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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
March 3, 2008
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| January 20, 2008 |
Pak-kuen Au speaks about Hong Kong: Ten Years Under China’s Shadow |
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| Having joined a regional Peace Boat voyage in 2002, this was Mr Au's first time to join a global voyage. |
Mr Pak-kuen Au, a pro-democracy activist, Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) member, and former school principal joined the 60th Peace Boat voyage as a guest educator from Yokohama to Singapore. Mr Au gave lectures on a wide variety of topics ranging from the political and economical situation of Hong Kong to the way forward to peace in Northeast Asia. Ten years have passed since control of Hong Kong passed from British to Chinese hands in 1997, and Mr Au lectured on the changes that he has witnessed in Hong Kong under the “One Country, Two Systems” policy. |
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| Mr Au and volunteers taught basic Cantonese greetings to participants onboard before Peace Boat made port in Hong Kong. |
Starting with the reinterpretation of the Basic Law, established along with the Sino-British Joint Declaration to ensure Hong Kong’s autonomy until at least 2047, pressure from the central government and a change of power in Hong Kong’s legislature have led to undesirable changes in Hong Kong during the last decade. For example, through the reinterpretation of the Basic Law, children in Mainland China have been restricted from coming to Hong Kong to reunite with family members, a privilege that they were allowed under the British rule of Hong Kong. |
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| Participants organised a traditional Japanese tea ceremony for Mr Au and other guest educators onboard. |
In 2003, people of Hong Kong demonstrated against this tightening of political control from Mainland China. Over 500,000 people, approximately ten percent of the total population of Hong Kong, endured the hot summer sun to protest against the infringement of their right to autonomy. Moreover, people in Hong Kong continue to show their antipathy towards the central government by holding a candle night event annually on June 4, in memorial of the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989. In 2007, over 60,000 candles filled the night sky at Victoria Park, flickering lights of hope and remembrance. |
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Mr Au stressed the importance of cultivating a culture of acceptance between peoples, which can only be achieved by starting with small steps. |
With very few natural resources and almost no arable land, Hong Kong is dependent on imports from Mainland China for food and water, among many other things. Hong Kong also maintains no army of its own. In Mr Au’s words, when China shivers, Hong Kong shakes. Though he believes that independence for Hong Kong is impossible, Mr Au says that he and the people of Hong Kong hope to maintain an autonomous, democratic state in Hong Kong based on the following six core values: freedom of expression and association, autonomy, human rights, rule of law, social justice and democracy. |
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| The famous Hong Kong skyline shimmered brilliantly as the Peace Boat pulled out of port. |
An executive committee member of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, Mr Au has observed a decline in the quality of education in Hong Kong in the last ten years. He notes that while before the handover, nearly all schools used English as the language of instruction, now only 140 of the 400 schools in Hong Kong are allowed to use English as the language of instruction. An international hub for the financial world, language proficiency is pivotal in the maintenance of the Hong Kong economy, which makes this new policy detrimental not just to students as individuals, but also to the future of Hong Kong as a whole. However, the youth of Hong Kong are very involved in political affairs; during the aforementioned demonstration of 2003 it is believed that at least half of the demonstrators were Hong Kong youth, and Mr Au notes this activism among young people as a source of hope in the struggle to maintain a peaceful, autonomous Hong Kong under the rule of China in the years to come. |
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