Archive for June, 2009

A Not-So-Special Election

Jun 26

Posted by Suzanne in Letters from Hong Kong | No Comments

On Sunday June 21, a special election was held in Hong Kong for a vacant seat on its Wanchai District Council.  This was the second such election to be held this year but unlike the March poll that set precedents for judicial support and effective tactics, this electoral exercise presented a far less edifying albeit more typical picture of the pan-democratic camp’s performance in district-level politics.*

The election generated little interest, which is understandable given its place in the overall scheme of things.  Hong Kong has 18 District Councils with some 400 elected members representing 400 small neighborhood constituencies each with only a few thousand voters.  The attrition rate is such as to necessitate two or three by-elections, as they are called here, each year.  Additionally, the councils also have about 100 members appointed by the government with its Home Affairs Department responsible for selection.  District Councils have some minor responsibilities but serve mainly as advisory talking shops, as well as channels for information-sharing, social networking, and the creation of pro-government public opinion as and when necessary.

Besides being understandable, however, popular indifference is also unfortunate because it masks the councils’ true importance, which is appreciated by only the few actual participants at this level of local institution-building.  As a result, what might have become a genuinely representative base for grassroots participation in local government is being fashioned into the building blocks of a very different kind of system.   Popular indifference also reinforces itself because few people outside the circle of direct participants bother to focus on the clear snapshots these elections provide of the conflicting forces at work in Hong Kong’s slow-moving political evolution.

In the case of the Wanchai District Council by-election on June 21, all the typical pan-democratic weaknesses were evident and the pro-Beijing loyalist camp’s strengths were in full play.   This council serves an impressively diverse mix of old and new, that is, upscale and rundown residential and business neighborhoods, plus Hong Kong’s best-known red-light district.   As for the constituency in question, it can boast few marks of distinction except for the remnants of a once popular open air street market.  Candidates’ favorite campaign photo-op is a sunless graceless spot nearby beneath the busy Canal Road overpass.

In fact, democrats should have had the advantage since the vacant seat had been won by an independent democrat in the November 2007 District Councils general election, despite an unexpectedly disastrous showing for the pan-democratic camp overall.  But their weaknesses in the Canal Road Constituency by-election can be summed up in two words:  functionalism and funding, the obverse of their opponents whose discipline, coordination, and resources made their candidate the odds-on favorite to win throughout.

The first problem for democrats was the incumbent and his reason for vacating the seat.  Kennedy Lee Kai-hung is currently serving a five-month jail term for fraud.  Hong Kong’s judicial system strives to keep all candidates on the straight and narrow.  Hence a democrat was able to reclaim his seat and his honor in the March election.  But democrats are also far less well endowed financially than their opponents and presumably for that reason are more likely to fall afoul of Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in its diligent search for expense account irregularities.

The second problem for democrats was their endemic disunity.   That only one candidate from the pan-democratic camp should stand in the by-election was agreed, but endorsing him was another matter.  Novice politician Gavin Kwai Sze-kit belongs to the League of Social Democrats (LSD), currently the most radical member of Hong Kong’s democratic family, and LSD candidates had helped defeat at least one fellow-democrat in the last, September 2008, legislative election.  Still smarting from that defeat, the Civic Party decided it was payback time and refused to endorse Kwai.

The resulting publicity and news stories presented a striking contrast.  Coverage of the democratic candidate concentrated almost exclusively on the Civic Party-LSD dispute with only passing reference to support from others.  Meanwhile, the Beijing-friendly Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) organized a full-dress support campaign for its candidate, Jacqueline Chung Ka-man.  The campaign included feature articles in the pro-Beijing press, photographs with all the DABs leaders and allies, and teams of street-corner volunteers who outnumbered democrats by at least ten-to-one on Election Day itself.  Turnout was only 26 % but the result was a foregone conclusion:  Chung polled 1,061 votes and Kwai received only 544.

Actually, neither side needed this seat.  The Wanchai District Council is solidly in pro-government hands and one representative more or less will make little difference.  But this by-election illustrated the division of political labor that has evolved as the two sides adapted their strengths and weaknesses to the ongoing struggle over Hong Kong’s future governing arrangements.  Democrats were not relaxing in the shade while DAB loyalists worked to organize their winning campaign.   June is the most important month on democrats’ political calendar, which features the annual candlelight vigil to commemorate protesters killed in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.  Tens of thousands turned out for this year’s 20th anniversary commemoration making it the largest since 1990.  Democrats are proud to host this event and well aware that Beijing regards them as subversive for doing so.

Preparations have also been underway for weeks to organize the July First protest march, a new tradition that began in earnest on July 1, 2003, when 500,000 angry citizens turned out to mark the anniversary of Hong Kong’s July 1, 1997 return to Chinese sovereignty.  Their anger was sparked by the government’s insistence on passing its new national security bill that would have put legal teeth in Beijing’s ubiquitous allusions to subversive intent.  Various democratic causes have been proclaimed by marchers every year since.

Hong Kong democrats are thus at their best as activists, agitators, and street performers.  In this way they sustain the popular movement aimed at protecting Hong Kong’s inherited way of life, with its Western-style rights and freedoms, against the encroaching Communist Party-led system.  Factionalism does little harm to the tactics and antics, which are centered on core values that all share, and funding is less important than energy and commitment.

Pro-Beijing loyalists and pro-government conservatives know they cannot compete for Hong Kong hearts and minds and so play to their own “establishment” strengths.  These have found a natural home in the District Councils where the loyalist-conservative coalition predominates with a dense array of well-funded social services and neighborhood activities.  But at this level, the coalition has also learned that every council seat is important and every vote counts.  For example, eleven by-elections were held during the previous 2003-2007 term and democrats contested every one but prevailed only once.  Loyalists and their allies now essentially control the District Councils where democrats have a majority on only two with parity representation on one other.

This might seem a happy division of political labors and cultures if only Hong Kong’s governing arrangements were permanent.  But the system is on a 50-year transition track leading toward full integration with its mainland parent by 2047.  Toward that end, the District Councils are being fashioned into the building blocks of a mainland-style system, which is actually based on the universal suffrage that Hong Kong democrats are demanding.  But universal suffrage in that system exists only at the grassroots level where powers are minimal and compliant candidates can be guaranteed.  Indirect elections prevail throughout all the remaining levels of the mainland people’s congress hierarchy.

The next step in Hong Kong’s evolution will come later this year when proposals for the next stage of legislative electoral reform are debated.  The most recent government consultation paper states innocuously that “indirect election” is also a form of universal suffrage.  The logical end result of this gratuitous aside is the companion proposal to allow legislators to be indirectly elected by the directly elected District Councilors.  Such a design can only favor those who now dominate at the district level and it will also add to the amenable votes in Hong Kong’s purpose-built Legislative Council.  These are already sufficient to endorse the soon-to-be revived national security bill, which signifies the ultimate clash between Hong Kong’s two competing political cultures and their adherents whose most recent electoral contest ended in yet another democratic defeat.  (June 26, 2009)

* On the March poll, see, “A Very Special Election,” link:   http://www.chinaelections.net/NewsInfo.asp?NewsID=20101

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The danger of keeping up appearances

Jun 1

Posted by Suzanne in Letters from Hong Kong | No Comments

Hong Kong, June 1, 2009. … Nothing better illustrates the esoteric nature of Hong Kong’s political discourse than the new controversy over “one-country, two-systems.”   This latest upsurge of interest in an argument that has continued off and on for 30 years was sparked by the belated discovery, in April 2009, of an article published in January 2008 that claimed Hong Kong is governed by a duopoly of mainland Chinese cadres and local Hong Kong officials.

The claim was startling only in its candor because it articulated for the first time what Hong Kong politicos have long known but could not say since to do so would contradict, without proof, the widely-acclaimed legal basis of Hong Kong’s current governing arrangements.  These are stipulated in its Basic Law constitution, which promises autonomous locally-run government for 50 years, from 1997.  During that time, the local way of life is supposed to remain unchanged signifying the two separate, mainland and Hong Kong, systems.

The article was also noteworthy because of who the author is and where it was published.   Cao Erbao is head of research at the Chinese government’s Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong.  His essay, “Hong Kong’s Governing Forces Under ‘One-Country, Two Systems’,” appeared in Study Times (Xuexi shibao, January 28, 2008), a non-classified weekly publication of the Central Communist Party School in Beijing.   Cao is therefore in a position to know the truth of what he claimed, namely, that since 1997 Hong Kong’s two-systems arrangement has in fact been implemented to mean one city with two governing teams.  One is the local executive establishment staffed by Hong Kongers.  The other comprises mainland officials both in Beijing and elsewhere, plus those such as himself assigned to work in Hong Kong, all of whom are responsible for Hong Kong matters including its relationship with the central government.

Hong Kong had already learned, incrementally and sometimes painfully via issues ranging form cross-border migration to local political reform, that Beijing also reserves to itself the right to determine what is and is not part of that relationship.   The mainland team, wrote Cao, is legal, open, and essential for managing the “one country” end of the equation within China’s unitary form of government.  He explained further that “complete autonomy” such as past Taiwan and British negotiators had advocated was tantamount to independence and incompatible with the one China concept.

That there should be any controversy now may seem surprising to outside observers since the formula has been so successful that its beneficial properties are commended by international practitioners everywhere.  What everyone overlooks, however, is that the long-term implications of this arrangement are still too sensitive for public discussion even in Hong Kong itself.  So intent are all the concerned parties on keeping up appearances that no one has yet dared discuss openly the formula’s future or even how it is currently being managed.

Keeping up appearances is important for two reasons.  Beijing wants to show that the pre-1997 promise of post-1997 autonomy is being kept because the Chinese government’s international reputation is at stake and so is President Hu Jintao’s aim of convincing Taiwan that “complete national unification” is nothing to fear.  Meanwhile, Hong Kong democrats interpret the two-systems promise literally and cite it as the legal basis of their ongoing effort to set precedents in practice for the values they champion.  Hence no one wants to admit that the two-systems formula is actually being used for the purpose Beijing evidently intended when the deeds and documents were drawn up before 1997, since Basic Law caveats are more than sufficient to finesse Hong Kong’s full integration within the Chinese political system by 2047.

Like any long-running game of political charades, however, the tensions created by this one are beginning to show.   Beijing’s official posture is increasingly strained, for example, by awkward veiled references to 2047 and to liaison office work with leading local loyalists whose real identities cannot be revealed because the local communist party branch is still officially “underground.”   Given its long-term objective, Beijing must prepare public opinion, institutions, and leadership personnel, and that objective can be deduced from progress already evident on each point.   Yet democrats cannot effectively push back because they cannot target directly what has never been openly admitted, which accounts for the nebulous quality of local political discourse.

Everyone must therefore have breathed a silent sigh of relief over Cao Erbao’s revelations and the beginning of the end of pretense.  Still, the habit of plain speaking is so unfamiliar that Cao’s revelations are only a first step in that direction.  After his essay was discovered in mid-April, liaison office personnel immediately demurred with the standard two-systems talking points.  Editorials followed.  Meetings and forums were held.  Veteran democrat Martin Lee said the two-systems formula had clearly been overturned.  Journalist Ching Cheong, recently released from a mainland prison after falling afoul of national security laws, said Cao’s claims indicated a major constitutional change in Hong Kong’s status.  Others suggested it might be time for communist party members to emerge from underground so they can take responsibility for their actions.   And writer Joseph Lian lamented Hong Kong’s fate now clearly tied to the dialectical complexities of Marxist logic.

Yet no one looked to the future or spoke of 2047 when even the formal guarantees will expire, and among democrats the reasons seem to go deeper than the need to maintain appearances.  Beijing clearly has a plan and an endgame and all relevant resources are being marshaled to promote it.  In contrast, democrats have kept their ideals alive on an incremental case-by-case basis and by meticulous adherence to the Basic Law’s chapters and verses.  But so secure are they in their commitments and 60% voter support margins, that democrats still treat their opponents as they always have:  like ships passing in the night.

Democrats do not even bother to keep themselves up to date on relevant sources of information and so have yet to grasp the full nature of the threat they face.  Toward that end, democrats need to understand that the Basic Law is actually a dual-purpose document and that their arguments will have to be transposed for use accordingly if they are to survive at all.  Especially, democrats and the public need to know what is at stake and to discuss how Hong Kong’s basic rights and freedoms can be protected not just before 2047 but afterward as well.   Otherwise, to paraphrase Joseph Lian, democrats will not only be buffeted by the dialectical complexity of life under one-party rule.  They risk following in the wake of all Hong Kong’s past political reform movements before them, which means they risk sinking beneath the waves of conservative resistance altogether.

Note:  The controversy was covered mainly by Hong Kong’s Chinese-language press, especially (all 2009):  Apply Daily, April 17; Hong Kong Economic Journal, April 18-19, 20, 21, 27, and May 13; Ming Pao Daily News, April 17, 24, 27, and May 10.  Pres. Hu on Taiwan:  Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], Beijing, Jan. 1, 2009.