I can't speak for the HK or Guangdong education systems, but there is a controversy in language education theory on this sort of approach.

One side of the argument says that the second language learner should have as few "filters" on as possible, and understand the target language in its own terms. The idea is that this is harder, but results in more competent second language speakers, because they're thinking directly in the second language, rather than translating from the native language. The other side, especially in adult education, says "My students already have all their schema ingrained already. We'll get better results faster if we take advantage of it."

As a linguist and a person who only ever taught adult learners, I always took the second approach and figured my students could make up the difference with practice.