Hong Kong, June 27 (FN Agency) The Hong Kong administration has singled out at least two schools for singing the Chinese national anthem “too softly” as it goes against its “patriotic education” curriculum meant to promote the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. Teachers at a third school have been asked to help students “cultivate habit and confidence” in singing it loud and clear with patriotic fervour. Hong Kong has redoubled the emphasis on “patriotic” education since 2020 when China cracked down on the city’s pro-democracy movement, as per a report in BBC on Thursday. Officials said students’ voices at the Hong Kong and Macau Lutheran Church Primary School were “soft and weak” and “should be strengthened”. At Yan Chai Hospital Lim Por Yen Secondary School, teachers were told to “help students develop the habit of singing the national anthem loudly in unison”. These comments appeared in a series of reports released by the city’s education bureau after it inspected primary and secondary schools, and interviewed staff and parents, the BBC said.
Of the 20 schools whose inspection reports were published on the education bureau’s website, at least six were advised to strengthen their curriculum focused on patriotic education. The exercise comes after in January, Hong Kong implemented a law which requires schools to include “patriotic education” in their curriculum and companies to do the same in their operations. The definition is vague but the curriculum is meant to promote the leadership and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, the BBC report said. Beijing says the law is aimed at “unifying thoughts” and “gathering strength for building a strong country”, However, the BBC report quoted critics who considers it as yet another sign of Hong Kong’s “disappearing autonomy” . Many former opposition lawmakers and democracy campaigners have been jailed since 2020 under a controversial national security law that criminalised all forms of dissent.