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

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

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

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

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

CHIEF EXECUTIVE SELECTION

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

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

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

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

PROPOSALS FOR THE LEGISLTIVE COUNCIL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INITIAL RESPONSE

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

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

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[i]  National People’s Congress Standing Committee decision on Hong Kong’s 2012 CE and Legco elections and on universal suffrage issues, text, Wen Wei Po, Dec. 30, 2007; English, China Daily, Dec. 31.

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

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

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

POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN TRANSITION        

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

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

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

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

WHOSE VALUES?

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

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

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

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

LEGISLATIVE POWERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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