Suzanne Pepper

         The guessing game continues but for now one of the two main questions surrounding Leung Chun-ying’s selection as Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive (April 25 post) is receding.   Suspicions about his communist party membership have not been laid to rest but without convincing proof one way or the other, that controversy has receded.  Attention now is focused on how he will govern and the outline is taking shape as names are leaked and reports about leading contenders for the top positions begin to circulate.  In terms of his populist campaign promises and the political fears his candidacy provoked, there are no surprises.  His emerging team reflects both.

POSITIVES

        Detractors said CY would never be able to find enough capable people willing serve in his administration but nominations have already been made and accepted for all the top posts.  Since many are actually old names in new places, the background checks and Beijing’s approval should pose few problems.     For pan-democrats and those concerned about a “red” CY administration, however, the prognosis is decidedly mixed.  On the plus side, he has declared that all his top officials must be prepared to meet and interact regularly with the public as he himself tried to do during his pre-selection campaign.  Perhaps for that reason, Beijing’s reported favorite to move up the line of succession is out of the running. 

          He is the current second-in-command or Chief Secretary for Administration Stephen Lam Sui-lung [Lin Ruilin 林瑞麟 ], one-time protégé of former Chief Secretary Anson Chan who now says she no longer recognizes the young talent she tapped back in the  1990s.  He made a negative impression from his earliest days as an information officer in the first post-1997 administration of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa.  Yet Lam continued to be promoted up the ladder from one sensitive post to the next, allegedly at Beijing’s behest because he is both efficient and loyal to a fault.   Among other things, he was nicknamed “the human tape recorder” for his strange robotic habit of repeating the officially correct position on every issue and in response to every question.  Even serious news reports refer to him as “Eunuch Lam,” an image reinforced by cartoonists and street theater performers who love to portray him in traditional pre-1911 Chinese dress as the perfect caricature of a sycophantic imperial official.

        What caused Beijing finally to see the light in this case is not known but Lam’s decision to take early retirement (and pursue religious studies in England) is in line with the new “public acceptability” criterion as well as CY’s meet-the-public demand.  Also in line with the new emphasis is his choice for Lam’s successor, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor [Lin Zheng Yue’e 林鄭月娥 ] currently Secretary for Development.  She is the official that an all-male group of rowdy New Territories leaders burned in effigy a few months ago, after she said she really did mean the time had come to clean up their act, remove all their illegal structures, stop occupying government land without payment or permission, and so on (March 21 post).   She meets with approval most everywhere else and her outgoing no-nonsense style has made her one of the most “acceptable” members of the current administration’s leadership team.

          After the Chief Secretary, the next most important official is the Financial Secretary.  Incumbent John Tsang Chun-wah [ Zeng Junhua  曾俊華 ]  is slated to continue in his post presumably to quiet the business community’s fears.  Tsang’s budgets have won little praise from social reformers who have protested his free-marketeer’s approach to poverty alleviation:  piecemeal charity handouts, yes; entitlements, no.  But he will be seen as a safe pair of hands while the new Chief Executive tries to fulfill his campaign promises and maintain economic stability all at the same time.

NEGATIVES

             Like CY himself, however, all kinds of unlikely people can develop political skills they never displayed before and one other such individual is the former security secretary Regina Ip.   After her 2003 debacle, she returned from three years at Stanford University a changed woman … in some respects if not all.  She had boasted during the Chief Executive campaign that both CY and Henry Tang offered her leading roles in their prospective administrations.  Allen Lee’s sarcastic prediction, based on her boast and sightings of her apple green Porsche, proved correct (April 25 post).   

             Regina Ip’s full rehabilitation is now assured with her imminent return to government probably as a member without portfolio of CY Leung’s Executive Council or cabinet.  This is composed of both the leading officials or ministerial secretaries and a selection of community leaders.   On the plus side of this negative, he plans to reduce the number of social notables and concentrate on appointing political party representatives.  Regina Ip will therefore qualify as a directly-elected Legislative Councilor and leader of her own small political party.   But her return also signals danger ahead for pan-democrats on their single most important issue since the appointment looks suspiciously like a reward for her support at a critical juncture of his campaign. 

             During their final March debates, CY’s main opponent, Henry Tang, betrayed the Executive Council’s strict confidentiality rule by recalling that in 2003 when they were all members of the council, CY had argued in favor of forcing through the Article 23 national political security legislation.  This he did despite the public opposition it (and Regina Ip in the role of lead promoter) was provoking.  He allegedly said the day would surely come when the government would need the extra authority the law provided to use riot police and tear gas against protesters  (March 21 post).   Leung denied the allegation and Regina Ip rushed to his defense.  Condemning the breach of confidentiality as an act of desperation on Tang’s part, she recalled her role at the heart of the controversy and said she had no memory of any such statement by Leung (March 17:  South China Morning Post, China Daily, Wen Wei Po).  No one has come forward to confirm the allegation and such minutes as are kept of council meetings will not be released.

           Question marks over the future of rights and freedoms also surround the appointment of the third most important official in Hong Kong’s government lineup, namely, the Secretary for Justice.   Given the central role of an independent judiciary in pan-democrats’ scheme of things, and persistent loyalist pressure for mainland-style “cooperation” among all the branches of government, some have been shocked to learn that the leading contender for the post is barrister Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung [Yuan Guoqiang  袁國強 ].  This is because he is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) for neighboring Guangdong province and has never said or done anything contrary to the assumptions attached to that position.

        Like its companion, the National People’s Congress, the CPPCC is based on a nationwide hierarchy of representative assemblies except that the latter is not a formal law-making body.   All members are also appointed rather than indirectly elected from the lowermost levels upwards as are all representatives within the party-dominated people’s congress system.  Appointment to the advisory CPPCC is an honor extended to politically amenable local elites.  More prominent senior Hong Kongers are appointed directly to the National Committee of the CPPCC.  Others are appointed to the conferences of neighboring provinces and prefectures as part of the communist party’s long-standing tradition of “united front” outreach.  CY Leung sat as a delegate on the CPPCC National Committee until he resigned last year preparatory to running for Chief Executive.

           Rimsky Yuen’s appointment in late 2007 created a stir since he was at the time chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association, which is proud of its reputation as defender of Hong Kong’s independent legal system.  In contrast, pro-Beijing partisans said Yuen had chosen the correct path, that is, from confrontation with to absorption within the mainland political system.  He stepped down as Bar Association chairman in 2009 but remains a CPPCC member.  He is reportedly Beijing’s preferred candidate and was not CY’s first choice.

       Said barrister and democracy movement elder, Martin Lee, Rimsky Yuen is not a bad person, he’s just naive and I’ll be the first to say so if he steps out of line.  But he is not expected to follow in the footsteps of the incumbent Wong Yan-lung [Huang Renlong 黃仁龍] whom all agree has done his best to safeguard Hong Kong’s judicial independence (May 8:  Ming Pao Daily, Wen Wei Po).  …  A mild verdict, indeed, from Martin Lee who has spoken out repeatedly against CY Leung and is among those who cannot be convinced that he is not a communist party member.   Barrister and Civic Party legislator Audrey Yu was not so charitable.  She said once a person is “dyed red,” resigning from the CPPCC will not be enough to “bleach him white” (Apple Daily, May 3, 9).

POPULARTIY vs. ACCOUNTABILITY

        CY’s top appointments need only be approved by Beijing.   Beyond them, however, he also wants to do a bit of remodeling, the better he says to streamline implementation of his populist campaign promises.  Specifically, he aims to add six top ranking positions and many minor ones, which will mean a substantial addition to the administrative budget, and for that he needs the Legislative Council’s approval.  However small this window of opportunity, legislators want to use it and pan-democrats are mustering their forces accordingly.  If he really means to address popular needs, they say, then the least he can do is explain to the public why he needs to spend so much more public money on an already top-heavy bureaucracy.   They are threatening to block the funding vote unless he agrees to hold a formal public consultation.

         His plans call for a new Deputy Chief Secretary to coordinate the work of the bureaus directly responsible for labor, welfare, education, and culture.   A new Deputy Financial Secretary will oversee knowledge-based information-technology development, commerce, and industry all in the context of enhanced Hong Kong-mainland economic integration.   Leung sees this last as key to the expanded opportunities and diversification Hong Kong needs for economic growth.  Additionally, two new bureaus will be added, one for culture and the other for information technology, bringing the total number of policy-making bureaus to 14.

         The new Chief Executive is so far standing firm against pan-democrats’ demand for a public consultation saying the public has already been told about his plans because they were included in his campaign platform statements and he will do more grassroots-level visits in the coming weeks.   The current administration is also helping out with supporting statements from officials and civil servants all in favor of Leung restructuring and hiring plans.  Critics will probably have to settle for the Legislative Council’s two days of public hearings tentatively scheduled for later this month, but their rear guard action and its likely result are symptomatic of something more than Leung’s “lead from above” governing style.

WHERE TO FROM HERE …  ?

           Pan-democratic leaders and commentators are not actually admitting as much in so many words, but an air of resignation is setting in as people look forward and back and realize that the 30-year campaign for Western-style directly-elected government is essentially lost.   It’s difficult to conclude otherwise.  

             No one is even suggesting any alternatives to the Chief Executive Election Committee, which means the same conservative body that has just elected CY Leung will be responsible for nominating the candidate in 2017.    But also unspoken is the corollary:   even if the committee were to be re-designed, pan-democrats have no plausible candidate waiting in the wings.  And if the new Chief Executive is successful with his team of conservative professionals, pan-democrats will be further eclipsed.  He has never shown any interest in political reform and continues to say nothing about it when asked.  The District Councils are now lost to the opposition, their small constituencies entrenched around the regular provision of neighborhood amenities that pan-democrats cannot match.  And half the Legislative Council is still represented by the Functional Constituencies with no end in sight. 

          Hong Kong’s current political playing field recalls the immediate post-1997 years of political drift.  Pan-democrats only revived when the government’s attempt to pass national security legislation reminded them of the dangers they had vowed to protect Hong Kong against.  Those were the years, 1999-2003, when its “Young Turk” radicals began deserting the Democratic Party.  Rather than sit it out in a dead-end “debating society” Legislative Council, they said it was better to head back to the streets where their movement began.  They kept their political ideals alive in that way (and left it to their pro-Beijing opponents to master the disciplines of electoral success).  But at least pan-democrats lived to fight another day and learned how to survive in retreat.

           Professor Joseph Cheng Yu-shek (Zheng Yushi 鄭宇碩) veteran activist and Civic Party member, was there at the beginning, in the early 1980s, and reflected that generational inheritance at the April 21^st seminar on political reform (April 25 post).  The pro-democracy political parties have not done enough, he said, we have “failed to protect Hong Kong.”  What to do?  He could only plead for continuing commitment and active participation, saying we must carry on the struggle to uphold Hong Kong’s “core values.”  Especially come out to march on July First, he said, evoking the memory of the July 1, 2003 protest that had given Hong Kong’s flagging democracy movement a new lease on life.  The commemorative July First march has since become an annual event and pan-democrats are pinning their hopes on a high turnout this year (video link:  www.ourtv.hk , English, April 21 seminar, panel 2).

         Another veteran activist Ho Hei-wah (He Xihua  何喜華 ) has a similar prescription.  He heads the Society for Community Organization or SOCO, one of Hong Kong’s oldest social action groups … so old that the British put it on their blacklist of potential subversives back in the late 1970s.  Ho Hei-wah was among those pan-democrats who came out for CY Leung early on because of his platform emphasis on housing, social welfare, and livelihood issues.  Ho still likes what he sees in that respect.   To fellow democrats who worry about the new Chief Executive’s political inclinations, Ho Hei-wah says he is more worried about self-censorship in the media under pressure from the commercial interests who dominate it.  He would not blindly trust whoever is Chief Executive and doesn’t fear Leung any more than he would Henry Tang. 

        This long-time social activist and human rights campaigner says human rights are something people must take for themselves.  Everyone should remain on guard, netizens must be ever vigilant, and people need to unite for protection.  But he is less pessimistic than Joseph Cheng, probably because Cheng is a political scientist first, politician second, and activist third.  Ho Hei-wah is a social activist first, last, and always, and does not see the institutions of elected representative government as a guarantee against political danger.  He thinks the new Chief Executive will concentrate first on housing and livelihood issues and only then, after he has secured public opinion, will he turn to political tasks like electoral reform and the Basic Law’s Article 23 national security mandate.  Yet that prospect, and the legitimacy Leung will accumulate in the process, does not concern Ho Hei-wah.  He is putting his faith in Hong Kong’s commitment to its core values and on the public’s ability to protect itself against all looming political dangers … just as it did on July 1, 2003 (Ming Pao Daily interview, May 2).  

suzpepper@gmail.com

          The speculation that preceded his March 25^th selection as Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive has continued unabated ever since.  Winning candidate Leung Chun-ying remains as much a man of mystery one month later as he was during the campaign beforehand when everyone was gradually coming to realize that he rather than the business community’s favorite Henry Tang would emerge victorious.  Although CY Leung had enjoyed consistently higher public approval ratings than Tang since last October, the focus now is on CY’s low ratings relative to predecessors Tung Chee-hwa and Donald Tsang just after their selection. 

          Two questions dominate the speculation:  is CY a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and whether he is or not, how can he govern when so many members of the Election Committee’s power elite refused to endorse him even after Beijing gave the signal? (CY, 689 votes; Tang, 285)   It’s way too early to declare agreement on either question.  But the preliminary emerging view is that CY will behave like a party member even if he isn’t; and those in the establishment who opposed his candidacy will not be rallying to his side any time soon.  Neither will most democrats.

HE SAYS HE IS NOT …

         Probably the time has come for Hong Kong’s unacknowledged communist party branch to come out from its underground hiding place.  At least that would call a halt to the endless inconclusive speculation and imaginings about who is and is not a member and what their hidden agendas might be.  It would also focus public attention where it surely belongs by allowing the community to consider party members for what they actually are rather than only what they claim to be.  

          Long ago in the 1950s, when colonial Hong Kong was learning to live with its giant new communist neighbor and anti-communist refugees were flooding in, the British and Chinese governments worked out ways of mutual co-existence.  Official Chinese interests would be represented by the local branch of the New China News Agency.  But the news agency was also allowed to serve as cover for the underground and unacknowledged local CCP organization, known internally as the Hong Kong and Macau Work Committee.  The committee would keep out of sight and pro-Beijing patriots, as they were known until the 1980s, would also keep to themselves.  That included also the leaders and affiliated members of the pro-Beijing Federation of Trade Unions after a few tumultous years.  Official colonial and mainstream anti-communist Hong Kong ignored them and they returned the favor. 

          It was as though the lines of Cold War demarcation between communists and anti-communists had not stopped at the Hong Kong-China border but migrated inward to take up positions within the community itself.  There invisible barriers formed around the few China-owned companies, union halls, bookstores, newspapers, theaters, and the neighborhoods where their employees lived and worked.  The barriers allowed mainstream Hong Kong and its patriotic minority to co-exist not as mutually recognized communities within a single city but more like ships passing in the night, a state that was reinforced by the mid-1960s upsurge of violence inspired by China’s Cutlural Revolution.  As a result, the distinction between “us” and “them” persists to this day.

        The confused tangle of questions pursuing CY Leung reflects that strange political culture built on decades of mutual isolation and silent antagonism.  Long repressed suspicions have emerged to challenge the pro-Beijing community as its members assume positions of leadership, by appointment and selection, allowing them to exercise authority over a community that until the 1980s refused to acknowledge their existence. 

           In fact, neither side knows how to address the other.  This has led to the exaggerated counter-productive criticism-struggle routines that ordinary Hong Kongers revile as “Cultural Revolution-style” rhetoric, like the campaign recently targeting Hong Kong University pollster Robert Chung (Feb. 6  post).   Meanwhile, the average person-in-the-street has no way of knowing whether Hong Kong’s new Chief Executive is a communist in disguise or not.  Maybe people don’t really care any more, but then again maybe they do.  It’s the uncertainty of not knowing, the suspicion of being deceived, that seems to matter most.

         For the Chief Executive-designate, it has become a futile exercise.  Leung has denied repeatedly that he is now or has ever been a CCP member, but to no avail.  Of course he denies it, said veteran protester “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung during an April 15^th television interview, “they always deny it.”  Surely Long Hair must know since he was born into and raised within the old patriotic community –  until he discovered Trotsky and rebelled at an early age.

           The fine line of distinction between CY Leung and probable actual leaders of the underground local party branch (like Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing) is thus ignored by just about everyone.  Tsang has never been heard to deny point blank that he is, whereas CY has done so repeatedly.  The basic rule, observed over many years, suggests that CY should be taken at his word and Jasper should be taken at his as well, since he has never denied what he is assumed to be.  But the shadowy world of political deception, hidden agendas, and false pretenses has existed here for so long that suspicions cannot be laid to rest with so simple an observed rule of practice.

          As luck would have it, on March 28 just days after his selection the official party newspaper, People’s Daily, posted on its website a brief biography of Hong Kong’s new  Chief Executive, “Comrade Leung Chun-ying.”  The political designation “comrade” is used only for party members and does not grace the resumes of either of his predecessors (Ming Pao Daily, Mar. 30).  “We told you so,” gloated the critics.  Here was proof positive of his party membership even if it soon disappeared  from the website and despite his calling in photographers to witness him signing a statement of denial.  Actually, the website interlude proved nothing. 

         According to the basic rules, non-party members must not address party members as “comrade” and vice versa.  But inevitably there are exceptions, as when a person has long, loyally, and meritoriously travelled the “united front” road, following the party center in all its twists and turns.  Evidently, mainland authorities view CY Leung in that light even if he does not actually belong to the organization.  Such considerations are leading some leading pro-democracy commentators here to conclude that when all is said and done “it really doesn’t matter” whether he is or is not …  which only adds further to the confusion.   

         Whether it really does not matter is a debatable question that the general public should be given the information necessary to consider for itself.  Someone should also explain to confused onlookers why some pro-democracy leaders and followers have been promoting the candidacy of Jasper Tsang for Chief Executive (Mar. 21 post).  If party members are such dangerous commodities, why is Tsang regarded as more acceptable than CY Leung?  Voters might like answers to such questions before heading to the polls in 2017 … assuming Beijing’s promise of a universal suffrage election actually comes to pass.

AN ADMINISTRATION IN THE MAKING:  FORECASTS AND FEARS

          Several well-known commentators offered their insights at a recent Saturday morning study session.*  All but one of the seven speakers are or have been associated in various ways with the pro-democracy camp and its causes.  The one exception, a vice-chairman of the main pro-Beijing political party (the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong or DAB), discussed the coming Legislative Council election (of which more later).  The others speculated about the new CY Leung administration focusing on two dimensions: (1) politics and political reform; (2) the contradictions between his populist social concerns and Hong Kong’s business-dominated way of economic life.

            Since the new Chief Executive is playing his cards close to his vest, the forecasts were more like informed exercises in creating thinking.  Even the leading contenders for top-ranking appointments remain unknown.  Hong Kong’s most talkative retired politician, Allen Lee, still sees no reason to hide his long-standing dislike of CY and could not resist playing the provocateur with a prediction that Regina Ip might well become a leading member of his governing team.  Now an elected legislator and leader of her own small political party, Regina Ip once scorned popular elections and is still best remembered for her role as security secretary when she spearheaded the government’s abortive 2003 attempt to pass its national political security legislation (Feb. 14, 2011 post).  She has since apologized for her behavior then but as Lee knows well, the thought of her return to power will conjure up a host of dark memories.  To strengthen the guilt-by-association point he was trying to make, Lee revealed that her distinctive apple green Porsche had been seen parked in the vicinity of CY’s office.

           Jokes aside, Lee’s purpose was clear even if he failed as usual to articulate it in so many words.  Pan-democrats fear that CY Leung, who has never demonstrated any sympathy or interest in their political reform causes, will carry on in the same vein.  Allen Lee was founder of the pro-business Liberal Party that saved the day in 2003 by withdrawing its legislative support for Regina Ip’s security project at the very last minute.  The party’s current chair, Miriam Lau, summarized the general concern more concisely during a TV interview aired the next day. 

           Like its founder, her party does not think much of CY and did not support him in the election.  She didn’t even bother to make a polite excuse for not attending the April 12^th “reconciliation” dinner he hosted as a peacemaking gesture aimed at bringing his pro-establishment supporters and opponents together.  Lau then advertised the snub by allowing herself to be photographed eating out alone that evening at a fast food restaurant.  She said her party will monitor his performance and decide as they go whether he is maintaining Hong Kong’s “core values.” 

              These she described in the general way as “one country, two systems,” “Hong Kong people running Hong Kong,” and a “high degree of autonomy”  –  all subject to an infinite variety of interpretations.   She defined only one point clearly.  Why should the Legislative Council’s small-circle business-friendly Functional Constituencies be abolished, she asked, if they are continuing to serve Hong Kong.  But if Leung needs her support to counter  pan-democrats’ demand for “genuine”universal suffrage elections, the Liberal Party’s help will not necessarily be his for the asking.

          Back at the Saturday seminar, speakers noted CY Leung’s political skills despite the doubts about how he would use them.  For the first time, said professor and Civic Party member, Joseph Cheng, we will have a “sophisticated politician” serving as Chief Executive, someone well-versed in political tactics and the machinery of building public support.  He meant, of course, the first since 1997.  Hong Kong’s last British governor was its first ever experience with a sophisticated professional politician as government leader.   Cheng also lamented pan-democrats’ failure “to protect” Hong Kong, but he did so in the typical way … by implication rather than explanation.  He was presumably referring to the communist party’s skillfully-orchestrated takeover from above and below that is now proceeding apace.

            Another politically active professor, Ray Yep, indicated why some pan-democrats who focus on grassroots issues had begun paying attention to CY several years ago as he began reaching out to them to learn about different policy areas.   “He knows his stuff,” said Yep.  He sees in CY a man of substance who stands prepared to argue his case.

        He also comes across as “arrogant and impatient,” said Michael DeGolyer, who heads Baptist University’s survey research Transition Project.  CY gives the impression of someone in too big a hurry and his populist concerns may not only set him against the business community.  He is also likely, predicted DeGolyer, to co-opt grassroots issues that pan-democrats have relied on to bolster their electoral support. 

           Equally important in this respect is CY’s tilt toward the 20,000-strong pro-Beijing DAB and its Federation of Trade Unions ally with 300,000+ affiliated members.  Both have been transformed during the past 20 years into efficient well-financed political machines dedicated to the provision of grassroots social services all year around and winning grassroots votes at election time.   Soon after his victory, CY went to both the DAB and the FTU, not the other way around, obviously feeling more at ease in their company than with any of the other political parties that made appointments to pay their courtesy calls at his office.  He also invited the DAB to name some of its members as likely candidates for him to consider in making his government appointments.

           His two biggest challenges, however, are the civil service and the business sector.  Allen Lee claimed that some administrative officers are no longer on speaking terms, so intense were the disagreements between those supporting the two main Chief Executive candidates.  He questioned if CY could find enough capable people willing to fill all the slots in his administration whether from inside or outside the service.  As for big business, well-known Hong Kong Economic Journal writer, Joseph Lian predicted that the two camps would be unable to reconcile.  He speculated further that the losing side would do all in its power to make CY a one-term Chief Executive.

         All of these strains can be seen in the one policy decision he has so far announced.  An issue known in the U.S. as “anchor babies” has reached alarming proportions here, given Hong Kong’s small size relative to the limitless numbers of mainland women rushing to take advantage of the liberal local “citizenship birthright” law and the many health, education, and welfare benefits that come with it. 

        The problem is relatively recent, having grown from only about 600 babies (born to mainland women without Hong Kong husbands) a decade ago.  For the first 11 months of 2011, the number was 33,500.  These were 80% of the total mainland mother phenomenon, which in turn represented close to half the total number of all live births here (Ming Pao Daily, Feb. 10, 2012).  Various measures have been adopted aimed at curtailing access to public hospitals where the current quota is set at 3,400.  But their private counterparts have expanded obstetrics services and exorbitant fees are no deterrent.  Nothing has so far been able to stem the tide, which is facilitated by an open border, recently authorized individual travel permits, and a dense network of intermediaries on both sides of the border. 

        The root of the problem, however, is Hong Kong’s Basic Law constitution, Article 24(1), that enshrines the common law right of “citizenship” (in this case permanent residency) for all Chinese citizens (but not everyone) born here.  Debate and disagreement have raged in the search for solutions other than the drastic precedent-setting step of amending the Basic Law.  The government was planning to limit the 2013 quota of mainland births to 25,000 in private hospitals (for mainland women not married to Hong Kong men)  …  until CY Leung’s sudden April 16^th announcement reiterating his campaign promise for a complete ban.  He will aim for a zero-quota plan and warned mainland gate crashers (who arrive unannounced at emergency rooms) not to expect residency status for their babies.

         Leung’s intervention set off alarm bells in many quarters.  Here at last was an example of decisive leadership, and a highly popular move as well.  But the style was arbitrary, impatient of legal niceties, dismissive of long-term demographic trends, and contrary to Hong Kong’s way of doing business-as-usual or so initially said private hospital managers. 

          She had no solutions but on this dimension, too, Miriam Lau offered the most concise summary of its challenges and why her party has resolved to wait-and-see.  Business agrees, she said, that the growing gap between rich and poor has become unsustainable and its many manifestations must be addressed.  CY’s populist concerns in this respect are not misplaced.   But then she pivoted and transformed them into the conundrum that has always blocked progress at the interface between social reform and economics. 

        Solutions must be sought in ways that do not undermine the fragile flower of business confidence.  That means a continuation of Hong Kong’s “big market, small government” non-interventionist gospel, said Lau.  Tax reform is unnecessary because Hong Kong has ample reserves to care for its poor.  Poverty alleviation is best tackled by generating new sources of wealth, by promoting new business and industries to increase opportunities for the younger generation.  We are fine with CY’s basic focus on the wealth gap, she said.  It’s only how he goes about trying to fulfill his campaign promises that we worry about.  

*  Sponsored by Hong Kong University, the U.S. National Democratic Institute, and the Canadian Consulate General, April 21.    Video link:  www.ourtv.hk

suzpepper@gmail.com       

         The biggest handicap for Hong Kong’s democracy movement has always been its lack of precedents and institutional memories.   Before 1997, the colonial governing tradition was all about keeping democracy at bay and the tradition persisted almost to the end, when it was only possible to cobble together a mix of Western-style goals and mainland communist underpinnings.  That left everyone with no footsteps to follow and nothing to point the way forward except a new untested Basic Law constitution and its vague “one country, two systems” formula, designed to last for 50 years from 1997.  Without any other guideposts, everyone at all points along the political spectrum can only learn-by-doing as they propel themselves toward the Basic Law’s ill-defined goals of a government elected by universal suffrage and integration with the mainland system in whatever form it may exist by 2047.  Under the circumstances, last Sunday’s Chief Executive Election laid down two important improvised markers that will be difficult to erase in future elections because the experience of this one will be set if not in stone then at least in the memories of all who participated. 

           One of those markers was Beijing’s still unexplained decision, announced last July, to allow a new “public acceptability” criterion to guide the choice of Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive (Jan. 4, 2012 post).  The second was the decision of Hong Kong University pollster, Robert Chung, to improvise on the new official criterion and hold a mock on-line election to let people have their say about which candidate they preferred.  The two, Beijing and Robert Chung, were not working in tandem.  Far from it, but they reinforced each other nonetheless.   In the end the original establishment-anointed candidate failed the public acceptability test, and 223,000 people participated in a simulated referendum exercise.  Even better, they used their “vote” to protest the fact that they didn’t have a real one!  Even worse, when it was all over, veteran commentator Albert Cheng predicted that given the result, Hong Kong’s March 25 Chief Executive election was a “nightmare” in the making (South China Morning Post, Mar. 28).

BEIJING AND THE SMALL-CIRCLES FALL INTO LINE

           Actually, it wasn’t just the general public that didn’t have a real vote.  Neither did Election Committee members and the most powerful among them are not very happy about seeing their candidate Henry Tang humiliated in defeat.  Beijing nevertheless kept its word, and also held its peace almost to the very end.  Many members of Hong Kong’s 1,200-person Election Committee are concurrent delegates to the National People’s Congress and its companion honorary body the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.  They attended the annual March meetings in expectation of receiving some advance signal but all returned from Beijing empty handed. 

         The writing was nevertheless on the wall if public acceptability was really to count for anything because Henry Tang’s popularity rating had remained in the doldrums for months.  Unauthorized challenger Leung Chun-ying had bested Tang in every poll dating back to last October.   At that time visitors to Beijing were returning with intimations that both Beijing and Hong Kong’s tycoons had agreed on Henry Tang. But in late December equally well-connected Beijing visitors began reporting a subtle change.  The new message:  central government authorities were comfortable with both candidates and Hong Kong itself must choose between them.  

           Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing press thereafter gave equal coverage to both and members of the main pro-Beijing political party were granted leave to attend the rallies of either candidate as they chose.  Candidate debates are now part of the standard campaign format here, thanks to the pioneering precedent set by the Civic Party’s Alan Leong in his challenge to Donald Tsang five years ago.  And it was not until after the final televised debate on March 19, when CY Leung emerged from the bruising experience still the public-opinion winner that reports confirmed Beijing had thrown its full weight behind him.  Only then did the pro-Beijing Federation of Trade Unions and the main pro-Beijing political party announce that all their 200+ Election Committee members would vote for Leung. 

         At that point, pro-Beijing sources also went into overdrive exhorting all Election Committee members not to join some pan-democrats who were agitating to disrupt the process by casting blank votes in protest against the undemocratic small-circle election. These included some who had been willing to nominate Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho, to speak for the democratic cause, but who had all along said they would boycott the actual vote on Election Day.  Members of the pro-business Liberal Party were also threatening to abstain rather than vote for CY Leung.  This would risk a second ballot if neither Leung nor Tang received the 601-vote majority needed to win.  It might also mean an embarrassing second round in May and a winner with his authority much diminished.

         Even so, the majority of Henry Tang’s core supporters stood by him although there were not enough of them to deprive Leung of a first-ballot victory.   Election Committee nominations and the final vote: 

                                                      Nominations (Feb. 29)           Votes (March 25)

* Due to overlapping memberships in some sub-sectors, the actual number of Election Committee members was 1,193.

THE PUBLIC HAS ITS DAY

         Two years ago, Beijing raised a great hue and cry when some pro-democracy politicians decided to stage a de facto referendum in protest over the government’s snail-paced political reform package.  According to Beijing, such popular initiatives are a violation of the communist party’s sovereign right to rule as sole representative of the people.  Beijing authorities therefore labeled the 2010 mock referendum a “blatant challenge” to the central government’s authority. 

          Undeterred by the memory of 2010 (or more likely inspired by it), Hong Kong University pollster Robert Chung announced late last year that he would try to arrange another mock referendum (Ming Pao Daily, Dec. 4, 2011).  He was then helping pan-democrats set up their on-line street-corner primary that they used to select a candidate to represent them in the Chief Executive election campaign (Jan. 16 post).  His idea was to extend the experience and give everyone a chance to vote on all the candidates.  Better that many people should actually make the effort to vote, he said, than for a few hundred to tell us their opinions on the phone.

         Unlike the 2010 experience, however, Beijing and the Hong Kong government did not launch a full-scale effort to obstruct the plan as he went about soliciting donations to finance it and arranged for back-up polling sites in public spaces around town.  He had only to suffer another sustained blast from the pro-Beijing press, which shifted its focus from Professor SING Ming’s political transgressions to revive the long-smoldering loyalist grievances against Robert Chung (Feb. 6 post).  Since late December, some 90 critical columns and commentaries have been published accusing him of everything from liaising with British intelligence to performing on cue for his “American  masters.”   Beijing’s Hong Kong representative Liaison Office also ignored the “one country, two systems” strictures against local political interference and spearheaded the media barrage laid down against him.

        He had planned to hold the referendum on Friday, March 23, for Hong Kong Identity Card-carrying residents only, asking which of the three Chief Executive candidates they preferred.  He hoped for 50,000 participants and planned to announce the results that same evening.   The anti-referendum media campaign receded as Election Day neared and the exercise seemed set to proceed uneventfully … until two local hackers transformed it into a great success.  They were soon located and arrested by the commercial crimes bureau but not before they had succeeded in blocking the online voting website for most of the day. 

         Additionally, however, 17 cardboard-box polling stations had been set up around town, like those pioneered by pan-democrats in January for their street-corner primary, to accommodate people who preferred doing it the old-fashioned way.   So instead of one day, the mock poll carried on for two, thousands of extra paper ballots were hastily printed, and people  –  men, women, old, and young  –  responded to the provocation by joining the enormous lines that snaked around the 17 polling stations for most of Saturday.  Final turnout was 222,990.  The results:  

CY Leung:  17.8%

Henry Tang:  16.3%

Albert Ho:  11.4%

Abstain:  54.6

HKU POP final regular opinion poll:  CY, 35%; Tang, 19%; Ho, 14%; none of the three, 32% (Apple Daily, Mar. 25).

CHIEF EXECUTIVE-ELECT LEUNG CHUN-YING

       So the unthinkable has happened.  Maybe except for CY Leung himself, until recently no one really thought that Henry Tang, favored by Beijing and the tycoons, would not be Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive.  They were planning for a safe pair of hands and a seamless transition from one post-colonial administration to the next, where all the sacred cows and vested interests would be carefully placated and preserved.  Now everything is uncertain because except for his old cold image and the 180-degree difference in his new outgoing accommodating campaign personality, CY Leung is unknown, untested, and distrusted. 

        He is not just a self-made man but also seems to be self-taught as well at least when it comes to politics.  Certainly no one has ever accused him of having British or American mentors.  He majored at school in property surveying, now known as real estate management, but his style on the campaign trail was more like contemporary American politician. He said early on that the “general public” was the new player in this year’s Chief Executive election and behaved accordingly.   He understands the need for rapid-fire direct responses to critical accusations, which is rare here.   And his remarks on Sunday had a familiar Obama-like ring that is also rare.  Commenting on his victory, Leung said that henceforth “there won’t be any Tang camp, Ho camp nor Leung camp.  There is only one camp  –  the Hong Kong camp.” 

         He also said he is not now nor has he ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party, a direct public denial that none of Hong Kong’s usual “traditional leftist” suspects have ever issued.  That includes Tsang Yok-sing who enjoyed a few days in the campaign spotlight last month (Mar. 21 post).  But whether Leung’s election was really precedent-setting or just the prelude to a nightmare will depend on whether he governs with his new personality or the old  —  and how the chief players respond.

         In fact, it will probably be precedent-setting regardless since the thousands who turned out to cast their mock ballots are sure to demand more of a say and more representative candidates.    That can become a nightmare scenario if the aspirations are blocked and it may look like a nightmare even if they are met, depending on how long it takes everyone to accept the unfamiliar rules of  electoral combat.  So far that lesson is proving hard to learn.

         For example, even though he met the new public acceptability criterion in comparison to his main rival and worked hard to succeed in that respect, much concern is now being expressed about CY Leung’s ability to govern given his “low” approval rating.  This is being compared to the honeymoon highs enjoyed by Hong Kong’s first two post-1997 Chief Executives at the beginning of their first terms.  But the situation now is completely different.  There were other contestants in 1996 and 2006, yet Tung Chee-hwa and Donald Tsang were officially anointed by Beijing long before the Election Committee rubber-stamped their candidacies. 

         In contrast, 2012 produced a genuine contest even if it was only between two pro-establishment candidates.   If a more varied slate is allowed in the future, the winners will no doubt emerge from the scuffle with something less than sky-high approval ratings.  And if the tenures of Tung and Tsang are any indication, high hopes at the start are no guarantee of what happens later on.

         Much is also being made of the unseemingly “mud-slinging” that for the first time featured in a Chief Executive contest.  But there really were secrets that the public needed to know and more sober voices (even old conservative ones) are saying the media was just doing its job when it dug for months to uncover the hidden fact of Henry Tang’s illegal basement.  The link between gangsters, rural leaders, and the candidates’ campaigns needed to be aired as well, and HKU students have already learned the hard way about looking more carefully behind sensational headlines before leaping to conclusions.

         Many additional lessons will have to be absorbed, however, if Albert Cheng’s vision of Armageddon is to be avoided.   Some of the challenges have been more clearly articulated in recent days than they were during all the past months of campaigning — perhaps because the possibility of a CY Leung victory had seemed so remote.  Just before the election, a group of self-proclaimed senior civil servants publicized an anonymous letter they addressed to the presumptive winner demanding guarantees that their political neutrality will be respected.  They have their doubts.

           The candidate had said all along that Beijing’s pledge of a universal suffrage election for the Chief Executive in 2017 was his as well.  He has even said he plans to be a candidate himself.  But when finally challenged after his election specifically on how candidates might be nominated in 2017, he deflected the question.  He had said repeatedly during the campaign that passing Article 23 national political security legislation is Hong Kong’s “constitutional duty.”  But when challenged directly, he still declined to elaborate on how he thinks the public “consensus” he promised to seek might be achieved or what he means by consensus.

           Leung’s pre-election public acceptability ratings were achieved partly by his tireless campaigning and partly by his skillful choice of words, and also because of the causes he championed.  He had long supported the new minimum wage law and is now an advocate of standard working hours, both of which the business community has fought tooth and nail.  He says the problem of housing for the poorest of Hong Kong’s citizens should be more actively addressed and social welfare advocates rallied to his promises as well  –  all of which explain why  business people regard him with such profound suspicion.

         Yet during the campaign he spoke confidently about the need for “management.”  Hong Kong is facing a range of tough problems and choices but with better management, he liked to say, solutions can be found.  Presumably he was referring to the ability to balance competing interests and accommodate diverse demands, and to other managerial skills he demonstrated during his campaign.  IF he can respond to all the above political, economic, and social challenges accordingly, Leung might just survive to contest the 2017 election for a second term.  But some, like Albert Cheng, are not willing to give him even the benefit of the doubt.  Neither are other opinion leaders like retired civil servant Anson Chan and veteran democrat Martin Lee.

         Cheng predicts that half-a-million people will likely be calling for Leung’s resignation on July First, the day he takes office, and the Civil Human Rights Front that organizes the annual July First democracy marches is already preparing.  Front leaders anticipate a turnout of 10,000 for this coming Sunday’s demo –  to mark the first week since Leung’s election.  They will be marching to Beijing’s Liaison Office in protest against its violation of the “one country, two systems” ideal by interfering in the election and helping to orchestrate his victory.*

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* April 2, update:  Turnout looked pretty close to 10,000.  As a rough rule of thumb, if the police estimate is 5,300 and organizers claim 15,000, then 10,000 should be about right.  All the main pro-democracy parties were represented in the march plus large contingents of students and young people.  Veteran street protestor “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung was there, leading a chant for the Chief Executive-designate to resign, but it wasn’t really necessary.  The younger generation is carrying forward the arguments on its own.  Their slogans were not particularly polite but the message was loud and clear, echoing the organizers’ call to march:  “The wicked wolf has come to power; Hong Kongers are angry.  Protest Central Liaison Office interference.”

         The protest marked a significant upward adjustment of the main target and paralleled the new direct participation by Beijing’s Liaison Office personnel in the political debate here.  It has always been common knowledge that Beijing makes the decision on who can be Chief Executive and on all the principal officials.  Nevertheless, for the first time a new public message of open defiance was reflected in several lead slogans:  “No to the central government’s imperial orders; give us true universal suffrage.”  “Protest Central Liaison Office rule in Hong Kong; protect one-country, two-systems.”  Maybe CY Leung is just what pan-democrats need to re-energize their flagging movement.  And maybe a re-energized democacy movement is just the test that he needs as well.

         For the first time ever, politics among the power-brokers here is fun to watch, probably because lots more people are getting into the act than the small circle of 1,200 electors who will vote on March 25.  This is thanks not only to the controversial candidacy of Leung Chun-ying but also to the new “public acceptability” criterion that Beijing is allowing to play out in the selection of Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive.  If the candidates’ popularity rankings can signify and since the public has been promised election by universal suffrage next time around, in 2017, then everyone’s opinions matter.  And if public opinion matters, so does the behavior of the candidates and their small-circle electors who are clearly unused to public scrutiny. 

         This story is not necessarily predestined to have a happy ending.  But for now the media is ferreting out secrets with great gusto; Legislative Councilors are demanding answers to questions; and university students are paying for full page newspaper ads (at a discount) as the quickest way of getting the public’s attention.  Those in the spotlight fretted at first but now seem resigned to mumble about mud-slinging and muck-raking as inevitable consequences of the demon democracy they have struggled for decades to keep at bay.  In fact, the power-brokers regained their balance soon enough and came back swinging during a fast-paced campaign that did not begin in earnest until late January after the Chinese New Year holidays. 

         Candidate Henry Tang’s womanizing and illegal underground pleasure palace (Mar. 1 post) are already old news, and loyal wife Lisa has probably given one tearful interview too many proclaiming his virtues.  Ming Pao Daily (Mar. 9) drew a line under this soap opera phase with an editorial headline that (roughly translated) said “just because Lisa loves Henry blindly, is no reason for the rest of us to do likewise.”  Highlights of succeeding rounds featured lobbying by candidate Leung Chun-ying’s campaign team on Henry Tang’s turf where “men of the marshes” hang out.   Outgoing Chief Executive Donald Tsang suffered collateral damage that has left his pious squeaky clean image tarnished by the hospitality of generous tycoons.  Then came a surprise development with big long-term implications for Beijing’s so-called United Front strategy.   Finally, the public was treated to four hours of freewheeling televised debate by the two real candidates, Tang and Leung, with Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho standing in to speak for pan-democrats.

A GIFT FOR HENRY TANG’S CAMPAIGN

        As noted in previous posts, the biggest tycoon property developers who inhabit Sector One on the 1,200-member Election Committee do not trust candidate Leung Chun-ying to maintain Hong Kong business as usual because they think he is too reform-minded.  Their spirits revived, however, after the media fixated on a dinner held in a far-off suburban seafood restaurant near the Hong Kong-mainland border.  This episode was led initially by the pro-Henry Tang Sing Tao/Standard/Eastweek media group (whose owner is one of Donald Tsang’s tycoon friends).

          The Lau Fau Shan dinner venue in the northern New Territories was a fitting place for one of the guests known in euphemistic Chinese terms as a “rivers and lakes person,” in other words, someone who lives on the margins of society (with Triad gangster connections).  Also attending the dinner on February 10 were New Territories rural leaders (all Henry Tang supporters) and members of CY Leung’s campaign staff.  Rural leaders, too, are worried about CY’s reformist aspirations and the get-together was reportedly held to discuss his platform including the matter of “illegal structures.”  These are common additions to suburban New Territories residential buildings and private homes.  Rural leaders recently held a rowdy protest and burned in effigy the government official responsible for trying to enforce the rules requiring that illegal structures be demolished.  But so intense was the media focus on who invited Kwok Wing-hung aka Shanghai Guy, what business he had there, and who paid the bill, that the public is so far none the wiser about what actually transpired at the dinner.

           Kwok is a one-time Triad society leader now known as a businessman who deals in New Territories properties.  That rural leaders have regular dealings with him has only been noted in passing and the implications for Henry Tang of having such people in his camp have been ignored altogether.  Rather the onus was placed on CY Leung’s campaign for consorting with gangsters, and to disprove Tang’s complaint (formally lodged with the police) that Shanghai Guy’s presence was meant to intimidate.

          This was the development that prompted Hong Kong University students to get into the act and buy HK$300,000+ worth of advertising space in several Chinese-language newspapers on March 12.  Their aim was to denounce “black gold” (corrupt) politics by calling on CY to disprove the allegations of underworld involvement in his campaign.  No one faulted the students for their enthusiasm but just about everyone blamed them, including the student unions of most other universities, for wasting so much money on an impulse that could land them in court for violating Hong Kong’s strict campaign finance regulations.  These limit all election-related spending to the candidates and their agents and the ads were clearly election-related.

         The whole episode nevertheless provided a great fillip to morale for Henry Tang supporters who had scoffed at CY Leung for being “too perfect,” whereas Tang was a fellow sinner in many respects.  Here at last was some mud that seemed to be sticking while they continued to dig for more.

A LOYALIST SAVIOR?

       Back in the middle of February when scandal-ridden Henry Tang seemed down and done for, a new “ABC” wind blew up (meaning Anyone But CY, a take-off on last year’s Anyone But Henry slogan).  An unlikely alternative appeared suddenly at the same time in the form of loyalist Tsang Yok-sing [Zeng Yucheng], unlikely not because of his pro-Beijing supporters but because some pan-democrats rallied to the idea as well. 

          Tsang was the founding chairman of what has grown into the main pro-Beijing political party and has, along with younger brother Tsang Tak-sing [Zeng Decheng], been a dedicated loyalist since their student days during the late 1960s Cultural Revolution riots here.  Long anathema to pan-democrats, the idea of accepting as Chief Executive someone assumed to belong to Hong Kong’s underground communist party branch needed explaining.  Leading Apple Daily editorial writer, Li Yi, was among those who volunteered.

          Yes, he wrote, Tsang Yok-sing is no doubt an underground communist party member.  But better that than this “mess of a contest between pigs and wolves” (that is, between Tang and Leung).  If Tsang were Chief Executive, Beijing would not have to worry about his loyalty and better that than the slavish servile posturing incumbent Donald Tsang has adopted to win Beijing’s trust.  Tsang Yok-sing would work for Hong Kong in line with Beijing’s intentions and since he is a traditional leftist himself he would not have to draw lines, as Donald Tsang has done, to favor leftists over democrats.  Therefore, wrote Li Yi, since we cannot yet elect our leaders, such a person is the best choice and Tsang Yok-sing is that person (Sharp Daily, Feb. 20, 21, 2012; Apple Daily, July 23, 2011).

        Given this new argument, founding chairman of the Democratic Party, Martin Lee, sounds increasingly like yesterday’s man.  He was the leading voice of Hong Kong’s democracy movement throughout the 1990s, and he remembers CY Leung’s hard-line institution-building work during those years.  All of the last British governor’s political reform initiatives were dismantled at that time and CY was a willing helpmate in that effort.  He is Beijing’s man, warns Lee, and with Leung in charge the Chinese Communist Party will rule Hong Kong (Sharp Daily, Mar. 14). For some in the pro-democracy camp, that prospect obviously is no longer something to fear. 

           If neither Tang nor Leung receive the necessary 601 Election Committee votes during the two ballots allowed on March 25, the election will be replayed with a new round of nominations.  The idea took hold so suddenly that Tsang Yok-sing could not put together a campaign in time to meet the February 29 nominations deadline.  But if there is a second round, he is thinking seriously about adding his name to the candidates’ list and if he does, some are predicting he would win.  By design and by default, the take-over from above and below (via the District Councils) is now well on course to proceed.

THE DEBATES

        Anyone hoping for a change of tone during the two televised debates, on March 16 and 19, was sorely disappointed.   The first was for the general public, the second for Election Committee members.   The first focused almost entirely on the integrity issue with Henry Tang setting the scene by ostentatiously bowing “before the seven million people of Hong Kong” to apologize for his past behavior.  He also pledged to clean up his act as Chief Executive, and then proceeded to make accusations against CY Leung that were calculated to dominate the next day’s headlines.  Questions from a studio audience selected to represent the “man-and-woman-in-the-street” did address platform and substantive policy issues like property prices, poverty, the wealth gap, education, etc.*  But these were quickly dispatched and then sidelined by the candidates as they quizzed each another.  Only Albert Ho emphasized the importance of political reform.

          Sure enough, headlines the next day were dominated by Henry Tang’s accusations.  His source was confidential conversation within the Executive Council (the Chief Executive’s cabinet) that by custom is never publicized.  Tang said he had decided that public interest should override the confidentiality rule that is a holdover from British colonial days.  One revelation concerned CY Leung’s statement at a 2003 council meeting after the big July First protest march against the government’s proposed national political security legislation mandated by Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law.  

          Under discussion at the meeting was whether to ram through the legislation despite massive public opposition.  Tang did not describe the specific context of Leung’s alleged remarks but apparently arguing in favor of such legislation, Leung said the day would surely come when the government would need the extra authority to use teargas and riot police against protestors.  A second allegation concerned his proposal to reduce the renewal time of a local radio station from 12 to three years as punishment for its critical stance toward the government.   Leung responded immediately by denying both allegations whereupon Tang accused him point blank of “lying.”  The same sequence was repeated during the second debate when Tang made the bizarre claim that he had lodged a complaint with the Independent Commission Against Corruption over Leung’s misrepresentation of the facts. To do so is illegal under Hong Kong’s election ordinance.

           Unfortunately for Tang, he has succeeded in deflating Leung’s poll ratings somewhat but the only one to benefit seems to be Albert Ho.  After the first debate observers said Tang had actually performed better than expected, although not good enough to make much difference in the public’s impression either of him or his debating skills. After the second debate, a HKU opinion poll commissioned by the South China Morning Post (Mar. 20) found 36% would vote for Leung if they could and 21% for Tang.  Both were damaged by the debate, down from 44% and 26% respectively.  Albert Ho, on the other hand, doubled his support from 7% to 14%, and Ming Pao Daily (Mar. 20) named him the winner on a debating points decision.

          As of yesterday, there was still no clear indication that Beijing officials had made up their minds.  As of today there is.  According to well-grounded reports, Beijing has shifted its neutral stance and begun lobbying Tang’s Election Committee supporters to switch sides (SCMP, Mar. 21).   

          CY Leung was roundly criticized for saying at one point that his candidacy had added a new “democratic” dimension to the contest.  But in a sense he was right.  He was not Beijing’s first choice this time around and he certainly was not the first choice of Sector One tycoons.  But he has made a major effort to try and meet the new public acceptability criterion.  Whether he can go on to actually win public acceptance remains to be seen.  So does the outcome on Sunday.  Election Committee members will have two chances to make up their minds.  If they fail on the second ballot, which Beijing sources have said repeatedly they do not want … then it will be a whole new ball game.  The tentative date for a second round is May 6.

*PLATORMS:

Henry Tang:  http://www.wearetomorrow.hk/main/solution.php?lang=eng    

CY Leung:  http://www.cyleung2012.com/declaration/policy/39

Albert Ho:  http://www.dphkweb.org/ce2012/ce_booklet.pdf

Professional Commons analysis:  http://www.ceplatform2012.hk/

suzpepper@gmail.com

           During the past 20 years, local democracy activists have used every argument they could think of to make the case for “genuine” universal suffrage elections.  In response, people liked to joke that Beijing would never allow elections unless it could guarantee beforehand who would win.  This logic inspired the intricacies of the Chief Executive Election Committee, now with 1,200 members, which was designed in such a way as to make a pro-democracy candidate’s victory impossible.  

           The only problem, from Beijing’s perspective, is that officials there cannot actually mandate which pro-establishment candidate should win because the communist party is not yet in open control here.  What’s more, Beijing is pledged to an ongoing course of reform that anticipates “public acceptability” (Jan. 4  post).  This is a new criterion added recently, without fanfare or explanation, presumably because Beijing has now learned its lesson:  Hong Kongers can be very troublesome when provoked and since hard-line mainland-style political security laws have not yet been introduced here, the city can become difficult to govern at times like now, when public expectations do not mesh with government performance.  Elections may be designed to misrepresent but the mass media and mass protests are still routinely invoked as the last lines of defense.

         The situation was tailor-made for disruption and disrupted it is, thanks to the candidate Beijing had anointed in consultation with Hong Kong’s main movers and shakers who dominate Sector One (business and finance) on the Election Committee (Jan. 16  post).    Democrats see this sector as the hard core within what they deride as a “small-circle” exercise, otherwise known as the Election Committee election.   Sector One tycoons remain essentially as hostile to political reform today as in the mid-1980s when the British belatedly introduced it.  But all the pro-democracy arguments under the sun could not do more to discredit the exercise than the hapless candidate Beijing and the local big business establishment tapped as the person best suited to safeguard their economic and political interests.

         On March 25, the committee is scheduled to endorse a new Chief Executive in the last such exercise before some form of yet-to-be-defined universal suffrage is introduced in 2017.   The official hope was, reportedly, that whoever succeeds Donald Tsang on July 1, 2012 would do such a good job that he could easily carry on for a second term,  thereby allowing Beijing to have its cake in 2017 and eat it too (that is, allow the long-delayed universal suffrage reform and elect the correct candidate).  Instead, candidate Henry Tang Ying-yen (Tang Yingnian 唐英年) may not even last out the month and if he does, no one wants to bet on the likelihood of him still being around in 2017.  

TABLOID FODDER

         Poor Henry.  In the past few months his prospects have only gone from bad to worse.  The younger post-1980s generation that gained sudden fame in 2010 with a series of spontaneous protests was the first to raise the slogan “anyone but Henry Tang.”  This was because he seemed not so much opposed as completely oblivious to the causes they held dear.  His first sin in their eyes was to dismiss concerns over the lack of good job prospects and affordable housing, and the growing wealth gap.   With his aimless trademark grin, he said everyone should just work hard and aim to become as rich as Hong Kong’s richest tycoon, Li Ka-shing.  What kind of world does that guy inhabit, they asked.   We don’t want to be rich as Croesus.  We just want to live in a city with more equitable opportunities for all. 

          Of course, they knew what kind of world he lived in, but this was not just another rich man’s playboy son (Jan. 4 post).  He was the favorite of his own small circle and slated to become Hong Kong’s Chief Executive responsible for making political, economic, and social decisions that would affect the lives of everyone for possibly the next 10 years.   He needed to be discredited in more ways than one if their opposition was to have any impact, especially after reliable news reports last September that central government leaders in Beijing had indeed decided to endorse him as their preferred candidate.  

         In anticipation of what was surely to come, Tang began his campaign with a preemptive strike.  Rather than wait for the inevitable salacious stories about his love life to surface, he stepped forward last October to admit that while he may have “strayed” in the past, he was now reformed and contrite, with loyal wife Lisa Kuo Yu-chin by his side to say she forgave him.  Since all rich men are expected to stray and the wives to keep up appearances especially when the public interest is involved, his volunteer confession seemed to work  –  even as tea-table gossip continued to circulate about more than one mistress, an illegitimate child hidden away in Paris, and so on.

          Meanwhile, clumsy efforts by Tang supporters to help him and discredit the other more popular candidate, Leung Chun-ying  (Jan. 4 post), did little to harm him or boost Tang’s poll numbers until a mysterious government press release in early February.  It concerned what seemed to be a relatively minor 2001 conflict-of-interest issue on a major public works project associated with Leung.  Who was responsible for the next leak to follow after that is also not known.  But since it contained unauthorized building plans for a Tang family property, and since CY Leung has strong support among his fellow surveyors and architects, the source can be imagined. 

         Unauthorized additions to residential buildings are common here, given the lack of adequate living space.  In recent years, the authorities have tried to improve enforcement of building codes beginning in the poorest neighborhoods where some serious damage has been done by pieces of dilapidated buildings falling on people’s heads.  But the community is no longer as passive as it was in Henry’s day.  If poor people must remove their illegal structures, others must do so as well.  Warnings to officials were issued last summer after some prominent persons were named and shamed.  The only people actively resisting are suburban New Territories residents (whose leaders have all declared for Henry Tang).

          Ming Pao Daily News had been trying without success to confirm the rumors since last October.   Finally a few people began to talk (Feb. 13).  Sharpe Daily (爽報 ), Apple Daily’s new afternoon Cantonese giveaway, claimed to have procured the blueprints (Feb. 14, 15).  Tang’s illegal structure, unregistered and therefore untaxed, was a 2,400 square-foot basement allegedly fitted out as a recreation complex complete with wine cellar, wine tasting room, mini-theater, sauna, etc. (Ming Pao, Feb. 16).  Dubbed his “underground palace,” the basement is larger than the vast majority of Hong Kong apartments.   Building inspectors confirmed the size but refused comment on the furnishings. 

        Worse than the transgression itself, however, was Tang’s response. Having denied all knowledge right up until the day before, he then blamed his wife, still standing by his side, at their tearful Feb. 16 afternoon press conference.  He said that during a “low point” in their marriage, he had transferred his shares in the property to her and she did what she liked with the house, which is next door to their main family residence.  The community accepted his initial transgressions as par for the course.  Boys will be boys.  But this was different.   Shameless miserable wretch screamed the headlines, reflecting the general sense of disgust for a man who would allow his wife to be further humiliated in this way when he had just said days before that he would accept responsibility for any problems with their properties.  Even the once-staid South China Morning Post, now under new editorial management, joined the outcry to demand he disqualify himself as a candidate without waiting to see if the public forgave him as his loyal supporters continue to hope.

LONE WOLF LEUNG  

           The pro-democracy media months ago gave derisive nicknames to the two main candidates that have stuck:  Mr. Piggy for Tang’s amiable indolent personality and character; Wolf Man for CY Leung as someone slightly sinister, stern, confident, and ambitious. The caricature nevertheless worked to his advantage after Leung emerged as an articulate candidate who had learned to speak thoughtfully about current public concerns.  He might be just what Hong Kong needs, by comparison with his chief competitor who continues to give the impression that he spends all his spare time enjoying his underground pleasures. 

        Unfortunately for Leung, however, Sector One luminaries also regard him as a wolf in their midst and they are not impressed when others see in him a man of strong character and firm principles.  They say he’s a loner, a self-made man, someone who avoids their wine-tasting social rituals, owes them nothing, and spends too much time at home working on his policy papers … in other words, a man who can’t be trusted to carry on Hong Kong business as usual. 

          What’s more, no one seems to know who in Beijing might still be promoting his candidacy.  Someone or no one?  Either way the prospect is unsettling.   Ten years ago he had patrons in high places including Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing (Jan. 4 post).  But it looks like maybe this time he just decided to come out on his own, introduce himself to the public, and wait for Beijing leaders to look his way again.

          Miriam Lau, who heads the pro-business Liberal Party, explained in somewhat different terms during a recent TV interview.  She said she could not speak for the tycoons.  But her small-and-medium-size enterprise constituents all prefer Henry Tang because they know him.  He was once a Liberal Party member himself, and he represents “stability.”  CY Leung is an unknown quantity and the business community fears uncertainty.  She was discreet.  Former leader James Tien told journalists, repeatedly, that party members would sooner cast blank ballots than vote for CY Leung.

OUR MAN THROUGH THICK AND THIN

          All the scrutinizing about who in Beijing might or might not be promoting Leung’s unusual candidacy (former leader Jiang Zemin, current leader Hu Jintao, future leader Xi Jinping) will matter in the end when Beijing makes the final decision.  But after CY began making his mark on the opinion polls and Henry Tang failed to pull ahead, Beijing leaders through local surrogates let it be known that “public acceptability” (still undefined) did indeed signify and they aimed to let the contest play itself out.   In recognition of the two officially approved candidates, Tang and Leung, the 200+ Election Committee members belonging to the main pro-Beijing political party and its Federation of Trade Unions ally were allowed to nominate one or the other according to their own preferences.

           As a result, between now and March 25, Hong Kong will have something as close to a Chief Executive election campaign as circumstances allow, with all eyes focusing on the 1,200-member Election Committee.  But the interim verdict, when the formal February 14-29 nomination period ended, said as much about the deficiencies of the Election Committee method of choosing a leader as about those of the candidates themselves.

           All three candidates hastened to lock in their nominees before too many pledged Election Committee members could change their minds.  Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho was first off the block, on Feb. 14, satisfied with 183 signatures from the 205 pan-democrats elected to the committee in early December.  He was later able to add a few more names but there had been too much talk about helping out CY Leung in case of need to risk any delay.  In the end, for better or worse, he didn’t need them.  He made the nomination threshold (150 signatures) with plenty to spare:  292. 

           Henry Tang’s nominees began slipping away after the underground pleasure palace story broke and he had to abandon his plans for a grand photo-op finish, but he remained on his front-runner perch.  Tang submitted his 378 nominations on Feb. 20, without fanfare and pledging to give his all to the task of rebuilding his reputation, a wise promise since the Liberal Party’s signatures came with a warning.  The party announced that its members would not vote for him on March 25 if his opinion poll rankings remained below 50% because that would indicate he had failed the public acceptability test. Thousands would take to the streets again and the city would become ungovernable again as in 2003.  

           Most of the big name tycoons and property developers nevertheless stood by him together with their conglomerate representatives including five from Li Ka-shing’s family enterprises; five from Jardine Matheson; nine from the Kwok family’s Sun Hung Kai enterprises; and godfather of the famous Hong Kong-Macau bridge, Gordon Wu.  Others included 28 suburban New Territories leaders (probably hoping to retain their illegal structures); 35 representatives from culture and sports; 35 from the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference; 26 religious leaders; and 14 Legislative Councilors (Ming Pao, Feb. 22; SCMP, Feb. 23). 

            Leung’s strongest support came from Sector Three:  labor, agriculture, and fisheries; plus his own fellow surveyors and architects in Sector Two.  He was not without Sector One supporters, however, and the biggest name among them is property magnate Ronnie Chan Chi-chung.  His signature may bode ill for pan-democrats if Leung wins since no one among the tycoons has said and written more about the evils of Western-style democracy than Ronnie Chan.  The tally as of Feb. 24 (Ming Pao):

The final tally as of Feb. 29:  390 for Tang, 305 for Leung, and 188 for Ho.   The latest HK University opinion poll, conducted on Feb. 27-28, gave Tang 17.7%; Leung 51.2%; Ho 13.3%.

         So the old truism that “the tycoons have always run Hong Kong and always will” has hit a snag.  Their carefully choreographed small circle routine is not such a safe bet after all.  Now, it seems, they must consider public opinion before making their final choice and the public doesn’t think much of their favorite but they are afraid of the alternative.  They have also just realized that if too many blank ballots are cast on March 25, neither candiate may win the necessary 601 votes on the first ballot, or even the second.  Or even worse,  pan-democrats’ 205 Election Committee members might be able to cast the deciding votes for them. 

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            In the lull between elections, Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing opinion-page writers gave their favorite Civic Party target a rest and launched a new campaign focusing on two academics.   Robert Chung Ting-yiu (Zhong Tingyao 鍾庭耀) has headed the University of Hong Kong’s well-regarded Public Opinion Program (POP) since its inception in the early 1990s.   Dixon Ming Sing (Cheng Ming 成名) is an Oxford-educated political scientist and associate professor at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology.  Together they stand accused of violating loyalist norms of political discourse, although not on identical grounds.  The new polemic aims to make an example of them and discredit their work in the eyes of all who might be influenced by it.

          Defending the campaign that has so far netted 40+ articles critical of Chung and a dozen ridiculing Sing, Vice-chairman Lau Kong-wah (Liu Jianghua 劉江華) of the main pro-Beijing party said, in effect, so what?  Asked to comment, Lau declared that Hong Kong has freedom of speech and freedom of the press and different opinions are expressed all the time.  Academics and politicians should take it in stride, just as he has learned to do when the newspapers criticize pro-establishment figures like him (Ming Pao Daily, Jan. 12).

           For sure, pro-democracy partisans as a whole give as good as they get.  But academics never indulge in the sort of public vituperation that graces pro-Beijing editorial pages when a campaign moves into high gear.   And everyone also knows the participants are engaged in a kind of a-symmetrical political struggle.   Power is concentrated in Beijing hands and Hong Kong’s one-country, two-systems guarantees are in transition to 2047.  Its formally autonomous political system is designed to favor and is dominated by pro-Beijing forces and their allies.  The system is also in constant motion and pro-Beijing pressures to conform are at work on many fronts including those where Robert Chung and Dixon Sing now find themselves under fire. Their experience illustrates one of the more public kinds of “inconvenience” that academics with partisan pro-democracy inclinations can encounter when they stray too far beyond the bounds of political propriety. 

PROVOCATIONS

         From the pro-Beijing camp’s perspective, both men made mistakes.  Actually, they have made many.  But there were some immediate provocations and both derive from the thorny issue of elections.   Both are also magnified by Beijing’s insistence on distinguishing between popular sovereignty as exercised, for example, in a popularly-initiated referendum and regular elections authorized by the state.  The former is regarded as subversive of state power, the latter upholds it.

          Prof. Sing’s troubles began with comments he made to the media about possible reasons for pan-democrats’ disastrous performance in last November’s District Councils election.  Sing’s specialty is Hong Kong politics and since he teaches the subject, journalists often go to him for comments and explanations.  The first part of his mistake was to answer questions put to him by reporters from the Falun Gong news media; the second part was what he said.   He also said the same thing on a radio talk show broadcast by government-owned Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK).

          Falun Gong is the spiritual sect that is banned in China as an “evil cult” but allowed to carry on here more-or-less unhindered.   Prof. Sing was accused for focusing in his comments on the “vote planting” problem and on possible involvement by the central government’s local Liaison Office personnel in pre-election planning.  Vote planting refers to people who register using false home addresses and vote in constituencies that are not those in which they actually reside.  Pan-democrats blame their pro-establishment opponents for this practice.  But the culprits may actually have made a difference in only a handful of Hong Kong’s 400 District Councils constituencies last November, according to petitions for re-elections by defeated candidates.  Investigations are still underway.  Liaison Office involvement is an open secret reflected in anecdotal evidence and news reports dating back to the mid-1990s when the New China News Agency was still representing mainland interests here.

          Robert Chung’s transgressions are also two-fold but more serious.  He announced, in late December, that he was planning a kind of territory-wide referendum-style opinion poll to be held on  March 23^rd just ahead of the March 25^th Chief Executive selection proceedings.  He wanted to follow up on pan-democrats’ street-corner on-line primary election and the small poll he had conducted for them by telephone as part of their exercise (Jan. 16 post).  The March survey would be far more ambitious, modeled on internet voting, and capable of including up to 100,000 people who would be given the opportunity to indicate their preference among all the formal candidates (South China Morning Post, Dec. 27).  These are now expected to be Henry Tang, CY Leung, and the Democratic Party’s Albert Ho.  Chung’s idea followed also from Beijing’s new popular acceptability criterion (Jan. 4 post) but would in effect be a simulated vote and the next best thing to a real referendum.

         Robert Chung’s second problem followed two days later when he announced the latest findings in a series that his POP program has been conducting periodically since 1997.  The aim is to measure Hong Kongers’ sense of belonging as they make the transition from British colonial subjects to Chinese citizens.  The latest survey, 47^th in the series, was conducted in mid-December.  Among other things it asked 1,000 Hong Kong residents to rank the strength of their feelings on a scale of one to ten, and found record highs for “Hong Kong citizen” compared to record lows for “Chinese citizen.”  The difference, however, was only 8.23 for the former and 7.01 for the latter.*

PAST HISTORY

        To an outside observer, these “provocations” hardly seem worthy of the name.  But in loyalist eyes, the two men already had cases to answer.  Robert Chung’s surveys and pro-democracy editorial explanations were targeted even before 1997.  “We don’t trust his polls,” said loyalists then, and they liked him even less after the first post-1997 administration, led by Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, tried to pressure the university into removing him.  Learning of these designs, Chung publicized them, a formal inquiry in 2000 upheld his claims, and the head of the university had to resign as a result.  Robert Chung survived but has since kept his pro-democracy sentiments mostly to himself … until now.

          Prof. Sing’s problem is probably not so much what he said to whom about the District Councils election results as what he did in 2010 and the views he has continued to express since, albeit in the low-key style typical of local academics.  But he was among those who helped out with electioneering work, talking to student groups and at academic forums, in support of the 2010 referendum campaign.  This was when two Civic Party legislators joined three from the League of Social Democrats in resigning their seats. They wanted to precipitate simultaneous territory-wide by-elections in protest over the government’s lackluster political reform program. 

           The exercise was billed by its promoters and treated by Beijing as a de-facto referendum thereby challenging the essence of communist party rule with the threat of popular sovereignty.  Officials warned that the referendum would be a “blatant challenge” to Hong Kong’s Basic Law constitution and to the central government’s authority.  After Beijing announced this verdict in mid-January 2010, all the pro-establishment parties abandoned their plans to participate, even though they might well have picked up an extra seat or two in the Legislative Council (2010:  May 17 and June 7 posts).

        Among the prominent academics concerned with local politics, aside from those who were Civic Party members, most others joined the Universal Suffrage Alliance seeking some moderate compromise solution and they did not support the referendum protest.  The Civic Party has been the favored target of pro-Beijing political writers ever since and individual members are singled out from time to time.   Not being a party member and having committed no other serious errors, Prof. Sing escaped attention … until last November.

AN OLD-STYLE CRITICISM-STURGGLE CAMPAIGN

        Beijing likes to present itself today as a modernizing global power proud of its new economic strength and benign intentions.  But the old revolutionary traditions live on and can be seen reflected in political security laws as well as related political discourse.  Lucky for Dr. Chung and Prof. Sing they are not mainland academics because from the sound of it they would surely be prime targets for the ever-present charge of subverting state power.

A Professor in the Dock      

          The polemic against Prof. Sing was conducted almost entirely in Chinese, mostly by anonymous op-ed page writers in the leading pro-Beijing paper, Wen Wei Po (Wenhui bao 文匯報)。 Lew Mon-hung (Liu Mengxiong, 劉夢熊), an activist member of Hong Kong’s appointed delegation to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) was the only well known contributor.  

        At first, when it began last November, the criticism passed unnoticed.  Sing’s initial reaction to pan-democrats’ greater than expected losses was that something was not right.  The problem of false voter registrations was widely known and Hong Kong election authorities had taken no action to plug loopholes in the system, including the problem of former Hong Kong residents returning to vote from new cross-border residences.  The question posed was how a political science professor could focus on such reasons without solid proof (WWP, Nov.  28).  Fair enough. The authorities are now taking the matter seriously, arrests have been made, and investigations are underway with conclusions yet to be formally reached about perpetrators, motives, and electoral impact.  But his case soon moved from the bottom to the top of the back page reserved for local politics, and from there to feature length among the op-eds. 

           Dubbed an “academic long hair” (after veteran radical Leung Kwok-hung who is nicknamed Long Hair), he was accused of singing the same tune as the avidly anti-communist Falun Gong for having given interviews to its reporters.   Whatever he may or may not have actually said to them, however, the eight-point charge sheet of his “most extreme” sayings might also have passed unnoticed since they only reiterated pan-democrats’ standard complaints. 

          Included among the eight points:  Hong Kong has a semi-autocratic form of government; the kind of elections currently being promoted by the central government (presumably on the mainland) are false elections; the central government is blocking Hong Kong’s democratic development;  Beijing’s Liaison Office here is engaged in behind-the-scenes election planning and mobilization (WWP, Nov. 30).    Additional points of sympathy for Falun Gong and protest over the government’s attempt to abolish special or by-elections as punishment for the 2010 referendum are also part of the standard pan-democratic repertoire.  Everyone has joined in the protest against abolition including those who did not think the referendum itself was a good idea.

          It would have seemed like a routine loyalist rebuttal in Hong Kong’s ongoing democracy debate  –  had the stakes not been  raised to make an example of the accused by suggesting what he, and by inference others like him, deserved for persisting in such “extreme” views.  Professors were supposed to be objective and neutral; this one was twisting facts to fit his political bias.  The eight points were prefaced with a question:  “Should the university allow this so-called professor to continue misleading the younger generation?”   CPPCC delegate Lew Mon-hung threw his weight behind the question by repeating it.  He challenged the university to consider carefully whether Sing deserved to remain on the faculty (WWP, Dec. 5, 12).

           The paper acknowledged that there had been some negative feedback from students and others (none of which the paper published), only to redouble its efforts.  These culminated in an old-fashioned rabble-rousing headline that proclaimed the professor a “Hateful Western-Trained Dog” (WWP, Dec. 15).  He and his supporters were nevertheless challenged to refute the facts presented and explain his distortions (WWP, Dec. 9, 21).  Supporters have spoken out or published elsewhere.**   But if anyone has challenged the paper to honor its challenge and print their responses it has yet to do so.  Prof. Sing himself has so far not responded nor has the university.***   The RTHK talk-show host who interviewed him had come in for similar criticism and has since been dropped by the broadcaster, which decided not to renew his contract. 

The Pollster Pushes Back

          Media savvy Robert Chung has fought this battle before and is not so reticent.  The first blasts from adversaries came within days of his two December announcements.  The simulated referendum would, of course, challenge the constitutional order and violate the spirit of the Basic Law (WWP and Ta Kung Pao, Dec. 31).  But what seemed to bother the authorities more was his opinion poll that showed local people still placed so much value on their local identity.  Rather than rely on the usual local surrogates, Liaison Office officials abandoned the pretense of honoring Hong Kong’s one-country, two-systems autonomy and stepped immediately into this one. 

         Hao Tiechuan (郝鐡川), director of publicity at the Liaison Office, went on local TV to criticize Robert Chung’s poll saying it was “unscientific” and illogical to distinguish between Chinese and Hong Kongers since all were now Chinese citizens (WWP, Dec. 30).  Robert Chung answered back immediately saying it was unscientific of Hao to inject his political imperatives into a survey that attempted to measure changing popular orientations toward the mainland.  He also said Hao’s sarcastic idea about asking locals if they considered themselves British was like “adding legs to the picture of a snake,” since local people had never identified with the British.  The dismissive Chinese phrase was the same that Hao had used to describe Hong Kong democrats’ political reform demands in 2010 (Ming Pao Daily, Standard, Jan. 3).

          Critical commentaries mushroomed, partly because public polling and national identity make for easier talking points than professorial lectures on government and politics, but also because Chung continued to defend himself.  Among other things, he accused Hao of trying to interfere with academic freedom and reminded him of Hong Kong’s favorite term for leftist polemics.  “Cultural Revolution-style” criticism and attacks, he said, have no market in a civilized society (Apple Daily, Jan. 3, 11;  http://hkupop.hku.hk/ press release, Jan. 5). 

           Chung nevertheless turned directly to politics himself since his findings have fluctuated over time evidently reflecting positive and negative political events in Hong Kong and on the mainland.   Hong Kong’s one-county, two-systems experience could serve as a useful example for Taiwan, he said.  The three political entities — Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the mainland  –  all had different political systems, thought, and culture.  But at present almost no one either in Taiwan or Hong Kong was discussing these differences and he hoped to promote such discussion in the future (Ming Pao, Jan. 3). 

             All the old pent-up grievances against Chung and his work were updated and re-cycled.  Accordingly:  he is in league with the U.S. Consulate, liaises with British intelligence, and has taken money from the National Democratic Institute, which is affiliated with the U.S. government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, which as everyone knows is linked with the CIA.  Never mind that NDI had cooperated in many mainland projects.  Beijing was using them to build “socialist democracy” and could guard against infiltration whereas Chung was in a “master-servant relationship” obediently following orders (China Daily, Jan. 6).  And the consequences were clear for all to see.

          That identity poll of his was a “political tool” designed to keep alive Hong Kong’s sense of separation from the motherland.  He should not be allowed to persist in asking such questions year after year, confusing the public and passing on suspicions from one generation to the next.  He is actually a promoter of “Hong Kong independence,” in sympathy with the Taiwan independence movement, and nothing more than a political hack who does not qualify to be called an academic much less serve for 20 years as POP director (WWP, Jan. 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, 16, etc., etc. … ).

          Questions of political security were naturally involved.  The results of his poll “appear to be seditious” because they suggest that Hong Kongers do not support the political order established by the Basic Law. “Such a distorted survey should not enjoy the so-called academic freedom.  Instead, it should be subjected to criticism and some restrictions are necessary for the protection of public morale” (China Daily, Jan. 5).

            The Lunar New Year holiday brought a welcome break in this episode but the issues remain unresolved and positions have been reinforced on both sides.  Academics from several universities ended the year with a joint press conference to express their concern.  They urged Chief Executive Donald Tsang, as the formal head of all Hong Kong’s main (publicly-funded) tertiary institutions, to take a clear stand in defense of academic freedom.  Political science professor Kenneth Chan, who is also the Civic Party’s current chairman, said the last thing they needed was to have “Big Brother” looking over their shoulders (SCMP, Jan. 21).  But concern about the “inconvenience” they might encounter if they stray too far beyond the new post-1997 political boundaries has already become a fact of life.

* SCMP, Dec. 29, 30; Ming Pao Daily, Dec. 30; http://hkupop.hku.hk/ , Press Release, Dec. 28, 2011.

** Ming Pao Daily, Dec. 8; Apple Daily, Dec 8, 16, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 11; SCMP, Jan. 21. 

***  Update, Feb. 13:    Prof. Sing’s response is forthcoming.  He and others have formed a University Academics Concerned Group to promote the cause of academic freedom.  Student groups have also begun issuing protest statements (Apple Daily, Feb. 3, 6; Ming Pao Daily, Feb. 6)  

Prof. Sing’s response:  Ming Pao Daily News, March 2, 2012.   

A signature campaign in defence of academic freedom, signed by 600+ Hong Kong academics, was published in Ming Pao Daily, Mar. 7 (English translation: http://www.hkptu.org/ac-freedom/).

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           Strangely enough given the make-up of the Election Committee tasked with endorsing the appointment of  Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive, candidates pledged to support a pro-democracy candidate actually did better in the December 11^th Election Committee Sub-sector Election than those who had declared for the two leading pro-establishment candidates.    During the first week of December, the highest preference rating received by the main pro-democracy candidate, Albert Ho Chun-yan (He Junren 何俊 仁) of the Democratic Party, was 6 %.  This was a Hong Kong University poll that gave the two establishment contenders, Leung Chun-ying and Henry Tang, 34.7% and 18%, respectively.  Albert Ho also has no chance of victory on Election Day, March 25, whereas Tang was regarded as the front-runner even though Leung was topping all the candidate popularity polls (Jan. 4, 2012 post).   The approximate number of pledged candidates who won:   50 for CY Leung; 203 for Henry Tang; 205 for a democrat.

THE COMMITTEE

         To sort out these contradictions, it is necessary to focus on the convoluted process of anointing Beijing’s choice for Chief Executive, and to do that it is necessary to focus on the composition of the 1,200-member committee.  Unfortunately, in order to understand the Election Committee it is also necessary to think in terms of the 28 Functional Constituencies that elect half the Legislative Council.  These are based on occupational categories and this electorate is a mix of corporate representatives and employees.  Altogether, they include 200,000+ voters.  To form the Election Committee, the 28 Functional Constituencies are rearranged a bit to become 32 of its sub-sectors.  These are divided into three main sectors, plus a fourth filled with political representatives.  Each sector has 300 members:

EC Sectors                                            No. of Members

First:  Business, industry                       300

Second:  Professions                                300

Third:  Labor, etc.                                     300 

Fourth:  Political                                        300

        All the economic heavy weights are concentrated in Sector One.  Professional categories are represented in Sector Two.    Sector Three is a mix of “grassroots” and others:  labor unions, farmers, fishermen, social welfare, representatives of all the main religions, sports, performing arts, publishing.   Sector Four contains political representatives of many kinds including all 60 Legislative Councilors and a selection of district councilors.   Pro-Beijing loyalists account for almost a third of this sector.  They are represented by Hong Kong’s 36 delegates to the National People’s Congress and 55 of Hong Kong’s representatives on the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

DEMOCRATS TRY THEIR LUCK

        After much argument among all the parties and groups, most democrats decided to support a candidate for Chief Executive, as they did five years ago, even though the committee is so weighted with conservatives and loyalists that everyone knows a democrat cannot win.  One opinion poll asked about the chances and respondents all replied “zero.”  Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho volunteered months ago to be the candidate (for reasons of the DP’s own, to be sure) but most others agreed that his candidacy could promote their common cause by providing another opportunity for public debate. 

          Some disagreed.  DP vice-chair Emily Lau has maintained her long-held view that to participate in such a “small circle” election is to acknowledge its legitimacy.  The new Labor Party, led by veteran activist Lee Cheuk-yan, holds the same view and the party’s two Legislative Councilors will abstain from the March 25 vote.  But among pan-democrats, only the most radical groups, People Power and League of Social Democrats, are actively agitating against participation for that reason (and also doubtless because they are still smarting from their failed attempt via last November’s District Councils election to punish the Albert Ho’s party for its sins).

          Even if everyone was on board, however, sponsoring a pro-democracy Chief Executive candidate in an environment deliberately designed to discourage such a project  is not easy.   The basic bar is the need for 150 Election Committee members willing to serve as nominators.  So the first step was to find a sufficient number of people, among the 200,000+ electorate, willing to stand as pro-democracy candidates for a place on the 1,200-member committee.  Among all the 38 sub-sector constituencies (including the six in Sector Four), only a few contain people likely to vote for Election Committee candidates who are willing to pledge, openly in advance, to nominate a pro-democracy Chief Executive candidate.

          Leading Democratic Party member Dr. Law Chi-kwong inadvertently illustrated the problem a month after the sub-sector election when an e-mail surfaced that he sent last summer.  He was supposed to have been mobilizing candidates for the social welfare sub-sector but instead warned his friends about the “inconvenience” they were likely to encounter if they won and did not support Beijing favorite Henry Tang (Ming Pao Daily, Jan. 11, 2012).  Law was then working with Tang on a charity project and his friends did not run.

           The places to look for such potential supporters are well-known since they correspond to the few Functional Constituencies that usually vote for pro-democracy Legislative Council candidates.  Those who declared themselves ahead of the December 11^th Election Committee election were concentrated mainly in Sector Two and Sector Three sub-sectors:  accounting, architecture, education, engineering, higher education, information technology, legal, medical, health services, social welfare. 

            Pan-democrats concentrated on these sub-sectors, reminding friends and colleagues to meet all the voter registration and nomination deadlines.  As the latter neared in November, campaign workers began beating the bushes urging more potential candidates to step forward after head-counters came up short of the 150 needed to guarantee one Chief Executive nomination.  Charles Mok of Professional Commons, a Civic Party ally, and the DP’s Yeung Sum were lead coordinators of this pre-election politicking.

            Most democratic candidates announced themselves as members of slates or group tickets, reflecting another peculiarity of this election.  Every individual voter among the 200,000+ could vote for as many candidates as there were seats allocated on the Election Committee to his/her sub-sector.  It was not required but for those wishing to exercise their right in full, remembering so many candidates could be a problem since only their names (no photos allowed) were printed randomly on ballot papers minus any distinguishing marks or reference to partisan affiliations.  All voters were advised to bring along their own “sample ballot” crib sheets for reference.  Some slates helped out by printing their own in the form of paid newspaper advertisements.   With its 60 seats, the social welfare sub-sector presented the greatest challenge, which was nothing compared to the job of vote-counting afterward.   

RESULTS

         The turnout  –  27.5% of 237,000 registered voters  –  was about the same as usual.  Altogether 766 seats in 24 sub-sectors were contested by 1,300 candidates.   But to everyone’s surprise including their own, given the lackluster turnout, democrats could count 205 of their candidates among those elected to sit on the committee.  The margin above 150 was more than enough for safety’s sake  –   in case some change their minds about signing  for a democrat when nomination time comes in February.  All were from the anticipated sub-sectors.  

           Pan-democrats’ success was one surprise.   Another was how well the results reflected all the reports from unattributed Beijing and Hong Kong establishment “sources” about Henry Tang being their preferred candidate, despite CY Leung’s popularity.  He tallied only about 50 backers compared to Tang’s 203.  The sub-sectors most solidly in Tang’s camp also indicate the extent of his support here:   commerce, industry, textiles/garments, wholesale/retail, tourism, catering, performing arts.  Leung’s greatest strength was in his own architectural/surveying constituency, plus import/export, religion, and a scattering of others.  Most committee members have not yet declared their preferences.     

           Ironically, pan-democrats were trying to play the “small circle” game they deplore and accomplished what they needed to do.   In contrast, Leung has had no Election Committee experience and it showed.  He seems to have ignored the tedious task of mobilizing advance support within the sub-sector constituencies.  Instead, he focused on the new popular acceptability criterion and campaigned by speaking out with more to say on current issues than any of the other candidates.  Two others, Rita Fan and Regina Ip, have recently dropped out of the race.  Still, he may have won some new friends.  There has been talk among democrats on the Election Committee about whether they should “lend” their surplus support (above the 150 signatures Albert Ho needs) to Leung so that he, too, can meet the 150-signature threshold.   Some among the younger generation want to help Leung who, unlike Henry Tang, at least represents the possibility of something different.

A PRIMARY ELECTION ALL THEIR OWN

          Not so fast, say their elders who remember Leung in the 1990s (Jan. 4 post).  Best wait before jumping on that band wagon until we hear what he has to say about democratic institution-building and the Basic Law’s Article 23 mandate for national political security legislation.  They are  setting the stage for Albert Ho and his main declared reason for joining the race.  Without our open challenge, he says, candidates Tang and Leung will continue to ignore us and carry on as they have so far with their non-committal answers to our political questions.

           Albert Ho is sounding like he, too, has learned some lessons.   Given all the flak aimed at him and his party during the past two years  –  for refusing to participate in the 2010 universal suffrage referendum campaign; for compromising on the 2010 political reform package; and now for participating in the Election Committee exercise  –   Albert Ho concluded that he needed something more substantial than 205 small-circle backers to underpin his candidacy.   He and his party therefore decided, with the help of some younger activists, to hold a virtual referendum in the form of a primary election.

          Besides helping to legitimize his nomination, there were many anticipated benefits.  The general public could participate and if numbers were great enough the establishment candidates would feel obliged to accept his challenge for open debate.  The exercise could also serve as a dress rehearsal for the next Chief Executive election in 2017 when Beijing has promised that everyone might be allowed to vote.  Specifically, the promoters are trying to establish some precedents and procedures ahead of 2017.  The aim is to have alternatives already tried and tested in order to prevent the current Election Committee from becoming the sole nominator of  pre-determined candidates, which is the direction Beijing’s promise now seems to be taking.

          Perhaps recalling its own lonely struggle with the 2010 referendum campaign, the Civic Party decided against putting forward a candidate to compete with Albert Ho.  But veteran moderate democrat Frederick Fung Kin-kee (Feng Jianji 馮檢基 ) stepped forward to save the day and round out the experiment, which was actually quite ambitious.  It entailed:  two televised debates between Ho and Fung on January 3 and 7; an opinion poll commissioned by the sponsors but conducted by Hong Kong University’s Public Opinion Program between January 3 and 6, asking respondents which candidate they preferred; and finally, an online primary election allowing all Hong Kong residents to chose one or the other on January 8. 

       If nothing else, the debates illustrated another almost-forgotten cleavage within the pro-democracy camp itself  –   between Frederick Fung’s extreme moderation and that of the Democratic Party.  In this line-up, Albert Ho played the radical with his dramatic declaration of “war” against the “hegemony” of Hong Kong’s mega-property developers who are blamed for pushing housing prices out of middle class reach.  Fung said such talk would only provoke more social conflict and hatred of the rich.  He advocated instead a policy of encouraging smaller developers to enter the market and a fund to promote innovative industries.  On political reform, too, Albert Ho was far more forceful, calling for abolition of the Legislative Council’s Functional Constituency seats and for resolving the question of Article 23 legislation.

         HKU’s opinion poll was the least successful part of the exercise.  Among 1,000 respondents, 271 preferred Albert Ho and 181 Frederick Fung, but over half abstained and there were no follow-up questions that might have explained why.  The January 8^th primary, on the other hand, exceeded expectations with its improvised cardboard-box polling booths, open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and 70 computers set up all around town outside the busiest subway stations.  Voters had to punch in their Hong Kong ID card numbers to prove they were residents and not voting twice.  But despite some radical heckling, 34,000 people turned out while only 20,000 had been expected.  The weather obliged and everything went off without too many glitches thanks to Charles Mok and his IT friends.  The result:  22,148 votes for Albert Ho; 10,791 votes for Frederick Fung; 993 abstentions.

           Despite some smirking and simmering from the usual pro-Beijing sources, pan-democrats have so far done what they set out to do with a minimum of conflict and controversy and no major blasts from on high.    But the campaign is only half over.  Next comes February and then March.  Will 150 Election Committee members actually sign on the doted line to confirm Ho’s candidacy?  If they do, will the establishment candidates respond as he hopes and accept his challenge for a public debate?   And if they do, will he stand by his January debating points or equivocate, as he did before, in the face of official intransigence and party pressures to minimize  “inconvenience.” 

          Between now and then, however, the spotlight will refocus on Leung Chun-ying.  Of all the awkward choices that have to be made, his will be the most difficult as he tries to find his way clear of the obstacles his unconventional campaign has created.  Leung’s greatest danger now is the interest among democrats and the feelers his own campaign sent out last month for their help in meeting the nomination threshold.  If he openly courts them, his standing with Beijing and the local establishment is probably doomed.  But the potential for support from democrats will be nipped in the bud should he feel the need to regain his loyalist-conservative footing by provoking them.  It follows that if Leung Chun-ying can maneuver through this minefield with his Hong Kong candidacy and Beijing credentials intact, then maybe he really is the right man for the top job.

suzpepper@gmail.com

           With the November District Councils election now an unhappy memory for Hong Kong democrats, attention has re-focused on the next (decidedly un-democratic) phase of its long drawn out 2011/12 election cycle.   Here there are no jokes about “small benefits and favors” or snakes and cakes for grassroots voters since the key players at this level are not grassroots and benefits don’t need to be discussed.    In polite formal discourse the people who count are known as stake-holders, otherwise referred to as the power elite, tycoons, social notables, and so on.  Some count more than others, of course, but a representative sample is currently engaged in the convoluted process of confirming Beijing’s choice for Chief Executive.  He will succeed Donald Tsang, whose term expires next June, and serve for five years.

          Initially, defenders of this exercise liked to say that at least it was more open than before 1997, when the colonial governor was appointed by British government officials in London and designated local dignitaries lined up to greet him on arrival at Queen’s Pier.   Two decades and more of agitation for universal suffrage elections, formalized in Article 45 of the Basic Law, has resulted in Beijing’s promise that the selection procedures designed during the pre-1997 transition to Chinese rule will end with the coming 2012-17 Chief Executive term.  According to this design, a representative sample of the post-colonial establishment is elected to form an Election Committee that then confirms Beijing’s preferred candidate (July 23, 2010 post).  But everyone who is currently commenting on the matter assumes that nominations for post-2017 universal suffrage elections will derive from their 1997-2017 predecessor, which means “the committee” is likely to cast a long shadow.

        It currently works like so.  (1) The 28 Functional Constituencies, with their combined total electorate of 200,000+ voters, are not only responsible for filling half the legislature’s seats (April 16, 2010 post).  The same constituencies also elect most of the Chief Executive Election Committee.  This has just been increased from 800 to 1,200 members but its composition is the same as before.  (2)  The committee then nominates candidates who need the endorsement signatures of 150 members to qualify, although candidates need not themselves be committee members.  In theory, anyone can be nominated who is a Chinese citizen, has lived in Hong Kong continuously for 20 years, and is over 40 years of age.  (3)  The winning candidate is then endorsed by all the committee’s members, on a one-person-one-vote basis, with 601 votes needed to confirm victory. 

          Hong Kong is now midway through this process.  The Election Committee election was held on December 11.   The signed nomination papers must be submitted between February 14 and 29.  Pan-democrats will select their candidate  –  there are two main contenders  –  after conducting opinion polls in early January, and holding an on-line primary election scheduled for this coming Sunday (January 8).  Hong Kong University opinion pollster Robert Chung is making plans for an on-line mock election he wants to hold on March 23.   Election Day itself is March 25.

THE IRRESISTABLE LURE OF ELECTIONEERING

       From their perspective, Beijing officials are right to be wary of elections because they can never be absolutely sure their “unitary” way of governing will prevail.  If the opportunity is there, no matter how limited, someone is sure to take advantage  –  like the many independent candidates who are creating headaches for local authorities during the mainland’s current cycle of grassroots people’s congress elections.  Under Hong Kong’s temporary one-country two-systems governing arrangement, where the unitary principle does not yet apply, opportunities are much greater.  In 2007, the newly formed Civic Party wanted to introduce itself and use the Chief Executive selection process as a platform for public debate, even though the Election Committee is stacked with conservatives making it impossible for a democratic candidate to win.  Beijing was unhappy with this challenge to its pre-selected candidate, the incumbent Donald Tsang.  And Beijing was even more unhappy with Civic Party candidate Alan Leong’s debating points  –  so much so that a press campaign was launched to discredit his most daring proposals.

         This year the contest is even more provocative and not just because Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho has decided to follow in Alan Leong’s footsteps.  Beijing’s real dilemma has been created by one of its own closest allies who decided at least two years ago that he wanted to be Chief Executive after all.  Meanwhile, Beijing had been quietly grooming another candidate while apparently trying to institutionalize a line of succession that might be used to prepare safe candidates in anticipation of the promised 2017 “universal suffrage” election.   But then things grew even more complicated. 

           Independent opinion polls showed the public, and young people especially, liked the wild card candidate much better than the other.  In fact, they liked several others better.  What’s more, the polls began registering this result around the same time last summer that Beijing’s top official responsible for Hong Kong affairs, Wang Guangya, added a new criterion for prospective leaders.  Besides being patriotic and capable, said Wang, the candidate must be acceptable to the people of Hong Kong.  By way of explanation, he was quoted as saying: ‘So that everyone will generally feel the person elected is about right’ (Wen Wei Po, July 12, 2011).  So after some initial hesitation, Beijing has decided to let the campaign run its course and make known a final choice “later.”

CANDIDATE LEUNG

           The mystery man is Leung Chun-ying (Liang Zhenying 梁振英) or CY for short, who has been a leading member of Beijing’s Hong Kong governing establishment since it’s foundations were laid in the mid-1980s.  Then in his early 30s and without any of the right family connections  –  whether British colonial or pro-Beijing patriotic  –    Leung entered at the top, occupying a prominent perch on the first of the building blocks Beijing constructed here.   He then moved on from one to the next in an unbroken upward trajectory.

        This unusual resume has naturally inspired many rumors.   Leung must be a member of Hong Kong’s underground communist party branch …  or maybe he was at least inducted into the Communist Youth League when he began applying his newly-minted status as a chartered surveyor to the new demands for cross-border expertise in the late 1970s.  On occasion he has denied such rumors outright, which suggests that he is not a party member.  But mostly he has evaded the questions, which is the practice of those everyone assumes must surely be.

         Leung Chun-ying’s parents were among the thousands of mainland migrants who fled China’s communist revolution in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  But unlike the majority of Hong Kong’s migrant population, this family came from the North, and his father was recruited into the police force as were many men from Shandong province following British colonial policing practice.  Born in Hong Kong in 1954, Leung grew up in the Hollywood Road police compound where the family home was a standard miniscule government-issue apartment.  His path upward began when he won a scholarship that allowed him to attend an elite secondary school located nearby. From there he went to Hong Kong Polytechnic and from there to Britain where he earned a degree in surveying from Bristol Polytechnic. 

           Returning to Hong Kong in 1977, he arrived back at just the right time to benefit from the new cross-border demand for expertise and capital that followed China’s post-1978 decision to learn the ways of the capitalist West including the privatization of land use.  Leung’s profession as a land surveyor was made to order for the new era and property development on both sides of the border would soon make him a millionaire many times over.  But besides wealth he also earned, for his advice and services in the 1980s, the gratitude of many mainland officials.  These included Shanghai major, Zhu Rongji, who would move on to become China’s Premier in the late 1990s.

         Meanwhile, back in Hong Kong Beijing was left with the difficult task of putting together a transition team and welcomed anyone willing to join the new order at a time when many were not.    In 1985, Leung was appointed to the 180-member Basic Law Consultative Committee, elected to its standing committee, and later named secretary-general.  The BLCC’s task was to canvass Hong Kong views for use by the Basic Law Drafting Committee.  Its Hong Kong members worked with Beijing to write the mini-constitution that was to govern Hong Kong for the 1997-2047 transition to full mainland rule.

          Inspired by events in Tiananmen Square and the Soviet bloc between 1989 and 1991, London then decided to hasten the snail-paced political reform anticipated by the Basic Law.   In return, Beijing decided to begin dismantling all such reform initiatives immediately, as they were being introduced by the last British governor, Christopher Patten.  A 70-member Preliminary Working Committee was formed with a mix of Hong Kong and mainland members to oversee the task. 

             Leung earned the enmity of democracy activists at this time, between 1993 and 1997, as a blunt uncompromising implementer of Beijing’s dismantling project.  He acquired this reputation for his work:  as Hong Kong convener of the PWC’s political sub-group; as a vice-chairman of the 150-member Preparatory Committee created in 1996 to form the new incoming administration; as a member of the Provisional Legislative Council that replaced the last colonial council and formalized the dismantling process by approving  all the necessary laws soon after July 1, 1997; and then as a member of the first cabinet or Executive Council where he was given special responsibility for housing policy by Tung Chee-hwa, the first post-1997 Chief Executive.  Reportedly at Beijing’s behest, Leung was made convener or leader of the Executive Council in 1999, a position he retained until a few months ago.

         His local supporters had proposed Leung in 1996 for the post of Chief Executive, but he declined saying he did not want to be either Hong Kong’s first or second Chief Executive.  His name was raised again beginning in 1999 when Tung, a pro-Beijing businessman who proved an ineffective leader, seemed headed for early retirement.  Better a second term for Tung Chee-hwa than Leung Chun-ying, said democrats at the time.  But again Leung declined and by the time Tung was finally removed, mid-way through his second term, Beijing had hit upon a new solution:  tapping talent from within the old colonial establishment.   Donald Tsang, a career civil servant and at the time Chief Secretary or second in command of the local government, was the man who succeeded Tung in 2005. 

           Anxious to keep the political atmosphere as calm as possible, and concerned about the 2007 promise to allow a “universal suffrage” election in 2017,  friends of  Beijing began canvassing local opinion leaders in mid-2010 for suggestions as to which 2012 candidate would be most likely to win a second term by universal suffrage public acclamation in 2017.    He has not yet said why he wants the job he forcefully declined twice before but by mid-2010 Leung had let opinion leaders know that he now thought he was the man for the job.

          In July 2010, one of those leaders, Allen Lee, entertained listeners at the Hong Kong Club with an hour-long soliloquy on the state of political play in Hong Kong.  Lee founded the pro-business Liberal Party and is now Hong Kong’s most talkative retired politician.  He spoke at length about Beijing’s search for the ideal thru-to-2017 candidate and also about CY Leung’s meticulous efforts to befriend every likely member of the 2012 Election Committee.  But Lee also mentioned the new acceptability criterion that his mainland contacts realized would be necessary even for an elected-by-acclamation candidate.  And therein lays the problem for the man Beijing reportedly favors. 

CANDIDATE TANG

          Henry Tang Ying-yen (Tang Yingnian  唐英年) has a more conventional Hong Kong-elite resume and he had already been promoted to Donald Tsang’s old post as Chief Secretary in preparation for the final step up.  Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Tang is the grandson of a patriotic Shanghai capitalist and son of a Hong Kong textile magnate who acquired the highest of Beijing connections.  Young Henry was educated in the U.S., returned to inherit the family business, and was among the pioneers of Hong Kong-mainland joint ventures.

       His political career began when, in 1991 at the age of 39, he was among the last batch of appointed Legislative Councilors.  He then joined Allen Lee’s Liberal Party, and became an elected legislator via one of Governor Patten’s new-style expanded functional constituencies in 1995.  As Chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, he nevertheless represented most of the business community in opposing Patten’s reform initiatives.  Hong Kong tycoons have always rejected the idea of political reform and now they had a new excuse:  the governor had infuriated Beijing.  “A confrontational and antagonistic approach is suicidal,” wrote Tang in 1996 (South China Morning Post, May 22).

          He joined the Beijing-led pre-1997 preparations, was selected to sit on the Provisional Legislative Council, and became one of Tung Chee-hwa’s first Executive Council appointees.  But unlike CY Leung, Tang moved on to join Tung’s new ministerial system after it was decided that policy bureaus should be headed by political appointees instead of civil servants.  Tang was appointed Financial Secretary in 2003 and Chief Secretary in 2007.

THE OPINION POLLS

           If Hong Kong pollsters had devoted half as much attention to the District Councils election, pan-democrats might have had more warning of what was to come.  But especially after Beijing officials added the new criterion of popular acceptability, interest has focused on the top prize.  In June last year, a Hong Kong University poll commissioned by the South China Morning Post placed CY Leung last among several potential candidates.  Asked who they would vote for if they could, only 8% said Leung; 10% said Tang.  But by October, the responses were Leung 29%; Tang 14% (SCMP, Oct. 17).  By late November, they were Leung, 47%; Tang 23.8%.  Among young people in their 20s, Leung’s support was 62% to Tang’s 20.6% (SCMP, Dec. 8).  Anyone but Henry Tang, they say.  A Baptist University poll in early December found 30% for Leung; 17% for Tang (Ming Pao Daily, Dec. 8).  Another by the Chinese University found 42% for Leung; 28% for Tang (Ming Pao Daily, Dec. 12).

           Nor are Beijing officials alone in their dilemma.  The older generation of pro-democracy leaders, who remember the fierce battles of the 1990s, are appalled.  Then chief secretary Anson Chan, who joined the democratic camp after her retirement, said she is “perplexed” by Leung’s popularity and cautioned the public to consider his “track record” before jumping to conclusions. She says he now seems completely different from the person she knew before.  If she were an American politician she would accuse him of pandering.  As it is, the question was only implied not articulated.  

              Hong Kong is thus learning another old lesson about electoral politics even if the public can’t yet elect its leaders.  For better or worse, voters are likely to give more weight to their immediate concerns than anything else when asked to decide who they want to govern them for the next five years.  Weighing what they know about the two main contenders, people obviously care less about pedigree or past performance and more about problems that need solving now, which explains Leung’s appeal. 

            He has not just spent the past two years growing orchids in his garden to use as gifts for Election Committee members, according to Allen Lee’s favorite anecdote.  Leung has also been writing an extended series of articles, published in the Chinese press, on matters of community concern with special focus on housing and the growing wealth gap.   When asked by journalists about a third runway for the airport during an unscripted New Year’s Day appearance at the big annual organic farmer’s market, he had a ready answer with something for everyone.  In principle, he replied, Hong Kong needs the third runway but pollution and other environmental concerns that people are raising must also be considered. 

          In contrast, Henry Tang’s New Year’s Day photo-op was a planned home visit to two families in a neat self-contained middle class constituency and his off-the-cuff comments have only reinforced the out-of-touch elitist image.  They call to mind the famous line from U.S. campaign politics about the elder President George Bush having been “born with a silver foot in his mouth.” 

            So now, thanks to CY Leung’s ambition and political skills and the new acceptability criterion, everyone is faced with an awkward choice.  Besides Beijing, that includes the big names who had already pledged for Henry Tang before the December 11 Election Committee election and pan-democrats who are waiting to hear about specific political issues.   So far neither candidate has had much to say about democratic institution-building, or about Beijing’s pending demand for political security legislation and the threat to political expression it contains.

(Next:  Pan-democrats and the Election Committee)

suzpepper@gmail.com

          Of all the post-mortems conducted after the November 6^th District Councils election, none have been more painful to watch than those done on the Civic Party.  Painful not because party members fared so badly because they really didn’t, except in contrast to expectations that they naturally did nothing to discourage among candidates and supporters beforehand.  But those expectations were not the only reason for the barrage of criticism and mockery leveled at the party afterward by friend, foe, and fellow party members alike.  It makes for a cautionary tale that says more about the pressures re-molding Hong Kong’s democracy movement than about the Civic Party’s failings.

            The party was set up in 2006 and contested its first District Councils election the next year.  Among 42 candidates in 2007, eight won.    A special election and new members boosted its number of local councilors to 12.  The party has grown in size from 100+ members to over 400, but was able to field only the same number of candidates, 41, seven of whom were successful (Nov. 14 post).   Not a great record but not surprising either.   Party members are mostly lawyers, academics, and other professionals who don’t have a lot of time to spend on grassroots social services and community politicking, which is what District Council constituencies are all about.  Party people said beforehand that their goal was to retain the 12 seats.  Perhaps 20 candidates had a chance of winning; the others were testing the waters for some in-service training.

         Yet the media focus on Civic Party candidates both before and after November 6^th  was out of all proportion to its small size and modest street-level ambitions compared to those of others in the pan-democratic camp.  For reasons that had nothing to do with those particular ambitions, the Civic Party was transformed during the course of the election campaign into a lightening rod that served to channel the pro-establishment camp’s entire litany of grievances against pan-democrats.  The really radical bad boys and girls of the campaign (People Power and League of Social Democrats), who never tired of denouncing Beijing’s one-party dictatorship, were more or less ignored as they played out their quarrel with the Democratic Party, which also got off relatively lightly. 

           That left the Civic Party to bear the brunt of their common opponents’ wrath.  The tone was set by a relentless mainland-style political struggle barrage that continued in the pro-Beijing press for months, aided and abetted by Hong Kong government officials and all their party allies.   The assault came in two waves.  One peaked before the election, the other followed afterward when it was compounded by recriminations from pan-democrats as well.   

          At first it seemed like over-kill for a party that was unlikely to win more than a dozen of 412 seats.   By Election Day, however, the aim of this targeted campaign seemed clear:  to discredit the most authoritative of the defiant voices remaining within Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp.   Radical People Power and LSD appeal is limited by their confrontational theatrics and the Democratic Party’s anti-establishment defiance has long since dissipated.  But Civic Party lawyers and academics could not be faulted on either score as they proceeded with their various projects designed to set legal precedents and entrench democratic practices in the name of Hong Kong’s long-term political development. 

             As a result, they have learned an old lesson the hard way about the contradictions between activist campaigning and winning elections.  If they insist on trying to do both  –  especially  now that the full force of the establishment can be mobilized against them  —  they will need more political dexterity and better communications skills than they were able to muster for the 2011 District Councils election.   By the end, they were sounding more and more like a team of talented amateurs who hadn’t quite realized which league they would be playing in or what they were up against.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR AND IMPORTED LABOR

          The origin of the pro-Beijing press campaign extends back several years and it was only an unlucky coincidence of timing, aided by the plodding pace of the judicial calendar, which brought two high-profile court cases into public view just ahead of the election.  The two cases were judicial reviews that concerned environmental standards and the right of foreign domestic helpers to apply for permanent residence.  The Civic Party did not directly sponsor either review but was supportive and party member lawyers represented plaintiffs in both cases.

            The bridge linking Hong Kong with the former Portuguese colony of Macau and points west has been controversial from its inception decades ago when the economic case could still be made for its construction (May 13 post).   Now it has become primarily a multi-billion dollar prestige project symbolizing Hong Kong integration with the mainland (and helping speed tourists on their way across the water to Macau’s gaming tables).  A judicial review was allowed on the pretext of environmental concerns and a decision was announced last April upholding one count in the case against the standards used by the government to approve the bridge design.  

          Rather than comply with the ruling, which would have been easy enough and quicker, the Hong Kong government appealed the original judgment.  This was duly overturned.  Construction is now proceeding full speed ahead.  But the government and pro-Beijing forces were not content to leave it at that and have supplied the media with a steady stream of information aimed at discrediting the Civic Party for its alleged behind-the-scenes role in promoting the judicial review.  Officials never miss an opportunity to remind everyone that the delay will add another HK$6.5 billion to the price tag and also left bridge builders idle for months.  Legal costs will add another $1.5 million to the bill.  The press campaign, ongoing since April, accuses the party of using its legal expertise to sabotage Hong Kong-mainland integration and block economic progress.  

           All of this escalated after the original judgment was overturned on September 27.    An elderly woman who served as plaintiff in the case, already identified by pro-Beijing papers as a Civic Party neighborhood volunteer, was now free to speak.  Granny Chu told interviewers she understood nothing about the environmental issues and would never have agreed to participate had she known that workers might be deprived of employment.  These drove the point home by organizing street protests to advertise their loss of work.  Angry citizens staged photo ops outside the Civic Party office, their placards denouncing the “black hand” disrupting Hong Kong’s stability.  

           No serious attempt was made by anyone to prove or disprove the cost and unemployment allegations, but they continued to be made throughout the weeks preceding the election while an even bigger uproar was underway over the rights of Hong Kong’s 290,000 imported domestic helpers.   According to Article 24 of the post-1997 Basic Law constitution, which follows pre-1997 colonial practice, all non-native born non-Chinese residents who have lived here for seven years can claim the right-of-abode or permanent residency.  Along with that privilege, granted at the Immigration Department’s discretion, come the right to vote, to be treated in public hospitals, qualify for social welfare, and so on.  All non-native residents, that is, except Hong Kong’s live-in low-wage domestic helpers.  Virtually all are women and most come either from Indonesia or the Philippines.   Besides serving the rich they make possible the maintenance of a middle class life-style for many thousands of working families.   

          Many thousands have also been here in service for over seven years but are routinely denied permanent residency by the Immigration Department.  Judicial reviews were allowed and the first decision was announced on September 30^th, with prominent Civic Party founding member Gladys Li representing the maid.    Judge Lam ruled that the Immigration Department’s practice of denying the right of residency just because people worked as servants was unconstitutional.

           A gift, gloated New People’s Party leader Regina Ip after the election (South China Morning Post, Nov. 20).  She was referring to the additional anti-Civic Party campaign issue that had been created over night and this one resonated with voters across the economic divide.  Her party strongly opposed the ruling as did the pro-business Liberal Party.  They spoke for the employers of maids concerned about disrupting their household arrangements. 

          The pro-Beijing Federation of Trade Unions organized street marches and workers protested that the maids, once free to leave domestic service, would be competing for jobs as well as low cost housing and other benefits.  Hotel workers said their jobs would be lost to the maids who typically speak better English and are well educated. Alarming headlines proclaimed the “floodgates” opening after government officials helpfully estimated that about 120,000 foreign helpers had been working here for at least seven years.  The women were caricatured breaking into the Immigration Department and the New Territories Association of Societies claimed to have collected 160,000 signatures on its protest petition.  A favorite placard read “Don’t vote for the Civic Party that has sold out Hong Kong” (Wen Wei Po, Oct. 24).

         Candidates who supported the maids’ right to apply for residency mostly all lost or their parties did badly:  People Power, the Civic Party, and Confederation of Trade Unions candidate Lee Cheuk-yan, who is still scheduled to head up a new group that will call itself New Labor.  The Democratic Party along with pro-Beijing and pro-government parties declared themselves against the right-of-abode for domestic helpers.

SNAKES, CAKES, AND OTHER REASONS

           Opponents are already anticipating the obituaries they will write for a crusading party they say is down and done for.  Their charge sheet on the causes of death will begin with the bridge, the maids, and last year’s referendum campaign.  More important for the party’s future direction were the verdicts of friends and fellow party members.  Some also criticized its leaders for the stands they had taken and causes promoted.  Others targeted their ineffective response to the crisis.

            During a morning-after press conference, current party leader Alan Leong Kah-kit (梁家傑) could not help venting his frustration and anger.  Discussing the losses, he blamed Beijing’s local liaison office for its well-known election strategizing and pro-Beijing parties for the equally well-known year-around gratuities they provide.  The usual polite term for this district-level party politicking is “small favors and benefits” (小恩小惠).  Leong used the more explicit “snakes, veggies, cakes, and dumplings”  (蛇齋餅粽)  to describe the low-cost seasonal treats that have become part of the pro-Beijing network’s neighborhood social services:  winter-time snake soup feasts, vegetarian dinners, moon cakes for mid-autumn, and Dragon Boat Festival dumplings in summer.

        Prove it, challenged a pro-Beijing newspaper reporter about liaison office involvement.  An insult to voters, railed academic commentator, Ivan Choy (Ming Pao Daily, Nov. 11).  Politics is about more than cut-rate dinner parties, declared the lead editorial in Jimmy Lai’s pro-democracy Next Magazine (Yi zhoukan, Nov. 10).  It noted the constituencies where residents had no need for subsidized provisions yet voted against democratic candidates anyway.

         Others criticized Leong and his party for their lawyer-like habits of maintaining a discreet silence while cases are pending and parsing words carefully ever after.  Having stood by Gladys Li in her court case, the party then seemed to equivocate as tensions rose saying the maids must have their day in court but that did not mean the Civic Party supported the right of abode for all of them.  Leong listed, correctly, all the excuses the Immigration Department could still use to deny residency, which failed to impress either those who sympathized with the maids or those who didn’t.  But by then it was too late:  the opposition had seized control of the issue and his response was not strong enough to regain the initiative.

         And then there was Ronny Tong Ka-wah (湯家驊):  legislator, barrister, and Civic Party founding member.  He became a dissenter last year over the party’s participation in the referendum campaign that protested the slow pace of political reform.  He wanted to show his support for the government’s reform plan by competing for one of the dual District Council/Legislative Council seats the plan created.   Against his party’s wishes he parachuted into a District Council constituency that rejected him on November 6^th.  He called himself “rudely defeated” by an unprecedented 56% turnout that gave him only 1,580 votes to his opponent’s 3,060. 

       Furious, he lashed out in an open letter blaming the party for his loss.  He blamed specifically its alliance with the radical LSD during the 2010 referendum campaign and the party’s failure to explain clearly its position on domestic helpers.   The Wall Street Journal’s November 8^th editorial added insult to injury by celebrating the defeat of so many radicals including him.  Think of it, he fumed, mixing me up with them.  We started out as a party targeting the middle class and professionals “to widen the pool of supporters for the Democratic Movement.”   But “a political party needs to be in tune with the concerns of the majority,” and the fate of the entire movement now hung in the balance.  Either we redefine our party’s direction, he concluded, or we are doomed.*

         He was right about the prospects for the movement but wrong about the reasons for its collapse on November 6^th.  More than anything else his and Alan Leong’s frustrations reflected their larger failure to acknowledge the challenge that has been building for years.  Pan-democrats have looked upon Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing loyalist minority like a ship passing in the night.  Twenty years ago they could afford that luxury, now they can’t. 

           Their loyalist opponents have learned enough about electoral politics to win control of Hong Kong’s District Councils and they have done this by using their multi-million dollar budgets to maintain full-time paid staffers in districts everywhere but especially in neighborhoods that appreciate the events they organize and services they provide.  They also run a disciplined operation that not only coordinates candidates with declared allies but with undeclared “independents” as well  –  like those affiliated with the ubiquitous Associations of Societies.  By parachuting into constituencies that had never seen them before, pan-democrats including both radicals and moderates demonstrated their failure to recognize the significance of their opponents’ ground game in setting the standards for community-level political work.   Having failed to calculate the lay-of-the-land beforehand, every single parachuter perished as a result.

        Yet Ronny Tong still does not grasp these basic new facts of Hong Kong’s political life, which is why he also does not yet appreciate that those dual use council seats were designed specifically for pro-Beijing candidates.  He thought he could move in and join the Shatin District Council  because he didn’t realize he was invading territory that the loyalist satellite Civil Force has been actively cultivating for over a decade.  Its founder, Lau Kong-wah, now a vice-chairman of the main pro-Beijing party, also parachuted into a Shatin constituency.  But it was occupied by one of his own people who immediately stepped aside to welcome him back and pave his way to the Legislative Council seat that Ronny Tong had hoped to win.

          If Hong Kong’s democracy movement is really doomed it will not be just because of bridges and maids and snakes and cakes.  The larger reason will lie in this failure of pan-democrats to acknowledge the strategy of grassroots institution-building that their opponents have perfected and are using to defeat them.

* Letter to Hong Kong, Nov. 13 (http://www.rthk.org.hk/rthk/radio3/lettertohongkong)

suzpepper@gmail.com

(updated Nov. 21)      

             Sure enough, Hong Kong’s political battlefields are now littered with the bones of pro-democracy fighters who tried parachuting into other people’s territory despite the known risks.  Radicals wanted to teach moderates and especially the Democratic Party a lesson for reneging on their 2010 political reform pledges.   Others including both moderates and radicals thought they could exploit the new opportunities that came with the 2010 reform package and turned District Council seats into stepping stones for admission to the Legislative Council.  Both strategies failed marking the greatest setback for Hong Kong’s democracy movement since 1997, and the most important election victory ever for pro-Beijing forces.  These are led by the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) and its Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) ally. 

            The result of the November 6^th District Councils election was not just a defeat for pan-democrats but a rout, built on losses that have been accumulating untended for years.  Each of 412 constituencies sends one representative to sit on Hong Kong’s 18 District Councils, but elections this year were held in only 336 constituencies.  Candidates in 76 others were elected unopposed and only one of the 76 was a democrat.  The basic line-up of winners and losers:                        

 Figures are calculated from the Electoral Affairs Commission official candidate lists (http://www.eac.gov.hk/ ), and partisan affiliation of independents update based on Ming Pao Daily, Nov. 8.

Key:  

pan-dems.   DP – Democratic Party; ADPL – Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood; Civics – Civic Party; Neo-dems – New Democratic Alliance; NWSC – Neighborhood and Workers Service Center;  PP/PV/F – People Power/Power Voters/Frontier; LSD – League of Social Democrats; others – Confederation of Trade Unions, Land and Justice League, Power for Democracy, Citizens Radio, Democratic Coalition, independent democrats, etc. 

pro-govt.  DAB/FTU – Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong/Federation of Trade Unions; CF – Civil Force; LP – Liberal Party; ES – Economic Synergy; New PP -  New People’s Party; others –  Hong Kong, Kowloon, New Territories Associations of Societies; New Century Forum; independents, undeclared,  etc.

Note:  independent pro-democracy candidates usually identify their orientation but pro-government independents and undeclared candidates usually do not so these “independent” partisan divisions are approximations only.  In the last (2007) District Councils election, the HK, KN, and NT Associations of Societies were major identified candidate sponsors, but this year accounted for only three declarations.  (Update, Nov. 21:  seven independent winners, originally calculated as pro-government, have since been identified as pan-democrats.)

___________________________________________________________________ 

          Opinion polls will hopefully offer some more precise measure of what people were thinking and why they voted as they did but there was little indication before Election Day that the results would be quite so dramatic.  In the meantime, matching up what candidates said and did with voters’ responses is a good place to begin.   

PRO-DEMOCRACY LOSERS

          Most striking was the defeat suffered by the radical people power movement.   Of the pro-democracy parties listed above, only the first two, the Democratic Party and the Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood, supported the 2010 reform package and gave the government the support needed for Legislative Council approval.  But only the last two of those pro-democracy parties opted to use the election to punish DP and ADPL candidates for compromising on the 2010 reforms.   The others joined the pre-election candidate coordination exercise and avoided stepping on one another’s’ toes.

              The People Power coalition led by Raymond Wong Yuk-man, together with the League of Social Democrats led by Andrew To and “Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung, consequently parachuted  into DP and ADPL constituencies all over town.  The challengers campaigned under the slogan “a vote for a vote” ( 票債票償 ) meaning a debt to be paid in votes for the 2010 betrayal of promises made at that time.  Many of these radical candidates were young first-timers on the campaign trail and new to the constituencies as well.  A few others were veterans most notably People Power legislator Albert Chan who wanted to deprive  DP chairman Albert Ho of enough votes to dislodge him from the District Council seat he has held for several years (Oct. 17 post). 

           They said their aim was to generate greater public understanding of their cause rather than to win seats but ultimately they did neither and called somber press conferences to admit the failure of their election stratgy.   There was no spinning the consequences to positive advantage since of 89 candidates who campaigned under the “vote for a vote” slogan, only one was successful in winning a seat himself.  Most did not even receive enough votes to harm their intended targets.  People Power candidates made the difference in only four constituencies to deprive DP candidates of victory.  Two of the seats were won by the DAB and two by independents.  Both the DP’s Albert Ho and ADPL chairman Frederick Fung survived with votes to spare, and the LSD could not even save its own six incumbents including Andrew To.  Long Hair won 970 votes to his hard-line pro-Beijing opponent’s 2,700, almost exactly the same number he received four years ago.

         Still, punishment was not reserved for radicals alone although it is not clear whether voters also wanted to reject moderate democrats or only resented them as strangers trying to elbow into constituencies for political gain.  But the uninspiring DP vice-chairman Sin Chung-kai lost his bid to unseat a conservative opponent in a middle class district on Hong Kong Island and would have lost even without the challenge of People Power’s chairman.  Far away across town in the northern New Territories the same thing happened.  Even though he had been widely tipped to win, popular veteran trade unionist Lee Cheuk-yan was defeated by the young novice candidate who had a six-year record of DAB/FTU-sponsored community service to her credit in the district. 

         Even worse for pan-democrats was the ousting of some of their highest profile incumbents, including both radicals and moderates, who were unable to defend their own District Council seats.  Radical Civic Party legislator Tanya Chan lost hers to a pro-business Liberal Party candidate in the upscale Peak District of Hong Kong Island.  But veteran moderate DP legislator Lee Wing-tat lost his New Territories seat as well.  So did another uninspiring DP candidate, legislator Wong Sing-chi.

         The only bright spot for democrats was the performance of two small parties, which opposed the 2010 reforms and did well anyway.  One was the Neo-Democrats or New Democratic Alliance whose members left the Democratic Party in protest last year.  They have a long history in a few New Territories constituencies.  So does the Neighborhood and Workers Service Center.  This group is organized much like the DAB’s grassroots services along the lines of the old neighborhood volunteer Kai Fong associations.

PRO-GOVERNMENT WINNERS

          Ironically given the disdain for electoral politics originally prevailing in pro-Beijing circles here, their politicians are now masters of the game they aim to contain and control.  During the past 20 years since the DAB was founded, party leaders have not only learned all the tricks of the electioneering trade.  They also apply them with the organizational strength, discipline, and funding that only a rich successful ruling communist party can provide.   When fully mobilized, as its 20,000-strong membership was for this election, the combination is hard to beat.

            Democrats rightly complain about the unfair advantage pro-Beijing forces enjoy with their unlimited unidentified sources of funding and pervasive social networks.  But in addition to all that, the pro-Beijing camp’s adaptive skills allow them to disguise weaknesses and exploit strengths for maximum effect.  The 2011 District Councils election campaign was a near-flawless example of how those skills are being put to work in a political system that is purpose built to reward conservatives and curb populist instincts.

           When pan-democrats challenged them to debate, pro-Beijing candidates almost always declined.  They also refused in all their campaign literature, distributed by each candidate in every constituency, to discuss the pros and cons of political reform or the political system — except to denounce those who had opposed the government’s 2010 reform package.  District Council constituencies are about non-political livelihood issues  –  the provision of grassroots benefits and favors individualized for each constituency and with special emphasis on those most loyal of voters, the elderly.   The candidates themselves rarely ventured beyond such practical matters and rarely allowed themselves to be provoked.   

          Out on street corners with their fliers and campaign teams, pro-Beijing candidates were all sweetness and light.  But the same could not be said for the pro-Beijing press that has, for the past two months,  kept up a steady stream of invective directed primarily against the Civic Party.  This focused on two important legal challenges that party member lawyers helped defend although not in the party’s name.   Yet even here the case against them was framed primarily in terms of the implications for ordinary workers’ benefits and employment prospects  –  the classic ploy of exploiting popular fears for political gain.  The message nevertheless struck a responsive grassroots cord and the FTU organized small street marches to publicize the point since pro-Beijing newspapers have the lowest circulation in the territory.

                Candidate coordination was based on community service work and familiarity with the constituencies contested.  In one rare case, where DAB vice chairman Lau Kong-wah registered at the last minute in his old New Territories bailiwick, the pro-Beijing incumbent who had already registered to defend his seat promptly withdrew from the race.  Any controversy was kept well hidden from public view and even the campaign teams were organized for photo calls.   Thousands of DAB and FTU volunteers came out to support candidates as needed with banners, posters, street corner handouts, sound trucks, and minivan escort services for old folks on Election Day.

         Nothing was left to chance.  They even outpaced pan-democrats last summer during the voter registration period when pro-Beijing organizers coordinated with the government’s publicity drive and democrats were noticeable by their absence.  Voter turnout was up slightly to 41.4 % from 38.8% in 2007, no doubt in response to all the controversies.  But voting patterns reflected in the increased turnout seemed to reflect last summer’s registration drive.   A net total 127,000 new voters were added to the rolls and the biggest increase was among seniors aged 61 to 65.   Overall about one-quarter of Hong Kong’s 3.5 million registered voters are over 60, the age cohort least likely to be impressed by radical politicians and most in need of the DAB’s community services.

            After the 2007 election, democrats sacrificed their last District Council chairmanship to factional infighting.  This year they won a bare majority in only one New Territories district (Kwai Tsing)  –  15 to 14  — and it remains to be seen wehther they will forfeit their right to this lead chair as well.   There is only one democrat on each of three councils, none on another (Wanchai), and only a handful on most.  These elected councilors will be topped up with 68 government appointees and if past practice is followed all will be pro-government conservatives. 

IMPLICATIONS

            As for District Council work itself, the loss of more pro-democracy seats will make little difference.  The councils were never intended to be more than advisory bodies and sounding boards for public opinion on local issues.  Since 1997 when the government restored the practice of appointing some members, conservatives all, the councils have essentially been used to guide public opinion and generate support for government policies.   But political dynamics are something else again and the consequences of electoral defeat, especially this one, cannot be written off as cavalierly as some did beforehand.

          The greatest loss is the defeat of the people power movement now being attributed almost solely to Raymond Wong.  His confrontational tactics, rude language, and street theater antics in the Legislative Council chamber are widely disliked by other democrats as well as conservatives.  But there was a general recognition among democrats that he was saying the things that someone should say.  The original League of Social Democrats, founded in 2006, helped round out the division of labor within the fragmented democracy movement by adding a much-needed boost of energy and enthusiasm.  For a time they served as the radical spearhead while others appealed to other constituencies in different ways.

          After the letdown over last year’s political reform drive, young people flocked to join the LSD and it seemed set for a leading role.  That continued until Wong broke with other LSD leaders first over their failure to defend his protégé Edward Yum who was arrested on a rape charge last December,  and then more seriously over the candidate coordination issue.  But Wong’s People Power movement seemed to thrive, absorbing the lion’s share of LSD energy along with Emily Lau’s abandoned Frontier fighters, and young people who were inspired by last year’s many campaigns.  Thousands turned out for this year’s July First march that convinced the government to re-think its plan for abolishing by-elections.  The march also reinforced the conviction among pan-democrats that feet on the ground are at least as important as votes in a ballot box. 

           Now both the LSD and People Power are defeated and their leaders discredited by failure.  The movement as a whole stands to lose an important source of youthful idealism that will be difficult to regain before next year’s Legislative Council election, if at all.  Raymond Wong nevertheless sees no danger ahead for the movement and says he has no intention of changing his confrontational style or the “vote for a vote” slogan.  He says Albert Ho made a mistake in agreeing to the 2010 compromise political reform bargain and he, Raymond Wong, will not work with the DP again until it acknowledges that mistake.  Radical candidates won 10% of the total vote and Wong says this is a good beginning for 2012 when proportional representation rather than first-past-the-post will decide the winners.

        The second major cost will come due with that election and its outlines are appearing even before the dust has settled on this one.    For his part, DP chairman Albert Ho is saying this election vindicated his compromise political reform decision.  But his decision entailed linking the District Councils to the Legislative Council with the addition of five seats in the latter to be filled by District Councilors.  The original proposal was that they would choose the five from among themselves.  Now only they can nominate and contest but the general public will be allowed to make the final choice.

           It soon became apparent, however, that the only District Councilors likely to be approved by voters outside their own small constituencies are politicians that already have territory-wide name recognition.  Still no problem, said Ho and other moderates, since pan-democrats have more popular stars in their stable of Legislative Councilors than does the opposition.  The only problem is that many do not also occupy seats on the District Councils and their only remedy failed.  DP vice-chairman Sin Chung-kai was defeated; so was union leader Lee Cheuk-yan; so was the Civic Party’s Ronny Tong who tried the parachute routine against his party’s wishes.  Meanwhile three incumbents were also specifically targeted by the pro-government campaign machine and they failed to retain their seats as well.  Tanya Chan lost hers as did Lee Wing-tat and Wong Sin-chi.  The only person left standing as a plausible candidate is Albert Ho himself and democrats will be lucky to win one of those five new District Council-linked seats he green lighted. 

         Pan-democrats single greatest failure, however, derived from their inexplicable refusal to acknowledge much less explain to voters the full implications of their opponent’s successful ground game.   DAB and government leaders mentioned their long-term plans last year but have kept them carefully unspoken and unexplained ever since and no one else discussed them either.  Hence for the second time since 2005 when the strategy was first revealed, no one explained to their constituents that they were not just voting for friendly faces and welcome services.   

            The District Councils have become the building blocks of a mainland-style people’s congress system.  This is based on direct elections at the local level but indirectly-elected communist party-controlled elections to fill congress seats at all levels above.  The arrangement is meant to legitimize the system in the public’s eyes; just as Hong Kong’s one-person one-vote elections are legitimizing the DAB’s growing strength. 

          Yet the closest anyone came to explaining these implications to voters was a full-page newspaper ad sponsored by five pro-democracy parties (not including People Power or the LSD) shortly before the election.  The ad read simply, “Don’t allow the establishment parties to control the District Councils,” and obviously had no impact whatsoever.  Hong Kong’s democracy movement has been based on the dream of a directly-elected government but achieving that goal has been transformed into a long-running political war of attrition and pan-democrats are not winning.  

suzpepper@gmail.com