Whether Hong Kong is a colony or not is not the point of word modification

After the new textbook of the Civil and Social Development Division stated that "Hong Kong is not a British colony", the community was very concerned about the official statement of the SAR government on this issue.

Liu Yongwei, vice-chairman of the Tai Po District Council, posted on social media a few days ago that a paragraph on the Legislative Council's website introducing the history of the council said that Hong Kong "was a British colony from January 26, 1841 to June 30, 1997." Afterwards, the Legislative Council Secretariat promptly deleted the relevant webpage and responded to media inquiries that the relevant content came from an outdated and old webpage found by an online search engine. The Legislative Council website was fully updated in January this year.

It is not uncommon for Hong Kong government to call it a colony before handover

In fact, the SAR government has called Hong Kong before the handover a "colonial".

Government departments such as the Police Force, the Customs and Excise Department, the Water Supplies Department and the Companies Registry, when reviewing the history of their departments, often mention that Hong Kong was a British "colonial" in the past, and even some current Hong Kong laws continue to exist as a "colonial". language.

Ding Xinbao, the former chief curator of the Hong Kong Museum of History, Yuen Kwok-keung, the former Secretary for Justice, and Liu Zhipang, a current Legislative Council member and historian, also called Hong Kong a "colonial" in the past.

After all, society has always regarded Hong Kong as a British colony in the past, and even had a direct impact on those who govern Hong Kong.

Carrie Lam delivered a speech at the Education Bureau's Civic and Social Development Teacher's Lecture in November last year, explaining why Hong Kong should not be regarded as a British colony. As a result of the equality treaty, the settlement of the Hong Kong and Macau issues is entirely an internal affair of the People's Republic of China and is within the scope of its sovereign rights." He then said, "I remember when I was very young, I had studied that Hong Kong belongs to the United Kingdom. Colony. In fact, if you really understand history, you will know that this statement is not accurate.” This basically means that she, the chief executive, also believed that Hong Kong was a colony in the past.

Acknowledging and understanding mistakes before they can be corrected

However, as explained by Carrie Lam and recent speeches by former NPC Standing Committee member Fan Xu Laitai and Basic Law Committee member Leung Meifen, the Chinese government believes that Hong Kong has never been a "colonial" and does not recognize the three unequal treaties between China and the UK.

Even in the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the Chinese wording is "resuming the exercise of sovereignty", which means that sovereignty has always remained in China.

What we should think about is why the official position of the country is so clear that many people in Hong Kong society have not recognized it since the return of the country 25 years ago?

In 1984, China and the British government signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Hong Kong issue.

(Getty Images)

Perhaps the problem is not only that the SAR government officials themselves do not have a correct understanding of the history, but they often regard the differences in their expressions as a sort of archival filing, and they just hurry to hide all relevant records.

Just like in September last year, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor met the media before attending the Executive Council. At that time, the inscription on the background screen mistyped the name of the country as "People's Republic of China". Different departments of the Hong Kong government immediately checked their websites for the same problem and quickly corrected them. It is reported that some bureaus now , the Department has also begun to carry out similar work on "colonies", but these wording changes do not help us face up to the issue itself.

In the past, society followed the British view and regarded Hong Kong as a colony. Today, if the government really wants to correct this, what it needs to do is to look directly at the reasons and historical background for the formation of the previous concept.

Rather than simply deleting the words or even denying the existence of this history, it is obvious that it is necessary to clearly understand how China was forced to sign, try to deny, to successfully try to overturn the unequal treaties related to it, and to clearly point out that it was not correct for people to call "colonies" at that time. More in line with the so-called national education needs.

The new government and the old issue The Hong Kong government's wrong country name incident reflects political distrust