With the anti-national education campaign on a rampage and half of the new government busy defending the curriculum, any objective observer will easily come to the conclusion that launching national education in Hong Kong schools is a fool's errand.
It would be like employing Muslims to teach the Bible in an Islamic country with the objective of enabling the students to view Christianity critically. No Christian could be converted this way, if, from primary one, children were taught that they should take Genesis with a pinch of salt.
After so many concessions as to totally disable the original objective of national education, Hongkongers still find it blasphemous, call it brainwashing and want to get rid of it. This is how ridiculous things are getting here 15 years after the handover.
This absurd situation is clearly unsustainable. Like McCarthyism and Nazism, such populist fervour will disappear, but the process may take as long as a decade and will be excruciatingly painful, leaving behind a gaping wound.
There are only a handful of scenarios for Hong Kong, a tiny administrative region within China. The first one is what is happening now, with the central government keeping a benevolent eye on the ongoing madness and reaching out with a helping hand when needed. But this happy state will not last.
In fact, it will soon end, as both the internal and external environment of the country dictate it must. The mainland is going through its most difficult period of transition since the opening-up policy was implemented in 1978. It will have to make drastic changes in response to both internal and external challenges.
In this respect, Hong Kong is not helping. It has become part of the problem and is posing as a springboard for external threats to stir internal troubles. The central government will be forced to deal with Hong Kong in a way drastically different from before.