Hong Kong’s Education Bureau has criticized the city’s schoolchildren for their “weak” singing of China’s national anthem, the “March of the Volunteers,” at flag-raising ceremonies that are now compulsory as part of patriotic “national security” education from kindergarten through to universities.

In an annual report published last month, the Bureau commented on schools’ staging of the ceremonies, which it said were part of “enhancing national identity.”

“When participating in flag-raising ceremonies, flag-bearers were skilled and energetic,” the assessment said. “Most of the students behaved solemnly and showed appropriate etiquette.”

But the scene was apparently lacking a certain je ne sais quoi, according to the inspection team.

“Teachers and students sang the national anthem together, but the singing was slightly weak,” the report found. “Schools must strengthen students’ confidence and habit of singing the national anthem and continue to make progress through multiple means.”

Hong Kong passed a law in 2020 making it illegal to insult China’s national anthem on pain of up to three years’ imprisonment, following a series of incidents in which Hong Kong soccer fans booed their own anthem in the stadium.

Being able to sing the national anthem with more enthusiasm would “deepen students’ understanding of and identification with their country,” the Education Bureau inspectors said.

Schools for learning disabilities

While criticizing the overall program of patriotic “national security education” in schools could land people in trouble in today’s Hong Kong, the inspectors did spark a backlash over their complaint that there was insufficient national security education at schools for children with learning disabilities.

The inspectors had singled out the Po Leung Kuk Laws Foundation School, which provides special education for children with severe intellectual disabilities.

“While the school has set up a flag-raising team … they were only able to connect a small number of subjects with national security education,” the school’s evaluation said of the school.

Another special school, Caritas Lok Kwan School in Shatin for children with moderate intellectual disabilities, was criticized for failing to fully cover the Chinese constitution and Hong Kong’s Basic Law in general knowledge classes. The report requested a “full review of national security education” at the school, which provides education, therapy, boarding facilities and family support service for children aged 6 to 18 with severe intellectual disability, according to its listing on the Education Bureau website.

“Some citizens believe that the Education Bureau has gone too far, saying that requiring students with special educational needs to learn the Constitution, the Basic Law and national security education is not reasonable,” the blog post said.

“The Bureau deeply regrets those comments.”

“Special schools will develop a school-based, adapted curriculum based on students’ needs and abilities,” it said.

Education blogger Yeung Wing Yu said it was “unbelievable” that students in special education were expected to understand concepts like “national security.”

“They don’t even know what a country is, let alone talking about national security,” Yeung, who runs the @edulancet Instagram account, told RFA Cantonese. “It’s pretty fanciful and unrealistic.”

“It’s really unbelievable what’s happening in Hong Kong now.”

Earlier this month, Secretary for Education Christine Choi said the strength of singing reflects students “emotional engagement” with the anthem, and that teachers will be asking kids to “sing louder” in music class from now on.

“This is a normal suggestion,” Choi told a local radio station, in defense of the report’s findings.

‘Glory to Hong Kong’

The report came as it emerged that versions of the banned protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong” has been reposted to YouTube and Spotify in the wake of a court injunction banning the dissemination of the tune in Hong Kong.

Song producers Dgxmusic reposted the song on streaming platforms Spotify and KKBox on their social media on Monday, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported on June 25.

“We are very sorry for the recent confusion, which has caused inconvenience to everyone,” the paper quoted the team as saying. “Despite our best efforts, we still cannot promise such incidents will not happen again for now. We will continue to work to reinstate other albums and ask for your understanding and tolerance.”

Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal on May 8 granted the government a temporary injunction to address the song’s continued availability online, calling it a “weapon” that could be used to bring down the government, and an “insult” to China’s national anthem.

The song’s labeling as “Hong Kong’s national anthem” on YouTube has been “highly embarrassing and hurtful to many people of Hong Kong, not to mention its serious damage to national interests,” the Court of Appeal judges found.

“Glory to Hong Kong,” which sparked a police investigation after organizers played it in error at recent overseas sporting fixtures, was regularly sung by crowds of unarmed protesters during the 2019 protests, which ranged from peaceful mass demonstrations for full democracy to intermittent, pitched battles between “front-line” protesters and armed riot police.

Call for reinstatement

On June 5, U.S. Representative Chris Smith and Senator Jeff Merkley, who chair the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, wrote to Google asking the company to reinstate the song on YouTube for users in Hong Kong.

The letter said that because the injunction didn’t impose a blanket ban, and allows for the use of the protest anthem for activities including academic and journalistic work, Google and YouTube blocking access to 32 videos listed in the Hong Kong court’s injunction appeared excessive.

Smith and Merkley called on Google to “limit the negative impact” on the free flow of news and information in Hong Kong.

“Glory to Hong Kong” calls for freedom and democracy rather than independence, but was nonetheless deemed in breach of the law due to its “separatist” intent, officials and police officers said at the start of an ongoing citywide crackdown on public dissent and peaceful political activism.

The injunction bans anyone in Hong Kong from “broadcasting, performing, printing, publishing, selling, offering for sale, distributing, disseminating, displaying or reproducing” the song with seditious intent, including online.

The move came after the Hong Kong government asked Google to alter its search results, to no avail.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Matthew Leung and Lee Heung Yeung for RFA Cantonese.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.