Suzanne Pepper

             After looking back at the growth of Hong Kong’s democracy movement from 1949 to the present (Dec. 10 and 28 posts), only the future remains and Hong Kong’s latest generation of activists is pointing the way forward.  They like to call themselves the “after 80s” (bashi-hou), meaning anyone born after 1980, and they have only just burst upon the scene taking everyone by surprise.

              One reason for the surprise is that Hong Kong’s political community is currently focused on the government’s latest political reform proposals (Nov. 23 post) and consumed by the debate over how to respond.  The three-month consultation period now has less than a month to go.  Public forums and debates including those sponsored by the government and all other concerned parties have become daily events but the pan-democratic camp has so far spent more time talking about strategy than substance. Everyone agrees that the government’s proposals are sorely wanting because they do nothing to reform the half of Hong Kong’s 60-seat Legislative Council that is elected not by universal suffrage but by special interest groups known as Functional Constituencies.  The main stumbling blocks are Beijing and Hong Kong conservatives unwilling to change the status quo.  Democrats are trying to decide how best to confront this impasse.

         Nevertheless, despite much disagreement and rising tempers, the radical League of Social Democrats and Civic Party activists are resolved to proceed with their resignation/referendum plan even though no one else seems prepared to take the risk.  Accordingly, five LSD and CP legislators  –  one from each of Hong Kong’s five electoral districts  –  have just announced their resignations, effective from January 29.  The move is meant as a gesture of protest against Beijing’s refusal to allow anything more than incremental progress toward the officially promised goal of universal suffrage direct elections for the entire legislature and for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive.  A further aim is to force simultaneous territory-wide by-elections wherein each legislator will run for the seat he/she just vacated.  Campaigning will be used as a platform for public debate that can illustrate the real life defects of Hong Kong’s current indirectly elected system compared to the benefits of one directly elected by all the people.  In this way, the public’s commitment to democracy can hopefully be kept alive in the face of Beijing’s intransigence.

AN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST         

          Given the historic potential of these distractions, no one paid much attention when a small group of young people began a strange silent protest that was initially mistaken for some sort of religious cult ritual.  Led only by a single funereal drum beat, they walked a few steps, knelt down, kowtowed forehead to ground holding grains of rice as a gesture of supplication in outstretched hands.  They would then rise to their feet and begin again.  This exhausting routine was originally choreographed to dramatize the protest of a suburban village that stands in the way of progress.  Tsoi Yuen village must be demolished to make way for a railway project that will link Hong Kong with the mainland’s new high-speed line.  Official aims are all about modernization, development, big business, corporate money, and construction jobs, plus Hong Kong’s now unrelenting physical and economic integration with the mainland.  The rice gains were meant to symbolize fields and vegetable gardens that re-located villagers will lose.

             This particular protest had actually been underway for months with concerned groups joining residents who ultimately won a generous compensation package from the government.  Most of the 150 village households have now agreed to move.  Hence when the drum beat dirge routine moved into town, onlookers and pundits dismissed it as more street theater from some unarticulated youth protest perhaps over poor job prospects, low incomes in a not yet fully recovered economy, and so on.  But that was before the young people set up camp around the Legislative Council building downtown as legislators began their final debates prior to authorizing funds for the project. 

         At that point people began talking to the protesters and discovered they were not primarily poor unemployed youth or suburban villagers but secondary and college level students and recent graduates.  They saw themselves as a coherent if deliberately disaggregated and leaderless force of activists who had a name for their movement, bashi-hou, and a purpose, namely, to protest social injustice as they saw it and in their own diverse ways.  

         They also did not just spring up over night but their typical Hong Kong-style small group activism never qualified until now even as a loosely-organized protest coalition.   Small groups of young people have in recent years spearheaded Hong Kong’s green movement with multiple environmental causes ranging from plastic bags to pesticide-laced vegetables, air pollution, and the density of high-rise apartment blocks.  Three especially high-profile protests have also focused on heritage or “collective memory” conservation and some bashi-hou activists began their protest careers in the mini-campaigns to try and stop demolition of the unpretentious but much-loved Star Ferry Pier and Queen’s Pier beside it.  Some then took up the cause of Wedding Card Street in the Wanchai District of Hong Kong Island as proprietors tried to save the dilapidated buildings that housed their print shops and generations of sentimental Hong Kongers remembered their own wedding invitations printed in the shops.

         The anti-high speed rail campaign followed naturally and appealed to many diverse groups  –  all represented in a festival-of-protest organized beside the Legislative Council building.  The demonstration culminated on January 15-16, when funding for the project was finally approved after a marathon debate while the drum beat routine circled the building and a small public square beside it and police lines encircled the whole scene.  By then it contained everything from hunger strikers to earnest discussion groups, choristers, and an organic vegetable stall.  Organizers claimed 10,000 people took part in the finale when young people packed the surrounding streets as well.   The police naturally claimed far fewer.  But even they had to admit surprise when about 1,000 text-messaging young people left suddenly to stage an impromptu sit-in several blocks away at the official residence of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive.  The Twitter generation had arrived and successfully staged its first illegal event, illegal because   public order regulations decree that any gathering of more than 50 people must be registered in advance.   There have been no arrests to date.

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS 

           After it was over, everyone realized they had either witnessed or participated in an important rite of passage.  Hong Kong’s traditional political culture, rooted in small group activism, was reproducing itself in yet another generation.  And like every other such upsurge dating back at least to the 1960s, this one serves to perpetuate the same basic commitments that also sustain Hong Kong’s democracy movement.  A dozen years after the return to Chinese rule, Hong Kong’s younger generation was replenishing “Hong Kong values” at their source in unspoken defiance of Beijing’s ambitious effort to promote mainland-friendly mindsets among local young people.  The strength of these values (Nov. 10 post) lies in their spontaneity and their weakness derives from the small-group attachments that hinder effective community-wide action. But for now that weakness is a major plus because it allows groups to carry on beneath the political radar that Beijing uses to target and label as “dissident” Hong Kong’s established pro-democracy parties.

         In fact, the 1980s protesters may proudly proclaim themselves leaderless and non-political but they are definitely not a-political.  The extra energy that propelled this latest agitation seemed to flow from the new appetite for political confrontation seen in recent months and from the developing crisis over Hong Kong’s political reform debate.  This last protesters readily admitted.  “Oppose Functional Constituencies,” proclaimed one giant placard in the square, “Promote Universal Suffrage.”   Fliers spelled out in clear detail how the Legislative Council’s current design promotes social injustice because the Functional Constituencies give big business the extra weight needed to win legislative approval for all such projects regardless of popular opposition.

          Again dating back to the 1960s, Hong Kong political activists have always maintained this same contradictory association with political power.  Not for us, they say today, of officials and politicians.  Out motives are too pure to be diluted by public posturing, prevaricating, and above all the pressures to compromise that come with elective office.  Especially these activists say they do not want to let themselves become “mouthpieces” for any political party.  But in this respect, the new 1980s generation is most closely related to its immediate 2003 predecessors who organized the massive July 1, 2003 protest that succeeded in shelving Hong Kong’s first attempt to pass national security legislation as mandated by Article 23 of the post-1997 Basic Law constitution.

            Several coalitions were formed at that time, in 2002-03, and the leading Civil Human Rights Front still organizes what has become the annual July First memorial march.  Yet so adamant were they in rejecting organized political parties that Front members voted to remove a leading 2003 organizer, Richard Tsoi, from his position after he decided to run for elective office.  Nevertheless, the Front has become, after due deliberation about not compromising its principles, a staunch supporter of the universal suffrage campaign.

        The post-1980 generation also has its political heroes and favorites, most of whom just happen to come from the LSD and CP.  For years, “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung led the ranks of angry young street protesters.  So far his standing among them seems to have been only marginally compromised by his 2004 decision to contest elections and join the “establishment,” which he and his LSD colleagues regularly scandalize by bringing their street theatre antics into the Legislative Council chamber. The CP’s associated Professional Commons group took up the latest cause and designed an alternative shorter cheaper route for the offending railway project. 

        These preferences are also reflected in party age cohorts.  The LSD claims that 55% of its membership is under 30; the CP claims 42.5% under 40.  In contrast, the Democratic Party, which broke with its Young Turk faction years ago, today has a membership only 12.6% of whom are under 30.  The main pro-Beijing party ranks lowest with 8.4% under 35 (Ming Pao Daly News, Jan. 5, 2010).

             Consequently, the figures and preferences provide clues as to why the LSD and CP have struck off alone on their risky resignation venture.  A dynamic interactive relationship has grown between the two parties and their constituencies that is propelling them all in a different direction from others still bound by the conventions of Hong Kong’s post-1997 political life.  This has allowed the two parties, in effect, to call Beijing’s bluff by saying that since the Basic Law’s promises for universal suffrage elections are not being kept, politicians need no longer be bound by the established rules of the game.  Since these are not working in the service of all the people, direct civil society activism is the only alternative short of civil disobedience or violent protest.

         The parties have given a name to their venture calling it a “new democracy” movement that challenges the public not to give up on democratic goals but to follow the example of the 1980s generation by taking the initiative on their own when no one else will.  This idea is reminiscent of 1970s social activism that filled the void left by Hong Kong’s aborted1960s political reform project.  The difference today is that new-style democrats see in the disparate demands for social justice a convergence of interests and a new source of energy for their universal suffrage campaign.  Whether the new strategy will have any more success than the old in winning concessions from Beijing and big business is doubtful.  But LSD and CP democrats are now offering an alternative  –  as if, in risking their Legislative Council seats for the cause, they are also preparing a retreat back into civil society should their gamble fail.

          Hong Kong’s present-day democracy movement dates its birth from the early 1980s with good reason.  At that time, Beijing announced its intention to resume sovereignty in 1997; the colonial government lifted its customary bans on local politicking; and the general public was finally allowed to participate in elections.  The present generation of democracy partisans built their reputations and defined their new identities in relation to those changes, with the aim of establishing safeguards against the political hazards of mainland Chinese rule.  Achievements of their lobbying and agitation include the guarantees Beijing and London wrote into the formal transfer documents, and the 60% majorities that pro-democracy candidates continue to win in local legislative elections. 

           In one respect, however, the movement’s success is responsible for what has become its greatest handicap.  Supporters and detractors alike are well aware of the movement’s many defects and deficiencies.  Supporters do their best to compensate and detractors to exploit. But one handicap is more dangerous than others because supporters do not recognize it whereas adversaries do. Hong Kong’s democracy movement seems to have no conception of political time, meaning either its pre-1980s past or a future beyond the guarantees their activism helped achieve in the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 and the Basic Law constitution that governs Hong Kong for a 50 year transition period from 1997 (Dec. 10 post).

SUSPENDED IN TIME

          For all practical political purposes, Hong Kong democrats are suspended in transitional time unable think beyond the promises written into those two documents whereby Hong Kong’s pre-1997 “way of life” will remain unchanged for 50 years.  That Beijing sees the one-country, two- systems promise as a temporary arrangement designed to finesse the transition to full integration within the mainland body politick is sometimes acknowledged but never discussed.  This is evidently because Hong Kong democrats have still not moved beyond their pre-1997 assumptions that by 2047, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will have gone the way of its European counterparts. The rousing sound-bite from the 1990s can still be heard today:  democracy cannot be achieved in Hong Kong until China itself has become democratic, the assumption being that China is on course to follow the global democratization trend.

           Failure to contemplate a future when the CCP and its Hong Kong adherents might be stronger, more confident, and more defiant of Western political values than in 1997 means democratic activists and opinion leaders have had no incentive to adjust their pre-1997 assumptions.  As a result, they cannot anticipate possible future scenarios inspired not by Western democratic ideals but by a different century-old tradition of one-party mass-based dictatorship, otherwise known as democratic-centralism, that was designed to entrench communist revolutionary power.  All told, Hong Kong is currently being asked to make decisions on the government’s latest political reform proposals and the electoral arrangements contained therein (Nov. 23 post) without the information necessary to assess either their historic antecedents or long term political implications.

          The public consultation period on these proposals still has two months to go, however, and democratic activists are just beginning to conclude that Beijing has no intention of allowing genuine Western-style universal suffrage elections in Hong Kong.  Hence the intensifying public debate may yet begin to focus on long-term prospects and there will be time enough to record its progress.  Meanwhile, we can set the stage with another dimension of their movement that democrats also never discuss, namely, its pre-1980 foundations. 

           Had the earlier political reform campaigns been acknowledged before 1997, pro-democracy partisans might have been able to learn from their mistakes and much more.  The 1980s movement would have been able to defuse one of Beijing’s angriest charges against them, namely, that their movement was nothing but an artificial anti-communist construct deliberately fostered by the departing British in an otherwise politically apathetic community after Beijing demanded Hong Kong’s return.  Beijing still argues that the aim was part of a Western “Trojan horse” conspiracy to subvert post-1997 Chinese governance in Hong Kong and eventually in the rest of China as well.  

          Carrying the argument further, Beijing also maintains that since the people are sovereign in Western democratic systems, calling for Western-style elected government in Hong Kong is tantamount to asking for independence.  This is because sovereign authority in China is represented by the unified party-led people’s dictatorship as exercised through its people’s congress system and Hong Kong is now part of China.   Had they acknowledged the pre-1980 popular activist foundations on which they built their movement, local democrats might have anticipated this independence allegation and done a better job of rebutting it since their predecessors had 30 years of experience in doing just that.

A NEW BEGINNING:  1949

          In September 1984, activists claimed their Ko Shan Theater rally marked the first time in Hong Kong history that 1,000 Chinese residents gathered to demand democratic political reform (Dec. 10 post).  In fact, it was only the first time a wholly Chinese-led crowd of that size had made such a direct demand.  But no one chose to remember the December 16, 1964 meeting when 1,300 mostly Chinese supporters of the Reform Club led by British expatriate Brook Bernacchi packed the City Hall auditorium for their 15^th anniversary general meeting.  The club had been founded in 1949 to promote elected representation and was in the forefront of a renewed effort that supporters assumed in 1964 was at last on the verge of a breakthrough.

          There has actually never been a time since the earliest days of British rule when someone in Hong Kong was not discussing the merits of elected representation.  But democratic partisans today regard everything before 1980 as pre-historic British colonial whereas a clear break with Hong Kong’s political pre-history occurred in the late 1940s, after the 1941-45 Japanese occupation.  Hong Kong’s present-day democracy movement can be traced in a direct line of descent from the first glimmerings of opposition to unreformed autocratic government that took hold at that time.

          The immediate post-World War II story is well-known.[1]  Concerned about perpetuating the old-fashioned   “benevolent autocracy” of pre-war days, and mindful of post-war pressures to give Hong Kong back to China forthwith, the returning British governor announced plans in 1946 for a partially elected city council.  The idea was to give more local people than the small accepted circle of wealthy Anglicized Chinese some stake in local public administration.  The colonial establishment procrastinated until 1949, when it countered with its own proposal, whereupon the community suddenly sprang to life.  The idea of elected representation in government gained a public following at that time and interest was sustained with varying degrees of intensity for the next three decades.  A few key episodes illustrate both the continuing demand and the excuses used to deny it.

          In 1949, two new groups took up the cause.  The Reform Club had a mixed expatriate and Chinese membership with English as the common language.  The Chinese Reform Association had primarily Chinese members and used Cantonese.  Their efforts culminated in a meeting on July 13, 1949 attended by 400 people from 142 registered Chinese civic associations. These represented a good cross section of the Chinese community and claimed a total membership of 141,800 people.  The organizations also sponsored a petition that was far more ambitious than the governor’s original 1946 plan and promoters proclaimed their effort to be historic since no large body of Chinese residents had ever before raised such demands.

          After more procrastination, the colonial establishment including both its British and Chinese components finally prevailed and killed the project but by then, in 1952, there were extenuating circumstances.  The effects of the CCP’s 1949 victory in China were making themselves felt:  anti-communist refugees were pouring in; a local pro-communist agitation was taking root; its sympathizers were taking over the Chinese Reform Association; and enthusiasm for reform had cooled.  The Hong Kong Standard, previously a supporter of reform, caught the changing mood. Czechoslovakia had gone the way of other European satellite countries by simple parliamentary process, noted the paper’s December 10, 1951 editorial, “and who can guarantee that Hong Kong may not share the same fate from an overdose of parliamentarianism?”

           That fear underlay decisions on political reform through the 1970s, but too sensitive to elaborate openly, officials and other conservatives usually relied on excuses harking back to the beginning of Hong Kong colonial time.  The most common was that Chinese, who have always constituted around 95% of Hong Kong’s population, were politically apathetic and preferred leaving government to the professionals.  Alexander Grantham, governor from 1947 to 1957, used both arguments in his 1965 memoir. [2] 

LOBBYISTS AND PETITIONERS

           After a few painful years, however, the colony settled down along Cold War lines of accommodation based on an understanding:  the pro-Beijing community would be left alone as long as it did not challenge the colonial government’s authority.  This understanding held until the 1967-68 leftist-led riots that scuttled the next major reform initiative.  Meanwhile, non-leftist veterans of the failed 1949-52 effort may have been drifting in the wilderness but they never abandoned their cause.  

            The most articulate by far was Ma Man-fai who soon broke with his left-leaning friends in the Chinese Reform Association.  Ma was an incongruous figure famous for his traditional Chinese attire, long wispy beard, detailed knowledge of British colonial constitutions, and fluent English, which he used to mock Hong Kong’s Cold War “showcase of democracy” boast.  On the difference between Western democracy and its Chinese communist namesake, he liked to say that the latter was of and for the people, but not by them.

           Momentum began to revive in the late 1950s.  One new voice was that of businessman Hilton Cheong-Leen, a leader of the new Civic Association.  In 1960, he and Reform Club representatives pioneered what would become standard practice by flying to London where they met British officials and sympathetic Members of Parliament and lobbied directly for political reforms.  Ma Man-fai was joined by another new voice, Elsie Elliott, who was destined to antagonize many generations of Hong Kong authority.  Their 1960-61 reform proposals were so radical that the haughty South China Morning Post dismissed them as “downright nonsense” because they included, among other things, a road map for Legislative Council elections by universal suffrage.[3]

          Official resistance was nevertheless easing and the government even allowed groups to start calling themselves political parties.  Claiming to be a Hong Kong first, the Democratic Self-Government Party began organizing in 1963.  It was in this new atmosphere of optimism that the 1964 Reform Club meeting attracted such a large crowd.  In May 1966, Elsie Elliott flew to London, financed by thousands of individual supporters who contributed to a “Dollar for Elsie” fund.  Afterward, the fund’s surplus was used to help pay expenses for dinners, meetings, and Hyde Park forums where Ma Man-fai did the translating during exchanges that gave local Chinese audiences their first chance to put questions directly to British politicians.  One dinner was hosted by 40 different political and civic groups.  On another occasion, Member of Parliament John Rankin responded to the many group leaders he met by advising them to unite and form a single political party for more effective action since they were all demanding the same thing. 

          When the government’s long-delayed Report of the Working Party on Local Administration appeared in February 1967, it received much the same response as the Hong Kong government’s just released 2009 reform package.  The 1967 plan envisaged no elected legislators and only partially elected district bodies, all quietly forgotten after the 1967-68 leftist riots.  Reform advocates tried to carry on in the 1970s, just as their predecessors had done in the 1950s.  Elsie Elliott’s supporters collected 53,000 signatures on a petition in 1972, asking the governor to appoint her to the Legislative Council as its first ever workers’ representative.  He ignored the petition but its populist message pointed the way forward as 1960s political activism was channeled into other mostly “non-constitutional” social issues. [4]

          Just before the government did its 1980 about-face on elections, a strange episode illustrated how anachronistic Hong Kong’s crown colony rule had become. Still fearful of communist infiltration and most other kinds of disruption as well, the government had set up in the late 1970s, a secret Standing Committee on Pressure Groups (SCOPG).  After its cover was blown, also in 1980,  activists enjoyed reading the security risk assessments attached to the most “threatening” of the many social action groups that had grown to fill the void in Hong Kong’s political life.   SCOPG records also illustrate the link between 1960s political activism and its 1980s revival via the 1970s watch list.  The sponsors of the first September 1984 Ko Shan Theatre rally, organized to call for directly elected legislators in 1988, included most of the groups and individuals given pride of place on SCOPG’s list.

PAST PRECEDENTS, CURRENT HANDICAPS

          That the 1980s generation should have wanted a clean break with the colonial past is understandable; that their movement should have ignored the experience of its predecessors is not.   The resulting disconnect has deprived Hong Kong’s democracy movement of three important talking points in what has now become a major confrontation with Beijing.  First, their movement is not an artificial construct but the natural result of an ongoing agitation that was already three decades old in 1980.  Second, far from being created by Britain, London and the colonial Hong Kong government did everything possible during those 30 years to contain and discredit demands for elected representation.

           The third point concerns the matter of popular sovereignty.  From the start, pre-1980s reformers were sensitive to the link between elections and independence.  They took care to acknowledge that since it actually belonged to China, Hong Kong could never become independent like all the other colonies that were democratizing their legislatures in preparation for that end.   Reformers’ arguments were instead always based on the simple proposition that local people like everyone else had an inherent right to elected representation with the practical aim of achieving more responsive government.

          Local democrats are, of course, not wholly to blame for this lapse since London used the independence excuse as late as 1967 to reject demands for even one elected legislator.  Britain then did its about-face on elections in the 1980s without explaining the contradiction and Beijing not surprisingly cried foul.  But Hong Kong’s new generation of democrats failed to confront either Beijing or London with some critical straight talk based on the earlier experience.

          Local democrats have also failed to overcome the handicap that was already apparent in 1966.  Many other sympathetic observers both local and foreign have reiterated John Rankin’s advice to no avail.  Hong Kong’s miniature democratic parties are still operating in small-group activist mode.  They do unite on major political reform issues but otherwise jealously guard their separate identities and constituencies despite the obvious consequences.  Months of tedious negotiations were needed, for example, to coordinate candidates for the last District Councils election in 2007.  This was necessary to keep democratic candidates from competing with each other and ceding seats to their opponents.  Yet everyone now knows the latter are guided by a different activist tradition that long ago mastered the lessons of unity and discipline.  Pro-Beijing partisans have self-consciously adapted that tradition and skillfully used it to build majorities on all but two of Hong Kong’s 18 District Councils — where democrats casually conceded their last remaining chairmanship in 2007 to the cause of factional infighting.       

 [2] Via Ports:  From Hong Kong to Hong Kong (HKU Press, 1965), pp. 111-12, 195.

 [3] Pepper, Keeping Democracy at Bay (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), pp. 136-37.

[4]  Lam Wai-man Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong (Sharpe, 2004).

          Pro-democracy supporters have scarcely begun consulting with the government over its latest consultation document on political reform (Nov. 23 post).  They knew at a glance they didn’t like it because the package of proposals is almost identical to those rejected by democrats in 2005.    Similarly, the 2009 proposals contain no hint as to how the political system might evolve toward the directly elected government that supporters assumed Hong Kong was promised by its Basic Law constitution.  For now action remains confined to the pan-democratic camp as debate rages over how best to register the dismay all share. 

          The radical resignation/referendum plan (Sept. 16 and Nov. 23 posts) is losing ground to moderates fearful of the risks, but the public consultation period will continue until February, so the drama and discussion have a long way to go.  That gives everyone else time to review how Hong Kong has reached such an impasse.  Newcomers to the subject will want to know why democrats are so agitated; others may have forgotten the dates and details of a saga that has continued for over two decades with no end in sight. The main difference between now and then is that until now everyone thought they were working toward one-person-one-vote directly-elected local government.  In contrast, the latest reform package and statements from its promoters suggest that Beijing has no intention of allowing such a government to evolve in Hong Kong and democrats have finally begun to confront that possibility.

 EARLY DAYS

           Hong Kong’s present day democracy movement dates its birth from the early 1980s.  At that time, the colony was just coming to grips with the idea that British rule would end as of July 1, 1997.  In 1982, Beijing had finally confirmed its intention, widely rumored since 1979, to resume sovereignty.  During those three years, the British government had begun to relax its customary “administrative absorption of politics,” whereby local leaders were co-opted, discredited, or marginalized.  In June 1980, the concept of universal suffrage was officially introduced for the first time ever in the government’s unexpected proposal for a colony-wide network of district boards to advise on community affairs.  A minority of members on each of the 18 new boards would be directly elected by the public at large. 

           The plan was set in motion with surprising speed given the century and more spent dithering over the dangers of voting rights for Hong Kong Chinese.  Elections were held without incident in a two-part sequence, in March and September 1982.  Hong Kong’s 1997 fate was confirmed by Beijing and London during the intervening months.  No link between that fate and Britain’s sudden interest in political reform has ever been acknowledged but Hong Kong’s contemporary democracy movement identified itself from the start with the challenge of 1997.  Suddenly liberated from the customary bans against politicking, local activists began a debate that has continued with varying degrees of intensity ever since.

         Beijing had already broached the idea of one-country, two-systems in an unsuccessful effort to woo Taiwan and the formula was then applied to Hong Kong.  In September 1984, Beijing and London signed their formal Joint Declaration.  In it, Beijing pledged to leave all of Hong Kong’s existing rights, freedoms, economic system, and way of life unchanged for 50 years from 1997.   But the statement also declared that Hong Kong’s local legislature “shall be constituted by elections,” which up to that time it had never been.  All these promises were to be written by Beijing into a Basic Law constitution, which was in fact done.  The law was drafted between 1985 and 1990 and promulgated that year.

            The Hong Kong government had meanwhile continued with its new elections project and did not consult Beijing.  In mid-1984, the government announced its plans for indirect legislative elections aimed at creating “a system of government the authority for which is firmly rooted in Hong Kong.”  A local political spectrum began to form as people took sides.  Most everyone found something to dislike in the proposal.  Some activists resented the assertion that Hong Kong was not ready for direct elections. The captains of commerce and industry were dead set against elections of any kind.  And Beijing’s resentment over the idea of a locally-rooted authority accountable to local people was and remains at the heart of its opposition to democratic elections.  Beijing’s antagonism grew along with the democracy movement itself since those who called for a strong democratic system as the best protection against the dangers of Communist Party rule generated the greatest public interest. 

         Democrats nostalgically date their rise from several rallies held in a nondescript neighborhood park.  The first Ko Shan Theater rally, on September 16, 1984, drew a record 1,000 activists demanding speedy progress from indirect to direct Legislative Council (Legco) elections.   The first ever Legco election occurred a year later in September 1985, featuring a minority of legislators indirectly elected by new functional or special interest constituencies plus an “electoral college” composed mainly of the new district board members.  The two most prominent winners were those who had spoken out most forcefully for democratic safeguards, namely, Martin Lee and Szeto Wah from the legal and education constituencies, respectively. 

 POPULAR MOBILIZATION

            In 1987, the government issued more proposals suggesting the possibility of direct elections for a few Legco seats in the next, 1988, election.  Many opinion polls showed majority support for direct elections, but Beijing protested, the local pro-Beijing and business communities were learning how to lobby, and the government backed down.  There would be no direct elections until 1991 and these must conform to the soon-to-be-completed Basic Law.  Lobbying intensified pro and con to influence Basic Law drafters and reached fever pitch after China’s own 1980s democracy movement ended in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.  One million Hong Kongers made history by marching in protest and their demands for democracy increased dramatically, but constitutional progress never kept pace with popular aspirations.

           The Basic Law allowed only 18 directly elected legislators in 1991, with a gradual increase to 30 or half the 60-seat chamber by the 2004-08 term.   Progress thereafter was left open.  Democrats nevertheless took heart from Articles 45 and 68 that promised eventual “universal suffrage” elections, for both the Chief Executive (CE) and Legco.  Democrats also swept 17 of the 18 seats in 199l, and the 1989-1991 collapse of communism in Europe provided more grounds for hope.   During his 1992-1997 tenure, Hong Kong’s last British governor, Christopher Patten, tried some imaginative variations on the Basic Law’s complex electoral formulas.  These actually owed much to the old British tradition of designing colonial legislatures in ways that always produced “safe” majorities so it was fitting that the last British governor should try to find a way out of the maze.

             All Patten’s democratizing innovations were abandoned after 1997.  The new Hong Kong government also took another leaf from the colonial playbook by trying to co-opt, discredit, and marginalize what came to be called Hong Kong’s “opposition,” even though democratic candidates continued to win a 60% majority of votes for the directly-elected Legco seats.   Officially, the movement was left for dead and often behaved accordingly, unable to find its footing at a time when Hong Kong needed both Beijing and the business community to overcome the effects of the Asian economic crisis.  In deference to their new sovereign and the public’s fear of political instability, democrats also abandoned their most effective pre-1997 rallying cry about providing safeguards against the dangers of Communist Party rule.

TURNING POINT       

         Beijing writer CHENG Jie recently provided an unusually candid commentary on what happened next.  Beijing had been surprised to discover that Hong Kong was not a “politically-subdued territory” after all, when 500,000 angry residents took to the streets on July 1, 2003 (hkjournal.org, july 09).   The public was in effect rebelling against proposed national security legislation mandated by Article 23 of the Basic Law.   As a result, for better and for worse, the democracy movement’s five-year drift in the political wilderness ended at that time and Beijing’s more active direction of Hong Kong governance began.

          Beijing’s alarm was caused not just by the massive protest march but also by its immediate political consequences. Democrats hastened to exploit the upsurge of popular anger and renewed their demands for universal suffrage elections as of 2007/08, when progress could resume according to the Basic Law’s timetable. The District Boards had been renamed councils soon after 1997, and campaigning for the next District Councils election was transformed by democrats’ call to elect candidates dedicated to their cause. These won far more seats on Nov. 23, 2003 than anyone anticipated in the usually conservative small district constituencies.  

         In early 2004, Beijing directed a high volume political studies campaign at Hong Kong and sent angry Basic Law experts to lecture the community as to its civic responsibilities and patriotic duties.   On April 6, 2004, Beijing issued an interpretation of the Basic Law overturning pre-1997 verbal and written assurances that Legco reforms would be for Hong Kong alone to decide.  Henceforth, no electoral reforms could be introduced without Beijing’s prior consent.  This was followed by a formal decision on April 26, 2004 rejecting popular demands for universal suffrage in the 2007 CE and 2008 Legco elections.  The existing balance of half directly-elected and half indirectly-elected functional constituency seats must also remain unchanged. 

            In late 2005, the Hong Kong government proposed a set of incremental reforms that were limited by Beijing’s April 26, 2004 decision.   Legco democrats united in voting down the package on December 21, 2005 because it contained no indication of how or when progress to genuine universal suffrage elections might resume.  In July 2007, the Hong Kong government tried again with a new Green Paper on Constitutional Development laying out all the options.  These were presented in such a mesmerizing mix of mainland and Hong Kong bureaucratic language that they registered virtually no impact on the general public.  But the possibilities for Legco are worth noting because they contained important hints about the way forward.  The options were:  (1) returning all seats on a one-person-one-vote basis as democrats were demanding; (2) retaining functional constituencies as their most powerful proponents were demanding; (3) replacing the functional seats with those elected by District Councilors as “some” unidentified people were said to be demanding.

         Then, on December 29, 2007, Beijing issued another decision and finally provided a timetable of sorts:  no universal suffrage elections for the CE until 2017; those for Legco could follow.  As for 2012, when both CE and Legco elections occur in the same year, incremental adjustments might be made as per the April 26, 2004 decision disallowing any change in Legco’s half-half balance of seats, which brings us up to date! 

           The latest package of proposals issued on November 18, contains adjustments for the coming 2012 elections only, with no indication as to how they might evolve thereafter because Beijing refused permission to provide it.  Hence some democratic leaders, having concluded they will never see genuine democratic elections in their lifetime, are opting for the territory-wide resignation strategy as a gesture of protest.  Final decisions on the pan-democratic camp’s participation will be announced later this month.

              Finally, after almost a year’s delay, the Hong Kong government has unveiled its latest package of political reform proposals and democrats have activated their long-planned protest strategy.   The entire pan-democratic camp has still not signed on but five legislators announced their preliminary decision to resign soon after the government’s proposals were published on November 18.  According to this plan, if the government’s proposals contained no meaningful signs of progress toward the promised end of genuine universal suffrage elections, one legislator from each of Hong Kong’s five election districts would resign simultaneously (Sept. 16 post).  By-elections must be held within a few months and the campaigns would be used to mobilize public support.  Democrats are calling this a popular referendum on reform, which the government has always refused to allow.

          Officially, the reform announcement was postponed from early spring to late autumn because the government needed to focus on anticipated repercussions from the global financial crisis.  More likely, economics provided a convenient excuse.   Electoral reform is an issue calculated to bring people back onto the streets and precautions were taken nationwide for months in advance to contain all such expressions of popular dissent ahead of China’s sensitive 60^th national anniversary celebrations on October First. The precautions for Hong Kong were probably not ill-advised.

           Everyone has long since lost count of the consultations and marches and demonstrations that have been held here since the early 1980s when universal suffrage was first introduced for a new system of colony-wide district boards.  Probably local politicians and activists have even lost count of their meetings and debates during the past year in preparation for this latest step on Hong Kong’s journey toward the promised goal of wholly elected local government.  The promise is written into Articles 45 and 68 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law constitution, which refers to the “ultimate aim” of universal suffrage elections for both the Chief Executive (CE) and Legislative Council (Legco), without indicating how or when it might be reached.  Over time, the goal has taken on mirage-like proportions receding by mandate from Beijing after each step forward in Hong Kong. 

           The most significant such “recession” occurred in December 2007 when Beijing finally announced a timetable of sorts.  The CE could (keyi) be elected by universal suffrage in 2017  (not shall or will be), and Legco could follow thereafter. [i]  The earliest possibility would be 2020.  In the meantime, incremental changes designed to prepare for the ultimate aim are permitted and the latest official reform package is designed accordingly for the 2012 elections, but only for the 2012 elections at Beijing’s insistence.  The CE’s term is five years and that of Legco four years; the next elections for both fall in 2012.

          In fact, the proposed changes just announced are so incremental as to raise questions about the nature of the ultimate aim itself.[ii]  Perhaps the real question should be:  what exactly did Beijing mean 20 years ago when it allowed “universal suffrage” to be written into Hong Kong’s Basic Law or, more specifically, what does Beijing mean by the term now?  Macau’s Basic Law, promulgated in 1993, contains no such promise suggesting that Beijing may have had second thoughts early on.  For Hong Kong democrats, however, the aim remains clear and unchanged, namely, local government directly elected by all residents without distinction on a one-person-one-vote basis as stated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 25).  If the latest reform proposals are any indication, the authorities have no intention of ever allowing such a system to evolve.

CHIEF EXECUTIVE SELECTION

            Article 45 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law actually states that the “ultimate aim” is “selection” of the CE by universal suffrage “upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures.”    For this election, then, the key reform issue is not so much universal suffrage as who nominates the candidates and how.   The Basic Law specified a devilishly complex Election Committee designed to produce what British colonial administrators used to call “safe” results.  It has been used to select the CE since 1997, including two different men who were each returned for a second term.  

            The 2009 package proposes to leave the existing Election Committee intact but expand its size from 800 members to 1,200, without suggesting how or even if it might be reformed in the future.  In 2012, this committee is to be created, as before, in a convoluted process that entails preliminary selection of an equal number of electors from each of four separate sectors:  (1) industry, commerce, finance; (2) professionals; (3) grassroots or labor, social services, religion, sports, culture; and (4) political office holders including Legco members, district councilors, and Hong Kong’s 36-member delegation to the National People’s Congress, plus members of the honorary Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. These four main constituency sectors have been divided into multiple sub-sectors to facilitate the election process.   It is proposed to increase the size of this committee by selecting 100 additional electors from each of the four main constituencies. 

             A prospective candidate could only qualify for nomination if one-eighth of the committee members endorsed him/her, a ratio that will remain unchanged.  The number of required member signatures would therefore rise from 100 to 150.    During the last CE selection exercise, in 2007, one democratic candidate managed to obtain the necessary signatures from likeminded committee members primarily in the second and third sectors.  Teachers, lawyers, health care providers, and social workers number among the most reliable democratic supporters.  So are Christians but the religious sub-sector has been divided up so as to give Catholics and Protestants a minority of members (14), in a constituency dominated by Taoists, Confucians, Buddhists, and Muslims (26).   The committee overall has been designed in the same meticulous fashion, stacked in the conservatives’ favor.  The result is a preponderance of pro-government, pro-Beijing, and pro-business members who make victory by a democratic candidate virtually impossible.  Without significant changes in the composition of this Election Committee, which the 2009 proposals do not anticipate, the public even if allowed would only be able to vote for candidates pre-selected by the committee’s conservative majority.

            Finally, the Basic Law also stipulated that the CE is appointed by Beijing.  Official statements have since made it clear that this right is substantive, as it also is in the case of everyone appointed to the CE’s cabinet of top advisors.  Beijing has nevertheless learned, through trial and sometimes painful error, that Hong Kong public opinion cannot be totally ignored.   Hence given current constraints, any universal suffrage election would not give voters an openly free and fair choice of candidates.  But experience during the past decade indicates that the most disliked or distrusted individuals would also not be given the nod by Beijing, regardless of their loyalist credentials.

PROPOSALS FOR THE LEGISLTIVE COUNCIL

          The 2009 reform proposals for Legco are a slightly revised re-play of the 2005 proposals that democratic legislators voted down in December of that year.  They did so because the 2005 version gave no indication as to when or how further progress toward genuine electoral democracy might be achieved and democrats decided they were being given the runaround.  In response, Beijing issued the 2017 timetable and said incremental changes could be made in 2012 toward the desired aim, but now the government’s package for 2012 still looks to democrats like the same dead-end. 

          One reason is that Beijing’s timetable decision also contained explicit constraints.  Accordingly, the 2012 reforms cannot change the current balance whereby the 60-seat council is half directly elected by all the voters, and half elected by small special interest groups called functional constituencies (FCs).  These replicate the Election Committee sectors with the same built-in bias.   Of the 28 separate constituencies responsible for filling the 30 FC seats, a majority are reserved for conservatives representing business, industry, banking, insurance, finance, etc. 

            Also, within Legco, a “two-chamber” effect is mandated for all measures and motions initiated from the floor by legislators themselves.  Passage requires a majority of those voting, separately, in each of the two directly elected and FC divisions, giving the latter veto power over the directly-elected democratic majority.  The chamber votes as a whole on government bills and motions.  Beijing’s 2007 decision forbade any changes in this voting mechanism and none are anticipated now.

          The Hong Kong government latest reform package therefore proposes to add 10 seats to Legco, equally divided between directly-elected and FC representatives.  But the five added in the latter category have the same inherent “sleeper” significance as they did when proposed in 2005 because they are not occupation-based.  Instead, they would be indirectly elected by the directly-elected councilors in Hong Kong’s 18 territory-wide District Councils. The one concession to democrats is that only the directly-elected district councilors would be allowed to participate in this election; about 20% of the total is appointed and all are conservative.  Directly elected councilors currently number 405. The earlier 2005 version would have granted voting rights to both kinds of councilors.

           For a variety of reasons including small neighborhood-based constituencies and a dense network of social activities, these local councils are now dominated by pro-Beijing loyalists and their well-funded conservative allies.  Hence these seats in Legco would not only establish a precedent in Hong Kong for China’s indirectly-elected communist party-dominated people’s congress system.  This is based on similar small grassroots constituencies in which everyone over the age of 18 has the right to vote.  The District Council representatives would also guarantee five more conservative seats in Legco. 

            Meanwhile, all the FCs are to remain unchanged with no indication that they will ever be eliminated or even reconfigured in a more balanced fashion.  Nor does the government propose to reform the mix of voting methods whereby some FCs allow corporate or company instead of individual votes.  A single corporate executive is even allowed to control several subsidiary company votes.  There are currently 213,700 individuals registered to vote in these constituencies plus 16,084 corporate bodies who together elect 30 legislators.

         Democrats have maintained their 60% advantage in the 30 directly-elected geographic constituency seats, with over three million registered voters.  But the official insistence on proportional representation for these seats means the democratic advantage is contained here as well.   Hence of the five new seats in this category, democrats might win four or they might not.   At present, pan-democrats occupy a total of 23 seats in Legco, the pro-Beijing camp 21, and conservative others 16.  Of the 23 seats, 19 are directly elected and four are FCs.  Democrats have veto power only over major constitutional reform issues, which require a two-thirds majority vote.  Otherwise, their measures and motions are routinely voted down.

INITIAL RESPONSE

             Conservatives are naturally happy to endorse the new proposals because they aim to keep directly elected government indefinitely at bay.  Democrats realize they have little to lose except their Legco seats and for this reason cannot even agree on the resignation/referendum plan.  Civic Party lawyers and the radical League of Social Democrats could carry it off on their own and will probably try since five legislators have already announced their willingness to resign.  But the older less confident Democratic Party fears losing any more seats and with them the democratic camp’s all-important veto power on the constitutional reform proposals.  A vote would be held soon after the by-elections if they materialize.   The Democratic Party will make its decision early next month.

             Meanwhile, inevitably, moderates have begun looking for points to negotiate and “small doors” to open.  The combination of populist pressure from radicals, and moderates looking for margins of maneuver, is likely to prove more effective than either one stance alone or the other.  But so far, government officials are promising only to collate and convey to Beijing whatever opinions on universal suffrage are expressed during the coming three-month public consultation exercise.   (next:  recapping the route to reform, 1984-2009)            

[ii] Methods for Selecting the Chief Executive and for Forming the Legislative Council in 2012, Consultation Document, Hong Kong government, November 2009, 51 pp.

           From the outside looking in, political life in Hong Kong must seem neither particularly inspiring nor even very well articulated.  Nowadays, the apparent lack of clarity and purpose is blamed on Beijing and sometimes also on underlying old traditions.  Actually, it might just as well be blamed on the British, although they already seem like a distant memory here.  The colonial government had developed what used to be called the “administrative absorption of politics” into a fine art of bureaucratic obfuscation.   Local leaders were co-opted, potential enemies marginalized, and open political debate was avoided.  This peculiar style of governance was said to suit behavioral patterns that Chinese preferred, with specific reference to their alleged dislike of open dissent and face-to-face adversarial debate.  Consultation and consensus were the watchwords and their spirit lives on in many ways.

          Yet for a place that had no overt opposition groups or political activists until the 1980s when the British stopped discouraging such things, Hong Kong has changed dramatically.  Today partisans can be found on every side of just about every issue related to public policy, local governance, and relations with what is still differentiated as mainland China.  The net result of old pre-1980s ways and the new partisanship is a kind of amorphous tension that passes for adversarial politics but allows the participants to remain even more obtuse than responsible politicians usually are or have any right to be.

POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN TRANSITION        

          Compounding this effect, of course, is the ambiguous relationship with a new sovereign.  Since Hong Kong is now 12 years into its 50-year transition period (1997-2047) between British colonial and full Chinese rule, the one-country-two-systems formula designed to finesse that transition is not static but in a state of constant evolutionary motion.   The main partisan divisions — democratic and conservative — have taken shape in the ongoing struggle to influence that evolution.    

        The divisions are well-known.  Democrats are committed to Western-style civil liberties guarantees and governance.  Conservatives include pro-business people and committed pro-Beijing partisans.  The latter are led by Hong Kong’s un-acknowledged branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This loyalist community has a history dating back to the 1920s, and was Britain’s main target for marginalization.  Although adherents and leaders now move freely in all circles, they do so only as pro-Beijing loyalists.  Ironically for a once revolutionary party, its “underground” existence is being protected by the inherited traditional aspects of Hong Kong’s political culture. Meanwhile, many other pretensions derive from this particular don’t-ask-don’t-tell secret and the nebulous nature of much political discourse follows accordingly. 

          Hong Kong’s partisan struggles to influence the course of its evolution are naturally colored by this political environment.  For example, no one ever discusses the implications of the 2047 deadline or asks to begin deliberating exactly how the two-systems formula might end.  This should be a major concern since the legal promise to maintain Hong Kong’s existing ill-defined “way of life” expires on that date.  Movement in the direction of mainland-style party-led government is also well in evidence although this drift, too, is not officially acknowledged.  Economic integration has long since become part of everyday life but the possibility of future political integration such as that experienced by other originally autonomous regions is never mentioned.

             Efforts to influence Hong Kong’s political evolution thus continue piecemeal, in a kind of political vacuum, as democrats try to take stands against the ways and means of an encroaching mainland system while conservatives work to promote its advance. Sometimes adherents state their case in terms of international human rights standards or national patriotism, but usually these external sources of inspiration are left unstated.  Onlookers sometimes make the connection; often they do not.  Achievements one way or the other also rarely register on any scale of earthshaking events.   Yet the partisan  struggle continues unabated and a sequence of contested issues during the past two months since the latest round in the electoral reform debate began (Sept. 16 post), has unexpectedly served to strengthen the democratic cause.  Most significant was the heightened defense of “Hong Kong values” and of the local legislature’s powers.

WHOSE VALUES?

          Democrats have settled on the term “core values” (hexin jiazhi) for every day use in differentiating Hong Kong’s political system from that of the mainland without actually having to say so.  Individuals explain only when they must with references to the values Hong Kong inherited from its pre-1997 past.  In fact, also without saying so, democrats are referring more specifically to the 1980s and 1990s colonial past when in addition to peace, prosperity, the rule of law, and lifestyle freedoms, others were emphasized that had not been before.  These included most notably the freedom of political expression and democracy or the new goal of electoral representation in government, which British Hong Kong did not allow in any meaningful sense until the 1980s.

        A recent practical application of these new values made headlines when politicians and local leaders all across the political spectrum hastened to condemn the indiscriminate charge of incitement made by mainland law enforcement authorities against Hong Kong  journalists who were covering the Urumqi riots in early September (Sept. 25 post).   Loyalists had mostly moderated their indignation by the time the media uproar died down, but the initial “all Hong Kong” response was a hopeful sign for those worried about the long-term post-2047 survival of civil and political liberties.

         Lest anyone think the issue settled, however, a group of prominent conservatives then lent their names, with official blessing, to a new effort launched in mid-October aimed at explicitly defining “Hong Kong’s core values.”  The group’s online (Chinese language) questionnaire asks the public to choose from a 15-item list of Hong Kong’s “most familiar” values.  These read like a selection from the pre-1980s past with much emphasis on family and prosperity, augmented by the mainland ideals of patriotism and social harmony.  The list includes only general references to freedom and law and says nothing at all about democracy (www.wpedu.org/value).   Results are to be announced early next year.

         For democrats these values come with sharper edges that emphasize free political expression in all its many written, verbal, and associational forms, plus judicial independence, adversarial politics, and elected government.  But in trying to co-opt the core values concept by defining it on their own terms, conservatives at least now accept that any credible list must include both “respect for freedom” and the “rule of law spirit.”

LEGISLATIVE POWERS

         The Legislative Council, or Legco in local shorthand, has been a major source of contention since the 1980s when Hong Kong’s Basic Law constitution was being drafted.  The 20-year-old argument over methods for electing legislators is set to continue for another decade and remains the most widely publicized aspect of Hong Kong’s partisan struggles.  Less well-known is the subtle test of wills over how Legco conducts its business. 

         Legislative power is severely constrained by Basic Law design and by Beijing’s insistence on maintaining what is called “executive-led” local government here. The council cannot initiate any substantive legislation and even non-binding motions are subject to conservative veto given the council’s split voting mechanism.  But within these limits, councilors began immediately in 1998 and have continued ever since to take full advantage of their supervisory powers as spelled out in Article 73 of the Basic Law.  Democratic legislators have tried further to push the limits of those powers whenever they can and conservatives push back at every opportunity, which has helped make Legco the center of political attention regardless of Beijing’s wishes.

         One such opportunity arose last summer during the three-day visit of Du Qinglin.  He heads the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department and came from Beijing to inaugurate the Hong Kong chapter of an association that promotes Taiwan reunification (Aug. 12 post).  In an unrelated event on July 29, he held a closed-door meeting with pro-Beijing business leaders who were not shy about talking to the press afterward.  They had complained to Director Du that legislators, especially democrats, were surreptitiously trying to expand their powers thereby interfering with executive-led decision-making and delaying development projects.  Among those present, New World China Land chairman Henry Cheng Kar-shun was so angry that he had decided to challenge Legco head on.   Like many other big business executives, Henry Cheng has been rewarded for his loyalty with an appointment to Beijing’s top national advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.  At last count, 174 Hong Kong residents had been honored in this way and those attending the meeting with Director Du were all CPPCC members.

           Cheng had been summoned months before by a Legco select committee to give evidence in a potential conflict of interest case that involved a recently retired government housing official.  But Cheng refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the summons and applied for a judicial review to clarify whether such a committee had the right to compel testimony.  He insisted that only the council sitting as a whole had such power, a useful argument since the council is designed in such a way as to produce “safe” conservative majorities for most every occasion when partisan interests are at stake.  Article 73 grants investigative power but is silent on the distinction he raised.

          Loyalists also complain about Hong Kong’s independent judiciary and contribute a steady supply of arguments to the local press.  These elaborate the case they are slowly building against the “colonial” foreign nature of Hong Kong’s judicial system.  Democrats for their part have made liberal use of the courts and of judicial reviews in an effort to entrench civil rights in local practice while they can.  In daring the court to rule in his favor, Henry Cheng was in effect invoking loyalist and conservative values to challenge the main — judicial and legislative — pillars protecting Hong Kong’s separate transitional system.

           For reasons not yet known, the Hong Kong government and its top legal official, Secretary for Justice Wong Yan-lung, took a special interest in the case.  During the August 17-19 hearing, his counsel presented an unexpectedly strong defense of select committee powers.   The September 24 judgment went against Cheng in a verdict he refuses to accept pending appeal.  He did, however, finally agree to testify “voluntarily” on November 3 when he used the occasion to tell legislators he still did not acknowledge their right to question him.  

            For his part, Judge Andrew Cheung had also used the opportunity to reaffirm the separation-of-powers principle in defiance of strong official hints from Beijing that Hong Kong’s legislative, executive, and judicial branches should strive for solidarity.  And so the slow-moving test of wills continues.  But for now the judgment stands in recognition both of the local legislature’s existing power, such as it is, and of the Hong Kong court’s independence.

          Last week’s post on the coming political reform debate highlighted a growing tendency on all sides here to acknowledge reality.  Until recently everyone has kept to the official narrative that proved so successful in guiding Hong Kong’s smooth transition from colonial rule. The narrative’s “one-country, two-systems” motto meant Hong Kong accepted Chinese sovereignty but enjoyed enough autonomy from the central government in Beijing to continue living essentially as before, with all the accustomed rights and freedoms remaining intact.  The change follows Beijing’s new candor about its direct hand in Hong Kong governance and Hong Kong’s growing sense that autonomy is fading. 

         The renewed activism evidently derives from this perception but whatever the cause politicians and commentators seem suddenly reinvigorated in their defense of “Hong Kong values,” another of those allusive terms that allow Hong Kongers to distinguish themselves from their mainland compatriots without actually saying so.  Besides the new appetite for confrontation with the powers that be over political reform and the intrusion of bureaucratic mainland ways, another example of this rising energy level is the wave of protest that blew up suddenly over the rough treatment received by Hong Kong journalists on assignment in Urumqi.   But in this latest case, the flare-up sparked a surprising response all across the local political spectrum where agreement on mainland-related matters is rare.

CROWD CONTROL IN URUMQI      

           Hong Kong journalists now routinely cover mainland events and, like many in the international press corps, have had their share of run-ins with the authorities.  But the incident on September 4 was different in that the three TV reporters were treated to a first-hand lesson in grassroots Chinese law enforcement.  They were forced to the ground, handcuffed, beaten, kicked, and then detained by police.  Foreign correspondents are handled more gently, but such treatment is otherwise routine whether or not Chinese suspects are armed and resisting, and whether or not they are potentially political.   In response to angry questions from Hong Kong, insult was then added to injury when the Xinjiang Information Office director came out in person to accuse the three of inciting a disturbance by gesturing to the crowd.  A few days later, five other Hong Kong TV and radio reporters were also roughed up and briefly detained by police on grounds their actions, too, were provocative.

          The journalists were in Urumqi to cover fresh protests there over the government’s failure to control a novel form of street violence involving hypodermic needle attacks on unsuspecting passersby.  Urumqi is the capital of China’s far-western Xinjiang province, which has lately been the scene of serious ethnic unrest between the Muslim Uighur inhabitants and Han Chinese migrants.  The latter have long been resented but needles are a new variation on switchblade knives, which have always been the Uighur weapon of choice for street crime and revenge attacks. 

HONG KONG’S RESPONSE

         In Hong Kong, however, the incident aggravated a very different but equally serious source of tension with the central government and one that local political leaders could not ignore.   In an unusual sequence, both pan-democrats and pro-Beijing politicians converged on the central government’s liaison office to register their concern and demand a probe of the Urumqi accusations.  The two camps made their representations separately, of course.  Democrats were not invited in and had to lodge their protest at the gate.  But the liaison office took note of all and stepped completely out of character by sending fruit-basket peace offerings to the newsrooms of the three reporters who had received the worst treatment. 

          Several senior pro-Beijing figures then issued strong statements focusing especially on the charge of incitement.  Among the opinion leaders was Miriam Lau, head of the pro-business Beijing-friendly Liberal Party who expressed her indignation as forcefully as any democrat. Controversial loyalist Leung Chun-ying, who featured in last week’s (Sept. 16) post, said the police should not resort to excessive force.  Others wrote to Beijing demanding “concrete proof” for the charge of incitement.

           Equally noteworthy was an editorial comment in the Ta Kung Pao, Hong Kong’s second most important pro-Beijing newspaper.   The September 11 editorial also focused on the issue of incitement and urged clarification of the unsubstantiated charge.  Probably the Xinjiang authorities do not understand why the accusation has caused such an uproar, noted the editorial, which went on to explain.  “As people in Hong Kong see it, clashes with those responsible for keeping order are difficult to avoid when journalists go out interviewing, but that’s no big deal ….”  Certainly it is not the same thing as incitement, “a charge that absolutely cannot be casually accepted by knowledgeable circles in Hong Kong.”

        Local protests included another liaison office demonstration organized by the Hong Kong Journalists Association on September 13, when some 700 people gathered to tie red ribbons on the gate and chant slogans for press freedom.  It was the largest political protest by local media workers, who usually cover such events but do not participate, since they joined Hong Kong’s big watershed march against proposed national security legislation on July 1, 2003.  Agitation culminated in a press freedom petition denouncing the harassment of Hong Kong journalists in China and demanding vindication for those accused in the Urumqi incident.  The petition together with the names of over 1,300 local journalists, journalism techers, and students, appeared in four local newspapers on the eve of National Day, September 30.

LESSONS LEARNED

         One reader in far-away Arkansas wrote to the South China Morning Post (Sept. 17) expressing surprise at all the fuss.  He advised Hong Kong journalists, in effect, to forget about it because nothing political ever changes in China.  In fact, China is changing and so is Hong Kong and the case involves a value that commands more widespread support here than political reform itself.  The incident also occurred at a crucial moment in Hong Kong’s evolving relationship with China.

         For more than a decade after the 1989 Tiananmen protest movement, Hong Kong’s democracy activists clung to the idealistic hope that they could help inspire political change in China.  They also liked to argue that Hong Kong’s democratic values could never be secure until they had been established in China as well.  The hope and the logic have not changed.  But in recent years, as political pressures began building from the opposite direction, local perspectives gradually adjusted to focus on the threat posed by mainland ways encroaching within Hong Kong itself.  The new appetite for confrontation is part of this defensive pushback.

       To everyone’s surprise, however, the Urumqi incident produced a rare real-life case of convergence.  Partisans who have been working to propagate mainland ways in Hong Kong came forward to lecture their mainland compatriots on behalf of Hong Kong’s most cherished political freedom.  At the heart of this matter is the national security legislation, shelved in 2003, which Hong Kong is still mandated to pass in accordance with Article 23 of its Basic Law constitution.  The Basic Law governs Hong Kong’s 50-year (1997-2047) transition as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) from colonial to full mainland rule.  Incitement is among the acts criminalized by such legislation. Hong Kong’s neighbor, Macau, is in similar SAR transitional circumstances and did its duty by passing its law earlier this year (See Feb. 17 Letter).   

          Meanwhile, press reports here regularly chronicle the experiences of people detained by mainland law enforcement authorities on charges of subverting state power, seditious incitement, and so on. The reports suggest that the Xinjiang police were simply following their own rules of procedure with the casual charge of incitement used as a crowd control measure in tense situations.  Had the three journalists been locals, they might well have been prosecuted and sentenced to prison terms since the crime is deliberately vague as stated in law, evidently by design to allow variable interpretations in practice as local authorities see fit.

          One of the key demands, deriving from Hong Kong democrats’ 2003 campaign against the draft Article 23 legislation, entailed de-linking its national security and political security provisions and clearly defining the nature of both.  Since the new Macau law failed to contain any such reassuring modifications and since that “sword of Damocles,” as it is often called, still hangs in the balance, the issue remains as sensitive for Hong Kong today as it was in 2003. 

         That pro-Beijing community leaders identified the source of the uproar so quickly and sympathized with the “Hong Kong values” side of the argument are nevertheless hopeful signs.  Hong Kong may have made little perceptible progress in its original goal of serving as a demonstration model for mainland political reform.  But Hong Kong and Beijing values are clearly converging in Hong Kong itself and that is a prerequisite for preserving its rights and freedoms between now and 2047, and into the future beyond.

         Of course, Hong Kong democrats cannot resist the temptation to score political points whenever opportunities arise and this case offered too many to ignore.  Despite Beijing’s straight-faced denials, everyone knows that Hong Kong public opinion counts and is measured in ways that simulate elected government even though Hong Kong does not have one.  Hence Executive Councilor Leung Chun-ying is well aware that being one of Hong Kong’s least popular politicians will not help his chances when the time comes for Beijing to approve Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive.

         Miriam Lau’s public protestations may have seemed a touch too effusive because she is trying to rebuild the fortunes of a party that lost all its directly-elected seats in the last Legislative Council poll.   And journalists who work for pro-Beijing publications would be the first to benefit from a possible easing of mainland rules.  These publications spend more time covering mainland events than anyone else and are rewarded for their efforts with the lowest circulation figures in town.  But democrats can be forgiven for scoring political points while they can since no one is willing to predict how long this rare confluence of public opinion and political interest will last.

          “We’ve been talking about democracy since the Qing Dynasty,” said one exasperated participant in the Hong Kong equivalent of a town hall meeting.  Debate and discussion has continued throughout the summer but this early September workshop in effect marked the start of a new chapter in Hong Kong’s long-running political reform saga.  The speaker was right.  Proposals for elected representation in local government date from the earliest years of Hong Kong’s colonial existence in the 1840s.  For reasons of their own strategic self-interest, the British did not allow such representation until the 1980s when their interests changed.   Thereafter the sovereign-in-waiting also found cause to object. 

         Beijing’s basic reasons were and remain twofold.  Theoretically, elected   government signifies that sovereignty resides in the people.  For Beijing, sovereignty belongs to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which represents the people.  Practically, Beijing maintains that Western-style representative democracy and mainland-style democratic centralism are two different things; that the former is not appropriate for China; and that Western-style democrats are working to overthrow CCP rule by using Hong Kong as a subversive base toward that end. These considerations have blocked implementation of Beijing’s formal Basic Law promise to allow “gradual and orderly progress” toward universal suffrage elections.[i]  But Hong Kong democrats refuse to give up and Beijing refuses to give in.  The latest delaying tactics came in the December 2007 decree that postponed the possibility of such elections for the Chief Executive (CE) and Legislative Council (Legco) until 2017 and 2020, respectively.  A small window of opportunity nevertheless remained open for incremental preparatory adjustments in the electoral system between now and then.  Hence this latest chapter in the struggle for popularly elected local government is about incremental adjustments for the next CE and Legco elections, both of which happen to fall in 2012. The early September meeting was held to encourage public discussion of possible options.

       Readers interested in the tedious details will doubtless find more than enough in blogs to come.  A few recommendations have already been put forward by interested groups and individuals.  After much procrastination, the government’s own proposals are scheduled for release by year’s end.  Already apparent, however, are two new trends not seen in Hong Kong’s political reform movement since the return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.  One is a growing appetite for direct confrontation with the Hong Kong and Chinese governments.  The other is a revival of the pre-1997 demand to call the local CCP branch out from “underground.”  Such developments may seem unremarkable but in Hong Kong’s constrained political space both are significant steps forward.

       It would be an exaggeration to say that public discourse here has finally evolved into a straightforward statement of ideas usually shared only among like-minded friends and colleagues.  In public, no one is yet willing to declare that the official “one-country, two-systems” slogan is a euphemism for transition to mainland-style one-party rule by 2047.  Nor is anyone yet willing to demand in so many words that local CCP members declare themselves.  But politicians and commentators are inching ever closer on both counts in Hong Kong’s own peculiar version of political shadow-boxing.

CONFRONTING THE POWERS THAT BE

         After complying with all the legal conditions and time frames for political reform, everyone realized they were getting the run-around when Beijing issued its December 2007 ultimatum delaying things until 2017/2020.  That impression has been reinforced by conservative and pro-Beijing opinion leaders who immediately began lobbying for retention of the least representative indirectly-elected features of the present Legco electoral system even after universal suffrage has been achieved.  The unspoken reality here is that such an arrangement would dovetail with the mainland system, which is based on universal suffrage albeit at the basic grassroots level only. The council is currently composed of 60 members:  30 directly elected with pan-democratic parties prevailing; and 30 based on indirectly-elected functional consistencies (FCs) weighted in favor of conservative business and financial interests.   There are currently some 3.4 million voters registered to participate in direction elections and only about 230,000 in the FCs, which supporters want to retain indefinitely.

       The pan-democratic parties therefore calculate they have little to lose and are exploring some confrontational pressure tactics that until now have been avoided for fear of their disruptive consequences.  Most striking was last week’s announcement that the Civic Party, led by well-behaved lawyers, had decided to endorse the action plan proposed by the Legaue of Social Democrats, currently Hong Kong’s most radical and rambunctious political group.  Accordingly, one democratic legislator would resign in each of Hong Kong’s five electoral districts thereby triggering simultaneous territory-wide by-elections as a gesture of protest.  This action would follow if the government’s official proposals later this year contain no meaningful signs of progress toward the ultimate end of “genuine universal suffrage” elections. 

           The lawyers have even gone further and are advocating that all 23 democratic legislators resign in 2011 if by then there is still no official demonstration of serious intent to move forward.  Pan-democrats are generally agreed that the FCs must go and nominations for CE candidates must not be officially controlled.  The action plan is not without risk and all pan-democrats may not endorse the entire package.  But it has already served notice to the government before its proposals are announced that there will be real political consequences, beyond just another routine protest march, if the impasse is allowed to continue.

COAXING THE PARTY OUT OF THE CLOSET

       The new pressure on local CCP members to declare themselves is more subtle but equally significant.  Democrats were intimidated into silence on the issue before 1997 when maintaining calm during the sensitive handover period was a major concern. So they focused instead on safeguarding Hong Kong’s existing rights, freedoms, and “way of life,” in accordance with the Basic Law’s 50-year guarantees.  Current concerns can be traced to the alarm registered among pan-democrats last spring when they discovered the article by mainland researcher Cao Erbao who matter-of-factly acknowledged Beijing’s participation in Hong Kong governance.[ii]   His contribution was followed by that of another mainland researcher, Professor Cheng Jie, who also wrote that Beijing is now taking an active role in Hong Kong affairs.[iii]   Then the CCP’s United Front Work Department director, Du Qinglin, arrived to much fanfare and more intimations of a direct party presence.[iv]    With Hong Kong’s 50 years of guaranteed autonomy evidently under threat, the old question has revived.  Maybe it is now time, say democrats still mostly among themselves, for local CCP members to step up and be counted along with everyone else.

         Civic Party member and South China Morning Post contributor Stephen Vines reflected this rising sentiment when he commented on the “dangerous lack of transparency” surrounding Hong Kong’s CCP branch.   Vines is one of the few non-Chinese members of a local political party.  “The suspicion lingers,” he wrote, “that there is some deliberate design attached to the installation of leading members in prominent roles in Hong Kong” without acknowledging their party affiliation.   Either that or they are afraid of the CCP’s still prevailing negative reputation among the general public (SCMP, Sept. 4).

         The existence of a local CCP branch has never been openly acknowledged except by one of its leaders after he fled to the United States. [v]  Xu Jiatun headed the New China News Agency (NCNA) in the 1980s, fell afoul of his Beijing superiors during the 1989 Tiananmen protest movement, and defected soon afterward.  The NCNA was China’s official representative in colonial Hong Kong and doubled as leader of the local pro-Beijing community while also serving as cover for the local CCP branch.  Xu revealed in his memoirs that the branch had some 6,000 members in Hong Kong and Macau when he took up his post in 1983. [vi]

         Leaders of the patriotic community, as it liked to call itself in colonial days, founded a pro-Beijing political party in the early 1990s.  The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) operates openly like all other political groups, but it is assumed that its leaders are also concurrently members of the local CCP branch.  Exactly who is and who is not a member nevertheless remains Hong Kong’s best-kept secret. Whenever the prime suspects are asked they neither confirm nor deny, which is interpreted as a confirmation.  So it is with a sense of no little bravado that heretofore discreet commentators recently began fingering Leung Chun-ying as a party member.  His prompt denial was taken as an indication that he probably is not.  But the damage has been done by calling attention to a political stance so unfailingly loyal that he might as well be.  Leung is a member of the CE’s Executive Council or cabinet and is thoroughly disliked by pan-democrats not because of his wealth or connections, but because he has always disparaged democratic government. He has also reputedly been a long-standing entrant on Beijing’s shortlist of favorites for the CE post and has recently undertaken a high-profile image-rehabilitation effort, presumably anticipating the next CE selection in 2012.  Only this time around his adversaries made a daring preemptive strike by leveling the most damaging of charges against him.  The Chinese-language Ming Pao Daily News even commissioned its own opinion poll to reveal Leung the least popular of the three current main contenders (Sept. 7).

       The case against Home Affairs Secretary Tsang Tak-sing is equally daring but more carefully crafted.  Unlike Leung, Tsang’s career profile makes him one of the prime party suspects and he made headlines two years ago when he became the first career loyalist appointed to a leading position in the Hong Kong government.  Among other things, Home Affairs oversees the 18 District Councils where the DAB has registered its greatest strength.  But activists are not challenging any of this.  Instead they are accusing him of acting in the style of mainland officials for pressuring the YWCA into removing one of its social workers from a rural district where he had allegedly disrupted local “harmony.”  Tsang has been summoned to attend a Legco meeting for overstepping the bounds of his authority, and the heretofore moderate Ming Pao Daily News again rose to the occasion with a rousing denunciation of mainland “river crabs” invading Hong Kong (Sept. 4).  River crab in Chinese is a pun on the word for harmony, recently popularized in mainland dissident circles to protest Beijing’s official insistence on social harmony in lieu of free political expression.

          Suddenly Hong Kong’s perception of its political relationship with the mainland seems to have changed, probably because Beijing’s pretentions about Hong Kong’s autonomy are also changing.  The widely discussed interventions by Cao Erbao, Cheng Jie, and Du Qinglin all indicated that Beijing is now interpreting the Basic Law’s promises very differently than was initially understood.  In response, Hong Kongers are beginning to realize that they will either have to push back as best they can to preserve what they value most about their existing way of life, or submit to the rising pressures for integration with the mainland political system.   If recent events are any indication, the first alternative is far more likely than the second.

[ii]  Letter from Hong Kong, June 1, 2009.

[iii]  hkjournal.org, July 2009.

[iv]  Letter from Hong Kong, Aug. 12, 2009.

[v] According to the old organization rules, branches in “white” territories where the party is still struggling for power should remain “underground.”  Hong Kong’s status is ambiguous in this respect and the territory is in any case regarded by Beijing as not yet “politically subdued” (See Cheng Jie quote in Letter from Hong Kong, Aug. 12, 2009).

[vi]   Xu Jiatun, Xianggang huiyilu [Hong Kong Memoirs], (Taibei:  Lianho bao, 1993), vol. 1, pp. 66-79.  The NCNA’s local political leadership functions have been inherited by the central government’s HongKong liaison office (Zhonglianban).

Actually, this is not a new dilemma but an old one that was obscured for a time by the fractious state of Beijing-Taipei relations during the tenure of Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian (2000-2008).  Now, one year into the new administration of Nationalist or Kuomintang (KMT) President Ma Ying-jeou, the China-Taiwan relationship has improved so markedly that Beijing can begin to plan once more for a final end to the state of war that has left the two sides of the Taiwan Strait under separate governments for the past 60 years.

The contradiction — between Hong Kong’s stalled demand for full universal suffrage elections and Beijing’s plans for full unification with Taiwan — came to the fore in late July when Hong Kong played host to an unusually high-profile Chinese Communist Party (CCP) representative.  The visitor, Du Qinglin, heads the party’s United Front Work Department and he came from Beijing in furtherance of what he called the “difficult and complex” task of national reunification.  His immediate assignment was to officiate at inaugural ceremonies for the Hong Kong branch of China’s Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification, or Peaceful Reunification Council (He tong hui) for short.  The organization, established in 1988, now has chapters in over 80 countries and works primarily among ethnic Chinese communities to promote friendly relations across the Taiwan Strait.  Hong Kong’s neighbor, Macau, was allowed to set up its branch five years ago.

DESTINATION TAIWAN

The questions raised by Du Qinglin’s visit became apparent even before he arrived and were reinforced by his remarks at the grand ceremonial gathering of 1,400 people on July 30.  It was announced beforehand that he would not be meeting any members of Hong Kong’s pan-democratic political camp, nor were they included on the guest lists for any of the events held during his three-day stay.  Yet he claimed in his keynote speech that the new Hong Kong branch was an “all Hong Kong” organization and he called on Hong Kongers to publicize the success of their “one-country, two-systems” formula as a model for Taiwan-China unification (Wen Wei Po, July 31).

The speech sounded like it was written for another era and had lain forgotten in United Front Work Department files for a dozen years until someone mistakenly OK’d it for use without regard to present day political realities either in Hong Kong or Taiwan. But another speech at the July 30 ceremony was very much up-to-date.  Peng Qinghua heads the central government’s official liaison office in Hong Kong.  This office, set up in 2000, was not mentioned in any of the pre-1997 planning documents but it has become Beijing’s increasingly out-spoken local resident authority.  According to the Wen Wei Po account, Peng Qinghua “emphasized that national unification is the common aim of the leaders of both the KMT and the CCP.”

The questions raised by Du’s visit are twofold.  First, how can the new organization be considered “all-Hong Kong in nature” when local democrats are not represented, even though they are still winning 60% of the vote in Hong Kong’s direct elections for half the seats in its 60-member Legislative Council?   Second, on what political grounds does Beijing intend reunification to take place  –  given Hong Kong’s experience  –  since Taiwan and China are now governed by two very different political systems?

BEIJING’S HONG KONG PROBLEM

The two questions are, of course, closely related.  Hong Kong’s one-country, two-systems formula has appeared successful until now because it is still in the early stage of implementation.  But the formula has only a 50-year lifespan (1997-2047) and should not be seen as a permanent solution.  It is being used instead as a means of easing the transition to one-country, one-system, meaning full integration within China’s political system.  This transition is now well advanced in Hong Kong and the most contentious issues are those in which Hong Kong, as represented by its pan-democratic leaders, is resisting the pressures to impose mainland Chinese-style political norms and institutions.

The most important of these pressures to date are:   Beijing’s insistence on introducing mainland-style national political security laws; Beijing’s refusal to allow a wholly elected local government, allegedly because too many voters still prefer democratic candidates; and the increasingly critical commentary in mainland sources about Hong Kong’s independent Western-influenced judiciary, which now stands as the court of last resort guaranteeing Hong Kong’s much-valued freedom of political expression in all its many manifestations.  Not only did Du Qinglin refuse to meet local democrats, he also declined to comment on any of these outstanding issues.

Veteran journalist Frank Ching noted the contradiction in his South China Morning Post (SCMP) column (Aug. 4).  Ching’s pro-unification stance has won him little applause from Taiwan independence supporters in recent years.  But until recently, he accepted the one-country, two-systems formula at face value assuming that its promised “high degree of autonomy” would be genuine.  Now he sees the promise eroding and wrote that “Taiwan will see Hong Kong as more of a negative example than anything else” if Beijing does not allow universal suffrage to be “properly implemented” here.

Frank Ching nevertheless failed to spell out the full extent of Beijing’s dilemma. He noted correctly that most Hong Kongers including democrats are not supporters of Taiwan independence.  On this point Du Qinglin was also correct to say the aim of reunification was “all Hong Kong in nature.”  But that begs the question as to why he avoided all contact with local democrats.  In fact, since the mid-1980s, Taiwan’s government has evolved into a wholly and directly elected democracy, which is the aim of local democrats for Hong Kong as well.

Yet Beijing still insists, as it has since the mid-1980s, that the demand of Hong Kong democrats for Western-style directly elected representative government is tantamount to demands for independence from the governing institutions of China’s party-led system.  This is why mainland sources routinely refer to Hong Kong democrats as anti-party dissidents and why Chinese polemics excoriate them as traitors or worse.  Loyalist supporters are guided by this logic, which seems calculated to provoke behavior that they claim is the inevitable disruptive consequence of Western-style adversarial politics.

The latest and most extreme example of such behavior is the plot to assassinate Hong Kong democratic leader Martin Lee and his friend, Jimmy Lai, publisher of both the Hong Kong and Taiwan editions of Apple Daily.  According to Chinese court documents from the Shenzhen trial of some of the conspirators, this project was funded by a Hong Kong businessman living in Taiwan and orchestrated by others who allegedly justified the plot on patriotic grounds.  Lee and Lai were to be punished for their “anti-China and anti-Communist Party” political stance (SCMP, Aug. 9).

Hence Beijing needs to explain exactly how Hong Kong’s one-country, two-systems formula can be made politically viable for Taiwan when the formula has already produced a political impasse in Hong Kong itself.  To date, however, no such explanation has been forthcoming nor has Beijing shown any inclination to ease its demand for unqualified acceptance of one-party mainland-style rule.  On the contrary, an authoritative article by Beijing writer Cheng Jie recently reiterated and reaffirmed Beijing’s thinking in this regard.

SUBDUING DISSIDENTS

Professor Cheng’s article, in the July issue of the online Hong Kong Journal, was written to explain what she calls Beijing’s “new policy” of active involvement in Hong Kong’s political evolution.  This shift, she explains, followed the huge July 1, 2003 protest demonstration against proposed national security legislation.  Until then, Beijing had viewed Hong Kong as a “politically-subdued territory” and was surprised to discover it was not.

Using official terminology, Prof. Cheng writes that since Beijing is not ready to risk a “dissident-run” Hong Kong, the central government itself must control the pace of political reform.  Beijing is also troubled by foreign influences and the pre-1997 legal or Basic Law provisions whereby foreign nationals are still being allowed to work as civil servants and judges.  Foreigners can also vote in local elections.  Beijing regards all this as “sharing governance” with foreigners.  Prof. Cheng suggests that the provisions may have been a “great mistake” and that they will certainly complicate Hong Kong’s demands for universal suffrage elections (www.hkjournal.org).

Under the circumstances, Du Qinglin and his colleagues should probably prepare some new talking points for use in promoting Taiwan-China unification.  One-country, two-systems may have seemed like a good idea back in pre-2003 days when Beijing thought Hong Kong was “politically-subdued.”   But if Beijing still fears a dissident takeover of Hong Kong, how will party leaders secure safe governing arrangements for Taiwan within the two-systems model?    Eliminating Hong Kong’s dissident risk factor seemingly pales in comparison to the task of subduing Taiwan  –  unless, of course, CCP and KMT leaders think they have already hit upon a political solution as well.  The ultimate questions then are whether Beijing is misreading Taiwan as it did Hong Kong, and what else might have been agreed on besides the ultimate aim of national unification. (August 12, 2009)

Now that the July First anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty has been transformed into a day of competing partisan street demonstrations, all morning-after spin naturally follows in the same spirit.  This year’s post-mortems have only been more intense than usual because they are not just burnishing memories for posterity but laying down markers and mobilizing support for the next round of Hong Kong’s never-ending political reform debate due to begin later this year.   Toward this end, attention focused overwhelmingly on pan-democrats’ afternoon protest march and its political significance.

Disinterested observers accept neither the police estimate of only 28,000 participants nor the organizers’ 76,000 claim.  Conventional wisdom says take a number in-between, which happens to dovetail nicely with my 50,000+ estimate based on the crowds gathered in the Victoria Park staging area (see previous post).  But the need for a low official estimate became clear on the morning after when Hong Kong’s main pro-Beijing daily, the Wen Wei Po (pinyin:  Wenhui bao; English:  none) carried a rare full page account of the afternoon march topped by the banner headline proclaiming the lowest of all figures:  “26,000 people march with at least 15 different complaints,” none of which were about political reform, universal suffrage, or better governance.  Nine photographs pictured marchers with various livelihood demands; the tenth featured a group of loyalists from the morning parade denouncing democrats for disrupting social harmony and creating chaos everywhere.

If the public cannot be stopped from marching, then the next best thing is to minimize the impact and deny its political significance.  The implications were clear to everyone else, however, which was why the lower than 100,000 expected turnout was so disappointing.  Hong Kong has learned that the only thing capable of deflecting Beijing from its announced course is a really large crowd of people in the streets.  The dreaded Article 23 national security legislation was deferred by this means in 2003, but that year’s mass protest also precipitated Beijing’s post-2003 ultimatums that have now delayed full universal suffrage elections until 2017 and 2020 at the earliest.

THE NEXT PHASE

Nevertheless, democrats continue to put their faith in popular mass action and if one march disappoints, they say, call it a preliminary skirmish and try again. Apple Daily’s morning-after headline defiantly proclaimed the 76,000 turnout figure along with the pervasive marching chants against Chief Executive Donald Tsang and for universal suffrage.  “To the streets at year’s end, for universal suffrage in 2012,” proclaimed another headline (July 3), reminding everyone that July First had been about marching for democracy and in preparation for more to come.  The reference was to the next phase of the struggle due to begin later this year when Donald Tsang unveils the government’s interim political reform proposals.

Despite Beijing’s decisions to delay full universal suffrage elections for many years, interim adjustments can be made along the way.  The next selection/election of the chief executive and legislature will be held in 2012 and in past years, before Beijing’s delaying decisions, democrats had called for full elections by that date.  The slogan is now being used as a rallying cry reminder and standard for judging the proposals already rumored by loyalists to be “even more conservative” than a similar exercise rejected by democrats in 2005.  The debate, in other words, will not be about full democratic elections in 2012 but only about which incremental adjustments seem the least likely to inhibit progress toward that end by the faraway elections of 2017 and 2020!

So tenuous an aim will naturally make mobilizing public interest all the more difficult, which is doubtless the reason for the endless delays in a goal that democrats have been pursuing like a desert mirage since the mid-1980s.  Each time they seem to be nearing their destination, it then slips further back into the distance once more.  But the coming incremental adjustments will actually mark a crucial precedent-setting step because once the way forward is fixed and formalized in this way, by a vote in the Legislative Council and with Beijing’s approval, significant design changes thereafter will be all the more difficult to achieve.

Other more moderate democratic voices offer a more sober assessment.  Some government sources have said that only about 30,000 people are really committed to universal suffrage, editorialized the Chinese-language Ming Pao Daily News (July 3), noting that the figure just happened to match the carefully constructed conservative estimates of protest march participants.  If this view of public opinion is reflected in the government’s coming reform proposals, concluded the editorial, and if they try to reverse course on democratization as a result, we can only wait to see how strong the public’s reaction will be. The conclusion was written more in hope than conviction.

THE STRUGGLE FOR PUBLIC OPINION

Doubts obviously remain and these are carefully nurtured by conservative opinion polls that ask the perennial question about whether people care more about political reform than livelihood issues, a question that always receives the same response.  One such poll, conducted by the Chinese University’s Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies soon after July First, found that those who did not march (94% of all 1,000 respondents) said economic development was their highest priority followed by several other non-political issues.  And only 39% of those who did march said political reform and governance were major concerns for them.  What’s more, just over 80% of all respondents said Hong Kong’s political system was already either very or generally democratic (http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/hkiaps/csp/press.html).

This survey may or may not be indicative of how public opinion will respond to the coming package of proposals.  The government has been relying on these “political apathy” polls since the mid-1980s and policies have been based on their assumptions, with the most spectacular failure occurring in 2003.  But democrats should heed the lessons of 2003 and also of 2005, when they voted down a conservative government reform without ever bothering to explain its long-term implications to the public.  In contrast, the government’s 2003 publicity for its Article 23 legislation was also based on the assumption that its complex issues were beyond the comprehension or concern of “taxi drivers and McDonald’s staffers.”  But after a slow start, democrats ran an effective public information campaign that spelled out clearly what the legislation would mean for everyone.

As of now, the Hong Kong public is lamentably ill-informed about the basic institutional features of the mainland’s party-led political system, and about the challenges these will pose as Hong Kong is slowly integrated within that system.  Meanwhile, the local loyalist media is already building its polemic based on the official Beijing view of Western-style adversarial democracy as a colonial remnant antithetical to the Chinese way of governance, which is said to constitute a more appropriate form of universal suffrage-based people’s democracy. 

Ming Pao’s editorial writer was correct to suggest that the public will ultimately decide, and democrats know that “voting with their feet” is still the most effective means whereby Hong Kongers can express their opinion.  But between now and year’s end, if they are to succeed, democrats will have to devise some ways of adapting the public’s generalized notions about dictatorship and democracy for practical use in assessing what will be a dry package of seemingly innocuous electoral reform proposals.  Specifically, democrats will have to translate the dreary mesmerizing details of the government’s July 2007 Green Paper on Constitutional Development, which laid the foundations for the coming reform proposals, into a public information campaign that spells out the clear political implications both for this and later generations from now until 2047 and beyond.   (July 28, 2009)

Although July First is now a public holiday, the anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 still has no name.  The official “Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day” has yet to catch on, probably because it so accurately reflects the difficulty of finding some neutral non-provocative term for use in a community that still cannot decide whether it would rather celebrate or protest.  So Hong Kong does both, and in ways that have intensified during the 12 years since 1997.

Everything remains peaceful and almost everyone remains on their best behavior throughout.  But the one-country, two-systems formula that was somehow supposed to leave Hong Kong’s way of life unchanged for 50 years and finesse its merger with the mainland system by 2047, is producing an increasingly polarized community.  As a result, partisans with two very different visions of Hong Kong’s political  future are vying for preeminence and the July First agenda has evolved accordingly into competitive dawn-to-dusk rituals.  These include something for everyone but the two sides remain by choice as far apart as possible.  Only a few hecklers can be seen in attendance throughout, each on the fringes of the other side’s events.

It was not always so.  The two separate political aspirations are rooted in opposing pro- and anti-communist local identities that extend far back in Cold War time.  But during the years since 1997, July First was initially just another holiday distinguished only by a flag raising ceremony in the morning and small groups of marchers demonstrating for various causes in the afternoon.  All that came to an abrupt end in 2003 and July First has been marked by competitive tensions ever since.

A NEW TRADITION

The national security issue has been hanging over Hong Kong’s head “like the sword of Damocles,” some say, ever since 1990 when its Basic Law constitution was promulgated.  Article 23 requires Hong Kong to pass mainland-type laws criminalizing treason, subversion, theft of state secrets, and so on.  The unpopular administration of Hong Kong’s first post-1997 chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, drafted and promoted the proposed legislation in typical bumbling style. But this bill represented a greater threat to Hong Kong’s way of life than anything else he had done and the public rebelled.

Requests for a delay in the legislative timetable were denied even though social life was brought to a near standstill in early 2003 while Hong Kong fought the SARS epidemic that left 300 people dead.  SARS had originated across the border in neighboring Guangdong province and its gravity was initially hidden by the very same culture of state-mandated secrecy that Hong Kong was being asked to accept via the Article 23 legislation.

Marginalized by the Tung administration and demoralized by official resistance to further electoral reform, Hong Kong’s democracy movement came slowly back to life during the struggle to amend the bill.  But thinking they had failed yet again, activists announced one last symbolic protest march for July First, just days before the bill’s scheduled passage.  Instead, 500,000 angry residents turned out, shaking the resolve of some centrist legislators and forcing withdrawal of the bill rather than risk its defeat.  Then, having found clear and compelling reasons for their cause of representative government accountable to the people governed, confidence returned and democratic candidates registered major gains in the fall District Councils election.

No benefit comes without cost, of course, and measured against the democracy movement’s revival since 2003 has been Beijing’s increasingly evident determination to drive democrats back into the shadows. This effort, pursued with the help of local loyalists and the Hong Kong government, has multiple dimensions.  But most significant has been the series of admonitions and directives from Beijing, beginning in late 2003, that have now pushed the goal of universal suffrage elections back at least to 2017 and 2020, for the chief executive and Legislative Council respectively.

Other dimensions would provide some comic light relief  –   if only the political implications were not so serious.   In 2004, for instance, the police and professional people-counters began their own new-found custom of underestimating by as much as 50% the number of marchers that experienced but less “scientific” observations indicated.  This reduced another half-million people to less than half that number.   In 2005, national security remained in limbo, the 2003-04 election cycle was over, and the government did its very best to distract people from their discontents.  A much-publicized display of Chinese dinosaur bones, timed to coincide with the holiday, drew a crowd of 200,000 people, with a new patriotic parade thrown in for good measure.  Protest marchers, by their own count, shrank to just 20,000.  Numbers have nevertheless grown each year since depending on the issues in play and the number of groups with grievances to air.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government and pro-Beijing organizations have hit upon an easy way to save face with a guaranteed body count of their own by organizing an early morning variety show at the Hong Kong Stadium (seating capacity 40,000).  Afterward, everyone troops out for a short 40,000-strong patriotic parade through nearby streets leaving the afternoon free for pan-democratic marchers or “dissidents,” as loyalists now define all who insist on protesting against mainland ways of political life.

MARCHING FOR DEMOCRACY, 2009

In contrast, the afternoon event is an all-volunteer occasion, self-organized and self-financed and coordinated since 2003 by a group called the Civil Human Rights Front.  As usual, Front organizers spent months this year preparing, negotiating demands for space, and essentially trying to impose order on an energetic crowd of free spirits all insisting on their right to be heard.  But rules that everyone must follow impose order on what might otherwise be mistaken for chaos.   Politicians cannot campaign for themselves or their parties, although publicity booths and collection boxes are allowed along the three-mile route and side-street soap boxes provide additional opportunities.

Everyone must also agree to march under a common set of protests and demands.  This year the lead banners protested “faulty administration” (referring to several recent Hong Kong government missteps), and “disparity between rich and poor.”  The demands were “power to the people” (a slogan from the universal suffrage campaign that Beijing denounces as subversive for invoking the Western-style principle of popular sovereignty), and “improve people’s livelihood.”  Apple Daily’s customary headline broadsheet printed just for the occasion read “Struggle for Universal Suffrage, Oppose Servility,”  the latter targeting Chief Executive Donald Tsang’s much-criticized deference to Beijing.

Turnout was the only disappointment even though tens of thousands made this year’s march the largest since 2004.  Disappointment derived from expectations.  The other main pan-democratic event of the season drew at least 100,000 people, for the June Fourth candlelight vigil commemorating Tiananmen, and an equal number was expected on July First.  To compensate for extravagant police underestimates, organizers are probably doing the opposite.  But calculating the numbers crowded into Victoria Park’s staging-area soccer pitches, where the size of the annual June Fourth vigil throng is well established, at least 50,000 people set out with the main body of July First marchers this year this year (police:  28,000; organizers:  76,000).

There were also many reasons for the largest June Fourth turnout since 1990.  The milestone 20th anniversary was one; widespread publicity for then Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang’s 1989 memoir was another.  Beijing’s clampdown ahead of this year’s sensitive anniversaries reminded everyone that the much-feared dangers of one-party rule are as strong as ever.  So did Donald Tsang’s use of official Beijing talking points to excuse its actions in 1989, which earned him the “servility” jibe. Yet another reminder was the just-revealed plot by two mainland men involved in a conspiracy to assassinate democratic leader Martin Lee and Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai, who are both vilified as “traitors” in Chinese polemics.

The imperatives for participating in Hong Kong’s July First democracy march were no where near as powerful as these mainland-focused reminders.  And the two-hour nighttime vigil requires considerably less stamina than a four-five hour trek along treeless streets in 90 degree heat with humidity to match.  More immediate threats generate greater stamina, of course, suggesting why Donald Tsang postponed public debate on the next round of Hong Kong’s snail-paced electoral reforms until after the anniversaries have passed, and why the back channel hints about reintroducing Article 23 legislation have stopped.  These are the two most contentious issues on the agenda before his term ends in 2012.   Everyone knows that when Hong Kongers are angry enough they will march in any weather and even a typhoon cannot deter them.

In fact, the two events, on June Fourth and July First, should be judged together and together they send the same message, namely, that Beijing’s post-1997 effort aimed at forcing Hong Kong into a one-size-fits-all mainland mode of governance needs re-thinking.   Democrats may have been unable to sustain their 2003 District Council gains, but Hong Kong’s “dissidents” are at their best as activists and agitators. They have kept their movement alive in this way by representing the general public’s commitment to its “way of life,” and their opponents know that at that level they may never be able to compete. (July 7, 2009)