State-sponsored Civil Society Organizations and the Anti-National Policy Campaign in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Government, backed by the Chinese government, has seen the introduction of national ‘patriotic’ education in the school curriculum as an important policy objective. The paper examines the role of a state-sponsored civil society coalition in supporting this objective and of the opposing civil society coalition which successfully caused the government to shelve the mandatory introduction of national education in 2012. It will also focus on the reasons for the failure of the government’s attempt to implement its policies and on the conflict of values which resulted in the formation of the anti-national education coalition.