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Hong Kong's (un)happy
anniversary
By Gary LaMoshi
HONG KONG - For the hundreds of thousands
of Hong Kong citizens who marched in
anti-government protests during the past two years
to mark the anniversary of the July 1, 1997
handover to Chinese sovereignty, the situation on
this anniversary would likely have been embraced
as an acceptable response to their pleas.
Article 23, the dreaded security law
proposal that prompted a half-million people to
march in 2003, has fallen off the radar. Hong
Kong's economy has rebounded from six years of
serial recessions to show modest growth.
Unemployment has eased off record highs to a
43-month low, and property prices have rebounded.
The Legislative Council chosen last year includes,
amid its pro-Beijing majority thanks to a rigged
electoral system, two of the most outspoken
critics of the mainland's heavy hand in Hong Kong
affairs.
Most importantly, hopelessly
miscast chief executive Tung Chee-hwa has resigned
into well-earned oblivion. Donald Tsang took over
in March, boasting favorable poll ratings of 70%.
Yet as anniversary presents go, Beijing's gift of
Tsang to Hong Kong is more like a steam iron than
an diamond pendant.
"Tsang is popular
because he is not Tung. He was born and raised in
Hong Kong and is a Hong Kong person, Cantonese
speaker, to the core," says Michael DeGolyer,
director of the Hong Kong Transition Project at
Hong Kong Baptist University. "He is the son of a
policeman who joined the civil service in 1967, a
year the leftists were trying to bring the
Cultural Revolution to Hong Kong. The people think
he is one of them; he claims he is."
Lukewarm welcome
Yet many
experts see trouble ahead for the man with the
trademark bow ties, despite his uncontested
endorsement as chief executive from the
mainland-backed 800-member election committee.
Beijing's decision to limit Tsang's initial tenure
to the remaining two years of Tung's term may
prove a welcome escape hatch for all sides.
Beijing's choice of Tsang seemingly
represents a great leap forward in its thinking
about how to handle Hong Kong. After all, Tsang
was a key member of the final colonial team as
Hong Kong's first Chinese financial secretary, a
service that won him a knighthood. He's also a
devout Catholic, while Beijing preaches atheism
more consistently than communism.
Hong
Kong's pro-mainland parties were initially
incensed that the chief executive post didn't go
to one of their own, but fell into line behind
Beijing's choice. "The question that everyone is
asking is: who is Donald Tsang beholden to?"
reports Christine Loh, who left the Legislative
Council to head the public-policy think-tank Civic
Exchange. "Who really promoted him?"
But
as is the case with so much about Tsang and his
appointment, there may be less here than meets the
eye.
Magnate to mandarin
DeGolyer sees similar thinking behind Beijing's
choices of Tung and Tsang. "Tung was an attempt to
leave 'capitalist' Hong Kong in charge of [those]
who the mainlanders thought ran it anyway, the
capitalists. Unfortunately, a business and a
society are very different creatures and need to
be run very differently. Now they know that and
have given it back to the ones they think were
really running Hong Kong - not the tycoons, but
the bureaucrats.
"But both assumptions
rest on false premises," DeGolyer adds. "Hong Kong
today is not the same as colonial Hong Kong, and
the dynamics then which kept the populace quiet
are very different today."
Beijing's
change in leadership from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao
may have prompted a new tack, David Zweig,
director of the Center for China's Transnational
Relations at Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, says, since Jiang had handpicked Tung
for the job. Tsang may have won over the new
leadership with a key trait that Beijing prizes.
"He serves his bosses well," Zweig observes. "When
Tung wanted no movement on democracy, he accepted
the idea of very slow progress."
DeGolyer
elaborates, "Tsang, in charge of constitutional
reform, toed the Tung line, defended it
vigorously, and never let on he did not agree
wholeheartedly with it, even after he became a
'politician' with the implementation of the
ministerial system in July 2002. As a civil
servant, doing so is one thing; as a 'politician'
doing that is quite another. So Democrats do not
know if Tsang is trustworthy and do not know
really what his own stance is. They suspect he is
far too capable and willing to implement orders,
rather than being like a true politician, one who
manipulates and maneuvers to shape himself to, as
well as shape as much as possible to his favor,
public demands."
Tsang missed a chance to
shape himself and public demands with a cautious
election platform that did not include any
proposals for expanded democracy, such as a
timetable for universal suffrage of the full
legislature and chief executive. While adopting
the trappings of a democratic electoral campaign
with a bow tie as its symbol, Tsang refused to
debate rival candidates.
Superiority
complex
Worse, Tsang's platform advocated
what Loh calls "old-style, colonial-bureaucrat
policies". DeGolyer notes, "[Tsang] has the usual
Hong Kong bureaucrat's superiority complex (a la
the old mandarins) - they believe they are the
smartest [people] in the room and if not, they
know more about X (whatever it is) than anyone
else." Hong Kong politicians seem the coolest
toward Tsang, and former legislator Loh points
out, "They have some sense what he is really
like."
Tsang's selection reflects a
failure of Hong Kong's political parties on all
sides to produce a plausible alternative. "They
have continued to let people down," Zweig says,
noting the parties are not respected in either
Beijing or Hong Kong due to feeble platforms and a
lack of charismatic figures. "Sir Donald has
benefited from their weakness."
A recent
poll found that the most popular figure to oppose
Tsang was Anson Chan, his predecessor as Hong
Kong's top civil servant until retiring in 2001.
The real keys to her popularity may be that she
has assiduously avoided party politics and has
been largely out of the public eye for four years.
Hong Kong's real failure isn't its
political parties, but its political system.
Thoroughly practical Hong Kong people recognize
there's little point in having a credible
opposition candidate without an opportunity to
win. "Beijing is not ready for any competition,"
Loh says. "As long as it stays like that, Tsang or
whoever is the anointed one, can hardly be tested
in open debates."
Tsang may have been the
best possible choice under current circumstances
as a figure acceptable to both Beijing and Hong
Kong. But on this eighth anniversary of the
transfer to Chinese sovereignty, the celebrants
are weary of those limiting circumstances.
Gary LaMoshi has worked as a
broadcast producer and print writer and editor in
the US and Asia. Longtime editor of investor
rights advocate eRaider.com, he's also a
contributor to Slate and Salon.com.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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