China wants to boost the loyalty of young people from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau by organising
BEIJING: China wants to boost the loyalty of young people from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau by organising “study trips” and exchanges for them to visit the mainland, a top Chinese official said on Friday.
Young activists in both Hong Kong and self-ruled Taiwan have irked Beijing in recent years by pushing for greater autonomy or even independence and by organising protests against China’s influence.
Hong Kong and Macau were former European colonial outposts that returned to Chinese rule in the 1990s.
Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to the Communists. China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, viewing it as a wayward province.
Yu Zhengsheng, the ruling Communist Party’s fourth ranked leader, announced the plan to boost the loyalty to China among young people in all three places at the opening session of a largely ceremonial advisory body to parliament in Beijing.
He said the government would this year organise trips for young people “to visit the mainland on study trips and experience it for themselves”, adding that the trips would “strengthen the love of both region and country among the people of Hong Kong and Macau.
