The Hong Kong United Youth Association held a reception yesterday evening to celebrate the 67th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and the inauguration of its Council. Invited as as the officiating guests of honour, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and Director Zhang Xiaoming of the Central Government's Liaison Office in Hong Kong SAR attended the ceremony and delivered speeches. The Association is the largest youth organisation in the SAR. The speeches delivered by the two senior officials could be said to have fully showed the SAR and Central Governments' care for and expectation of young people in Hong Kong.
In his speech, Leung Chun-ying stressed on the SAR Government's youth policy and resources committed, encouraging young Hongkongers to seize the opportunity of development in the Mainland to seek development opportunities. Zhang Xiaoming on the other hand listed three recent major national events: the launch of Tiangong 2 space lab, the successful convention of the G-20 summit and the achievements of Chinese athletes at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and called on young people in Hong Kong to ponder deeply on their own roles in national development and rejuvenation, so as to "give their answers free from shame before our times, nation and ancestors".
No doubt, the two senior officials' talks were sincere, meaningful and based on facts. In past years, the SAR Government has allocated a large amount of resources to promote The Funding Scheme for Youth Exchange in the Mainland and The Funding Scheme for Youth Internship in the Mainland. Efforts will continue to be devoted in this regard, and more organisations and institutions will be mobilised to join in, so as to solidify achievements and expand influence.
Director Zhang Xiaoming's speech is even more interesting to listen to and inspiring. On this, some people may argue: Isn't a National Day speech every year simply to repeat what the nation has achieved? So how could Zhang's speech be of interest to young people? Actually this is not the case. For one thing, the three major events listed by Zhang Xiaoming are indeed great events of phasic significance, so he did not just talk in generalities. More importantly, young people really need to be more often inspired and reminded so that they could care more about their own nation and enhance their understanding and knowledge about themselves and their nation. Patriotic publicity and education is always needed, not to mention that such work it being done "not too much but too little" in today's SAR.
As a matter of fact, young people are the hope and future of a society. But it is never easy for those in power, including their policies and effectiveness in administration, to gain understanding and support from young people. This is particularly the case in today's SAR. In the just-concluded general legislative election, the number of voters increased by nearly 400,000 from the previous election, of which many were young, first-time voters. The average age of lawmakers-elect are also much lower than their predecessors. Whether the increase of young voters as well as young lawmakers is fortunate or unfortunate for the SAR Government's administration, political, economic and people's livelihood developments, it is hard to draw a conclusion right now. Nevertheless, it is a disputable fact that the increased participation by young people definitely will bring changes to and impact on all aspects of society.
Therefore, an urgent issue facing the SAR Government and the nation- and Hong Kong-loving, pro-establishment camp is how to better work on young people, including to better understand their appeals, opinions and aspirations, and find out what they support and what they oppose. In this regard, communication and listening is the most important thing. Consensus can hardly be established with a failure to effectively communicate with young people and understand what they love or hate and their value orientation. Being prone to go to extremes is often a feature of young people. But with patience and sincerity and letting actions and facts speak for themselves, such as giving more young Hongkongers opportunities to participate in the nation's space aviation experiments, summit forums and sports events to understand the pride and responsibility of being a Chinese, then it is believed that even a piece of stone would nod in agreement.
21 September 2016
