'Schoolmaster' Xi leaves Hong Kong smarting

Hong Kong : A landmark visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Hong Kong left little doubt that Beijing views the city as a destabilising hotbed of unacceptable political dissent that must prove its loyalty, analysts said Sunday.

His three-day trip to celebrate 20 years since Hong Kong was handed back to China by Britain, culminated Saturday in a 30-minute speech warning that any challenge to Beijing's control over the city crossed a "red line".

That was seen as a salvo against a new wave of activists calling for self-determination or independence for semi-autonomous Hong Kong, concepts intolerable to Beijing.

Throughout the televised address, Xi played up Hong Kong's role in upholding China's national security and sovereignty, casting it as a potential breeding ground for instability that must be reined in.

It comes after major political turbulence in recent years which saw mass rallies calling for democratic reform bring parts of the city to a standstill for months in 2014. 

Since then, a "localist" movement has emerged promoting Hong Kong's own separate identity as fewer young people see themselves as "Chinese". Some in that camp want a complete split from the mainland.

The address laid out a "very strong warning" against dissenters, said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political science professor at Hong Kong Baptist University.

"Xi's acting as a schoolmaster, warning there will be consequences if they misbehave," he added. 

Xi also called on authorities to "enhance" education to raise awareness of China's national history and culture, alluding to the need to bring young people back into the fold. 

By putting national security and education front and centre, Xi is pushing Hong Kong's new Beijing-friendly leader Carrie Lam to revisit two potentially explosive catalysts for social and political unrest. 

The last attempt to implement a compulsory patriotic curriculum was shelved in 2012 after huge rallies by parents, teachers and students who feared it was Beijing brainwashing. Those protests were led by a then 15-year-old Joshua Wong, now an internationally known pro-democracy campaigner.

A proposed anti-subversion national security law also triggered massive demonstrations in 2003 over concerns it would lead to suppression of rights and freedoms. It has never been implemented.  

"If Carrie Lam does what Xi Jinping said, which is to relaunch the national education campaign and to draft a national security law, she's going to antagonise a lot of Hong Kong people," said Cabestan.