„Dissolving Hong Kong – Public History and National Education since the 2020 National Security Law“ by Edward Vickers

This talk analyses the stepping up of ‚National Education‘ in Hong Kong following the mass protests of 2019-2020. It examines how the National Security Law of 2020 has led to a rapid and sweeping ‚mainlandisation‘ of identity discourse in schooling and the heritage sector. Changes to school curricula are significant, but need to be understood in the context of a draconian crackdown on media freedom, civil society and teachers‘ autonomy. The shift in public discourse is especially evident in museums and the heritage sector, where the local past is increasingly refracted through the prism of Chinese nationalism and ’securitisation‘. Recent changes include a new focus on commemoration of China’s ‚War of Resistance‘ against Japan; the opening of a grand new ‚Hong Kong Palace Museum‘ celebrating the imperial high culture of northern China; and forceful promotion of ‚National Security Education‘, invoking threats of foreign imperialism and subversion. Crucially, the intensified promotion of state-centred Chinese nationalism is also tied to an agenda of ever-closer integration of Hong Kong within a ‚Greater Bay Area‘ encompassing Shenzhen, Guangzhou and neighbouring cities. The reorientation of local identity consciousness is supported by demographic, economic and infrastructural changes that, taken together, threaten to dissolve Hong Kong’s distinctiveness in a solvent of monolithic ‚Chineseness‘.