2024-02-23
What Has the Japan–China Parliamentary Friendship League Been Doing! Could the Reality Be That They Have Frequently Visited China and Enjoyed Honey Traps!
January 14, 2022
The following is from the third installment of “Remaking Hong Kong,” on the front page of today’s Sankei Shimbun.
The emphasis within the text, apart from the headings, and the commentary between the asterisks are mine.

Chinese-Style Education: Brainwash the Children
Thinking Skills Are “Unnecessary”; Mandarin Is Promoted
December 13, 2021, was the day the Chinese Communist Party’s view of history was drilled into Hong Kong’s children.
“On this day 84 years ago, Nanjing fell to the Japanese military. In Nanjing, as many as 300,000 of our Chinese compatriots were massacred…”
Last year, the Hong Kong government instructed primary and secondary schools—the latter corresponding to junior and senior high schools—to conduct commemorative activities for the “Nanjing Massacre.”
Each school held special lessons on the same day that commemorative ceremonies were held in China.
This was the first time.
According to Hong Kong media, some children at one primary school began crying after seeing footage and photographs of people being killed.
There are various estimates of the number of victims.
“300,000” is the figure asserted by the Chinese side.
A Chinese-affiliated Hong Kong newspaper dated the following day, December 14, published a child’s comment: “Hearing the figure of 300,000 made my hair stand on end.”
Its editorial justified the activities, saying, “We must help children develop an accurate view of history from an early age and foster patriotism.”

What exactly are the Japanese government, politicians, mainstream media, and scholars who raise no voice of protest whatsoever against the Chinese government over such outrageous education—that is, Nazism in the name of anti-Japanese education?
Are they citizens of Japan, or subjects of a Chinese vassal state?
What exactly is the United Nations, which has continued to leave this unchecked?
While leaving such outrageous Nazism unchecked, the person responsible for alerting China and South Korea to visits to Yasukuni Shrine—a place commemorating the war dead, something entirely normal for the people of any country—and prompting them to criticize our country was Yoichi Kato, a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun.
South Korea, far from merely resembling China, has continued to practice an even worse form of Nazism in the name of anti-Japanese education from the postwar period to the present.
Kato proves the correctness of the argument I have continued to make since I began writing: “Everything begins with one person.”
The Asahi Shimbun, which continues Kato’s conduct as though it were its corporate creed, can hardly be called a Japanese newspaper.
It is a newspaper of China and South Korea.
What kind of Japan–China friendship is this, when China has been allowed to continue such outrageous education—that is, Nazism in the name of anti-Japanese education!
What have the lawmakers who have belonged to, or currently belong to, the Japan–China Parliamentary Friendship League been doing!
Could the reality be that they have frequently visited China and enjoyed honey traps!

“The changes in education are happening far too quickly…”
Zhang Weiqiang—a pseudonym, in his forties—who has taught at a Hong Kong secondary school for more than 20 years, expresses his astonishment.
According to Zhang, as soon as the Hong Kong National Security Law took effect in June 2020, Hong Kong’s Education Bureau issued directives to each school.
“First, a curriculum was introduced for teachers to study the National Security Law, and we were instructed on what kind of education to provide under it.”
For example, students must be taught that “China is a democratic country.”
Teachers were instructed that, in doing so, they must ensure that students do not develop doubts.
“In other words, we were told to brainwash the students. Teachers’ work became focused exclusively on producing patriots. Only foreign countries may be criticized.”
How have the students responded?
Many minors participated in the anti-government and anti-China demonstrations that intensified in 2019.
“Yet now they all listen silently. The classrooms are filled with an atmosphere that says, ‘You must not object.’”
Hong Kong’s secondary schools originally had a subject called “Liberal Studies,” which developed students’ thinking skills through the study of social issues.
However, the Chinese government criticized it for “fostering critical thinking rather than patriotism.”
Since last September, it has been replaced by a subject—Citizenship and Social Development—intended to strengthen students’ identity as Chinese citizens.
A male teacher, aged 32, who had taught Liberal Studies, resigned.
“It was a subject that fostered students’ curiosity. I don’t want to teach lessons in which teachers decide the direction students must follow!”

At Zhang’s secondary school, ceremonies to raise the Chinese national flag on commemorative days and other occasions are also strictly regulated.
When students cannot gather in the schoolyard because of construction or other reasons, every student must stand in their classroom and watch a live broadcast of the flag-raising ceremony.
According to Zhang, the Education Bureau recently issued a new directive to each school.
“Strengthen Putonghua—Mandarin—education.”
The language used in everyday life in Hong Kong is Cantonese.
Mandarin education has been provided since Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997, but this directive called for it to be strengthened and accelerated.
“Recently, I often see children speaking Mandarin in the streets, and it sends a chill down my spine.”
A former pro-democracy district councilor says this.
He says that not only immigrants from mainland China but also Hong Kong children have begun using Mandarin in everyday life.
“Could Beijing be planning to replace the population’s lifeblood?”
He has China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in mind.
In that region, large numbers of Han Chinese migrated in, and Mandarin became the predominant language of conversation.
And the places to which Uyghurs who spoke only the Uyghur language were sent for educational purposes were detention camps.

The authorities’ transformation extends beyond education.
Last December, the Hong Kong government established a “Civil Service College” to teach civil servants the Chinese Communist Party’s principles and the mindset required to safeguard national security.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam, the head of the government, said in her address, “We must respect the Communist Party’s principles and spirit.”
She spoke in Mandarin.
A male civil servant in his thirties laments, “All civil servants were made to sign a declaration pledging loyalty to the government. This is no longer the free Hong Kong I knew,” and lowers his voice.
“It is as though we have become a Chinese colony.”
Honorifics omitted.
(Kinya Fujimoto, Hong Kong)