In troubled Hong Kong, the virtual coronation of hardline Chinese President Xi Jinping last week in the Great Hall of the People cast a long, dark shadow over the special freedoms and autonomy the city has enjoyed in the 20 years since its handover from British to Chinese rule.
It’s no coincidence that Xi’s extraordinary ascension over the last five years has paralleled Hong Kong’s steady decline as a special administrative region of China operating under the “one country, two systems” principle agreed to prior to the handover. While Hong Kong today remains, by far, the freest and most vibrant and efficient city in China, during Xi’s presidency it has repeatedly seen its autonomy violated, its individual freedoms eroded and its independent judiciary compromised.
Now that “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” has been enshrined in the Chinese constitution at last week’s twice-a-decade party congress — an honor shared only by the revolutionary founder of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong, and his celebrated successor, former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping – Xi’s near-absolute grip on power appears guaranteed for many years to come. These years promise to be tough ones for Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million people, many of whom, despite their Chinese ethnicity, refuse to be labeled as Chinese.
According to a University of Hong Kong survey conducted prior to the 20th anniversary of the handover in July, only 3.1% of Hong Kong people aged between 18 and 29 identify themselves as Chinese, presumably because of the disconnect they feel with China as a nation. Instead, more than 90% of that group preferred to be called “Hongkongers.”
In a wider survey of all age groups, said they 35% thought of themselves as Chinese and 63% as Hongkongers.
In 1997, the year of the handover, the figures were about the same for the wider group, but the number of young people claiming a local identity rather than a national one has since risen by 25%.
Those figures don’t exactly add up to a warm embrace of the motherland and are viewed with disappointment and apprehension in Beijing. Until Xi took over as general secretary of the Communist Party in 2012, the central government had maintained a relatively loose grip on Hong Kong, in keeping with the post-handover supposition that a city subjected to British colonial rule for more than 150 years would require some time and space before returning comfortably to the fold.
Under Xi, however, that time is running out and that space is noticeably shrinking as Hong Kong protests against central authorities have become more strident and a small but vocal independence movement has been born.
Alarm bells certainly went off in 2012 when a teenage activist named Joshua Wong Chi-fung led a 100,000-strong demonstration against a proposal to introduce Chinese-style patriotic education as a required subject in Hong Kong schools, forcing the Hong Kong government to pull back on the obviously Beijing-mandated scheme.
Two years later, Wong and others would spearhead the 79-day occupation of key commercial areas of the city by pro-democracy demonstrators, attracting international attention and support and putting Beijing on hyper-alert for any further efforts that could undermine its authority in Hong Kong.
More recently, the 2016 election of two pro-independence candidates —Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus Baggio Leung Chung-hang — to Hong Kong’s mini-parliament, called the Legislative Council (Legco), brought matters to a legislative and judicial crisis after the two lawmakers turned their oath-taking ceremony into profanity-laced protests against the central government.
Reacting to the crude affront — during which both lawmakers referred to the Chinese nation as “Cheena,” a derogatory pronunciation used during the Japanese occupation of the country in the last century, and Yau mockingly pledged her allegiance to the “People’s Refucking of Cheena” — the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress stepped into the blazing controversy, issuing an “interpretation” of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law. That interpretation essentially rewrote the article concerning oath-taking so as to disqualify any lawmaker who did not “take the oath sincerely and solemnly.”
Yau and Leung had already been booted out of Legco by the council president. The interpretation assured they would never return.
In July, after the Hong Kong government filed a legal challenge against four other pan-democratic lawmakers who had used their Legco oaths as a platform for protest, the High Court ruled that Lau Siu-lai, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, Leung Kwok-hung and Yiu Chung-yim should also lose their seats in the legislature. The ruling was a godsend for Legco’s pro-Beijing bloc: Now down six seats, the pan-democrats lost their veto power in the council and, with that loss, any hope of offering meaningful legislative opposition to a Hong Kong government taking its marching orders from Beijing.
Watch for more jail time for pro-democracy protesters, more patriotic education (which the opposition denounces as “brainwashing”) in the city’s schools and — perhaps the pièce de résistance — the passage by Legco of national security legislation mandating harsh new anti-subversion laws
July also marked Xi’s first visit to Hong Kong as president, which he used to join in the 20th anniversary celebrations while also making an uncompromising speech in which he drew “a red line” against any forces in the city harboring plans “to carry out infiltration and sabotage activities” targeting mainland authorities.
A month later, Wong, Law and their compatriot, Alex Chow Yong-kang, would be given jail sentences of six to eight months for their roles in storming the headquarters of the Hong Kong government in September of 2014, effectively launching the Occupy campaign, also known as the Umbrella Movement. Initially, Wong and Law had received community service sentences for their actions, while Chow had been issued a suspended jail sentence. But, in an unusual move that critics said amounted to a case of double jeopardy, the Hong Kong government, no doubt cheered on from Beijing, mounted a legal challenge on those sentences as being too lenient and won, sending all three activists to prison.
Clearly, under Xi, China has lost patience with Hong Kong and is moving actively, with the assistance of a compliant local government, to bring the wayward city to heel. The last five years, during which Xi has led the country as a mere mortal, present a stark record of that. Now that Xi has entered the Communist Party pantheon along with Mao and Deng, life stands to become downright backbreaking for Hong Kong’s political opposition.
Watch for more jail time for pro-democracy protesters, more patriotic education (which the opposition denounces as “brainwashing”) in the city’s schools and — perhaps the pièce de résistance — the passage by Legco of national security legislation mandating harsh new anti-subversion laws that would see those calling for Hong Kong’s independence from China imprisoned for treason.
In 2003, the last time the Hong Kong government tried to force such legislation down the throats of the people, 500,000 demonstrators took the streets in protest. The bill was subsequently shelved and the then deeply unpopular secretary for security, Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, resigned and fled the city to pursue studies abroad.
Ip has been back in Hong Kong for years now, rebuilding her reputation by winning a Legco seat, by starting her own political party and think tank and by capturing a place on the Executive Council advising Hong Kong’s chief executive. Indeed, today she is one of the city’s most popular political figures.
Hong Kong may soon see a similar rebirth for the national security legislation she once championed.
Kent Ewing has been spreading falsehood all these while to plant division in Hong Kong people. Hong Kong people should withdrawn his visitor and working visa to protect Hong Kong interest.
Like a Lotus Blooming, A New Comity of Interests Might Emerge from the Humus of Chinese History
Recently, I read an article that highlighted the none too obvious fact that west, in its own back yard, Mainland China faces a security problem of substantial size – the Turkic minorities. They represent a "camel’s nose" to China’s hegemonic tent. It would appear that China probably needs a better policy option than military occupation and political suppression to avoid alienating these peoples who have a history of resisting being vassals to the ruling "Middle Kingdom."
Actually, China itself is a conglomerate of competing interests that are not naturally binding to form a cohesive nation. Linguistically, Mandarin and Cantonese are an obvious and major divide. There are at least eleven other linguistic groupings. The Chinese land mass also harbors within it competing "true believers" of the major religions, the Islamic peoples clearly, but Christians, and traditional Taoist and Buddhist as well, not to mention the persecuted Fa Long Gong, or the disaffected Maoist. Nationalism in Tibet commands the loyalty of a subjugated population supported in word, if not in deed, by surrounding nations and the West.
These interest groups represent centrifugal forces at work which have the capacity to pull and divide "China" into pieces. They have a history of resisting China’s historical efforts to achieve and satisfy it’s desire for empire. Like the lava dome of St. Helens, these forces in China and in other recognized cultural entities as well, can and have gathered explosive force below the surface and erupted with little early warning throughout history. One only has to recall that the break up of the USSR wasn’t telegraphed, and neither is the possible disintegration of a totalitarian Chinese authority. How China managed, and manages, these stresses to national cohesion has been challenging in the past as they are proving to be in the present.
Take Taiwan and Honk Kong. Mainland China’s gloved threat of war over a seceding Taiwan, and control over the governance of Hongkong, was greeted with criticism worldwide and ought to be instructive to Peking. There are large political, economic, religious and ethnic problems that remain to be addressed. China’s own history indicate that the heavy handed imposition of it’s political hegemonic will on others will be resisted. More importantly, it would likely prove to be costly and, if the past is prologue, will fail.
There have always been competing power centers in China bridling against the mandate of the "Middle Kingdom’s" efforts to make vassal states kowtow to its preeminence. While the temptation of imperial rule lingers still, it isn’t the only option history has crafted for China to consider. The "one country, two systems" for example is working its way toward becoming a more benign intra-national model for accommodating differences while retaining a shared interest in an economic, if not a political market, open and free.
China’s political platelet continues to rub against large and competing masses within and without its borders. Like the "ring of fire" marking much of it’s geographic limits, political eruptions, tsunamis, and earthquakes will occur along its edges. Hopefully, however, when the merging of peoples, politics and interests occurs, a phenomena hopefully to be anticipated with time, the near term temptation to use force to resolve conflicts ought to be viewed as unnecessary. A more promising option, other than pursuing the rise of a revanchist Asian empire, might be more workable and attractive. A benign form and formula of shared governance of interests might emerge to foster and manage the continuing development and growth of the "Chinese" conglomerate, and other nations with interests they share..
Jaime L. Manzano
Federal Senior Executive and Foreign Service Officer (Retired)
Bethesda, MD
7904 Park Overlook Drive
Bethesda, MD 20817
jmanzano1930@yahoo.com
(301) 365 4781
LOL. 自作多情.
Who do you thinkl HK belongs to? A nation can only be strong when all are united and play their role accordingly. Some HK youngsters seemly think otherwise. We would say play plank with outside support, especially from the whites.
Westernised Hongkies are losing sleep days and nights over the coming to the end of the 50 years of One Country Two Systems.
A more accurate title would be Mr Xi as a respected and loved elected leader will mean a brighter future for liberated Hong Kong !
Mirror, Mirror on the wall – can this dude answer Andrew Brennan’s article ‘war on terror’!
Most kids that finish school in HK become anti-China. How come? HK schools are under the influence of the church and most people who become Christianized become anti-China. So to remove this negative, old superstitious thinking and step into the 21st century,HK must do as in the west;i.e., take the church out of the schools and put the schools into the hands of the government!
What a load. I choose Beijing and Shanghai anytime over HK.
Even Shenzhen. Lol.
Nope. The school system and universities have been hijacked by Western servants and neocolonialists.
Why invent so many theories for a straight forward answer to good government? Chinese leaders worked to get highest economic development for the masses, become no 1 in many clean energy industries, only send out peace keeping forces under the flag of united nation, it’s strong defence forces prevented war in Asia pacific for almost last half century. This is the type of government the world should emulate. Not one that murder aboriginal Indian to grab land for the colonizer, and prosper on the suffering of other.
Let’s not have double standards. In Europe, Catalonia’s referendum for independence has met with beatings and harsh reprisals. Spain will preserve its territorial integrity at all costs — to jail with the separatists, whether they fight with means peaceful or otherwise. Are there no parallels with HK and China at all in this situation? Mr Ewing should let us know what he thinks of the harsh, even draconian, measures employed by the central government in Spain. Perhaps he will condemn Spain and sing songs of freedom for Catalan. Cry your bleeding heart out, why don’t you?
The HongKongers reject China’s hegemony at their own peril. You will be viewed as traitors and will sadly be crushed. Engage in dialogue with Beijing and you shall survive and thrive, you will only have yourself to blame when your leaders are in jail, beaten and bloodied.
The hardcore remants of Anglophiles can see no future in that place with Xi’s rise.