|
|
|
|
The glorious role of Tung Chee-hwa
By Henry C K Liu
There
is a Taoist (or Daoist) saying: Be careful what
you wish for because it may come true to
disappoint you.
The resignation of Hong
Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, the leaked
rumor phase of which lasted 10 long days before it
was finally confirmed, stimulated all kinds of
analyses of and allusions to the politics behind
the unanticipated development. All over the world,
propaganda warfare by tilted news analyses is
commonly practiced, elaborated and sustained in
all manners by competing forces with different and
frequently opposing agendas. Often it is not the
soundness of the analyses but the motivation
behind them and the self-serving forecast of
future impacts that shed light on the geopolitical
dynamics of current events.
Now that, at
long last, the rumor has become a fact, in the
aftermath of an abrupt change of leadership in the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of
China, the anti-Tung press, which has been
relentless in its hostile coverage of Tung
Chee-hwa, the business executive-turned-politician
by fate rather than training, is beginning to have
second thoughts about having systematically
ignored his under-reported contribution to having
kept Hong Kong free from anticipated intervention
from a much-feared China. Try as the hostile press
might to find evidence to the contrary, China has
meticulously kept its promise to honor the
principle of "one country, two systems" in Hong
Kong under Tung. The credit for this happy state
cannot be denied to Tung, despite the press'
relentless nitpicking about his alleged
administrative shortcomings. Also, under Tung's
leadership Hong Kong has been irrefutably freer
than it was during colonial times, when the
British routinely eavesdropped on all telephone
conversations and arrested and imprisoned
anti-British Chinese patriots without due process.
The colonial government accommodated MI5, the
British intelligence service, to operate
unrestrained in the colony through the
government's political unit. The Tung
administration, for example, disbanded the
political unit in the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region government immediately upon
entering office, instead of allowing Chinese
intelligence service to replace the MI5.
The so-called "Democrats" in Hong Kong
politics have been most ferocious in their attack
on the chief executive, in the person of Tung
Chee-hwa. In the Legislative Council (LegCo), the
Democrats' unbecoming role as a persistently
disloyal opposition wrought punishment from voters
in the last election, returning a reduced minority
of a grand total of seven seats out of 30
geographical constituencies. The Democratic Party
is now the third-ranking party in the legislature,
behind the pro-government Democratic Alliance for
the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) with 12 seats
and the pro-business Liberal Party with 10 seats.
The Democrats repeatedly called for Tung's
resignation throughout his tenure. Now that his
resignation is confirmed - he is now a senior
member of the Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference in Beijing - the
anti-China Democrats are lamenting that they may
become the sacrificial lamb the next chief
executive will offer up as proof of loyalty to the
Central People's Government. They know very well
that an iron rule of power politics is that
forcing out a moderate opponent will only bring in
a hard liner. But they can relax, for it is only a
delusion of grandeur that allows them to conclude
that their opposition forced out Tung Chee-hwa.
The fact is that while the Democrats can make
pointless noises that get reported in the US media
and are distorted as the voice of people, locally
their tiresome ranting amounts to mere noises of
nuisance.
The Democrats' condemnation
of Tung had been based on two futile
displeasures: they accused him of having been "hand-picked"
by Beijing and said he had not advanced Hong
Kong's "democratic aspiration" by "standing up" to
the central government to their satisfaction.
Yet these self-appointed "democrats" regularly
damaged their own credibility by repeatedly
presenting themselves as fifth-column agents for anti-China
foreign parties.
The Democratic Party,
founded in the twilight of colonial Hong Kong on
October 2, 1994, with foreign, anti-China support,
has a current membership of 607 regular members,
hardly a broad-based organization. Its founding
chairman, barrister Martin Lee, did not face any
intra-party election challenge all through his
decade-long tenure. He was hand-picked as chairman
of his new political party by his off-shore,
anti-China backers, a fact that makes a mockery of
his condemnation of Tung Chee-hwa as having been
hand-picked by Beijing.
Never having been
known as an intellectual or activist for democracy
under colonial rule, Lee suddenly emerged after
1997 to operate as a shrill one-man band to spill
meaningless political slogans of democratic
advocacy that had no relevance to Hong Kong's
historical conditions. For decades from the
beginning of his professional career, he meekly
practiced law as an elitist Queen's Counsel
without the slightest resistance to British
imperialism or having any record of being a
freedom fighter or democracy activist. Yet in
post-colonial Hong Kong under Chinese sovereignty,
Lee has transformed himself overnight as a
defender of freedom and democracy. On April 4,
2000, the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the
Basic Law, post-colonial Hong Kong's key
constitutional document, Lee, in his capacity as
Democratic Party spokesman on the rule of law,
issued a public statement in the local press
titled, "The Basic Law should no longer be used as
an instrument of control." It is a peculiar
position for a defender of the rule of law,
particularly when Lee and his Democrats had been
ceaselessly broadcasting "sky is falling"-type
warnings of the threat of the Central People's
Government's violation of the Basic Law. When the
sky did not fall as he predicted, Lee concluded
his statement calling for a change of the Basic
Law with the sentence: "This is the time for
change - change for the better." Such a demand is
of course a direct refutation of Article 5 of the
Basic Law, which stipulates that the system in
Hong Kong shall remain unchanged for 50 years.
The support received by the Democratic
Party from foreign anti-China forces clearly shows
that the democracy card is used in Hong Kong
merely as a devious anti-China device. The party's
political platform has been aptly described
locally as, "If it's Chinese, oppose it" (Feng
zhong bi fan). The Democrats and their foreign
backers oppose China because it is communist.
Western-style democracy in a community still
infested with residual Cold War colonial mentality
cannot be expected to vote in support of a
sovereign that is communist as long as communism
remains a revolutionary ideology. For more than a
century, democracy as practiced in the Southern
states of the US did not vote for racial
desegregation. Historical fact illustrates that
democracy as a political process is not sacred;
rather, democracy can also lead to evil if public
sentiment is heinous. This is the reason why
democracy can only be introduced in Hong Kong
gradually, along with the steady eradication of
residual anti-China colonial-political culture.
China, Hong Kong's economic
savior
The Asian financial crisis, which
had been brought about by US-sponsored
globalization of unregulated financial markets,
coincided with the establishment of the HKSAR with
Tung Chee-hwa as chief executive on July 1, 1997.
For most of the past seven years, the Hong Kong
economy has been stuck in the doldrums by the Hong
Kong government's fantasy of Hong Kong's alleged
"strong market fundamentals" in the context of
bankrupt neo-liberal free-market ideology. Hong
Kong suffered more than six years of deep economic
depression until China came to the rescue with
preferred economic measures. Suddenly, while the
motherland is still viewed as a political pariah,
she is welcomed as an economic savior by Hong
Kong, even by US transnational firms active in
Hong Kong and China.
The HKSAR's
controversial currency peg to the US dollar, which
during its long years of undervaluation, pushed
Hong Kong into a financial bubble that manifested
itself in fantastic price rises in the property
sector. After the Asian financial crisis pushed
the US dollar to overvalued levels in relation to
other Asian currencies, the peg kept the Hong Kong
economy stagnant without any prospect of recovery
along with other Asian economies that de-pegged
their currencies. After seven unnecessarily
painful years, with the US dollar now finally
falling against other currencies, the collapsed
bubble in Hong Kong has been given a temporary
reprieve.
But the fundamental problem of
monetary policy autonomy continues to prevent Hong
Kong from being master of it own economic fate.
Despite the Basic Law, Hong Kong still does not
enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Yet the culprit
is not Beijing, but Allan Greenspan of the United
States Federal Reserve, for no autonomy is more
important in this globalized economy than monetary
autonomy, which Hong Kong has voluntarily
surrendered to the US since 1983 through its peg
to the US dollar. The myth that the currency peg
provided Hong Kong with financial stability has
been totally disproved by fact, yet the myth
remains firmly imprinted in the minds of many Hong
Kong leaders in and out of government. The
official who needs to resign is not Tung Chee-hwa,
but Joseph Yam, the pretentious self-styled Hong
Kong central banker who at one point during the
Asian financial crisis even recommended openly
that Hong Kong citizens should take out
residential mortgages denominated in US dollars to
get low interest rates. It was the equivalent of
Alan Greenspan recommending US citizens to borrow
euro to hedge against the falling dollars. It
amounted to monetary treason.
Given the
macro-economics and monetary fixes of past
decades, there was not much that any chief
executive could do to revive the Hong Kong
economy, short of asking for help from the
motherland, the monetary policy of which remains
independent of dollar hegemony by virtue on the
renminbi (yuan) remaining not freely convertible.
This was Tung's only option, and this was
precisely what he did, against stiff resistance
from pervasive residual colonial mentality about
keeping Hong Kong from turning into another
Chinese city, notwithstanding the obvious fact
that if Hong Kong is not a Chinese city, it is
nothing. The world does not come to Hong Kong as
an economic-financial destination; it comes to
Hong Kong to access the Chinese market.
The middle class in Hong Kong has also
been vocal in its criticism of the Tung
administration for the adverse economic effect on
its lot from the Asian financial crisis. The
unhappiness of the middle class was caused mainly
by two economic factors. The first was a quick and
sharp fall in property prices that put many
property owners and small speculators in negative
equity positions in their homes and real estate
investments. The second was a high rate of
unemployment coupled with falling wages. Both were
directly tied to Hong Kong's currency peg to the
overvalued US dollar after the 1997 Asian
financial crises. The middle class was also
influenced by the generally anti-government media,
which incessantly ridiculed the personal style of
Chief Executive Tung. The Western press and
television have a tradition of being merciless in
their treatment of politicians while being
superficial in policy analysis. Western readers
and audiences, being accustomed to such tradition,
do not always regard a good press as the ultimate
measure of statesmanship.
President Harry
Truman, regarded by many historians as a great US
leader, never enjoyed a good press. Teflon
presidents are increasingly frequent phenomena as
a result of the steady decline in the credibility
of the commercially controlled press in the West.
Tung Chee-hwa is not as eloquent as Britain's
Winston Churchill, but he is certainly more
expressive than say, Dwight Eisenhower, who could
never finish a complete sentence in public, or
former US president Ronald Reagan who fumbled over
the term "USSR" in mid-sentence and had to settled
with "the other side" - both men were treated with
good-natured tolerance by the press and enjoyed
high levels of popularity. The reason is that in
Asia, unlike in the West, Confucian culture does
not accept kindly the public ridicule of political
leaders in the name of press freedom, and leaders
who permit such ridicule are perceived as weak and
incompetent by the populace. While the Hong Kong
Democrats and their foreign backers hold the
ideological hammer of press censorship over Tung,
the public concludes that his tolerance of
disrespectful ridicule by the yellow press is a
sign of personal weakness and proof of political
incompetence.
The patriotic forces in Hong
Kong were unhappy with Tung for his
middle-of-the-road accommodation with residual
colonial institutions and personnel and his pro-US
inclinations. The patriotic right found Tung's
catering to foreign conservative political
organizations distasteful, while the patriotic
left found the Tung government's blind embrace of
neo-liberal market fundamentalism
counterproductive in facing the new challenges of
post-colonial Hong Kong. Ironically, while Tung,
with official support of the People's Republic of
China, saw his major challenge as the appeasement
of hostile US attitudes, this approach diluted
support for him from the grass-roots patriotic
forces. Having been oppressed by British
colonialism for a century and a half, and having
sacrificed for generations by systemic denial of
economic and career opportunities by the ruling
British as punishment for their patriotism, the
patriotic forces in Hong Kong are finding that the
principle of "one country, two systems" is
condemning them to another 50 years of oppression.
Former chief secretary Anson Chan spoke
disparagingly about the threat of the local
patriotic forces as something more dangerous than
Beijing.
The patriotic left was found
insulting the dubious annual awards Hong Kong
receives from the likes of the US-based Heritage
Foundation for being the world "freest" economy.
They pointed out that what saved the Hong Kong
economy from total collapse was its linkage to the
dynamic Chinese economy, not neo-liberal market
fundamentalism or bogus economic freedom. They
criticized the Tung administration for being slow
in linking up with Chinese economic policy and
strategy and for allowing Hong Kong to bite the
hand that fed it. The patriotic forces point out
that Hong Kong does not dare criticize the US for
fear of jeopardizing its exports to that country,
but it feels free to criticize China while it
demands special trade preferences from the
motherland.
The civil service has suffered
problems of low morale, salary and benefit
reductions and budget cuts in the face of rising
demand for government services. For most of Tung's
first term, it was led by an anti-China and
anti-Tung chief secretary, Anson Chan, installed
by the departing British colonial governor. In
post-colonial Hong Kong, the civil service changed
from an apolitical civil service loyal to the
British Crown to a surreptitiously obstructionist
civil service innately hostile to the Central
People's Government (see Hong Kong's unkind cut, July
10, 2002).
HK's poor see government
as big-business tool
The poor in Hong Kong are
unhappy because they perceive with justification
the HKSAR government as a government of big
business, uninterested in the welfare of the poor.
This has always been the case for Hong Kong, but
in colonial times, freedom of expression and mass
protest demonstrations were strictly forbidden.
When Britain was under a Labor government, Hong
Kong's poor received the best deal ever with the
introduction of needed welfare programs, albeit
still grossly inadequate. Social welfare programs
in Hong Kong were also part of the Cold War
propaganda contest to win the hearts and minds of
anti-communists who had fled the mainland to Hong
Kong. Chinese policy on Hong Kong in the first
seven years under Chinese sovereignty was focused
on "preserving the previous capitalist system" as
stipulated in Article 5 of the Basic Law. On the
mainland, Chinese economic policy had been focused
on a take-off phase of rapid economic development
at the expense of economic equality. Only now is
China focusing its development policy on
"people-based" principles that can be expected to
impact the future Hong Kong polices.
By
trying to steer a conciliatory political posture,
Tung ended up pleasing few both inside and outside
of Hong Kong, including factions in domestic
Chinese politics and in US foreign policy. All
these diverse forces, for different and even
opposing reasons, fantasized about the removal of
Tung Chee-hwa from the post of chief executive as
if that would strengthen their separate partisan
purposes. It is ironic and even amusing that as
the rumor of Tung's departure took on a life of
its own, these competing forces suddenly found
themselves in positions of having to recognize
that fantasies are only desirable as fantasies.
Reality is a much harder pill to swallow. Even
those who fantasize about the bliss of the
afterlife find the reality of dying unappetizing.
The day will come when Hong Kong will wish for a
leader as kind and gentle and accommodating to
opposition as the amiable Tung Chee-hwa. All the
political venom from anti-China forces has been
directed at Tung Chee-hwa personally. This is not
surprising, since the colonial tradition of Hong
Kong politics accorded the colonial governor with
exceptional dictatorial power and therefore the
governor should assume full responsibility for the
fate of the colony. Anti-imperialist forces in
colonial Hong Kong also directed their attacks on
the British governor. But the chief executive of
post-colonial HKSAR does not command the
dictatorial power once enjoyed unapologetically by
the British colonial governor. Public criticism of
the chief executive is now fair game rather than a
criminal offense with a direct path to prison as
it was under colonial rule. The British colonial
governor was the personification of the British
sovereign and was held above political criticism.
In colonial Hong Kong, criticism of British
imperialism and colonialism was subject to
criminal prosecution. In post-colonial Hong Kong,
criticism of China and its socialist system is
celebrated as a defense of democratic freedom. And
anti-China forces attacked Tung Chee-hwa
personally to hide the fact that the real target
was China and its socialist system.
The
tactic of making Tung an anti-China whipping boy
was rooted in the perception that China would
firmly stand behind Tung for his full two-terms of
office. Thus any personal attack on Tung was
really an attack on his committed backer - the
central government. By now it is clear, from his
personal appearance, from his public explanation
of his decision, and from the official text of his
resignation letter, that failing health is the
main reason for his resignation and for the
Central People's Government's acceptance of it.
The timing of the resignation is telling. As can
be visibly discerned from his public appearance,
Tung's health appears to have been deteriorating
rapidly in the past few months, and he has said
doctors have told him he might not be able to
fully discharge his taxing duties for another two
and a half years. Faced with the problem of being
a political lame duck, coupled with the additional
handicap of rapidly failing health, Tung convinced
the central government to let him resign.
It was a brilliant and noble decision on
Tung's part. Brilliant because his resignation
would skirt the lame duck problem that plagues all
final-term leaders. Noble because he knows that
his selfless and self-motivated resignation would
be twisted by his distracters to look like he was
being forced to leave by the Central People's
Government for non-performance, regardless of
official gestures to reaffirm his consideration in
implementing the principle of one country, two
systems and to lead Hong Kong through a most
difficult financial and economic crisis not of his
making. The fact is that if Tung did not want to
leave before the end of his second term, the
central government had no reason to create an
addition problem on its already full plate of
serious problems. Tung has repeatedly told the
people in Hong Kong that the central government
does not want Hong Kong to be added to its list of
headaches and that Hong Kong should govern itself
by strict observation of the Basic Law. Besides,
there is no policy rationale or constitutional
basis for relieving him short of treason or
corruption, of which Tung is totally above
suspicion. The central government does not need
the problem of a sudden and disruptive change of
leadership in Hong Kong in the absence of serious
crisis. President Hu Jintao's public suggestion
(in Macao, with Tung Chee-hwa in attendance) of
examining shortcomings reflected more upon Chinese
domestic politics in a shift to people-based
policies than a signal for Tung to resign. If
anything, it was meant to help Tung overcome
obstructionist resistance within his
administration.
Xinhua, the official news
agency of China, in a recent report on the term
"harmonious society" said that it is:
a sign of society's acute longing
for a more quality-oriented and politically
balanced, economically fair and socially
progressive society ... As President Hu Jintao
put it, a harmonious society includes a slew of
elements: democracy, the rule of law, equity and
justice, sincerity, amity and vitality. That
calls for an alternative to single-minded
pursuit of economic achievement at all costs ...
In the trade-off between efficiency and equity,
our policymakers have for a long time put more
accent on the former. As a result, gross
domestic product (GDP) has become an overriding
gauge of political achievement … After years of
staggering economic growth, China's national
strength has ballooned while its social
undertakings have fallen way behind … Now
development opportunities are met with a variety
of problems, such as corruption, a widening
income gap and regional imbalance, a
deteriorating environment, workplace accidents
and violation of farmers' rights. The central
leadership is conscious of the challenges. The
16th Party Congress in 2002 put forward the idea
of building "a well-off society in an all-round
way," to recall a previous well-known
catchphrase. The idea of building a harmonious
society has brought home what xiaokang
society should be like. At the core of the new
concept lies the government's commitment to
equity on the basis of the rule of law. To that
end, it is vital for the government to revamp
its governance … The government needs to make
greater efforts to promote social equality by
improving social security, employment, medical
care, poverty reduction and education. It must
especially devise policies to help rural areas
develop faster to catch up with better-off urban
regions. Thus President Hu
Jintao's call for Hong Kong's chief executive to
look for past inadequacies in governance is a new
overall national policy that includes Hong Kong
and should not be interpreted as a criticism of
Tung Chee-hwa, whose monumental contribution to
the implementation of one country, two systems,
and the health-related reason for his voluntary
resignation have been duly entered in the official
record of the central government. Yet Reuters
reported: "Tung, Hong Kong's first post-colonial
leader after the end of British rule in 1997, said
he was stepping down due to ill health, but many
people believe he was fired by Chinese leaders in
a violation of their promise to give the city a
high degree of autonomy." Obviously, these
"people" wanted to use Tung's resignation to
falsely accuse China of violating the one country,
two systems principle. The anti-China forces are
now whipping up a storm in a tea cup over the
issue of the duration of the next chief
executive's term; whether he should only serve out
Tung's remaining two-year term or be elected to a
full five-year term. Beijing has taken the
position that, like the US presidency, a mid-term
resignation will result in the vice president
serving out the remainder of the term, not a new
five-year term.
The persistent political
turmoil in Hong Kong is independent of the office
of the chief executive and it cannot be addressed
by merely changing the occupant. Tung, not unlike
all other government leaders, has unavoidably made
his share of decisions that some would considered
mistakes - for no politician can please everyone
in a complex society, much less in a society like
Hong Kong where socio-political cohesion had been
systemically erased by a British colonial policy
of divide and rule.
Governance of Hong
Kong almost an impossible job
Yet it is
unclear to what extent these "mistakes" can be
traced directly to Tung personally or even as a
political leader. Or that another chief executive
could do better. The constitutional structure of
the office of the chief executive as defined by
the Basic Law makes governance in Hong Kong almost
an impossible job. By all accounts, Tung has been
a hard-working, conscientious and patriotic chief
executive. His level-headed patriotism is above
question. Ironically, those who criticize him for
not being responsive to popular opinion neglect
the fact that he has been too much of a
consensus-builder in a political environment where
consensus amounts to inaction or policies that
appease no one.
As Hong Kong's first chief
executive, Tung came into office with
insurmountable constitutional and institutional
handicaps. He was a political leader without
ideological supporters or a political base. His
mandate came from a Central People's Government
that had committed to non-interference in Hong
Kong's high degree of local autonomy. This was
similar to a soldier being dropped by his generals
abruptly into a hostile war zone behind enemy
lines without a weapon. The chief executive was
not the head of an established political party and
he commanded no loyal party functionaries who
would circle the wagons around a chief under
attack from all quarters. He could command no
political loyalty by exercising party discipline.
A clear illustration of this defect is the
eleventh-hour political betrayal by the head of
the Liberal Party, who abruptly resigned without
notice from the Executive Council over the Article
23 issue on the introduction of a security law for
Hong Kong, and deprived the government of the
needed votes to pass the bill. Such a disloyal and
treacherous political flip-flop would have landed
the offender in political wasteland in any other
polity, but not in Hong Kong. The offender was
elevated immediately to the status of a heroic
politico and a potential candidate for top office
to replace Tung. No one in the Executive Council
felt any personal loyalty to the chief executive,
and many saw themselves as his potential
replacement. This structural handicap will
continue to plague future chief executives.
The constitutional process of selecting
the chief executive by a selection committee of
400 for the first term and 800 for the second term
created genetic political opposition from
"democratic" forces who wanted instant universal
suffrage in place of gradual transition to
representative democracy. Yet throughout the
entire colonial history of Hong Kong, the colonial
governor had always been appointed by London
without any consultation with the people in Hong
Kong, down to Chris Patten, the last British
governor and devious purveyor of bogus
post-colonial democracy, who himself came to Hong
Kong after failing to get re-elected to his seat
in the British parliament, a quintessential FILTH
(Failed in London, try Hong Kong). Nobody elected
Patten governor of Hong Kong, not even an election
committee of four, let alone 800.
The
agreement with Britain regarding the return of
Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty was that there
was to be "no change" in the economic-political
institutions of Hong Kong for 50 years. Patten, as
the last British colonial governor, violated the
Joint Agreement by aggressively instituting bogus
democratic reform in Hong Kong in anticipation of
its return to China, knowing that Western
democratic institutions would present structural
difficulties in any socialist polity, particularly
one with Chinese characteristics and Confucian
culture. For one and a half centuries, the British
tolerated no democracy in Hong Kong or any of its
other colonies. The democracy card was simply a
device to make Hong Kong under Chinese sovereignty
ungovernable and to draw self-righteous US
intervention into Hong Kong politics. Just as
Churchill plagiarized the term "Iron Curtain" from
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, Patten lifted
the perverse use of democracy used by the Nazis to
put Hitler in power, to try to elect a
neo-imperialist as a leader of post-colonial Hong
Kong. Secretary for Security Regina Yip was forced
to resign for observing an historical fact.
The fact that China grants Hong Kong a
high degree of autonomy does not means China
should not have a policy on Hong Kong. It is the
height of hypocrisy for the US to criticize China
for harboring a policy on Hong Kong when the US
adopted a Hong Kong Policy Act in 1992, a US
domestic law that directly interferes in the
internal affairs of China. Section 202 of the Hong
Kong Policy Act requires "a US presidential
determination to be made annually on the state of
Hong Kong autonomy after July 1, 1997. Whenever
the US President determines that Hong Kong is not
sufficiently autonomous to justify treatment under
a particular law of the United States, or any
provision thereof, different from that accorded
the People's Republic of China, the president may
issue an executive order suspending the
application of such law or provision of law:
Notwithstanding any change in the exercise of
sovereignty over Hong Kong, the laws of the United
States shall continue to apply with respect to
Hong Kong, on and after July 1, 1997, in the same
manner as the laws of the United States were
applied with respect to Hong Kong before such date
unless otherwise expressly provided by law or by
executive order." It further stipulates that "in
making a determination with respect to the
application of a law of the United States, or any
provision thereof, to Hong Kong, the president
should consider the terms, obligations, and
expectations expressed in the Joint Declaration
with respect to Hong Kong".
In the
Sino-British Joint Declaration signed on December
19, 1984, the government of the People's Republic
of China declared that the basic policies of the
PRC regarding Hong Kong are as follows:
1)
Upholding national unity and territorial integrity
and taking account of the history of Hong Kong and
its realities, the People's Republic of China has
decided to establish, in accordance with the
provisions of Article 31 of the Constitution of
the People's Republic of China, a Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region (SAR) upon resuming
the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong.
2) The Hong Kong SAR will be directly
under the authority of the central government of
the People's Republic of China. The Hong Kong SAR
will enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in
foreign and defense affairs, which are the
responsibilities of the central government.
3) The Hong Kong SAR will be vested with
executive, legislative and independent judicial
power, including that of final adjudication. The
laws currently in force in Hong Kong will remain
basically unchanged.
4) The government of
the Hong Kong SAR will be composed of local
inhabitants. The chief executive will be appointed
by the central government on the basis of the
results of elections or consultations to be held
locally. Principal officials will be nominated by
the chief executive of the Hong Kong SAR for
appointment by the central government; Chinese and
foreign nationals previously working in the public
and police services in the government departments
of Hong Kong may remain in employment. British and
other foreign nationals may also be employed to
serve as advisers or may hold certain public posts
in government departments of the Hong Kong SAR.
5) The current social and economic systems
in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will
the lifestyle. Rights and freedoms, including
those of the person, of speech, of the press, of
assembly, of association, of travel, of movement,
of correspondence, of strike, of choice, of
occupation, of academic research and of religious
belief will be ensured by law in the Hong Kong
SAR. Private property, ownership of enterprises,
legitimate right of inheritance and foreign
investment will be protected by law.
6)
The Hong Kong SAR will retain the status of a free
port and a separate customs territory.
7)
The Hong Kong SAR will retain the status of an
international financial center, and its markets
for foreign exchange, gold, securities and futures
will continue. There will be free flow of capital.
The Hong Kong dollar will continue to circulate
and remain freely convertible.
8) The Hong
Kong SAR will have independent finances. The
central government will not levy taxes on the Hong
Kong SAR.
9) The Hong Kong SAR may
establish mutually beneficial economic relations
with the United Kingdom and other countries, whose
economic interests in Hong Kong will be given due
regard.
10) Using the name of "Hong Kong,
China", the Hong Kong SAR may on its own maintain
and develop economic and cultural relations and
conclude relevant agreements with states, regions
and relevant international organizations.
The government of the Hong Kong SAR may,
on its own, issue travel documents for entry into
and exit from Hong Kong.
11) The
maintenance of public order in the Hong Kong SAR
will be the responsibility of the government of
the Hong Kong SAR.
(12) The above-stated
basic policies of the People's Republic of China
regarding Hong Kong and the elaboration of them in
Annex I to this Joint Declaration will be
stipulated, in a Basic Law of the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region of the People's
Republic of China, by the National People's
Congress of the People's Republic of China, and
they will remain unchanged for 50 years.
The key point of the Joint Declaration
focuses on leaving Hong Kong "unchanged", not on
the amelioration of control by Beijing as it
replaced London, not gradual liberalization of
top-down governance, not progressive relaxation of
prohibition of anti-government activities, and
certainly not eventual independence. After its
signing, the last British colonial governor, Chris
Patten, violated the letter and spirit of the
Joint Declaration by instituting bogus political
reform in Hong Kong designed to strengthen local
anti-China forces.
The Hong Kong Policy
Act of the United States is a big economic hammer
held by Washington over Hong Kong politics because
of the dependence of the Hong Kong economy on
export to the US market. The US has substantial
economic and social ties with Hong Kong. There are
some 1,100 US firms, including 740 regional
operations (242 regional headquarters and 498
regional offices), and about 55,000 American
residents in Hong Kong. According to US State
Department statistics, US exports to Hong Kong
totaled US$13.5 billion in 2003, and two-way trade
totaled $22.4 billion out of a Hong Kong GDP of
$158 billion (2003). US direct investment in Hong
Kong at the end of 2003 totaled about $44.3
billion, making the United States one of Hong
Kong's largest investors, along with China, Japan,
and the Netherlands.
As required by the
Hong Kong Policy Act, the 2004 Hong Kong Policy
Report to the president recommending a
presidential determination states: "The most
important legal development during this reporting
period was the Hong Kong government's decision on
September 5 to withdraw legislation on Article 23
of the Basic Law. Article 23 requires that the
government enact legislation on its own
prohibiting treason, secession, sedition,
subversion against the central government, theft
of state secrets and links that are harmful to
national security with foreign political
organizations. In 2002, the government released a
consultation document proposing guiding principles
for the legislation. After the legislation was
introduced into the Legislative Council in
February, the government proposed a series of
amendments to address concerns raised by
interested parties, such as legal and media groups
and ordinary citizens, that the bill could
restrict fundamental rights and freedoms.
Of particular concern were the proposed
extension of treason, sedition, secession, and
subversion criminal offenses to permanent
residents, without regard to nationality or legal
domicile; a proposal to ban organizations
affiliated with mainland political organizations
that have been banned by the PRC on national
security grounds; a proposal for extended
emergency powers for the police; uncertainty about
the parameters of "unlawful disclosure" of state
secrets; and other proposals perceived as
potentially limiting freedom of speech and press.
Opponents of the proposed legislation conducted a
series of protests, including a demonstration on
July 1 in which at least 500,000 persons
participated. In response, the government
announced in July that it was indefinitely
postponing the bill. In September, the government
withdrew the bill from the legislative process."
The report concluded that "there were no
suspensions under section 201(A), terminations
under section 202(D), or determinations under
section 201(B) of the United States-Hong Kong
Policy Act of 1992, as amended, during the period
covered by this report".
In 1995, a
million African-American men met on the Mall in
Washington, DC, for the Million Man March. The
event was the brainchild of controversial Nation
of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who led the crowd
in a pledge to help improve their communities. The
march, rightfully drawing attention to the
injustice toward African-Americans in US society,
was not interpreted by the press as a political
crisis.
On July 4,
2003, three days after the 500,000-person march
in Hong Kong, I wrote in Asia Times Online,
which was later quoted as the lead sentence in
an article on the event in the Guardian: While
the government of the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region (SAR) has proved helpless
in saving the SAR from a downward spiral of
economic stagnation since its establishment on
July 1, 1997, it has been unwittingly successful
in uniting critical public opposition to its
governance. The massive demonstration this past
Tuesday, July 1, of an estimated half-million
people from all walks of life clearly
illustrates the serious disconnect between the
government and the governed …
The
demonstration was billed as a protest against
the proposed security law for Hong Kong, in
accordance with Article 23 of the Basic Law …
The New York Times in a front-page
report on the demonstration acknowledged on
Wednesday: 'Parts of the pending security
legislation are less draconian than British
colonial regulations still on the books for
offenses like sedition.' Local polls on popular
concerns repeatedly show democracy and civil
liberty trailing by wide margins major
livelihood issues, such as rising unemployment,
small-business bankruptcies, home-mortgage
foreclosures, home ownership with negative
equity, education reform, crime, and public
health …
Hong Kong is in crisis not
because its law-abiding residents are about to
lose any civil liberty, but because outside
forces are trying to deny basic Chinese
sovereignty over Hong Kong. These forces want to
continue to use Hong Kong as an anti-China base
in the name of freedom and to exploit
dissatisfaction with the ineffective governance
of the Tung administration toward that devious
purpose. What Tung needs to do is to begin to
act like a populist leader, adopting measures
that will take care of the people of Hong Kong
by providing full employment, affordable health
care, decent housing, quality education, humane
retirement and a clean environment. Tung needs
to project himself as a firm, confident and
benevolent political leader in the context of
Chinese paternalistic political culture and stop
acting like a permissive and vacillating father
figure who looks to foreigners for useless
advice and dubious guidance. He must face local
conditions truthfully to devise original local
solutions courageously.
It's time for Hong Kong
to drop its fantasy of British colonialism as a
path of salvation. For most people in Hong Kong,
the crisis is loss of employment, not loss of
civil liberty (see Why
Hong Kong is in crisis, July 4,
2003). Fifteen months before
the 500,000-person march, on October 16, 2002, two and
a half years before the official announcement of a
people-based approach to governance, I wrote in
Asia Times Online:
British
imperialism was built on resistance to
unregulated markets with a strong central
authority to support and protect British
imperialist interest worldwide. The
nation-building in 19th-century US was
accomplished with a strong central government
that guided and directed economic development.
The New Deal after the 1929 crash greatly
expanded the power of the US government to rein
in unregulated markets in the name of
Jeffersonian ideals of protecting the welfare of
the masses.
While even in the United
States, the fountainhead of neo-liberal market
fundamentalism, populist sentiments are
currently again on the rise, crying out for
government re-regulation and intervention on the
destructiveness of runaway market failures
driven by systemic fraud, Hong Kong is still
fixated on a governing philosophy that renders
government helpless in the face of economic
disaster. It's time for the chief executive of
the SAR to be a Franklin Roosevelt and not a
Herbert Hoover.
Hoover was a victim of a
defunct philosophy of passive government that
failed to protect the needy. His ready
willingness during the Great Depression to give
direct government aid to business while denying
it to the unemployed left him with a historical
legacy of ineffective leadership in time of
crisis, despite the fact that he was a man of
high personal integrity and compassion and a
hard-working administrator.
While Hoover
limited himself to the counsel of
self-interested businessmen, Roosevelt had his
"Brain Trust" of progressive scholars and social
activists who proposed bold measures to protect
the underdog and to oppose unearned privileges
and ruthless exploitation. Hoover's initial
response to the 1929 crash was that if people
only had "confidence" in themselves, the good
times would mysteriously but predictably return
in a "what went down must go back up before
long" fantasy and a platitude of "Americans had
overcome adversity in the past and will do so
again by simply not giving up on themselves."
Implied in this attitude was that economic
hardship was the fault of the victims rather
than the system.
When events failed to
cooperate, Hoover shifted to the related tune
that the only way to remedy the economic
collapse was to let it run its natural course
without government "meddling", that the
self-compensating laws of the market would
return the economy to good health if left alone
by government. If wages were allowed to sink,
that would reduce cost, thus restoring profit
that would lead again to new hiring in time;
that socio-economic Darwinism of the survival of
the fittest would leave the economy in a
stronger state in the end.
Long-term
restructuring of the economy was used as a
justification for pervasive and severe pain for
the average person. The government professed
deep compassion for the unemployed and the
bankrupt, but alas, it could not do much and
should not be expected to do much to change
natural economic laws. Hoover ignored the social
and political cost of a logical deflationary
program and refused to guard against the
prospect that powerful business interests would
use government to prevent their own deflation at
the expense of the rest of society. Hoover was
captured by corporate interests that had
convinced him that corporate wealth must be
protected first, or all else would collapse. By
allowing demand to shrink from unemployment and
falling wages, Hoover condemned the US economy
and his own political future to certain demise.
To even the casual observer, the chief
executive of the SAR appears to have faithfully
retraced Hoover's footsteps in the past five
years. While Hong Kong sells itself as Asia's
World City, Shanghai promotes itself as the
World's Asian City. Even Singapore radiates more
national pride than Hong Kong. It is obvious
Shanghai has the advantage of being free of Hong
Kong's residual compradore mentality …
The
middle-income sector in Hong Kong has been
squeezed mercilessly by economic restructuring,
layoffs and negative property equity ... It is
government by spin-doctoring, by insisting on a
government monopoly on truth in the face of
obvious facts. Undeniable facts then are
categorized as natural results of life or
external factors beyond the control of
government. Tung himself has been a source of
policy vicissitude in the past five years, which
is actually a positive sign, for having the
courage to change policies in response to
changing conditions is the hallmark of
leadership (see Hong Kong pegged to a failed
policy, October 16,
2002). One country, two
(economic) systems misinterpreted
There is
widespread, purposeful misinterpretation of the
meaning of the one country, two systems principle
as inscribed in the Preamble of the Basic Law. One
country, two systems applies strictly to
socio-economic matters, that "the previous
capitalistic system and way of life shall remain
unchanged for 50 years" (Article 5). One country
is the pre-condition and the concept of two
systems refers to two economic systems, not two
political systems. All of China operates under one
political system, with special administrative
regions, of which Hong Kong is one. There is no
question that Hong Kong was a Chinese city
politically after 1979, the assertion of the likes
of former chief secretary Anson Chan
notwithstanding. Culturally, Hong Kong had
remained a Chinese city even under British
colonial rule, albeit one with emasculated
national dignity as victimized by colonialism.
There used to be a joke around Hong Kong schools
that it is not embarrassing for a British native
to be not proficient in Chinese and it is not
embarrassing for a Chinese to be not proficient in
English. But Hong Kong students, being
bi-cultural, therefore do not have to be
embarrassed for being not proficient in both
Chinese and English. It is a effective satire of a
colonial mentality that takes pride in the worst
of both cultures. But it accurately describes many
graduates of Hong Kong schools under colonial
rule.
Hong Kong never had a free-market
regime under the British, who ran Hong Kong as a
colonial capitalist system very much similar to
the state-controlled capitalism adopted by the
Third Reich of Germany. The Nazis used capitalism
to further the political aims of the state which
was precisely what Britain did with its
capitalistic colonies, including Hong Kong. For a
century and a half, Hong Kong prospered under such
trade-restraining colonial policies. The idea that
Hong Kong was, or should be a free market was a
fantasy created by US propaganda during the Cold
War. Nevertheless, Article 110 of the Basic Law
stipulates that the HKSAR "shall, on its own,
formulate monetary and financial policies,
safeguard the free operation of financial markets,
and regulate and supervise them in accordance with
law".
To the extent that a currency peg to
the US dollar preempts any prospect of an
independent monetary policy for Hong Kong, a case
can be made that the peg violates the Basic Law,
and is therefore unconstitutional. The concept of
Hong Kong being governed by Hong Kong people has
been misinterpreted as a commitment on
Western-style democracy while in fact it only
stipulates that Hong Kong will be governed by a
chief executive that holds both Chinese
citizenship and Hong Kong permanent residency,
selected by electoral processes as defined in the
Basic Law. Article 4 of the Joint Declaration
states: "The Government of the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region will be composed of local
inhabitants. The chief executive will be appointed
by the Central People's Government on the basis of
the results of elections or consultations to be
held locally."
Hong Kong will evolve
toward democracy only when democracy is not
presented as an anti-China device. It can only be
introduced when residual colonial mentality and
Cold War hostility toward socialist China have
thoroughly subsided in this pit of imperialist
ideological toxin. In Britain, when national
security was threatened at the outbreak of the
Second World War, the king suspended elections and
appointed Winston Churchill to form a coalition
government. The one country, two systems principle
calls for Hong Kong being granted a high degree of
autonomy by the Central People's Government, but
it should not be misinterpreted as a camouflage
for independent sovereignty or even a separate
political system. Patriotism is a sine quo
non for political rights. This principle holds
in all countries.
From the very start in
the negotiation for the return of Hong Kong to
Chinese sovereignty, China made a fatal
constitutional concession by agreeing that the
Court of Final Appeal of post-colonial Hong Kong,
the counterpart of the Privy Council during
colonial times, which was based in London, be
based in Hong Kong instead of Beijing. The most
serious error committed by the first chief
executive was his insistence to Beijing on
accepting a historically anti-China judiciary for
Hong Kong be headed by a member of a pro-British
running-dog family. Predictably, such a chief
justice repeatedly led a pro-British judiciary in
Hong Kong to create unnecessary constitutional
crises over the issue of Chinese sovereignty over
Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal
tried to interpret a "high degree of autonomy" as
independent sovereignty and has gleefully ruled
against the SAR government on every opportunity.
Had the Court of Final Appeal been based in
Beijing, headed by the pro-China chief justice,
there would have been no question of China's
interference with Hong Kong's high degree of
autonomy when constitutional issues are ruled, and
there would have been no need for the National
People's Congress to interpret or amend Hong Kong
constitutional law to neutralize a hostile court.
Political control of the highest court of the land
is a legitimate political aim in all political
systems. The choice of the chief justice of the
United States Supreme Court is a politicized act.
By surrendering political control of the judiciary
on constitutional issues, China has placed itself
in a position of being constitutionally
handicapped over the exercise of sovereignty over
Hong Kong.
The term "rule of law" has been
bandied about recklessly in Hong Kong politics as
a righteous anti-China slogan, echoing US
propaganda. Yet the fact that law constitutes two
separate aspects, legal and constitutional, is not
properly acknowledged even in learned circles.
Under the British common law system, legality is
based on precedent, with the inclusion of
extensive non-statuary law. Unlike the civil law
system derived from the Roman concept of statuary
law and commonly used outside of the British
Empire, non-statutory law is the basis of the
common law system. The legal authority in common
law rests not on legislation passed by the
legislature and/or statutes issued by executive
order and eventually codified into a body of law,
but rather on tradition, custom, and especially
precedent. Common law is recognized within the US
constitution as being essentially inviolable, such
as the concept of inalienable rights. However, as
customs and traditions change and evolve, the
common, non-statutory law must change and evolve
with them, and occasionally be amended by statute,
as manifested in the continuing struggle between
strict constructionists of the constitution and
the Federalists.
Civil law develops out of
the Roman law from Justinian's Corpus Juris
Civilis, proceeding from broad legal principles
and the interpretation of doctrinal writings
rather than the application of facts to legal
fictions. Legal fictions are suppositions of fact
taken to be legally true by the courts of law, but
which are not necessarily true in reality. They
typically are done to evade archaic rules of
procedure or to extend the jurisdiction of the
courts in ways that are considered useful but not
strictly authorized by the old rule. A significant
legal fiction nowadays is the concept of a
corporation as a legal person. In the common law
tradition, only a person can sue or be sued. This
was not a problem in the era before the advent of
capitalism, when the typical business venture was
a sole proprietorship. Courts created a fictional
solution to accommodate the rise of capitalism in
the form of a corporation as a legal person who
could sue and be sued, and thus be held
accountable for its debts and other legal
obligations. This ensured that creditors would be
able to seek relief in the courts and contract
enforced should the corporation default on its
obligations, encouraging investors to buy shares
and banks to extend credit to the corporation.
This simple fiction has enabled corporations to
acquire vast wealth, grow in scope, and become the
preferred organization for businesses of all
sizes.
Under common law, cases are
primary, statutes secondary
In modern
times, civil law has become codified as droit
coutumier or customary laws that are local
compilations of legal principles recognized as
normative. Common law jurisdictions have
frequently codified parts of their laws, eg in the
US Uniform Commerce Code. The difference between
civil law and common law lies in the
methodological approach to codes and statutes. In
civil law countries, legislation is seen as the
primary source of law. By default, courts thus
base their judgments on the provisions of codes
and statutes, from which solutions in particular
cases are to be derived. Courts thus have to
reason extensively on the basis of general
principles of the code, or by drawing analogies
from statutory provisions to fill lacunae that
arise when there is no previous authority directly
dealing with the issue of the case at hand. By
contrast, in the common law system, cases are the
primary source of law, while statutes are only
seen as incursions into the common law and thus
interpreted narrowly.
Common law
countries, especially the United States, see
judges as balancing the power of the other
branches of government in the context of a
separation of powers. By contrast, the original
idea of separation of powers in France was to
assign different roles to legislators and to
judges, with the latter only applying the law as
la bouche de la loi (mouthpiece of the
law). Civil law judges are usually trained and
promoted separately from attorneys, whereas common
law judges are usually politically selected from
practicing attorneys.
According to the
legal origin theory promoted by some economists,
civil law countries tend to emphasize social
stability, while common law countries focus on
individual rights. This contrast has a
considerable impact of different countries'
economic-financial development. In economics, the
Legal Origin Theory states that many aspects of a
country's economic development are the result of
its legal system and the source of its legal
authority. Thus, one country, two systems will
continue to create structural contradiction and
conflicts between Hong Kong's common law system
that promotes individual rights and China's civil
law system that promotes social stability.
Scholars in the Critical Legal Studies
movement in leading British and American
universities have challenged some of the most
cherished ideals of modern Western legal and
political thought. These thinkers in learned
Western legal cycles claim that the rule of law is
a myth and that its defense by liberal thinkers is
riddled with inconsistencies. Critical Legal
Studies has been increasingly successful in
absorbing critical theory into established
discourses of law and politics. There are glimmers
of the present in ancient Sophist assertions of
the conventionality of justice, the 16th century
discrediting of the Roman Corpus Juris Civilis,
the utilitarian attack of Jeremy Bentham
(1748-1832, a founder of the theory of legal
positivism) on the integrity of common law, or the
Legal Realist critique of deductive legal
reasoning.
The phenomenon of the "critical
turn" may well be a recurring theme in the
histories of law, the exploration of which might
provide valuable perspectives at this current
moment in the context of an evolving global
jurisprudence, including not only intellectual
challenges to particular legal orders, bodies of
legal theory and legal history, but also to
dominant residual regimes regarding the nature of
law and of justice, and the recognition of the new
political order, not discounting those voices and
arguments that had been excluded from the canons
of colonial jurisprudence and the legal history of
imperialism and colonialism.
What is needed
for Hong Kong is not a new chief executive, but a
correct interpretation of the one country, two
systems policy to ensure social stability,
homeland security and economic growth with equity
for Hong Kong. For this, the authority of office
of the chief executive needs to be strengthened
and clarified, with improved political control
over the civil service, renewed reaffirmation of
Hong Kong's unique strategic role to support
national construction and national interests and
strict prohibition of all foreign-inspired or
sponsored anti-China activities. The HKSAR needs
to stop constantly modeling itself after
Singapore, or New York, or Switzerland, none of
which have any constitutional similarity to Hong
Kong. Hong Kong is unique because of the principle
of one country, two systems and it faces unique
challenges that can be found nowhere else. It's
time the Hong Kong SAR starts solving its problems
objectively and with independent courage and not
wasting time and energy apologizing to outsiders
for its new destiny.
Some have raised
concerns about the political past of the acting
chief executive and his loyal service to British
colonialism. The value of a civil servant in the
British colonial system is its apolitical loyalty
that is automatically transferred to any new
political leadership. There is no reason to
suppose that a new chief executive with a colonial
civil service background cannot serve a Hong Kong
under Chinese sovereignty loyally and effectively.
President Hu in his new four-point policy
proclamation on Taiwan said: "No matter who he is
and which political party it is, and no matter
what they said and did in the past ..." This
posture applies to Hong Kong as well. The test
will be based on current and future actions, not
past baggage.
History will show that Tung
Chee-hwa has not been part of Hong Kong's problem.
Rather, he has been part of the solution, and a
very credible part at that. All in Hong Kong owe
him a gratitude and respect for his personal
sacrifices and political contributions in leading
Hong Kong through its historic transition from
shameful colonialism to constructive participation
in the motherland's national rejuvenation. As the
first chief executive of Hong Kong under Chinese
sovereignty, Tung Chee-hwa will occupy a glorious
place in Chinese history.
Henry C K
Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu
Investment Group.
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette China Sex News
|
|
|
