HONG KONG—In the aftermath of this fall’s pro-democracy protests, Hong Kong university students are looking to resist communist penetration of their student bodies.
Exhibit A in this trend is the controversy over the candidacy of mainland Chinese student Ye Lushan for a cabinet secretary position in the Hong Kong University Student Union (HKUSU).
Ye comes from Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong Province, which is just north of Hong Kong. She studied at the prestigious Affiliated High School of South China Normal University.
In an interview with HKU’s campus TV, Ye admitted to being a member of the Communist Youth League. Ye also said that 99 percent of HKU students from the mainland are members of the CYL and that membership is a “very common phenomenon.”
When asked how she viewed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), she noted that the CCP is China’s ruling body and then said, “One can see its accomplishments, anything that is not done adequately can be criticized and the CCP has corrected them.” Ye claimed she opposed the CCP’s interfering with the affairs of Hong Kong.
Ye also said she was once a member of the Union of Students For External Exploration (USEE), an organization established by students from mainland China that specially organizes events for the mainland students. Ye said she only “assisted” in organizing events.
In 2014, USEE organized a new student orientation event and invited a special guest speaker, Wang Yaoying. Wang is the founder of the Hong Kong Tertiary Student Alliance (HKTSA), a pro-CCP organization. Wang is also a member of the All-China Youth Federation Committee, a branch of the Communist Youth League. He has held important positions as a part-time consultant for China’s Central Policy Unit and chief executive officer of the Basic Law Institute.
The past penetration of communists in positions of responsibility at HKU involved HKTSA members, such as Chen Yie, Chen Guankang, Chen Xianlong, Huang Borong, and Mei Yixi. That organization is suspected by some students of being used by the CCP to strengthen control of Hong Kong’s tertiary education sector by taking over the student unions.
Ye has since published an article to rebut the claims made by HKU campus TV that she was sent to “red-dye” the HKUSU. In response HKU campus TV said it has the responsibility to investigate every candidate’s background so that students could know them better. The TV station also said it was not targeting Ye personally.
Another candidate, Feng Jingen, who is running for president of the “Ming Feng” cabinet, was asked to provide his family’s political background. Ming admitted that his grandfather was a senior official of the CCP.
The CCP’s Crimes
On Friday Feb. 6, The Global Times, an English-language publication of the CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily, published a signed article criticizing the controversy over mainland Chinese students running for the HKUSU, saying it has brought “McCarthyism” into the school campus.
The article said, “A small number of Hong Kong people are maliciously targeting mainland Chinese students’ every act, which is not any different than McCarthyism. This devious trend really cannot last long.”
Cheng Xiang, a HKU alumnus and commentator, said more mainland Chinese students are going to Hong Kong. Many elite students in mainland China are drawn into the CYL. Therefore, he is not surprised that “99 percent of mainland Chinese students are members of the CYL.”
He believes that if mainland Chinese students want to run for the HKUSU, it is necessary to be careful of those with a CYL background: “Even though she said that she no longer paid the membership fee and was no longer a member of the CYL, I feel that is not persuasive enough. Because we all know, be it the CYL or the CCP, it’s the ideology that matters. If the ideology is that of the CCP, then it is inevitable that its way of doing or looking at things would be brought in. This problem is worth everyone’s attention.”
