Beijing signals new hard line on
Hong Kong By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - When a mainland Chinese
official accuses unnamed "external powers" of
interfering in Hong Kong affairs, it's a given
that he is referring to the United States and
Great Britain - and perhaps Taiwan as well.
It's also a given that, 15 years after
Hong Kong's handover from British to Chinese
sovereignty, such a cryptic, undocumented
allegation is the clearest signal yet that
authorities in Beijing have completely lost the
plot in their management - check that,
mismanagement - of a city that is supposed to
remain a largely autonomous Special Administrative
Region of China until 2047.
And what of
Beijing's pre-handover pledge to grant full democracy
to Hong Kong's 7.1
million people? At this juncture, that looks like
an empty promise.
It's almost as if
Chinese leaders have deliberately set out to
antagonize and alienate the city. That, of course,
would be stupid, and there is no such plan. What
may be even more obtuse, however, is to aim at
winning hearts and minds but only wind up losing
them due to arrogance and ineptitude. That's what
has happened.
How else to explain last
week's 6,000-word article by Zhang Xiaoming, a
deputy director of the State Council's Hong Kong
and Macau Affairs Office, published in Wen Wei Po,
a Hong Kong newspaper long known for its
pro-Beijing views. In the article, originally a
chapter in a report to the 18th Communist Party
Congress, held earlier this month in Beijing,
Zhang commits just about every offense possible
for a mainland official addressing Hong Kong.
First of all, without presenting so much
as a scrap of evidence, he alleges foreign
interference in Hong Kong elections when everyone
knows that it is Beijing's heavy hand that is most
visible in the city's politics. That's why Hong
Kong has an unpopular chief executive, Leung
Chun-ying, who is widely perceived as a Beijing
stooge, and a 70-member Legislative Council
(Legco) that is paralyzed by divisions created by
a system that sees only 35 of them democratically
elected.
True, the British and the
Americans have made no secret of their support for
greater democracy in Hong Kong, but there has been
no indication, as Zhang charges, that they have
directly intervened in Hong Kong politics.
It's not the fault of Washington or London
that Hong Kong's political machinery is gnarled by
a "one-country, two-systems" formula that has
turned Legco into an unseemly battleground and
placed three successive post-handover chief
executives - first the hapless Tung Chee-hwa, then
the scandal-plagued Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and now
Leung, who assumed office in July - in the
impossible position of simultaneously trying to
please their masters in Beijing and their
constituents in Hong Kong.
Rather, it is
Beijing's ham-fisted meddling that has led to this
formidable impasse, and Zhang's article provides
further proof that, 15 years on, the Chinese
leadership's understanding of Hong Kong remains
woefully inadequate.
Zhang did not stop
with his unsubstantiated allegation that foreign
forces "get deeply involved in local elections and
help coordinating campaigns for opposition
parties." He went on to say that the central
government must "take necessary measures to
prevent external interference", raising the
specter of reviving proposed national security
legislation that was shelved in 2003 after 500,000
people took to the streets in a protest that
marked the beginning of the end of the Tung
administration.
Tung, citing ill health,
would resign from office less than two years later
- although, at 75, he is today the picture of good
health.
Understandably, the city's
pan-democrats - identified as the "opposition" by
Zhang - reacted with alarm to the lengthy Wen Wei
Po article, worried that it could be a signal that
Beijing, under the new leadership of Xi Jinping,
selected as President Hu Jintao's successor at
this month's party congress, will take a harder
line on dissent in Hong Kong when his term begins
in March.
As vice president, one of Xi's
tasks has been to oversee Hong Kong affairs over
the past five dysfunctional, protest-ridden years,
and he probably doesn't much like what he has seen
- especially, no doubt, the recent trend among
some protesters to carry colonial-era flags.
So Zhang's article - in which he also
maintains that the Standing Committee of the
National People's Congress (NPC) has the legal
authority to overrule Hong Kong judges in
interpreting the Basic Law, the city's
mini-constitution - could be seen as a warning to
pan-democrats and their supporters to tone down
their protests or risk a stronger reaction from
central authorities.
As the pan-democrats
and most of Hong Kong's legal community see it,
however, the Basic law guarantees the city
judicial independence and a common-law legal
system for 50 years after the handover.
Adding to their concern, Zhang's article
was published in the wake of a controversy caused
by former justice minister Elsie Leung Oi-sie, a
prominent pro-Beijing figure, who criticized Hong
Kong judges and lawyers for their failure to
understand the "evolving" nature of the concept of
rule of law under Beijing's central authority -
remarks that prompted members of Legco's justice
and legal affairs panel to invite her to one of
their meetings to explain herself.
Leung
declined, saying she did not want to be subjected
to an interrogation that she anticipated would
resemble the "McCarthy hearings" - a reference to
the infamous, anti-communist congressional
witch-hunt led by US senator Joseph McCarthy in
the 1950s.
Meanwhile, retiring Court of
Final Appeal justice Kemal Bokhary, who has been a
thorn in Beijing's side since the handover, has
stated that his tenure on the court was not
extended because of his liberal rulings while also
warning that the rule of law is under threat in
the city.
Bokhary and his fellow judges
were famously overruled by the NPC Standing
Committee in a 1999 case in which they granted
right of abode in Hong Kong to mainland children
born before their parents became permanent
residents of the city. A WikiLeaks report later
revealed that the judges all considered quitting
the city's top court in protest after the standing
committee issued an "interpretation" of the Basic
Law that effectively overturned their decision. In
the end, they decided to stay on.
Bokhary,
65, has reached the retirement age set for Hong
Kong judges, but there is a shortage of judicial
talent in the city these days and extensions can
be granted. Bokhary asked for one but was refused.
When he was replaced by Judge Robert Tang Ching,
who is nine months his senior, naturally, people
wondered why.
This atmosphere of distrust
has only been exacerbated by Zhang's 6,000-word
shot across the bow.
Under Xi's watch,
Beijing has adopted a strategy of wining the
affection and loyalty of the people of Hong Kong
by dispensing a raft of economic goodies - such as
turning the city into a hub for trading in the
Chinese currency, the yuan, and relaxing travel
policies to boost the number of mainland tourists
who visit Hong Kong to wine, dine and shop.
Even so, the strategy hasn't worked as the
flood of mainland visitors has further crowded the
city's already congested streets and transport
system and driven up prices. At the same time,
nouveau-riche mainland investors are buying up
Hong Kong property, contributing to the
highest-yet cost of buying a home, which is now an
impossible dream for most of the city's residents.
With resentment of mainland visitors and
leaders at an all-time high, this is hardly the
time for Cold War-style allegations of foreign
interference and calls for anti-sedition laws.
Such threats will only deepen the rancor that an
increasing number of Hong Kong people feel toward
their mainland brethren and lead to further
protests.
If ever there was a time for
Beijing's vaunted push for "soft power," this is
it - right here on its own recently reacquired
soil.
Kent Ewing is a Hong
Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached
at kewing56@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter:
@KentEwing1
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