Persistent mass protests in Hong Kong against a proposed extradition treaty with China have pressured Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) into announcing the death of the controversial bill, but her half-hearted statement neither assuaged apprehension over the bill, nor won over people’s confidence.
Her announcement only raised doubts about the sincerity of Lam and her administration, whose priority seems to fulfill Beijing’s beck and call. The much-hated bill seems to be a political strategy for creating a legal condition between China and Hong Kong so that Beijing can have a freer hand to persecute and intimidate Hong Kong democrats, journalists and academics critical of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Whether it is the 2014 “Umbrella movement” or today’s anti-extradition bill protests, Beijing’s strategy of co-opting the elites to control the masses does not seem to work anymore in Hong Kong.
In the two decades since its handover to China, the territory has faced a variety of encroachments from Beijing. Among them, the increasing economic control and political repression, such as the kidnapping of booksellers or disqualification of democratically elected representatives, indicate China’s deep entrenchment within Hong Kong governance.
For many Hong Kongers, the demand for democracy is not just about political freedom, but also about social and economic equality, and the accountability of their leaders.
The territory is an international financial hub that sometimes seduces people into thinking that its residents are characters straight out of a Crazy Rich Asians movie, but Hong Kong has its own share of social challenges. China weighs on some of the territory’s main issues, from dwindling public space to a wealth gap and serious housing problems.
For example, the inflow of Chinese money and migrants have caused property prices and rents to skyrocket — leading to a housing crisis — and made healthcare less accessible to many Hong Kongers.
The economic power of Chinese companies in the territory has undermined the credibility and independence of many news organizations, as advertising sales are contingent on reports being politically correct in regard to Beijing and the CCP leadership.
Beijing has made it easy for wealthy Hong Kong businesspeople to invest in China in exchange for giving their political allegiance to the one-party state and using their influence within Hong Kong to spread the Chinese government’s authoritarian tentacles throughout each of the territory’s sectors.
Chinese firms — both public and private — have invested heavily in Hong Kong, including in the energy and real-estate sectors, and the stock market. As a part of its political tradition, the one-party state has never shied away from using its economic clout to expand its political interests, especially in reference to challenging issues such as Taiwan, Tibet and now Hong Kong.
The investment opportunities in China have made it possible for many Hong Kong businesspeople to create huge wealth, but keeping their Chinese business interests secure has meant becoming political puppets of Beijing. In spite of all the Chinese political transgressions of the past few decades, not a single Hong Kong tycoon has expressed concern over the territory and its future.
During Hong Kong’s movement for universal suffrage in 2014, its main tycoons went to Beijing at the insistence of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to demonstrate their support for the CCP’s political involvement in Hong Kong.
For the CCP, it was a show of strength, but for the territory, it was a point of departure between the interests of a few elites and that of the mass majority of Hong Kongers. In addition to the super-rich, there are other Hong Kong elites, such as Jackie Chan (成龍), who seem happy to criticize anyone if it makes their CCP masters happy.
Along with China’s political intervention and economic domination, there is a clash of identity in Hong Kong between Chinese and Hong Kongers, Mandarin and Cantonese, Chinese nationalism and Hong Kong internationalism — and in politics, between authoritarianism and democracy and the centrality of China’s “one country, two systems” formula. Successive chief executives in the territory have failed to find common ground with Hong Kongers, as their priority has been to please their superiors in Zhongnanhai.
CCP dictators need to recognize that if Hong Kong must identify itself with a bigger entity, then it will associate with the entire world, not an authoritarian, regressive China, for it was an international territory with close interactions around the globe long before China began to timidly reach out to its neighbors.
As a member of the international community, Hong Kong deserves international support and solidarity during this critical time of diminished democratic space, political intimidation and police violence. To have an environment where human freedom and dignity flourish, every centimeter in any part of the world is valuable and worth fighting for.
Taiwan’s Sunflower movement, which scuttled the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) policy of close economic integration with China before it could set sail, is a tremendous achievement on the side of democracy and freedom.
For the seeds of the Sunflower movement to bear the fruits of freedom, Taiwanese should be wary of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and other pro-China politicians, such as Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), winner of the KMT’s presidential primary, whose campaign of making Taiwan rich is likely to be another case of the KMT’s old baijiu in new bottles.
Owning its own destiny, Taiwan can always be happy and rich. Wealth can never substitute for freedom and dignity — Tibet is the best example of that.
For Lam and her circle, their proposed bill might truly be dead, but what should truly concern them is how the public’s trust in those who govern is rotting. Democracy is the only way to heal the betrayed hearts of Hong Kongers and resurrect public confidence in the leadership. The time has come for Hong Kong leaders to stop sleeping in the territory while dreaming of somewhere else.
Palden Sonam is a China Research Programme researcher at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in Delhi, India.
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