The results of the Hong Kong Legislative Council by-election late last month manifested the public’s outrage against Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying’s (梁振英) administration over the violent clashes between local police and young protesters in the commercial district of Mongkok on the first day of the Lunar New Year.
Taking a stance against the “mainlandization” of Hong Kong, more than 50 percent of voters in the New Territories East Constituency supported candidates from the well-established pro-democracy Civic Party and Hong Kong Indigenous — a political group founded by “Umbrella movement” activists last year and blamed by the local government for instigating the Mongkok “riot.”
The electoral outcomes are of great significance at three levels.
First, there is a growing trend of young people becoming radicalized in Hong Kong politics. Both the “Umbrella movement” and the Lunar New Year clashes were the logical outcomes of failed democratization in the territory.
Since 1997, Hong Kong has witnessed the continuation of colonialism, with the Chinese Communist Party replacing British autocratic rule. This authoritarian system is built on a combination of fear-based rule and persistent crackdowns on dissent. The structural violence arises partly from the apathy and submission of most Hong Kongers toward Chinese hegemony, and partly from the imposition of strong control mechanisms.
From the “Umbrella movement” to the “fishball revolution,” Hong Kong officials have turned a blind eye to the rising political aspirations and socioeconomic discontent of young people. Instead, it condemned the young demonstrators as fugitives in their native territory. Meanwhile, the local authorities sent in the police and triads, undermining social bonds and pre-empting any possible collective resistance among Hong Kongers.
Second, Hong Kongers have come to realize the limits of the constitutional framework of “one country, two systems.”
The British handed over the sovereignty of the territory to China in 1997 without consulting Hong Kongers. Residents were deprived of their rights as British citizens and the opportunity to mobilize and form an independent city-state. To ease public concerns about the territory’s future under communism, Article 5 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, guaranteed that socialism would not be implemented locally and that the existing capitalist system and way of life would remain unchanged for 50 years.
However, shocked by Beijing’s frequent interventions into local affairs, Hong Kongers worry about the approaching 2047 deadline, when the territory is scheduled to become part of the People’s Republic of China.
Third, the neoliberal narrative of laissez-faire prosperity has lost its appeal to Hong Kongers, who see no hope in the futureless society that they find themselves in. Middle-class professionals rely on the mainland market for their livelihoods, and choose to ignore corruption and nepotism at all levels of Chinese bureaucracy.
Worse still, local elites have applied the logic of economics to deal with civic society. Their legitimacy hinges on the satisfactory outcomes of public policies, but their arrogance has perpetuated all forms of discrimination against the poor. Faced with the negative spillover effects of China’s economic slowdown, local authorities have been incapable of coping with social and economic grievances.
The same vulnerability can be discerned in the slow progress toward democracy. In Hong Kong, democratization means the implementation of universal suffrage for the election of the chief executive and legislators as guaranteed in the Basic Law. Adhering to a longstanding policy of denying full democracy to Hong Kong, China pre-empted electoral reforms in recent years and its handpicked political agents gained no legitimacy in the eyes of the public.
As French sociologist Alain Touraine said: “A life devoted exclusively to consumption, to self-interest or to the rejection of other people often constitutes an obstacle” toward the pursuit of universal values of justice, freedom and equality.
Many Hong Kongers learn that the best way to fight this autocratic system is to isolate the “status quo” from civil society so that citizens can search for an alternative mode of governance and take control of their destiny.
The by-election results indicate that Hong Kong is a society fraught with severe tensions and conflicts, which the ruling elites have tried to cover up through appeals to economic prosperity. However, Hong Kong faces a fundamental crisis of governance, for coinciding with the call for integration with China is the political awakening of its citizens and with it the rise of youth activism on an unprecedented scale. If Beijing dismisses this new public sentiment and ignores the legitimate demands of Hong Kongers, it will miss an opportunity to win the hearts and minds of the territory.
Joseph Tse-Hei Lee is professor of history at Pace University in New York.
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