The unfinished chapter of Hong Kong’s long political transition

In hindsight, that the institutional framework of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ (OCTS), the political and socio-economic blueprint for ensuring the continuity of Hong Kong as a capitalist economy, with guarantees of freedom of speech and a high degree of autonomy from China’s socialist and authoritarian rule after a change of sovereignty in 1997, gets caught in political crossfire is inevitable. OCTS was a historical compromise in the early 1980s when the deadlock of Hong Kong’s uncertain political future was resolved by finding a way to convince all the concerned parties that the colony’s prosperity and stability would be guaranteed after a change in its political status. China was eager to claim its sovereignty over Hong Kong but was equally keen to keep its capitalist economy intact as this was central to its own modernisation project. Britain tried to find a way to hand its colony over to an authoritarian regime through negotiation and arriving at an agreement in front of the international community to avoid embarrassment. Regarding the people of Hong Kong themselves, they were denied any formal representation in the diplomatic negotiation process, as China insisted that it would only be a bilateral negotiation between two countries.

What the people of Hong Kong did secure were empty slogans and airy verbal promises of ‘Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong’ and ‘horse racing and nightclubbing continuing as usual’, and the stipulation in the Basic Law that ‘The socialist system and policies shall not be practised in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and the previous capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years’. (Article 5) The status quo, both before and after 1997, was maintained in the midst of such uncertainty that it triggered the collapse of the Hong Kong dollar in September 1983. At the time, fear of deadlocked talks and a probable abrupt termination of negotiations were reinforced by the ominous announcement from the Chinese side that ‘if there were no agreement by September 1984, the Chinese would announce their decisions for Hong Kong’ (Cradock, 1994: 190). Furthermore, Xiao-Ping Deng (1993[1982]) had remarked in September 1982 after his meeting with Mrs Margaret Thatcher that if there were disturbances, China was ready to change the timing and format of hand over (4). OCTS was the pact arrived at by diverse (political as well as economic) interests at that juncture. But the premises and parameters of the pact have significantly changed since the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong by China and Britain in 1984. The storm over the Extradition Bill has its roots in the fissures inherent in the institutional framework of OCTS.

In a sense, the Joint Declaration was the formal statement declaring an end of Hong Kong’s status of being a ‘borrowed place’ living on ‘borrowed time’. A date for its return to China had now been set. The status quo, however, would be maintained prior to 1 July 1997, with guarantees from China that there would be no premature intervention. More importantly, Beijing promised that the existing socio-economic, cultural, and political conditions would remain unchanged for 50 years from 1997 onwards. How Hong Kong would continue to maintain prosperity and stability after its return to China was to be worked out through drafting the Basic Law (the institutional blueprint with OCTS as the overarching framework). Thirty-five years passed and our memory of the pact is fading. Originally, the focus of OCTS was placed on keeping Hong Kong’s capitalism separate from China’s socialism. It was believed that if tensions and conflicts were to arise after a change of sovereignty, the source of the problem would be found in the contradictions between these two entirely different economic systems. ‘The Death of Hong Kong’ was predicted on the basis of the irreconcilable economic logics of the two systems. ¹ A cursory examination of the Basic Law reveals that, at the time of its conception, the main emphasis was placed on three elements: (i) protection of private property (Articles 6, 29, 105, and 115); (ii) protection of personal freedom (Articles 4, 27, 28, 31, 32, 34, 37, 137, 141); and (iii) retention of the pre-existing legal system and institutional structure (Articles 8, 17, 18, 19, 25, 35, and 109). Questions of democratisation, which are the focus of the current unrest, were hardly posed at the time. Vested interests, particularly those in the business sector, were resistant to any drastic change in political representation. In retrospect, it seems rather naïve. People, including many who had voted with their feet by leaving China and were sceptical of the Chinese Communist Party, somehow believed that the preservation of free market capitalism together with the maintenance of the existing legal system plus the protection of personal freedom would provide the necessary safeguards against Chinese socialism, especially when the latter was much in need of Hong Kong’s contributions to its own marketisation and modernisation. Even after the crackdown of the student movement in Beijing in 1989, when many middle-class families decided to emigrate to Canada, Australia, and the USA in search of a safe and stable environment, the support for full democracy was still far from overwhelming. At the time when the British bowed out of their colony and the Chinese flag was hoisted at midnight 30 June 1997, many people in Hong Kong were quite happy to see the status quo maintained and, generally speaking, their earlier fears of a communist takeover, with its attendant threat to their way of life, were allayed.

There were some anxieties as 1997 approached (Lui, 1999), but with what was perceived as a liberalising Chinese economy it was hoped that the harder edges of Chinese communism would be progressively softened and economic growth and development, driven by the open-door policy, would facilitate socio-economic convergence with the outside world. So, while anxieties about such matters as restrictions on freedom of expression and self-censorship did not really go away, they were not pronounced. With the guarantee of maintaining two different economic systems within one country, it was widely felt that Hong Kong would remain relatively isolated from the Mainland and the Special Administrative Region (SAR) would continue to prosper. After the handover, there were a number of challenges faced by the newly established Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR): the hiccups in the opening of Hong Kong’s new international airport; the setbacks in dealing with bird flu; and the stormy situation created by the Asian Financial Crisis. However, as it transpired, the real challenge and the most acute source of tension arose from the political domain, an area to which scant attention had been paid in the pre-handover transitional period.

The impact of decolonisation was immediately noticeable and manifested itself particularly in the form of changing relations between state and society. The legitimacy of the new government and its leadership was repeatedly called into question, especially when the SAR Government was no longer delivering economic prosperity and livelihoods began to plateau rather than exhibiting steady improvement. Governance within the framework of OCTS was found to be problematic. The SAR Government failed to forge a new alliance with diverse business interests after 1997 (Lui and Chiu, 2007). Pro-Beijing political forces, despite being organisationally adept in their address to grassroots needs, failed to win over the majority of the voters. Nor was it possible for the SAR Government to continue to practise the ‘administrative absorption of politics’ (King, 1981). That is to say, relying on the efficiency of civil servants to contain political challenges within the parameters of an administrative framework and procedures. The fissures created by a partially democratised political system could no longer be swept under the carpet. Contrary to the assumption of Hong Kong being an economic city, political matters came to the forefront. What were once left to one side in the transition period of the 1980s and 1990s have now become the most contentious issues.

By 2003, demands for political change were clearly in the air when, by some accounts, half a million people joined a mass rally to express their discontent. Subsequently, frustration arising from disappointment about the pace of democratisation took increasingly political form. The Umbrella Movement in 2014 was one such instance. This increasing political mobilisation took place against a backdrop of the changing relationship between Hong Kong and Beijing. In the colonial days, London had, generally speaking, left Hong Kong pretty much to manage its own affairs. Beijing, however, reacting to a variety of political and economic triggers, became increasingly intrusive. In short, Hong Kong found itself encountering an entirely different macro context for handling OCTS after its return to China.

At the outset, there was inadequate preparation for the consequences and implications of regional and national integration. Witnessing the rise of China as a growing economy and an increasingly strong presence on the international stage, Hong Kong was eager to capitalise on the opportunities this offered and to make the most of its status as a part of China, albeit one with a highly globalised institutional infrastructure. The leaders of the HKSAR Government promoted the idea of ‘backing from the Mainland and openness to the world’ in 2001. They also explored the possibility of developing new forms of economic relations with the Mainland, with a shift from a unidirectional flow of investments from the SAR to different parts of China to a two-way traffic. The year 2003 marked a major turning point in the development of these economic connections – Beijing relaxed the flows of people (via inbound tourism to Hong Kong) and capital (in the forms of institutional investment, initial public offering (IPO), and individual’s investment in domestic property) as part of its strategy to pull Hong Kong out of an economic recession due to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and also, probably more importantly, to respond to the political crisis brought about by the mass rally that subsequently forced the Chief Executive to step down pre-maturely. From this point onwards, Hong Kong has had to face a challenge unanticipated in the original design of OCTS. Instead of maintaining a significant degree of isolation (most evident in the original requirement for Mainland Chinese to apply for an entry visa in order to visit the SAR), active regional and national integration now kicked off.

Inbound Chinese tourists rose in number from almost 8.5 million in 2003 to 51 million by 2018. The pace and scale of this regional integration is illustrated by incidents such as the run on baby milk powder and subsequent shortages caused by Mainland consumers eager to find a safe alternative to Mainland sources. Births to non-local mothers rose drastically and the SAR Government found this unmanageable given that such babies would be entitled to have Hong Kong resident status. In 2012, measures were introduced to end the granting of resident status in such cases. All in all, the scale of the new influx of people and money from the Mainland was simply overwhelming.

At the same time, China has also come to see that it is to its own advantage to have a tighter grip on Hong Kong’s development, especially in the political domain. It goes beyond the scope of this article to discuss in detail Beijing’s changing approach to the management of social and political developments in the SAR. Here, suffice it to say that Beijing has consciously moved in the direction of exercising a more systematic form of domination over Hong Kong. This was most evident in the publication of a policy paper entitled The Practice of the “One Country, Two Systems” Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Information Office of the State Council, 2014) in June 2014, when the ‘Occupy Central’ movement was gathering momentum and the HKSAR Government seemed paralysed in the face of debates on political change and reform. The policy paper made it clear that

the central government exercises overall jurisdiction over the HKSAR, including the powers directly exercised by the central government, and the powers delegated to the HKSAR by the central government to enable it to exercise a high degree of autonomy in accordance with the law. (Information Office of the State Council, 2014: 9)

In August, a framework of political reform was imposed by Beijing in an attempt to define the parameters of possible changes. Instead of deterring people from pushing for more democratic reform, Beijing’s intervention triggered various forms of collective action that lasted for 79 days.

The travails of the Anti-Extradition Bill reflect the same theme of struggling for a greater degree of autonomy for Hong Kong. The pact of OCTS reached in the early 1980s is no longer able to address the concerns of a newer generation of Hong Kong people. Whereas most of them in the 1980s were content with the preservation of a capitalist economy and the pre-existing way of life, those in the 2010s found the presence of China in their everyday life a source of deep unease. For the older generation, the perceived dangers of a communist takeover were potential political purges and the confiscation of personal property; for the younger generation, increased Chinese influence and control feels like a violation of previous promises of a high degree of autonomy. Witnessing a socialist China that has gradually turned away from the politics of the Maoist era and moved towards a market economy, the older generation sees progress, even though examples of corruption and abuse of political power continue to crop up now and then. The younger generation, however, adopts a different, much less hopeful view. They look at the gap between the state propaganda extolling China’s new found strength and a reality of authoritarian responses to any forms of opposition and the systematic denial of natural disasters and other societal ills. On the basis of such observations, they feel justified in treating any Chinese claims with a high degree of scepticism. For the older residents of Hong Kong, early fears of increased Chinese influence have faded. For the young, however, their nightmares seem to have turned into reality and any belief in further liberalisation in the current conditions looks self-deluding.

Seen in this light, collective actions taken in the course of the Anti-Extradition Bill movement must be seen as forms of resistance. Rejecting the initiative taken by the HKSAR Government they also, more importantly, represent resistance to China. They are driven by fear, anger, and distrust and highly energised by emotion. Under the overarching cries for autonomy, there are strong anti-China and anti-Mainland Chinese sentiments. The desire for autonomy and democracy is evident but other than that there is hardly a social agenda. The protesters are uncompromising and this also means that they are not really ready for negotiation and formulating other alternatives. Strictly speaking, there is no ideology. And they are leaderless as well. There is no political platform and they would not support any of the existing political parties and organisations should they attempt to assume a leadership role. The movement itself sees no end in sight. Furthermore, the unresponsiveness of the HKSAR Government and the violence displayed by police continue to fuel collective action. There are moments of solidarity and expressions of heroic commitment and sacrifice. However, at the same time, there are aimless attacks on shops, restaurants, and individuals who disagree with the movement’s central demands. Threats of revenge proliferate, and hatred is one important source of the movement’s energy. The Anti-Extradition Bill movement is probably not alone in sharing such attributes. ² Protests in our contemporary world are expressive in character. They are howls of collective outrage that express a desire for immediate change without stopping to contemplate how such change might be brought about or considering alternative forms of action to bring about change. In the case of Hong Kong, the movement alerts us to what has been left unaddressed in designing OCTS. A new dialogue should begin to explore these absences and omissions. A troubling question remains, however: Would Beijing be interested in opening this dialogue?