Why is Education Bureau undermining NatSec propaganda?

Internet radio host Wan Yiu-sing is arrested for ‘seditious intent’ (he’s already on bail for some other trumped-up BS). The law has its roots in late 16th Century England, but has now been scrapped in the UK (except for aliens, it says). 

Sedition is classified as words that incite “hatred or contempt” for the government or cause discontent and dissatisfaction among residents. So either Wan (and Tam Tak-chi) have caused all this – undeniable – ‘discontent and dissatisfaction’, or the government should be arresting itself.

Instead, schools’ NatSec propaganda artwork is taking us into a strange world where the disturbing meets the farcical. Here’s the… OK, I don’t know what it is. (Apparently from a guide to teachers to help them identify patriotic kids’ face decals and bad elements’ hairstyles?) And behold, the immense, tireless effort low-level civil servants put into the Let’s Get Brainwashed on National Security video. 

It looks as if education bureaucrats are deliberately sabotaging Beijing officials’ commands by taking the orders to engineer young people’s souls 100% literally – with a straight face – and producing laughable and obviously counterproductive materials like this. But it could be that the Bureau’s staff are slavishly devoted to the CCP’s mission to reshape Hong Kong kids’ minds, unaware that their output is too grotesque to convince even the most suggestible 10-year-old. Either way, the Mainland overseers presumably lap this stuff up.

Some links from the weekend…

Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu interviewing Sebastian Veg on Hong Kong/Taiwan and Chinese identity, the Umbrella Movement vs the 2019 Uprising, the shift in Beijing since 2012 and more. Part 1 of the conversation, from mid-Jan on the NatSec Law/Regime, is here – perhaps best to read it second. Lots of interesting ideas.

Drawing on Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Václav Havel and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Quillette piece on personal responsibility under dictatorship in Hong Kong. (A must-read for the education bureaucrats.)

And in Asia Times, Francesco Sisci on China’s view of politics as war by other means

China is facing a challenge unprecedented in its history: to criticize and change the world or to be part of the world. 

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6 Responses to Why is Education Bureau undermining NatSec propaganda?

  1. Chris Maden says:

    Interesting. My VPN puts me in Taiwan, and I was told that I couldn’t watch the brainwashing video because it’s only available in certain countries. Someone must realise how well this puerile shite will go down in countries that remain free…

  2. Sam Clemens says:

    @Chris Maden

    It is verboten to watch the video in the U.S. as well.

  3. nationaliseddonkeynuts says:

    I mention this unironically because the video seems to also do the following without any irony or interest in how might be read by other audiences.

    but in the first 18 seconds, a girl asks an owl “Mr. Owl, what is National Security!?” and before the Owl even can answer a young man raises his hand up and says “I know,” and… he literally is immediately disappeared with a popping noise and a flash animation and reappears in front of… the military. Wisely, the owl said nothing. I take the Owl to be Xi himself, who is normally Sphinx-like in his appearance.

    Seriously, you must watch the whole thing. Without any awarenesss of how its subject might be perceived by non-believers and skeptics, there is rich fodder for showing up the national security issue for the faux security law that it is, and for ridiculing the lack of global perspective had by the animators and the staff who put it together. My god, it’s more troubling than laughable. I can imagine those putting it together actually totally believe in what they are doing. But I couldn’t stop laughing and choked on my coffee.

  4. Din Dan Che says:

    The voices seem to be those of trained voiceover artists… of which there used to be quite a few in HK, milling around RTHK and whatever outlet required their services. We must keep our ears tuned to whom these Lord Haw Haws may be so they won’t dob anyone in for seditious utterances.

  5. where's my jet plane says:

    I couldn’t stop laughing and choked on my coffee

    Be careful, NDN, you might find yourself accused of bringing the whole shooting match into disrepute and hurting the feelings of the Chinese people.

  6. Mary Melville says:

    8th February 2021 – (Hong Kong) The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) today (8th) charged a coach (34 years old), a 26-year-old member and a 22-year-old former member of the Hong Kong Women’s Handball Team, accusing them of conspiracy to defraud the Hong Kong Sports Institute, falsifying the training attendance records of the members and causing the sports institute to issue government training subsidies amounting to HK$28,000. Strewth.
    2020/21 ICAC Budget around HK$1,248,000,000
    Value for money eh?
    Meanwhile the Great White Sharks of our community survive and thrive.

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