Hong Kong’s democracy movement has gained admiration worldwide. The principles, decency and behavior of its youthful vanguard inspire confidence in the qualities of the generation that one day will run the great territory. That said, it is time to move on to a sensible endgame.
The longer the standoff between Hong Kong’s chief executive and the demonstrators continues, the more likely it is that individual citizens — and Hong Kong itself — will be hurt.
The Hong Kong government should demonstrate some statesmanship, which the so-called “Umbrella movement” — occupying the moral high ground and not wishing to risk losing public support — would surely reciprocate. A substantive and successful dialogue with the government would not require the protesters to call off their campaign for democracy; it would simply end the current phase of a campaign that will eventually succeed.
Despite their protestations to the contrary, Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) and his government have considerable room for maneuver. As many Hong Kong residents have argued, the Chinese government’s current position is based on a report, submitted by Leung’s officials, which purported to reflect accurately the outcome of local consultations on constitutional development.
However, the report plainly understated the degree of public support for change. Given what has happened in the past few weeks, Leung could quite properly give a new report to the authorities in Beijing focusing on two issues not proscribed by Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.
The first issue concerns not just the immediate question of the terms on which the chief executive is to be elected in 2017, but also how the Legislative Council should be elected in 2016 and after. The procedure is largely a matter for the Hong Kong government to decide.
It is surprising that 17 years after the handover of sovereignty from the UK to China, Hong Kong still does not have a directly elected legislature.
Then-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher suggested in a speech in the House of Lords in December 1992, that, if all went well, Hong Kong could have universal suffrage by 2007.
Unfortunately, all has not gone well. The legislature today comprises a mix of directly elected members and those representing functional constituencies: corporate interests and groups of employees.
Some civic groups have advocated increasing the number of directly elected legislators and opening up the functional constituencies to broader electorates.
Moreover, the brake that the functional constituencies can put on legislation should be scrapped, leaving decisions to a simple majority. This could be accompanied by a pledge to create a legislature composed entirely of directly elected members in 2020.
The second issue concerns the composition and the voting rules of the handpicked 1,200-member election committee that is to choose the chief executive in the future. The current proposed arrangements would permit the Chinese government to veto any candidate that it does not like, prompting criticism that what is on offer is an Iranian-style election: “You can vote for anyone we choose.”
The Hong Kong government could call for changes to increase the openness and fairness by which the chief executive is chosen, without abandoning its current method in favor of universal suffrage.
According to the Basic Law, the election committee should be “broadly representative” — a provision that the committee’s current composition violates. Its membership is chosen by only 7 percent of the total Hong Kong electorate, and its voting procedures seek to prevent the nomination of any candidates who may harbor democratic sympathies.
Since 1997, 55 percent to 61 percent of voters have voted for democratic candidates in Legislative Council elections.
The last time a slightly smaller election committee met (to choose Leung), less restrictive constraints on candidate selection were in place, and the leader of the Democratic Party was able to be nominated (though he still received less than 7 percent of the vote).
So Leung and his team should put forward proposals to broaden the electoral base of the election committee and open up the nominating process for candidates. There are plenty of recommendations from civil-society groups about how to accomplish these objectives.
Both sides need to give a little to prevent the confrontation in the streets from escalating, with the police forced to provide a substitute for a sensible policy.
The British government has said that it is important that “the people of Hong Kong have a genuine choice.” Leung and his colleagues can give them one. This would not be all that the Umbrella movement has demanded, but it should encourage the protesters to reach a compromise without departing from their longer-term goal.
That is why Leung should embrace dialogue and compromise. Even a ruler whose mandate comes from heaven should heed the words of the Confucian sage Mencius (孟子): “Heaven sees with the eyes of its people. Heaven hears with the ears of its people.”
Chris Patten was the last British governor of Hong Kong and is now chancellor of the University of Oxford.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US