An extra one-off public holiday on 3 September 2015 has been approved by Legco. Local lawmakers approved the controversial ‘political’ holiday a few months after Beijing announced that September 3 will be a holiday to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in the World War II.
Lee Cheuk-yan of the Labour Party said: “It is sad to see that the Leung Chun-ying government must follow Beijing’s order even over a holiday.” While Dr Kwok Ka-ki of the Civic Party said: “It is a political holiday. It is a product of the bad relations between Beijing and Tokyo, and Beijing wants to make use of the opportunity to do something to embarrass and criticise Japan. If the Hong Kong government cares so much about Chinese history, why does it not designate the birthday of Dr Sun Yat-sen as a public holiday?”
While millions of Chinese died fighting the Japanese during World War II, China itself did not exist and the CCP itself did absolutely nothing to end the conflict. Japan surrendered unconditionally on the 11 August 1945 after the US dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
To create a new public holiday to celebrate the surrender seems nothing more than Beijing having a dig at Japan and looking to keep open wounds which the rest of the world closed years ago. To create a new holiday to remember the rumoured 14-20 million who died and the many millions more who became refugees would be respectful, but that doesn’t fit in the CCP’s China is great narrative which stirs the fires of patriotism when it needs to distract attention from a failure.