A blow to anti-NE bids

Hong Kong's most brilliant youngsters have dealt a big blow to anti-national education forces in the city by demonstrating huge enthusiasm for learning more about their motherland.

Nearly 1,000 leaders and members from 13 leading youth organizations in Hong Kong - including the Scout Association of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Girl Guides Association and the Girls' Brigade Hong Kong - are now on an in-depth, nine-day study tour of the mainland, trying to gain better knowledge of the history and latest development of our nation by attending lectures, paying visits and conducting exchanges with national leaders including Vice-President Li Yuanchao and peers on the mainland.

Such enthusiasm defies the relentless efforts by mainland haters and hired guns of other hostile forces to whip up anti-national education sentiment in the city.

Since last summer, waves of campaigns have been launched by these groups across Hong Kong to undermine the SAR government's effort to implement national education in the city. In their latest farce, anti-national education forces launched a new round of verbal attacks on the government over the past couple of weeks, branding a booklet that provides a simplified introduction to the Basic Law for primary school pupils as a means to conduct "covert brainwashing".

This mega-study tour and many other mainland-based summer camps being attended by numerous Hong Kong students have declared the anti-national education campaign a failure, and proved that efforts to demonize the mainland are futile.

With the handover of sovereignty in 1997, Hong Kong is now an inseparable part of the Chinese nation, and shares the same fate with the rest of the nation, as reminded by Vice-President Li when he addressed members of the study tour in Beijing on Tuesday. It's of paramount importance for Hong Kong youths to have better knowledge of, and love their country as they are the future of Hong Kong and of the nation. That is why the vice-president expressed three wishes for Hong Kong youths: to become defenders of the "One Country, Two Systems" principle, to carry on the patriotic tradition of Hong Kong society, and to become the next generation of Hong Kong entrepreneurs in the new era.

The author is a current affairs commentator.

(HK Edition 07/25/2013 page1)