Patriot games

HOW Chinese is Hong Kong? Two recent issues have highlighted the territory’s contradictory attitudes toward the mainland. On August 22nd seven Hong Kongers belonging to the Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu Islands returned to a heroes’ welcome. They had sailed their fishing boat to those barren rocks (known as the Senkakus by the Japanese, who administer them), and were detained briefly after landing there. The group’s supporters range from pro-Beijing front groups to radical democrats who abhor the Communist Party. Hong Kong’s new chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, applauded the seamen from a distance, as did some of his sharpest detractors. Defending hallowed soil from Japan is something that everyone can agree on.

Just hours earlier, however, the government was paddling back from a much less successful attempt at teaching patriotism. The education bureau said it would form a special committee “to allay public concern” over the city’s new Moral and National Education curriculum.