China’s ‘purification’ of classrooms: A new law erases history, silences teachers and rewrites books
The high school visual arts teacher couldn’t go to the front lines of protest, but he took inspiration from the pro-democracy marches and unleashed his own brand of subversion: cartoons.
He drew a policeman sweeping a bloodied protester under a rug fashioned after the Chinese flag. Another sketch captioned “Lunchtime” depicted popular snacks — an egg custard tart and deep-fried French toast — next to a canister of tear gas. He captured the unrelenting despair that seized Hong Kongers after the demonstrations each night with an image of a man lying in bed crying himself to sleep.
Everywhere Wong looked, he saw China constricting the freedoms that had made Hong Kong an unabashed city of towering glass, raucous politics and quicksilver commerce. He drew in harrowing detail what he was losing, sharing his work on social media under the pen name @vawongsir. He thought his identity was safe. But then came the anonymous complaint to the Education Bureau that he was “publishing inappropriate illustrations online.”
Wong would end up losing his job.
“I felt powerless,” he said.
With China’s tightening control over Hong Kong, including passage of a new national security law, the territory’s pro-democracy activists, politicians, journalists and others are facing a Communist Party determined to crush dissent. Perhaps the greatest threat from this new purge — one that will affect generations to come — is the increasing pressure on schools and teachers over what to put in the minds of students. Both activists and bureaucrats know that a nation’s soul is distilled in the classroom; history can be erased with the silencing of teachers and rewriting of textbooks.
“They are turning education into a tool for controlling thought in Hong Kong,” said Ip Kin-yuen, a pro-democracy lawmaker representing the education sector who is vice president of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union. “There are a lot of cases of teachers being wronged, facing exaggerated accusations. I would describe it as political persecution.”
Hong Kong is being remade before the world. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is capitalizing on his country’s economic power and the planet’s preoccupation with the coronavirus to rein in Hong Kong’s democratic ambitions. Xi wants to subsume this defiant territory into his vision of national unity, even as China faces diplomatic fallout, most notably from the Trump administration, which has drawn closer to a new Cold War with Beijing in a fraught time of high-tech surveillance, shifting supply chains and America’s fallen stature of a global leader.
It is this city of 7 million at the center of a great power rivalry — where China sees its future and the West is in danger of losing a vital nexus in the Pacific Rim — that will determine the fate of teachers such as Wong, 30, who was too scared of retribution to give his first name. As an authoritarian makeover takes root, he and many others feel they have no place in the classroom.
It’s unclear how many teachers have been disciplined or let go for their political views. The Education Bureau said it received 222 complaints about teacher misconduct in the 12-month period ending in June. Of them, 117 were substantiated, resulting in reprimands or warnings for nearly half. The remaining half remain under review. The bureau declined to disclose the nature of the complaints.
Less than two weeks under a new national security law enacted by Beijing, Hong Kong residents already feel a curtain of control falling over the city’s realms of speech and thought.
Wong was one of those complaints. Months after his cartoons began appearing on social media, officials at his secondary school, considered one of the best in the city, demanded to know if he was running the account. They prodded him about his political views. Wong sought legal advice and the school backed down.
Months passed without a resolution. Wong continued to teach his group of 10 students, who knew he was behind the drawings but never mentioned it. Then on the last day of June, hours before the new national security law was introduced dismantling Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms, Wong was summoned to the principal’s office. He was told the school no longer had the resources to renew his contract.
Dispirited and unable to push back, Wong went home that night and reposted a drawing of a teacher with a hand clasped over his mouth. On a blackboard behind him were the words, “Goodbye, students.”
“The biggest pity is losing my students. They are always my top priority,” said Wong, still overcome with guilt for not protesting earlier alongside his pupils, including one who was arrested for demonstrating.
“Why is this their responsibility?” he asked. “Why do they have to take up this burden and be repressed for speaking up against injustice when they could have been playing basketball or video games and eating fishballs and siu mai? As a teacher, I was very ashamed that, at a time of a danger, I wasn’t there to protect my students.”
Wong, who remains unemployed, was so desperate to retain his job in order to pay for his ailing mother’s medical bills that he offered to work for half his $46,000 salary. The school declined and Wong had no recourse.
He was not alone. In June, a middle school music teacher’s contract wasn’t renewed after she failed to prevent students from performing a protest anthem during midterm exams.
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