The rather grandiosely named Advanced Institute for Contemporary China Studies was founded at HK Baptist University in 2008 to become a ‘world renowned centre’ in its field. Instead, it seems to have been hijacked by United Front elements determined to reveal evil, foreign, non-reds-under-the-bed influences in Hong Kong’s education system – with predictably amusing results.
It had a hand in the infamous ‘brainwashing’ booklet that prompted the city’s many suspicious parents and students to rise up last July against the proposed introduction of National Education in schools. The subject is now toxic and dead.
It also produces the so-called Blue Book, which is purportedly an annual report on Hong Kong’s political, economic and social development. The book recommended the abolition of the Native English Teacher scheme because the barbarian language instructors had ‘taken root’ in Hong Kong, and proposed that all Permanent 
Secretaries (the top civil servant in each policy bureau) should be appointed by Beijing. And it alleged that a HK Chinese University course was funded and essentially run by an ‘American fund’, a phrase presumably intended to make readers think ‘CIA’. For this falsehood, and for trying to give the impression that others were responsible, the Institute (sorry, Advanced Institute) director Professor Victor Sit has been fired.
Baptist U’s student paper reported last month that a pro-Beijing businessman donated the funding for the Blue Book, and he was Tsang Hin-chi. This tremendously grumpy old boy is a past member of the National People’s Congress and a myriad lesser organizations, and has a HK$10 million doctorate from Sun Yat-sen University. He is boss of Goldlion, a tie (and of course real estate) company, and has criminal convictions for some sort of long-ago trading-document falsification. He donates millions in cash to Chinese Olympic gold medal winners, and has embarrassingly, on occasions, stopped scowling and broken into teary-eyed song at gatherings of the normally sedate HK Chinese Chamber of Commerce (the catchy Without The Communist Party There Would Be No New China). And he has an asteroid named after him. Oh, he also bought a liver harvested from an executed prisoner – so they say.
Apart from the fact that it has more backbiting and cattiness than a Miss World contest, and many of its members lapse into pathological obsessions about inane perceived slights and injustices, the world of academia must be a hellhole to inhabit because most of the intellectual rigour and enquiry has to be directed towards begging all sorts of odious people for funding and grants. Maybe Baptist U should have settled with having a plain, everyday not-very-Advanced Institute of something less hazardous, like tiddlywinks studies.
Here is his happy smiling self, joyously handing over HK$1.5/5 million for the Blue Book to Baptist U’s Victor Sit (r) and yesterday’s firer of Sit, Baptist U boss Albert Chan…
…to bring a little ray of sunshine and delight into our lives!
Even on the mainland, university German departments tend to go a bit native: philological, longwinded, legalistic; American ones, casual, didactic, earnest, naive.
But here in Asia’s world city, the English departments teach in Cantonese and rely on pocket dictionaries for current usage — whereas if the word “Chinese” occurs in the title, it’s hard to get over the threshold because of all the mouth-frothing and booby-traps.
I was wondering when we would get around to the ‘blue book’. Certainly such wild claims apart from being racist make HK look as paranoid as the erm, Mainland. Its quite ironic that socialist leaning know alls are singled out when we have Disney with its subtle disneyfication of millions of Mainlanders via its HK and eventually Shanghai theme parks. Now that’s truly machiavellian.
The Communists always keep an eye on or at least persecute intellectuals but of course the problem is that there are so few intellectuals in Hong Kong. Yet even they are considered dangerous.
Baptist University is know as the Disney University, “Students” are trawled from 7/11s, McDonalds and bus queues all over the territory to keep up enrollment numbers, if they have not first been snatched by the Hong Kong Institute of Education.
More serious CCP infiltration occurs at neighbouring Shitty University. Look in the Law and History Departments.
There is no problem with funding at universities in Hong Kong. Most of the Government’s miserly investment in education (for many decades on a par with Malawi and Senegal in terms of GDP percentage) is funneled into higher education, in keeping with the elitist aims of both the British and the CCP.
To be a teacher in Hong Kong “higher education” is to be a rat in a cage poked by a stick. The cage is the institution and the stick is the administration.
Baptist U boss, Albert Chan seems to be sporting ‘Hollywood Hair’ and as a patriot it’s a lovely shade of boot polish black !
Tsang Hin-chi looks suspiciously like that grumpy looking cat that’s all over Facebook
http://www.inquisitr.com/345077/meet-tardar-sauce-the-internets-favorite-grumpy-cat/
Albert Chan Sun-chi for Chief Secretary! At last, someone who can make a decision – We knew there was at least one decision-maker around somewhere and now he has been identified. Next for the axe, the Advanced Institute for Contemporary China Studies itself, then the all the think tanks. Please move to the front of the tumbril for easier boarding.
> Hemlock,
The guidelines stipulate that inverted commas are required round the word “Teacher” or “instructor” when the noun in question is not a compatriot. The word “foreigner” must be clearly visible in the same sentence, at a distance of not less than four words. Finally, two of the following must be present in the same paragraph: evil path, splittist, external forces, patriotic, 5000, return, sabotage, or a double negative or rhetorical question.
To bring a little ray of sunshine and delight into our lives this morning…
…play the video “Without The Communist Party There Would Be No New China” and read the English language subtitles : It says ( 2 x in fact) that the communist party practices “democrazy” I kid you not.
Seems that the abolition of the Native English Teacher Scheme backfired in this case 🙂
He is one sour faced miserable bastard. His passing hopefully will be soon.
The NET scheme is having an interesting impact on the English spoken in Hong Kong. I met one young lady who enunicated like a lumberjack from deepest Canada, whilst I was surprised to be greeted by a lad in Ma On Shan with a cheerful ” Morning, bit parky today” Both are beneficiaries of the NET scheme.
RTP
Desist from…
http://biglychee.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif
Indeed, employing emoticons in one’s rhetorical repertoire should perforce be punished with a spell in the pillory, being pelted with thousand-year-old eggs.
@Maugrim: Nooooo the cat is way cuter.
@ The (always-) Right Rev Dr Dr Lois Beluga
OK 🙂