Good English is Hong Kong’s passport back to the world community
- With the right messaging, the government can encourage better English with a sense of inclusivity and integration – without neglecting Mandarin or Cantonese culture
- As a financial city, Hong Kong must embrace English if it wants to become China’s most potent ambassador
Whither English? The abrupt and poorly managed switch to Cantonese mother tongue instruction in secondary schools in 1998 was an own goal. Schools had to adapt to “biliteracy and trilingualism”. The intent, sensibly, was to promote fluency in English and Chinese, with conversational ability in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.
But the policy lacked clarity and there was huge variance in its adoption. Whereas pre-1997, about 90 per cent of secondary schools taught most subjects in English, by 2019, just 30 per cent used English as the medium of instruction.
Hong Kong has a long colonial history. Yet, it has motored on with Cantonese. Many from Guangdong escaped here to avoid painful cataclysms as a new Communist China took shape. This reinforced cultural conformity. Ranks closed further when social upheavals spilled over the border, encouraging a siege mentality.
Times have changed. Attitudes have not. Therein lies the rub. Part of the population has embraced all things Chinese while the rest, shaken by the protest fallout, is raising the drawbridge.
English proficiency and teaching should be encouraged while promoting Mandarin and protecting Cantonese culture. There is no contradiction here. This would help stretch intellectual horizons and offer a broader understanding.
The Hong Kong government can revisit this issue with clear resolve and the right messaging to encourage not just language competence but a sense of inclusivity and integration. The city must come together and heal to make the most of its prodigious talent.
Following the Hong Kong protests, the United States again became the Svengali for any apportioning of blame, from the city’s malcontents to those deemed less than patriotic. Yet, American and British universities remain in great demand, and rightly so. Language is not an issue of kowtowing to a particular country but of amassing knowledge.
China showed how. As the young communist country grappled with reconstruction, it was apparent that much technical research was bypassing it, as material was unavailable in Chinese. In 1978, this prompted Deng Xiaoping to encourage a long march of students to foreign universities. The success of that knowledge transfer is keenly evident today in China’s economic heft.
Hong Kong must now find direction and purpose. Ironically, English is its passport back to the world community, where it can also become China’s most potent ambassador.
Vijay Verghese is a long-time Hong Kong-based journalist and columnist