Photo

The Chinese University of Hong Kong has postponed a campus visit of soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army, after students protested against the invitation to what they called troops of a “totalitarian regime.”

“On June 4, 1989, the People’s Liberation Army bloodily cracked down on the students’ democratic movement, massacring the people with tanks and live ammunition,” the university’s student union said in a statement on Wednesday, referring to the military suppression of student-led demonstrations around Tiananmen Square that left hundreds, perhaps thousands, dead. “To let an army serving a totalitarian regime enter our campus is to set a precedent of working with the People’s Liberation Army.”

Later that day, the university announced that the visit by soldiers from the Hong Kong garrison of the P.L.A., which was to have taken place on Friday and which included a seminar, a basketball game with students and a luncheon with university leaders, would not take place as scheduled.

“Due to a misunderstanding of the intent of the event by some parties, the university and the People’s Liberation Army Hong Kong garrison have decided to postpone the visit,” the university’s Office of Student Affairs wrote in an email to students. The university did not provide a new date for the visit.

Chinese University was the site of a rally in September protesting Beijing’s decision on the framework for selecting Hong Kong’s next leader, the chief executive, in 2017. Under those rules, all eligible voters would be allowed to cast ballots, but only for two or three candidates vetted by a committee critics said would yield to Beijing’s wishes. The rally preceded a weeklong student strike, which expanded to protests outside the Hong Kong government headquarters and nearly three months of street protests calling for greater public participation in choosing the candidates for chief executive.

Photo

On Friday, a commentary on the website of Global Times, a Chinese state-run newspaper, criticized the student union’s protest against the P.L.A. visit and noted that many who objected to the use of military force to end the student-led Tiananmen Square protests “weren’t even born in 1989.”

“Their attitude runs counter to the spirit of the national Constitution and the Basic Law of Hong Kong,” it said.

“Their understanding of the event was shaped by Western accounts,” it added. “They do not know that those young mainland students on the square have already grown up and have flowed into the stream of China’s surging development. They have become staunch patriots. They are experienced and have healthy and whole minds.”

And the commentary pointed out: “The Hong Kong garrison has visited at least seven institutions of higher learning in Hong Kong, including the University of Hong Kong, and not encountered any protests.”

Indeed, 80 Chinese military personnel visited the University of Hong Kong in November 2010, taking group photos and playing a friendly match of basketball with students.

But the symbolic friendship between the students and soldiers did not survive long outside the basketball court. Young people in Hong Kong, a former British colony that has retained considerable autonomy and civil rights since its return to Chinese rule in 1997, have shown a decreasing inclination to identify themselves as Chinese. An attempt by the Hong Kong government to introduce “patriotic education” to high school curriculums in 2012 was met with protests and abandoned.

That weakening identification with the Chinese mainland is especially acute among 18-to-30-year-olds, and has given rise to friction with the political and university authorities. In January, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, criticized an article in a student publication at the University of Hong Kong for advocating “self-determination” for the territory. In April, the university backtracked on a proposal that future students would be mandated to visit the mainland as part of their undergraduate studies.

Photo

Follow Alan Wong on Twitter at @alanwongw.