HKEAA: Yes-Man to EDB

Students sit at a Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exams in Hong Kong on April 29, 2020. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

Commentary

This is my honor to write my first English column for The Epoch Times. For the last year or so, I have been active with the media, a fact that would have been unimaginable had I been still with the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA).

This turn of life can be traced to 2020, due to an ordinary history exam question.

“‘Japan did more good than harm to China in the period 1900–45.’ Do you agree? Explain your answer with reference to sources and using your own knowledge,” a question of the 2020 HKDSE history exam that was under my charge, was severely criticized as “misleading” and “hurting the national sentiment of the Chinese” by the pro-Beijing camp, including the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC in Hong Kong. Secretary for Education Kelvin Yeung Yun-hung claimed that the question had “no room for discussion” because Japan only did harm and nothing good to China.

Are the accusations valid? Simply not. Ezra F. Vogel, author of the renowned “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China,” states in his latest publication “China and Japan: Facing History” “from 600 to 838 … Japan was learning the basics of Chinese civilization, and two later periods, 1895 to 1937 and 1972 to 1992 … China was learning from Japan.” (emphasis added) “Chinese graduates of Japanese universities rose quickly in China’s academic hierarchy, notably Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. Products of Waseda University’s law and politics program, Chen became dean at Peking University, Li head librarian, and both became celebrated co-founders of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.” An important aspect of Japan’s contribution was the formation of modern Chinese language: a huge part of vocabulary, such as lishi (history), jingji (economics), and the very word gongchan zhuyi (communism), comes from Japan. Questioning Japan’s contribution to China means questioning the shaping of modern China and even the early history of Chinese communism.

Immanuel C.Y. Hsü, in his classic “Rise of Modern China” that had been a standard text for ex-Hong Kong Advanced Level History since the 1970s, writes “The late Ch’ing [Qing] new educational system was modeled upon that of Japan, as were most of the textbooks. Between 1902 and 1904 translations from Japanese sources accounted for 62.2 percent of the total 573 works, while British sources dwindled to 10.7 percent, and American to 6.1 percent .... Clearly Japan had replaced Britain and the United States as the chief supplier of information”

Hsü’s quote is particularly relevant. No doubt it invalidates the accusations by Education Bureau (EDB), but more importantly, it suggests that an HKAL history candidate can be well versed enough to do so. Actually, HKDSE candidates can be no less competent: in a three-page document to my ex-superintendent, I managed to list all similar historical facts that appear in current HKDSE history textbooks and EDB resource packages.

Given the above common-sense historical facts, EDB still decided to invalidate the question, a demand on which the statutorily independent HKEAA acted immediately. The invalidation decision shows that HKEAA is ruled by persons who know nothing about assessment in general, and history in particular. Shameful indeed, but more crucial is that they are happy to be yes men and Trojan Horses for EDB.

As the person in charge of history, my first time being formally summoned to provide information about the question was at the internal review in mid-June, almost one month after the invalidation.

The conspiracy was unveiled before not after the exam took place. The exam question is about Sino–Japanese relations in the first half of the 20th century, on which was never set before in HKDSE history. One day before the exam, Dot Dot News and Orange News, both under the control of the Central Government Liaison Office, picked a related friend-only post from my Facebook for mudslinging purposes (subsequently I found such posts leaked through hacking). What is the probability of the hackers/leftist media randomly choosing one of my thousands of Facebook posts and, coincidentally, having it aimed precisely right before the exam at a question that is never similarly set before?

All clues point to one conclusion: the question papers were leaked before the exam.

EDB made every effort to “prove” the question being beyond the ability of candidates to handle, and in order not to be proved otherwise, it needed a “safety valve” to prevent any such evidence being made available. Hence the unprecedented invalidation before marking started, so that markers could not generate any marks and comments for accurately describing a candidate’s actual performance on this question, and EDB’s accusations would never be really challenged. Safe enough? One more step to go: after the exam was completed, EDB took hold of all the relevant scripts from HKEAA for “study purpose.”

The climax was that I was made the only person to be held responsible for this “problematic question” and was advised to resign, which was necessary for the fiasco to be used as an excuse for launching the “scraping the bone and removing the poison” campaign in the educational field, getting rid of the “yellow-camp general”—me, and reforming the long-hated Liberal Studies.

In hindsight, it is a blessing rather than a curse for me. Continuing to work in an institution that has been reduced to be nothing more than a leftist disinformation, propaganda, and struggling machine would have been too much of a hardship to bear. Sharing history and memories of old Hong Kong with fellow Hongkongers is certainly a more cherished thing to do.