Letters | No, Hong Kong’s problems were not created by liberal studies: but unaccountable officials may have played a role

Tung Chee-hwa blames the liberal studies curriculum his administration introduced for the discontent of young people today. He would do better to fault another failed programme he started

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Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive after the 1997 handover, has claimed that the liberal studies curriculum that began under his administration is to blame for today’s “youth problems”. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Published: 7:45am, 9 Jul 2019Updated: 7:45am, 9 Jul 2019

I refer to “Liberal studies to blame for protests claims ex-Hong Kong leader” (July 3), and here Tung Chee-hwa seems to be desperately clutching at straws. Perhaps he is now wishing that he had made the study of Confucian values a compulsory subject instead. To the contrary, I think that introducing liberal studies was one of the better moves of the Tung administration, as it gave students some relief from the stifling rote-learning methods that dominate local education, and gave them some room to think for themselves.

Tung may reflect that a real failure of his administration was the introduction of the Principal Officials Accountability System (“ministerial system”), and this must take some blame for the protests. Tung heralded this as the “dawning of a new era for the governance of Hong Kong … [to become ] a government more accountable to the people of Hong Kong”.

It was introduced in good faith, but there is no doubt that it floundered. Finding capable people from outside the civil service willing to serve in the administration has proven extremely difficult. The promise of “an open, enlightened and progressive government” has become a bad joke, as civil servants are promoted above their capabilities and have only succeeded in establishing another layer of bureaucracy.

Decision-making is pushed down the pyramid, from bureau to department to district. It is no wonder that Hong Kong has lost its dynamism. With this vacuum for decision-making, it is the tycoons, vested interests and paid consultants who have been calling the shots. A most obvious shortcoming of the accountability system is that no minister has resigned to take responsibility since 2003. No one is accountable.

In a functioning ministerial system, our secretary for justice and the secretary for security would have already resigned to take responsibility for the extradition bill fiasco. In these “unaccountable” circumstances, it is no wonder that youths have become inflamed: and not just youths.

I.M. Wright, Happy Valley