History next to be rectified

What do a broadcasting organization, patriotic (and desperate-to-seem-patriotic) uniformed youth groups, CY Leung’s wife, and a banner saying ‘cultural revolution launch’ have in common? The answer: RTHK’s flag-raising ceremony to celebrate the May 4th anniversary. 

The scene looks to have been contrived to the point of surrealism – so absurd you could almost suspect the idea was a clunky and amateurish attempt by locals to demonstrate ultra-loyalism rather than something imposed by Beijing officials. (Did any other government departments mark the occasion?) 

The May 4th Movement arose from student/intellectual protests against weak and inept government, exemplified by Chinese diplomats’ failure in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference to resist the Versailles Treaty’s transfer of the German concession in Shandong to the Japanese. The movement’s leaders argued for the Chinese people to modernize and embrace ‘Mr Science’ and ‘Mr Democracy’. But today, the CCP accentuates the anti-imperialist angle – a typical little example of the Party airbrushing history.

Which brings us rather neatly to ‘Red’ ‘fair and objective’ RTHK’s deletion of large amounts of programming posted online. This is the equivalent of a venerable newspaper burning its collection of back-issues. One of many reasons the CCP and its underlings want to erase the historical record is to wipe out evidence of collusion between the authorities and gangsters at Yuen Long on July 21 2019. The next step will no doubt be to accuse anyone recalling the truth of spreading ‘fake news’.

It will be interesting to see what the cops make of another awkward piece of history: they had good relations, back in the old days, with march organizers the Civil Human Rights Front, now on the CCP’s ‘to purge’ list. 

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8 Responses to History next to be rectified

  1. donkey says:

    Re the May 4 flag fellatio exercise.

    One of those turquoise color guards girls stood next to me on the MTR on that morning. I had to do a double take. She looked very shiny and almost like an Imperial Guard in the Star Wars movies. She was also so rigid. Even on the MTR she was walking in and out of the train like a robot. I noticed that other passengers were looking at her like, how did she get so waxy. Literally a kind of sheen was on her uniform.

  2. dimuendo says:

    Why are the names of the participants in the English version of the story written in pin yin? Are their names in the original written in puntonghua or guadongwah? If the former, why?!

  3. Casira says:

    Are they actually doing the May 4 ceremony in front of a public toilet?

  4. where's my jet plane says:

    In the photographs on that RTHK link it looks as though there been a certain amount of rummaging in the dress-up bag with a surprising tally of what look like colonial military uniforms. The best one is a guy in the second row in a khaki army officer’s uniform – pity his trousers are about a foot longer than his legs.

  5. Chinese Netizen says:

    “One of many reasons the CCP and its underlings want to erase the historical record is to wipe out evidence of collusion between the authorities and gangsters at Yuen Long on July 21 2019. The next step will no doubt be to accuse anyone recalling the truth of spreading ‘fake news’.”

    Shudderingly prescient.

  6. Chinese Netizen says:

    @jet plane: Don’t worry…now that the Popo are totalitarian regime parading, they and the other “disciplined” services will eventually transition out of colonial style uniforms.

    High collared jackets (think Mao jackets and Wehrmacht uniforms) go much, MUCH better with goose stepping than khakis or blues with neckties.

  7. Ping Che says:

    So you can now be jailed for being at the wrong place at the wrong time:

    https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1589368-20210505.htm

  8. Mary Melville says:

    @Ping Che ; this is Common Law with Chinese characteristics. “Beyond reasonable doubt” is now ‘whatever we say it means’.

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