tim's experiment

Found some of my students from the Mainland the other day, wearing those little red scarfs which you see kids wearing in China propaganda posters. It turned out this was a polite protest.

I gather that the City U student union was holding its election of officers when it emerged that three candidates from the Mainland had been Young Pioneers and one had actually been a member of the Communist Party itself. The other candidates then withdrew and the election had to be postponed. Readers who are not familiar with the way these things are done at Hong Kong universities should bear in mind that the students do not run for office as individuals. The people who are interested sort out the jobs between them and then run as a team. The only opposition is from apathy. Finding that some of your team members had undisclosed interesting pasts is under these circumstances, I suppose, a reasonable justification for peremptory withdrawal from the proceedings.

This was not the way my Mainlanders saw it, though. They saw the whole thing as “discrimination against Mainlanders”. It seems that if you are a promising student on the Mainland it is impossible to avoid the Young Pioneers. Comparisons with the Pope’s membership of the Hitler Youth are perhaps relevant here. I suppose it is not advisable to refuse an invitation to the Ciommunist Youth League, if it arrives. And then as you get older the Party membership follows.

I am reminded of the tussle among the occupiers of Iraq over what to do about former members of the Baath party, which uncritically supported the regime of Saddam Hussein. Some of the occupiers pointed out that membership of the party was virtually a prerequisite for many jobs so people joined with no particular commitment to the party’s ideology, such as it was, or to Mr Hussein personally. The view that prevailed, unfortunately, was that Iraq should be treated to a process analogous to the deNazification of Germany after World War 2. This process made a great many unnecessary enemies and also crippled the administration of government, power, public transport and other services.

Behind all this lies Hong Kong’s fundamental ambiguity on the question of the Communist Party and its role here, if it has one. Some leftwing bigewigs are, we must suppose, Party members. If so they do not disclose it. Mr CY Leung’s evasions on this topic are considered something of a blot on his suitability for elected high office. It is often written that membership of the Communist Party is illegal in Hong Kong. I have never come across a law to this effect. If the people who write this merely mean that the local branch has not been registered under the Societies Ordinance then that is true, but easily remedied. Communist Party members presumably feel that it would not enhance their standing in Hong Kong society if their membership were known, and I think they are right to think that.

But to apply that to visiting students seems, if discriminatory is too strong a word, at least unfair. People join many things when they are young, and as no doubt the Pope would point out, they sometimes have little choice. However I suspect the problem of the City U students is not that they had past memberships, but that they had concealed them. When running for office the sooner your embarassing baggage is opened to public view the better. See performance by Henry Tang of recent date.