Abstract
This empirical study shows age makes a difference in how people evaluate Hong Kong’s legal and political institutions amid the former British colony’s chronic democratic deficit and rising political discontent since its return to Chinese rule in 1997. Using data from a 2015 survey of 3525 local residents conducted 6 months after the end of the ‘Umbrella Movement’ – a pro-democracy protest lasting 79 days, it reveals a glaring gap between older and younger people in their evaluations of Hong Kong’s electoral system and human rights, and more importantly, the latter’s rising localist sentiment. If perceived illegitimacy of a regime discourages legal compliance, these findings do not bode well for Hong Kong’s long-term governance. The largely youth-led protests that erupted in the summer of 2019 against a now-withdrawn bill that would have allowed extradition to Mainland China, which plunged the city into its worst political crisis since 1997, are ominous signs.
Introduction
The rule of law has taken centre stage in Hong Kong since its return to China in 1997 under a ‘One Country, Two Systems’ model. Despite being billed as ‘the Hong Kong way of life’ (Patten, 1995), how the rule of law has fared in people’s minds has been under-researched. This study fills a gap using data from a 2015 telephone survey of 3525 randomly selected Cantonese-speaking adult residents 5 months after the end of an unprecedented pro-democracy movement, dubbed the ‘Umbrella Movement’, in 2014. Originally designed to bring short-lived disruptions to Hong Kong’s prime financial district to make Beijing speed up democratization, it would go on for 79 days, which at its peak saw tens of thousands of citizens ‘occupy’ the city’s major thoroughfares. The survey, which took place after this critical political juncture, revealed significant differences between younger and older people in their evaluations of Hong Kong’s legal and political institutions.
Age is a strong predictor of political attitude (Almond and Verba, 1963; Inglehart, 1990; Quintelier, 2007). Socialization during adolescence also leads to values differences between those growing up in different eras (Sun and Wang, 2010). Western Europeans born after World War II, for example, were found to have leaned towards post-materialism – whose focus goes beyond amassing wealth and maintaining order – as part of a paradigm shift in mature democracies (Abramson and Inglehart, 2009). Hong Kong has largely followed this trend, especially among those born after the 1980s (Ortmann, 2015). Their aspirations for democracy were reflected in the slogan of the Umbrella Movement: ‘I Want Universal Suffrage’ – referring to the elections of the city’s leader and legislators (Kurata, 2015). Hence, this article focuses on public perceptions of the ‘institutional’ aspect of the rule of law in a society plagued by a chronic democratic deficit and growing political discontent.
If perceived illegitimacy of a regime discourages people from obeying the law (Tyler, 1990, 1994), recent developments in Hong Kong suggest more turbulent times ahead. Hong Kong’s ‘summer of discontent’ in 2019, where initially peaceful protests against a now-withdrawn bill – that would have allowed extradition to Mainland China – have turned into violent clashes between mostly young protesters and the police, is the latest example. More notably, contrary to their reputation for being law-abiding, a substantial number of Hong Kong people have defied police bans and a newly imposed ‘anti-mask’ law (which a court later annulled) and repeatedly taken to the streets. This article begins with a review of previous research on Hong Kong people’s legal and political culture, followed by a discussion of the methodology and findings of the 2015 survey as well as its political implications. Against the backdrop of the recent uprisings, it argues that, escalating political discontent, if left unaddressed, may lead to huge consequences.
The Evolution of the Idea of the Rule of Law in Hong Kong
The rule of law has its roots in western liberalism. Its classical notion, popularized by British jurist Dicey (1959) in the 19th century, contains three fundamental principles: Men are to be governed by law alone; everyone is equal before the law; and the law of the constitution is not the source but ‘the consequence of the rights of individuals’. Hong Kong, thanks to its 150-year British rule, has long embraced this liberal conception of the rule of law built on procedural justice and respect for fundamental rights. Lauded as the secret of its economic success and the ultimate bastion of liberty after 1997, the rule of law has achieved the status of a ‘grand narrative’ (Jones, 2015; Sin and Chu, 1998). Patten (1995), the last colonial governor, once proclaimed the rule of law as ‘the best safeguard against arbitrary and overbearing government’ and the Hong Kong ‘way of life’. Yet, for all its rhetorical appeal, the rule of law was, for most of the colonial period, a governing tool. Without democracy, it took the form of ‘law and order’, a dominant ideology during the anti-colonial riots in 1967 which precipitated the enactment of the Public Order Ordinance – a draconian law which remains in force today (Ku, 2004). As calm returned, the colonial government began a series of social reforms accompanied by an economic take-off in the 1970s. That gave the hard-working Chinese population their first taste of prosperity at the time when political struggles across the border had thrown Mainland China into a state of ‘lawlessness’. ‘Law and order’ thus became something of a ‘doxa’, a Greek term that Bourdieu (1987) used to describe the ‘self-evident’ status of law. With social conditions improved under a now more benign colonial ruler, the people of Hong Kong came to treasure ‘law and order’ as the bedrock of stability and prosperity.
Beijing’s military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in June 1989, just 8 years before 1997, threw Hong Kong society into psychological disarray. In response, the British government enacted the Bill of Rights Ordinance (BORO) that incorporated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1991, giving it an overriding status (until its reversion by Beijing upon handover). The BORO, together with the Basic Law, which was promulgated in 1990, and that would become Hong Kong’s post-1997 quasi-constitution, saw the rise of a vision of the rule of law based on democracy and rights protection (Ku, 2004). As 1997 neared, the rule of law was increasingly seen as the ‘bulwark’ against any possible encroachment on civil liberties (Sin and Chu, 1998). For example, the Bar Association, part of the liberal elite, declared that beyond the presence of a body of law, the rule of law entails a set of open, reasoned and legitimate processes; or those in power could arbitrarily make or repeal the law, rendering it ‘rule by the people in power’ (DeLisle and Lane, 1997). Hong Kong’s return to China on 1 July 1997 under ‘One Country, Two Systems’, the brainchild of reformist leader Deng Xiaoping who in the 1970’s championed a form of socialism that suits China’s conditions – ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’, idealistically afforded legal continuity to Hong Kong with a promise of democracy. The fledging Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government and its supporters, including local business interests, continued to hold ‘law and order’ as the key to the city’s enduring success. At the same time, these interests played down the importance of democratic reform in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s guiding principle of ‘ruling Hong Kong by law to ensure its prosperity and stability’ (Information Office of the State Council 2014). That, according to Chen and Cheung (2014), symbolized the distinction between ‘fundamentalists’ (who insist on a liberal version of the rule of law) and ‘pragmatists’ (who recognize the political realities within which the law operates) which has characterized the discord between the pro-democracy and pro-government camps since Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule.
The ideological contest between ‘law and order’ and ‘rule of law’ manifested itself in the gap between the older and younger generations. Older people who endured turbulent times either in Mainland China during the Cultural Revolution or in Hong Kong in the 1960s tend to treasure social stability (Sin and Chu, 1998). They are more likely to be content with the status quo, which affords them a functioning legal system and basic human rights. Younger people growing up in post-1997 Hong Kong, where peace and material profusion is taken for granted, tend to embrace post-materialism that prizes ‘self-expression and quality of life’ above ‘economic and physical security’ – for which equality and democracy are fundamental values (Inglehart, 1977). This postmodern shift often entails an intergenerational change in basic social norms, for example, from those emphasizing self-survival to those concerning individual development. Elsewhere it reflects the change in priorities between precarious times and our present era of relative peace. This ideological shift shows the disagreement between older and younger people over what post-colonial Hong Kong – characterized by economic success and democratic underdevelopment – should become.
Previous Empirical Studies on Hong Kong’s Rule of Law
One may ask, in the light of Hong Kong’s transformation from an essentially common law system to one with ‘Chinese characteristics’ under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ model, how do people perceive and evaluate their rule-of-law institutions? Despite the importance of this question, most of the major studies on this subject were conducted decades ago. In a pioneering study about local Chinese’s acceptance of common law values, Hsu (1992) compared a random sample of 400 residents of four urban districts with that of local Chinese legal professionals as well as a random sample of residents of an English city. Using a self-constructed Common Law Index comprising six concepts, namely, ‘Respect of individual rights’, ‘The Rule of Law’, ‘Judicial independence’, ‘The adversarial system and an independent legal profession’, ‘The jury system’ and ‘The right to silence and presumption of innocence’, Hsu found that local Chinese had, to some extent, internalized those basic common law values under British rule.
A series of biennial Social Indicator Surveys were conducted in the 1990s concerning the ‘legal orientation’ (knowledge, evaluation and affection) of Hong Kong people and its correlations with their law-related behaviours (Kuan et al., 1991; Kuan, 1992). In 1995, Kuan surveyed public attitudes towards the rule of law based on seven general principles: ‘Equality before law’, ‘Law binds the ruler’, ‘Presumption of innocence’, ‘No law, no crime’, ‘Judicial independence’, ‘Inborn rights’ and ‘Obligations over rights’. Kuan (1997a, 1997b) found that, while Hong Kong people clearly supported the first three principles, they apparently lacked a solid cultural foundation of the rule of law.
After sovereignty changed hands, subsequent Social Indicator Surveys have turned their focus to public perceptions of the judiciary, commitment to the rule of law and Hong Kong’s constitutional regime under ‘One Country, Two Systems’, respectively (Kuan, 2005; Ng and Kuan, 2004, 2008). They revealed that Hong Kong Chinese not only took an instrumentalist view about law, they also lacked a clear grasp of the role of the judiciary. Yet, given that these surveys mainly concerned social values, their findings could not adequately reflect how people evaluated the institutional aspect of the rule of law (Ng and Kuan, 2008).
To fill this gap, Tai (2007) subsequently constructed an Index of the Rule of Law to evaluate Hong Kong’s rule of law from seven aspects: ‘Basic requirement of law’, ‘Government under law’, ‘Rule against arbitrary powers’, ‘Equality before law’, ‘Impartial enforcement of law’, ‘Accessibility to justice’ and ‘Procedural fairness’. Despite its small sample size – 19 legal personnel – and thus its lack of representativeness, Tai’s Index helped build a concrete framework for studying the ‘institutional’ dimension of the rule of law using a social survey method. Furthermore, since 1997, a reputable polling organization has also tracked public opinions about major political institutions through periodic polls. Yet, they were confined to general questions such as ‘Are you satisfied with the government’s performance in protecting human rights and freedom’ and ‘How do you rate the rule of law in Hong Kong’ (Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong, 2018a, 2018b), and therefore could only show opinion trends, not concrete views about the performance of public institutions. The 2015 survey, building on all the above studies, provides a clearer glimpse of public perceptions of Hong Kong’s major legal and political institutions in a comprehensive and representative manner.
The ‘Age’ Factor on Legal and Political Values
Age is a known predictor of political attitudes. Studies have highlighted the links between a prolonged period of economic and physical security and substantial differences in values priorities between the young and old. For example, different age groups in the United States were found to possess different ‘citizenship norms’ (Dalton, 2008). Senior citizens tended to honour ‘citizen duty’ – concerning conventional norms of social order – while younger ones embraced ‘engaged citizenship’ championing liberal ideas such as civic activism and political autonomy. As a beacon of freedom in Asia, Hong Kong’s value trends have largely followed those of developed Western economies (Cummings and Tang, 2009; Yew and Kwong, 2014). For example, Hsu (1992) found that those aged between 18 and 27 – the youngest of the four age groups studied – scored the highest on the Common Law Index, meaning they were the most inclined to accept values such as human rights and the rule of law.
In addition, the past three decades also saw a constant decline in political trust among young people in Hong Kong, a trend which first emerged in North America and Western Europe (Foa and Mounk, 2016). On the other hand, older people reportedly expressed a higher level of trust in the government (Lau and Kuan, 1988). For those who had fled Mainland China during its tumultuous times, the stable government, robust legal system and orderly society that they enjoyed in colonial Hong Kong made them treasure the status quo (Hsu, 1992). After 1997, however, the widening wealth gap, rising social inequalities and stunted democratization increasingly alienated young people (Cheung, 2014). The mass protest on 1 July 2003 against a proposed national security law widely believed to be aimed at curbing civil liberties was a political watershed (Ma, 2011). The resulting civic awakening has seen the rise of youth-led activism, from the anti-World Trade Organization demonstration in 2005, to campaigns against the demolition of historic cultural icons in 2006–2007 and the anti-Hong Kong Express Rail Link movement in 2009–2010 (Lee, 2012).
The rise of youth activism took place amid a surge in local consciousness as a result of Beijing’s relentless attempt at top-down assimilation. A widely held belief that the authorities were foisting a national education curriculum upon Hong Kong’s youth led to a persistent backlash in 2012 (Lim, 2017). Successive demonstrations led by mainly young students outside government headquarters finally brought about an official U-turn. Some of the student activists went on to lead subsequent political movements (Veg, 2017). These developments coincided with rising fears of ‘Mainlandization’ which anticipated, for example, the erosion of press freedom and civil liberties often seen in Mainland China, as well as vote-rigging in elections engineered by Beijing (Yew and Kwong, 2014). The failure of traditional democrats to achieve political breakthroughs further estranged Hong Kong’s youth from mainstream politics, making radicalism seemingly their last option (Kwong, 2016).
The Umbrella Movement and Young People’s Political Discontent
Against this backdrop, the Umbrella Movement presented a new political opportunity for Hong Kong’s young people. Initially called ‘Occupy Central’, the movement was originally meant to be a short-lived sit-in protest in the central business district (Chan, 2018). Momentum began to build after the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) decided on 31 August 2014 (the 8.31 Decision) that only those who were acceptable to Beijing would be allowed to join the 2017 election for the Chief Executive (CE) – effectively disqualifying all pro-democracy candidates. That triggered a week-long university class boycott followed by a protest outside government headquarters, which descended into scuffles between students and the police and saw the latter employ a hitherto rarely-used tactic – firing tear gas – against a swelling crowd. The subsequent declaration of the beginning of ‘Occupy Central’ in the early hours of 28 September ushered in a city-wide protest lasting 79 days, until the police cleared the last protest site on 11 December 2014.
The Umbrella Movement was arguably a ‘movement of the youth’; 85% of those who took part were under 40 and 61% were under 30, meaning that the protesters’ median age could be lower than that of the whole population (Yuen and Cheng, 2015). Most of its support came from those aged between 18 and 29 (53.1%), compared to 21.9% and 20.7% from the ‘50–59’ and ‘60 or above’ age groups, respectively (Wong and Chu, 2017). These findings highlighted not only the gap in political values between younger and older people but also the extent of dissatisfaction of the former group over the governance of Hong Kong. That the movement was in effect led by university students showed that it should not be brushed aside as an example of youth rebellion. Their demand, as reiterated by the student leaders during a meeting with the city’s top officials at the height of the movement, was ‘to have the right to vote and the right to stand in elections’ – the very rights the 8.31 Decision allegedly restricted (Cheung et al., 2014). Underneath their disillusionment with officials and mainstream politicians were intractable structural problems, including social inequalities and an electoral system skewed towards entrenched interests. In this sense, the Umbrella Movement embodied the collective societal discontent of a generation of Hong Kong young people. Its failure to achieve any political concessions has likely deepened their sense of alienation and coloured their views about major political institutions.
The ‘Institutional’ Aspect of the Rule of Law
Institutions play a key role in maintaining the rule of law, according to the Rule-of-law Index designed by the World Justice Project, a measure widely used in international surveys since 2008. The Index is based on four universal principles, that is, state accountability, just laws, open government and accessible and impartial dispute resolution, and comprises nine indicators: (1) Constraints on Government Powers, (2) Absence of Corruption, (3) Open Government, (4) Fundamental Rights, (5) Order and Security, (6) Regulatory Enforcement, (7) Civil Justice, (8) Criminal Justice and (9) Informal Justice. It shows that effective institutions, including a clean government and internal checks on executive powers, are integral to the rule of law.
In Hong Kong, recent studies showed that younger people tend to hold a more negative view about political institutions (Lam, 2017; Wong et al., 2017). Based on data from Asian Barometer Hong Kong Surveys in 2007 and 2012, respectively, Lam (2017) identified seven variables to highlight the differences between those aged 18–29 and the overall population. They are: ‘Trust in major institutions’, ‘Evaluation of law-abiding government’, ‘Evaluation of vertical accountability’, ‘Evaluation of horizontal accountability’, ‘Equal treatment’, ‘Election effectiveness’ and ‘Satisfaction in how democracy works’. Lam found that while there was a general decline in political trust, evaluation of government accountability, social equality and election effectiveness in the years before the Umbrella Movement, the younger age group (18–29) stood out as the most dissatisfied with Hong Kong’s political institutions. For example, they reported little trust in the CE, the government, the police and the Central Government. They agreed, more than the others, that ‘when government leaders break the laws, there is nothing the court can do’, and ‘the government ‘always’ and ‘most of the time’ withholds information from the public’. Fewer of them believed ‘our elections “always” or “sometimes” offer the voters a real choice between different parties and candidates’. And many of them were not satisfied with how democracy works in Hong Kong. Yet, younger people appeared to be the staunchest supporters of the judiciary, with more of those from the 18–29 group pledging ‘a great deal of trust’ or ‘quite a lot of trust’ in the courts.
While Lam’s (2017) work helped shed light on young people’s dissatisfaction about the performance of political institutions in Hong Kong, her analysis contained two major weaknesses. First, she employed only one to two items in evaluating most of the seven variables in question. For instance, she used just one item, ‘when government leaders break the laws, there is nothing the court can do’ to measure the variable ‘the evaluation of the law-abidingness of the government’. As the seven variables are all sophisticated concepts presented in general terms, any attempt to draw a conclusion on any of them based on just one or two aspects therein risks compromising the validity of the findings. Second, because Lam only compared the scores given by the 18–29 group with the overall scores of the whole sample, it remains unclear which age group has given higher or lower scores than the 18–29 group. Because of that, the purported relationships between age and those seven variables remain sketchy.
This article does not attempt to juxtapose Lam’s ‘pre-Umbrella Movement’ data (2007 and 2012) with that of the 2015 survey. Neither does it seek to compare the present findings with those of Lam due to different survey designs and data sources. Yet, like Lam’s, this article investigates whether age has an effect on one’s evaluation of Hong Kong’s major legal and political institutions and contributes to existing literature about the age effect on perceptions of the ‘institutional’ dimension of the rule of law. On this basis, this article focuses on three specific aspects, namely ‘Integrity of legal and judicial systems’, ‘Integrity of electoral system’ and ‘Protection of fundamental rights’. Addressing the weaknesses of Lam’s analysis, we first conduct confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to validate our multi-item variables followed by an evaluation of the association between the three variables with age.
Research Method, Sampling and Data Collection
To examine the effect of age on people’ perceptions of the rule of law in Hong Kong, we adopted a survey which allows for quantification of public opinions on the performance of rule-of-law institutions and generalization of results thereof. The target population was Cantonese-speaking residents in Hong Kong aged 18 or above. According to the 2011 population census, the number of persons aged 15 or above who could speak Cantonese excluding foreign domestic helpers amounted to 5,824,614. Due to the grouping of age groups, it is not possible to separate those aged 15 to 17 from the figure. Thus, the number of persons aged 15 or above was used as estimation (Census and Statistics Department, 2017). Bearing in mind the potential sensitivity involved, the questionnaire was so designed to avoid asking individuals to divulge their personal experiences. The survey, which took place from April to August 2015, was conducted by the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong. A pilot test was conducted with 10 members from the target population to validate the survey instrument. Data of the formal survey were collected using telephone interviews. Simple random sampling was adopted to selected telephone lines from a pool of around five million numbers. The telephone numbers included both residential and non-residential numbers which were known prefixes assigned to telecommunication services providers under the Numbering Plan of the Office of the Communications Authority. From April to August 2015, 5685 phone calls were made to recruit respondents to participate in the survey. When telephone contact was successfully established, the person in the household who had his/her birthday next from all those present was selected as the participant. A total of 3525 respondents completed the survey. The response rate, calculated by dividing the number of responses by the number of respondents approached, is 62.0%. With a population size of around 5.8 million and a confidence level of 95%, the sampling error is 1.7, meaning there is 95% certainty that the true population value falls within ±1.7 of the sample estimate of this study.
Measures
Hong Kong people’s perceptions of legal and political institutions were measured in three dimensions, namely ‘Integrity of legal and judicial systems’ (D1), ‘Integrity of electoral system’ (D2) and ‘Protection of fundamental rights’ (D3). D1 contained nine items. It measured the respondents’ perceptions of the fairness of the legal system and the independence of the judicial system. D2 was composed of three items regarding whether political elections were free from corruption. D3 contained seven items asking respondents if they agreed that a range of fundamental rights were protected in Hong Kong. The items were selected from the questionnaires used in previous studies including Rule-of-law Index, Common Law Index, Social Indicator Surveys and Index of the Rule of Law, with advice from 10 legal experts and political scientists, among them, at least two were lead researchers in those previous studies. The 10 experts helped select items from those earlier studies based on their relevancy to the present research. For example, the items ‘Law binds the ruler’, ‘No law, no crime’ and ‘Judicial independence’ from the Social Indicator Surveys (Kuan, 1992) were deemed to be related to D1. Because the experts only chose those that could most accurately measure the three dimensions nowadays, items that no longer reflected the current situation in Hong Kong, such as ‘the Governor should be allowed to dismiss a judge’ from the Common Law Index (Hsu, 1992), were excluded from this research. In addition, we have modified certain questions so as to match the local political context. For example, for questions concerning elections, we referred to those of ‘Chief Executive’, ‘Geographical constituencies’ and ‘Functional constituencies’ instead of ‘President’, ‘Prime Minister’ and ‘Senate’ and so on. All the items used in this study were measured by a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Demographic variables used in this study included sex, age, religion, place of birth, education level, occupation, industry and personal income.
Hypotheses
As discussed, some previous studies have revealed possible differences in the perceptions of Hong Kong’s rule of law between older and younger people (Lam, 2017). We therefore make the following three hypotheses:
Analytic Strategies
All the data were analysed using Stata 14. As this article aims at examining the current Hong Kong situation in terms of the three dimensions (D1, D2 and D3) rather than investigating the rule of law in its entirety, it analyses the three dimensions individually. CFA was first conducted on the three dimensions separately to test the model fit. CFA is a statistical technique used to validate the factor structure of the observed variables (or dimensions). Good model fit indexes indicate that the variables are adequately measured by their respective sets of observed items. Cronbach’s α coefficient is also used to measure the reliability of the three variables. A high reliability means the observed items are highly correlated and together they measure the same dimension consistently. To test our three hypotheses, we performed Pearson correlation and Spearman’s rank-order correlation to investigate whether age (based on six groups: 18–29, 30–39, 40–49, 50–59, 60–69 and 70 or above) had a positive association with the three dimensions and with the individual items within the three dimensions, respectively. Pearson correlation measures the linear relationship between continuous variables (i.e. the three continuous scales), while Spearman’s rank-order assesses the association involving ordinal data (age group as an ordinal variable). Lastly, we conducted multiple regression which is an analytical tool to evaluate the relationships between multiple predictors and the outcome variable. Through constructing separate multiple regression models with other demographic variables regarding the three dimensions, we were able to ascertain whether the observed correlations persisted when accounting for other demographic variables.
Findings
CFA and Reliability
The fit indexes for D1 and D3 were acceptable. This means that D1 and D3 were unidimensional and the two variables were adequately measured by the observed items. The fit indexes for D2 could not be generated as there were only three items (Table 1). The Cronbach’s α coefficients of the three dimensions ranged from .618 to .793, which were acceptable. This means that the variables had adequate internal consistency (Table 1).
Fit indexes and reliability.
CFI = Comparative Fit Index; RMSEA = Root Mean Square Error of Approximation; SRMR = Standardized Root Mean Square Residual.
Mean Scores of Three Variables
The mean scores of the three variables were all over 3.0 (Table 2). This showed that the respondents were generally satisfied with the current situation of the rule of law in Hong Kong. The highest mean scores were those of D1 (mean = 3.99) and D3 (mean = 3.97), meaning that the respondents rated these two dimensions of the rule of law as the most satisfactory. The mean score for D2 was the lowest (mean = 3.33), indicating a degree of perceived ‘corruption’ in Hong Kong’s elections. Moreover, the standard deviation of D2 was large (SD = 1.11), meaning that the respondents’ opinions regarding the integrity of the election system were quite diverse.
Mean, SD, min and max of the three scales.
Correlation Between Age and the Three Variables
The findings revealed that age was positively correlated with all three variables (p < .000) (Table 4). Respondents who gave higher scores for D1 did so for D2 and D3 as well. According to Cohen (1988), the effect size of correlation is small if it varies around 0.1, medium if it varies around 0.3 and large if it varies more than 0.5. For the present study, the strength of association of the three variables ranges from .198 to .336 (Table 3). Age apparently had a small positive association with D1 (r = .198) and D3 (r = .252), while it had a moderate positive correlation with D2 (r = .336). That indicates younger respondents are less satisfied with these three dimensions of the rule of law than older respondents. All three hypotheses are therefore validated. Figures 1 to 3 illustrate the mean plots of the three dimensions.
Correlation between age and the three scales.
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Correlation between age and items under integrity of legal and judicial systems.
R: Coding reversed for negative item.
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Means plot of integrity of legal and judicial systems.
Means plot of integrity of electoral system.
Means plot of protection of fundamental rights.
Correlation Between Age and Items Under the Three Variables
Table 4 shows that age had a positive significant association with seven out of the nine items under D1. The correlations were small, ranging from .069 to .238 (Table 4). All three items under D2 were positively correlated with age, with small to moderate coefficients ranging from .257 to .308 (Table 5). All six items under D3 were found to be positively associated with age, with small coefficients ranging from .046 to .282 (Table 6).
Correlation between age and items under integrity of electoral system.
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Correlation between age and items under protection of fundamental rights.
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Multiple Regression Models Confirm the Effect of Age in All Three Aspects
Multiple regression analysis confirmed that age was a significant predictor for all the three dimensions (p < .001). While D1 and D3 were also predicted by sex and place of birth and D2 by place of birth, age had the largest β coefficient in all three models among other predictors. The higher the absolute value of β, the stronger the effect. Hence, age is the most important predictor for all three dimensions of the rule of law. (Table 7)
Multiple regression models.
* p < 0.001, ** p < 0.005, *** p < 0.05.
Discussion
Values Gap Between Older and Younger Citizens
The above findings show how younger and older respondents differed in their perceptions of Hong Kong’s legal and political institutions. The former gave lower scores to all the three dimensions of the rule of law. As discussed, that reflects a phenomenon in post-industrial societies whereby young people, living in relative affluence, increasingly embrace values such as democracy and social justice (Inglehart, 1990). This study also reveals that age and place of birth are both significant predictors of law-related attitudes. In the 2015 survey, 71.5% of the younger respondents were born in Hong Kong, while only 53.4% of the older respondents were local born. Their different socialization experiences might have influenced the way they evaluated Hong Kong’s legal authorities. In fact, such divergence of views coincided with rising rights consciousness in the early 1990s and a strengthened local identity – especially among the younger generation – after the 1997 handover.
What is more, many young people have become disaffected by Hong Kong’s deteriorating political climate. A series of controversies, for example, a proposed and later shelved national security bill in 2003, the construction of the Express Rail Link connecting Hong Kong with Mainland China in the late 2000s and more recently the 8.31 Decision, exposed the many social ills widely attributed to Hong Kong’s lack of democracy and its dysfunctional political institutions (Wong et al., 2017). Structural inequalities amid escalating fears of ‘Mainlandization’ further eroded the legitimacy of the regime, which culminated in surging youth activism seen in the Umbrella Movement under the slogan ‘I want universal suffrage’. If historic events could entail sudden changes in values (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005), the Umbrella Movement was a watershed moment of political awakening for Hong Kong’s young people dubbed ‘the Umbrella Generation’ (Yang and Liu, 2015).
Structural Political Inequality and Young People’s Rising Discontent
Much of Hong Kong’s democratic deficit lies in its electoral system. With a moderate correlation between age and the aggregate scale (Table 3) and low mean scores given by the younger age groups (Figure 2), ‘Integrity of electoral system’ (D2) deserves the most attention. The 18–29 age group gave it a very low mean score of below 3. While the said correlation concerning Q12 on ‘Election for geographical constituencies’ (r s = .257) and Q13 on ‘Election for functional constituencies’ (r s = .271), respectively, was small, that concerning Q11 on ‘Election of Chief Executive’ had a moderate correlation of .308. These results reveal a sentiment among younger people that Hong Kong’s current electoral system, which not only allows the long-time domination of pro-Beijing parties in district council elections but also prevents pro-democracy candidates from contesting in the CE Election, smacks of corruption.
‘Corruption’ in this context does not necessarily mean bribery but structural unfairness. Despite the promise of universal suffrage under the Basic Law (Articles 45 and 68), Beijing remains non-committal about allowing Hong Kong people to directly elect all their representatives in the legislature as well as the CE. Functional constituencies, a colonial legacy where a number of Legislative Council seats are reserved for certain industries and professions, have long been criticized for violating the principle of equal suffrage under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of which Hong Kong is a party (Cheung, 2014; Crowley, 2000). Yet, two decades after the handover, up to half of the 70-strong legislature still owe their seats to this electoral arrangement. Perceived systemic unfairness lies partly in the gross imbalance in the number of votes undergirding each constituency. For example, the Agriculture and Fisheries and the Heung Yee Kuk (which represents traditional villagers) sectors – both long-time government allies – each has fewer than 160 eligible voters, while those in the Education and Health Services sectors number around 87,000 and 37,000, respectively (Voter Registration, 2017). Young people, many of them have yet to belong to any professional groups not to mention the vested interest networks, might feel alienated from this ‘small circle’ election and see the whole scheme as structurally ‘corrupt’ (Chong, 2014). The same goes for the CE Election. Annex I of the Basic Law stipulates the framework within which the election takes place. At its core is the Election Committee, the composition of which imitates the proportions allocated to the functional constituencies in the legislature and which numbered 800 in the years between 1998 and 2012 and 1200 in the 2017 election. Despite widespread public demand especially among young voters for universal suffrage for the CE Election, no substantial progress has ever been made (Chen, 2016). The 8.31 Decision, which excluded democrats from contesting in the 2017 CE Election, shattered the hopes of many young people for a democratic Hong Kong. The strong reactions from university students and their subsequent protest outside government headquarters finally led to the Umbrella Movement.
The frustrations of young people with the electoral system have profound political implications. As the Umbrella Movement ended without achieving its goals, many young people, already dismayed by mainstream democrats’ political failure, turned to localism as a way of defending Hong Kong’s autonomy (Kwong, 2016). Amid the city’s infamously sky-high rents and yawning income gaps, the government’s crackdown on unlicensed street hawkers plying their trade, in particular the sale of a popular snack ‘fish ball’, during the Lunar New Year holiday in 2016 fanned public anger and saw violent clashes between the police and young protesters – dubbed the ‘Fish-ball Revolution’ – a little over a year after the end of the Umbrella Movement (Lim, 2017). The more confrontational nature of this incident perhaps reflected young people’s growing animosity towards a government seen as Beijing’s proxy and their increasing readiness to challenge the symbols of state power, for example, the police (Jackson et al., 2012), through less peaceful means.
The respective movements foretold an escalation of tensions between young people and the authorities. Political trust is understood to help stabilize a democratic system (Almond and Verba, 1963); the lack thereof arguably results in a public more critical towards not just the politicians but also fundamental institutions and procedures (Dalton, 2008). To the extent that it undermines government legitimacy it becomes a major concern. A seminal study has long recognized the links between public perceptions of political legitimacy and general compliance behaviours (Tyler, 1990, 1994). It found that where people perceive political authorities as acting within bounds, they are more inclined to obey the law, and vice versa. Legitimacy in this sense is a ‘psychological property’ associated with an authority or institution that causes one to see it as ‘appropriate, proper, and just’ and to willingly obey its rules (Jackson et al., 2012). Such voluntary compliance is essential for stable governance. For example, scholars have found a positive correlation between political trust and citizen obligations such as tax compliance and return of census forms (Dalton, 2008; Scholz and Lubell, 1998). On the other hand, in the face of an untrusting public and a culture of non-compliance, government may seek to enforce the law through coercion (Marien and Hooghe, 2011).
Ascertaining the relationship between political trust and support for law compliance is significant not only in theory but also in practice. For example, young people’s poor evaluations of Hong Kong’s electoral system revealed their distrust of an institution that is implicated in the very legitimacy of the regime. The Umbrella Movement, coming on the heels of Beijing’s decision to deny Hong Kong voters the right to directly elect their leader, symbolized young people’s political aspirations as well as discontent. Having failed to effect any change through peaceful protests, some of them might think they had no choice but to use other means to confront a regime they deemed illegitimate. That saw the rising popularity of some young radicals who emerged after the Umbrella Movement and became a force to be reckoned with in the 2016 Legislative Council Elections. For example, two legislators-elect, in a show of defiance, used derogatory terms against China during the oath-taking ceremony that led to an NPCSC interpretation of the Basic Law, followed by a court ruling that disqualified them from office (Cheung et al., 2016). This latest sign of Chinese interference into Hong Kong’s electoral affairs antagonized even more young localists resulting in yet another clash with the police (Lim, 2017). The same fate subsequently befell another localist, Nathan Law, the youngest legislator ever elected in Hong Kong in 2016 at age 23, when his seat was retrospectively revoked following a court decision in line with that NPCSC Basic law interpretation. In a sign of escalating suppression on his fledgling political party, Demosisto (that he co-founded with iconic activist Joshua Wong), a fellow member was barred from running for his vacant seat on the grounds of the party’s alleged ‘separatist’ stance (Wong, 2018).
The shrinking civic space amid an increasingly restless generation poses a challenge to governance. Past surveys found that Hong Kong people not only showed stronger disapproval to authoritarianism than most Asian states, by 2007, they had also expressed stronger support for democratic values than many Asian electoral democracies, behind only Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (Ma, 2011). The Umbrella Movement and the subsequent social unrest revealed that increased state coercion could not tame the ever-increasing demand for democratic accountability symbolized by fair and free elections. Data from the 2015 survey are a testament to the growing political discontent of Hong Kong’s young people. The resulting decline in respect for political authorities could only pose more problems for governance.
Positive Views About the Court and Civil Liberties amid Rising Challenges
Young people, on the other hand, generally see the judicial system in a favourable light. While younger respondents in the 2015 survey gave significantly lower scores to D1 (integrity of legal and judicial systems) and D3 (protection of fundamental rights) compared to older ones, their mean scores for both dimensions were still close to 4 (Figures 1 and 3). These findings are consistent with the tremendous respect the court has always enjoyed in Hong Kong (Chan, 2007; Cheng, 2018), as well as the high degree of freedom Hong Kong people have enjoyed which enables them, for example, to join the annual June 4th commemoration (which is banned in other parts of China) as well as countless demonstrations from which the title ‘A city of protests’ derived (Dapiran, 2017). Nevertheless, the recent trajectory, as evidenced by NPCSC’s 2016 Basic Law interpretation to disqualify elected legislators Beijing deemed unfavourable, Chinese leaders’ open displeasure at the HKSAR’s failure to pass the ‘long-overdue’ national security law (Mai, 2019), and the invocation of a colonial-era emergency law to ban face masks at the height of the anti-government movement in 2019, casts a pall over Hong Kong’s judicial independence and civil liberties.
In an ominous development, the court has been dragged into the growing conflict between citizens and law enforcement. It began with alleged police misconduct a few weeks into the Umbrella Movement, where live footage showed seven police officers allegedly assaulting a restrained protester in ‘a dark corner’ away from the main protest site (Kaiman and Weaver, 2014). Then in November 2014, video footage emerged of a police superintendent indiscriminately hitting people with his baton at another protest site. Not only did such displays of high-handedness shock the community but delays in formally charging the officers concerned and the Complaints Against Police Office’s initial rejection of a civil complaint against the superintendent also eroded people’s trust in the police (Leung, 2016). An opinion poll conducted in July 2015, for example, showed that the mean score of public trust in the force saw a downward trajectory since the beginning of the Umbrella Movement (Cheung, 2015). More notably, people were becoming more polarized in their views about the police, signalling an increasingly split society. What did not bode well for Hong Kong’s rule of law was that, when a non-Chinese judge subsequently sentenced the seven police officers upon their conviction for assault, he soon became the subject of verbal abuse – and allegedly threats – from a band of pro-Beijing groups (Ng, 2017). That was followed by suggestions from some Chinese legal scholars and politicians that Hong Kong should stop hiring foreign judges because they do not understand the nuances underlying ‘One country’ and the Basic Law (Lee, 2017) – echoing a controversial 2014 State Council White Paper on the Implementation of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ which stated, among other things, that Hong Kong judges should be patriotic and understand the Basic Law correctly (Information Office of the State Council, 2014). Against this backdrop, as much as the public believe in the courts’ ability in upholding due process, the independence of Hong Kong’s judicial system cannot be taken for granted.
Conclusion
Data from the 2015 survey revealed a wide gap between older and younger people in their evaluations of Hong Kong’s major legal and political institutions. Although remaining fairly positive about the court and civil liberties, younger respondents have given significantly lower scores to all the three specific dimensions of the rule of law. Most alarming is their assessment of the electoral system which yielded the lowest mean score. These findings reflected young people’s discontent with a government born of an allegedly ‘corrupt’ electoral system, as discussed above. That the Umbrella Movement failed to achieve universal suffrage only alienated them further. Subsequent confrontations between young protesters and the police, to a certain extent, proved that procedural unfairness and perceptions of illegitimacy might reduce people’s incentive to comply with the law. The situation in Hong Kong is exacerbated by the growing popularity of localism, perceived encroachments by Beijing and shrinking political space especially for young people. As long as the democratic deficit remains, many young people may continue to resist policies that apparently favour Beijing at the expense of Hong Kong. The widespread unrest erupting in the summer of 2019, that plunged Hong Kong into its worst political crisis since its return to Chinese rule in 1997, is one of the latest signs of this worrying trend. With more people ready to defy the law in the face of what they see as increasing government suppression, more turbulent times may lie head.
The quantitative nature of this study does not allow us to ask the respondents to explain the reasons behind their responses. For instance, although our data revealed that age and place of birth are both significant variables in predicting the three specific dimensions of the rule of law, we are unable to investigate how differences in life experience between Hong Kong and Mainland China might have affected those findings. The fact that previous studies on perceptions of the rule of law in Hong Kong seldom explored the differences between older and younger people means we are not in a position to compare the findings of the present study with those of past studies, or to examine whether the observed differences between older and younger adults have changed over the years or whether major political events, such as the Umbrella Movement and the Fish-ball Revolution, have had any effects on those differences.
For future studies, researchers may consider adopting both interviews and quantitative surveys for insight about the respondents’ different life experiences and ideologies, and how they might have shaped individuals’ perceptions of the rule of law in Hong Kong. Longitudinal studies may be carried out to keep track of the changes on the ways the older and younger generation groups perceive the rule of law. It is especially important where political conflicts in recent years have exposed the ideological schism between older and younger people, leading to animus and intergenerational conflicts (Chan, 2014; Leung et al., 2017). The situation may get worse before it gets better as young people see little hope of a democratic Hong Kong but continued marginalization of young activists from politics.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their meticulous reading of the manuscript and very helpful comments. All errors remain their own.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study is based on data from the Rule of Law and Legal Culture Project funded by General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (2013–2016). It also received support from the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, The Education University of Hong Kong (Special Project 2018–2019).
