The following post by Chow Po Chung (周保松), a professor in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 10:40 a.m. today, September 5, 2012. Chow currently has more than 32,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Because of what has recently been going on in Hong Kong, a mainland friend took to Facebook to write her thoughts about receiving 16 years of ideological and political education. Every word brings tears to the eye. I don’t know how long this [post] will survive, so if you want to read it be quick about it..”
The post shares a text-as-image file of the essay on national education purportedly written by a mainland student. We’ve translated the opening, which is below the file:
Here is a translation of the first paragraph of the essay:
Why do I oppose national education? This question is perhaps not a real question, but it nevertheless prompted me to consider it at some length. As an ordinary person without power or money, my parents had no opportunity to send me to an international school or pack me off overseas. Therefore, from primary school all the way to university, like the vast majority of ordinary Chinese students, I spent 16 years in a public school. National education was a shadow that followed me throughout those 16 years. Nevertheless, it had no affect on me or on my fellows. Among my classmates, not a single person cares about the Chinese Communist Party, not a single person believes that the Chinese Communist Party is supremely great or correct. It seems our 16 years of national education were an utter failure. Well then, is there any real need to oppose national education? The following is my attempt to offer my thoughts on this question from the standpoint of someone who spent 16 years alongside a “great, glorious and correct Party,” educated with the idea of loving the Party and loving the country.
Chow’s original Chinese-language post follows:
因為香港最近發生的事，一位內地朋友在Facebook寫下她對身受的十六年思想政治教育的反思，讀來一字一淚。不知道它能存活太久，所以想讀的要快。
NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.
