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

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

SUSPENDED IN TIME

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

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

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

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

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

A NEW BEGINNING:  1949

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOBBYISTS AND PETITIONERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

PAST PRECEDENTS, CURRENT HANDICAPS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 EARLY DAYS

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

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

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

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

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

 POPULAR MOBILIZATION

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

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

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

TURNING POINT       

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

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

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

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

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

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