Hong Kong student clashes with authority are the result of too much liberal education, too late

Wei Yen says Hong Kong students, raised in the Confucian tradition, lack the political skills Westerners learn in their formative years, resulting in protests that are not productive and that only end up polarising society

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Student union president Lau Tsz-kei (left) and Chinese medicine student Andrew Chan Lok-hang at a protest against Baptist University’s decision to suspend Lau and Chan after a stand-off with staff at the language centre. Photo: Winson Wong

Published: 11:00am, 6 Feb 2018Updated: 7:34pm, 6 Feb 2018

As someone who has lived and worked in Hong Kong and now lives in the US, I read about the Baptist College student demonstration against the mandatory requirement of Mandarin skills with bemusement. Every college has a language requirement for graduation, which it has a right to set. Students pick their college, and that’s that. Instead of trying to perfect their Mandarin, these students chose to demonstrate to alter the requirement. That sounds like the easy way out.

But I also see this as a part of the bigger picture of a culture clash between China and the West.

For many young people growing up in Hong Kong, Western values such as freedom and democracy are bolt-on additions to their traditional Chinese upbringing. At home, they listen to their parents, go to school and hopefully get a good job afterwards – that is, a typical Confucian upbringing. There is little freedom of choice and independent thinking in their formative years, so they don’t have the solid foundation of a true Western liberal education, nor are they acquainted with the proper ways of operating in an open society.

When they enter the universities, which are mostly fashioned after liberal British and US colleges, all of a sudden they are bombarded with Western liberal ideas. They feel liberated and want to right the wrongs they see – right away.

Unruly students in Hong Kong are the product of a failed education system

Nothing wrong with this, except that students often lack the political skills Westerners learned in their formative years. As a result, they sometimes resort to marginal tactics to achieve their aims.

America is an adversarial society, but also one governed by law