Elderly suicides

get to grips with reality and start thinking about how to best prepare their kids for this future.”

Within Hong Kong, the influence of the mainland is felt everywhere. Step out at lunchtime during the week and you are likely to hear conversations in Mandarin nearly as frequently as Cantonese, the dialect traditionally spoken in Hong Kong. Hong Kongers used to act as a bridge between China and the West. A few decades ago, many rushed to the mainland to set up factories or to run the Chinese branches of multinationals. Increasingly, these jobs are going to mainland Chinese who speak fluent English and have graduated from Ivy League universities or Oxbridge. Many companies want staff who not only speak the language of the clients they are pursuing but also watch the same films and gossip about the same celebrities.

Ms Lau, who bought her son the police toys, works in financial technology. “I manage a lot of mainlanders who have moved to Hong Kong for work. They work harder, stay later and are more ambitious and thickskinned. There is no way a local Hong Konger on my team can compete with them. The Hong Kong competitive advantage is gone.” She may not embrace the democracy movement, but she is not happy about the changes in the curriculum. “When I was growing up, we were taught to think at school. Now, it’s a joke.” She adds of her son, “Not only is he not going to learn about what really happened in Tiananmen Square, but he is also not going to be competitive against mainland Chinese his age when he enters the workforce.”

Hong Kong is one of 11 cities being merged into the Greater Bay Area, a signature plan of China’s president, Xi Jinping, which covers an area of nearly 90m people with an economy larger than Australia’s. Shenzhen is at the centre. Hong Kong’s primary role will be to provide Chinese companies with a way to raise money from abroad. Faced with this future, some wealthy Hong Kongers are sending their children to private schools which teach in Mandarin and English. “My children can pick up Cantonese on the street. I don’t care if they aren’t fluent,” says one Hong Kong father whose privateequity firm mostly invests in mainland China. He and his wife speak Mandarin at home.

More and more highschool graduates from Hong Kong are choosing to attend university across the borMany in Hong Kong fear the next generation will be like the post-Tiananmen generation in mainland China

der. Tony Lam chose to study on the mainland because he has family there and tuition is about a quarter what it is in Hong Kong. He hopes to find a job in advertising or public relations when he graduates. “There are a lot more jobs in the mainland.” Mr Lam says the past two years of pandemic and protests have “proved the superiority of the mainland system”. Several of his friends who are also pursuing university in mainland China were encouraged by their parents to do so.

Some parents reject the idea that the regime’s control is inevitable or, at least, permanent. Rachel Leung is home schooling her daughter on a small farm because she wants her to have a connection to the land and to have time to play—and because she wants to insulate her from China’s influence. “The party will eventually fall,” she says. “When? I don’t know. Maybe 20 or 50 years from now. And when it does, what skills will our children, our grandchildren, need to thrive?” She pauses as children covered in mud from planting rice run by, then lists the qualities that she thinks they will need. “A willingness to communicate, the ability to persuade and compromise, empathy and love, knowing how to listen deeply. There will be an end to this darkness. For now, we can’t do anything big. But we can do small things like raise our children with this future in mind.”

lessons learned Ms Leung may be right. But the Chinese government has plenty of practice in moulding young minds. In 1989, at the height of prodemocracy protests in China, hundreds of thousands of people piled into Tiananmen Square. Li Ming’s father was one of them. After the massacre, he made his way back to his home town to join the civil service. When the party rolled out its patriotic education campaign, Mr Li was one of tens of millions of students who were subjected to it.

“My father taught me to never say anything in public that could get me into trouble,” he says. “He taught me, above everything else, to protect myself. It is a very pragmatic approach to life in China: it is the way to survive.” But his father also bought him whatever books he could find. He pushed Mr Li to think for himself by observing society and the people around them. When Mr Li moved to Hong Kong for university, his father warned him: “Be very careful what you say. But always remember: think for yourself.”

Many in Hong Kong fear the next generation will be like the postTiananmen generation in mainland China. They expect the curriculum to change so much that the government’s campaign of indoctrination may succeed. Still, there are reasons Hong Kong may hold out. Because it is already advanced, the party’s deal with the mainland—of economic growth in exchange for political submission—does not apply. And so far, unlike in mainland China, the government has not restricted internet access.

But the past two years in Hong Kong have shown how well the party understands power and how ruthlessly it will wield it. Mr Li may continue to think for himself, but he has absorbed the lesson his father drew from Tiananmen. He has returned home and is preparing for his civilservice examinations, with an eye to becoming a local propaganda official. n .................................................................................