Democracy debate fuels tensions in Hong Kong
Play
There is talk in Hong Kong of violence, of people fleeing and companies making contingency plans to move out in the face of a threatened civil disobedience movement. There is also talk of patriotism and of treachery to the nation.
Mainly rhetoric so far. But temperatures are clearly rising as Hong Kong begins fraught discussions about what its future democracy – which Beijing has promised to grant by 2017 – should look like. The issue has stirred up a political storm here, since Beijing firmly drew a line in the sand two weeks ago, saying that those who “confront the central government” will not be allowed to become the city’s chief executive.
Qiao Xiaoyang, chairman of the Law Committee under the National People’s Congress, the Chinese legislature, laid out the prerequisite as he spoke on how Hong Kong’s universal suffrage system will be designed. Chief executive candidates must also be “patriots” who ai guo, ai gang (love the country, love Hong Kong).
But what does it mean to “confront” Beijing? In a speech in Shenzhen, Qiao sought to make a distinction between confrontation and criticism.
“Confrontation does not refer to criticising Beijing,” he said. “Criticism is allowed as long as it is for the good of the country.”
But those who “seek to overthrow the Communist Party leadership or change the nation’s socialist system” – principles enshrined in China’s constitution – will be deemed treacherous to the country’s interests. Qiao singled out two pan-Democrat leaders, Albert Ho and Audrey Eu, both of whom have publicly opposed one-party rule in mainland China, as those who would be unsuitable to be chief executive.
Ho scoffs at this. He has ripped into Beijing for being a “one-party dictatorship” but said: “We have no might to overthrow the government; how can we be accused of such ambitions when our powers and abilities are so limited?”
Such slicing and dicing of semantics – on both sides – will have to be part of an arduous process of finding room for compromise. It will not be easy, given that both the pan-Democrats and Beijing have dug in with their “baseline demands” – the former want a no-holds-barred election and the latter wants to bar those it deems confrontational.
But if democracy – whatever its form – in Hong Kong is to be realised, compromise has to be found. Beijing holds the power. But the pan-Democrats are not without their chips either. The latter have a two-stage plan. They have formed a coalition that intends to conduct opinion polls and use the results to formulate a proposed model for the universal suffrage process by the end of the year.
“Terms like democracy and universal suffrage are vague, and so we will focus on the nomination process – and find out the percentage of people who can or cannot accept its various forms,” says academic Joseph Cheng, convenor of the alliance. This, he says, “demonstrates our sincerity to negotiate with the central government”.
If Beijing refuses, the pan-Democrats will galvanise the public to join in an Occupy Central sit-in next year, paralysing the financial heart of the city. Beijing, with military resources, can react harshly, but the repercussions are clear.
On the other side, Professor Zhang Dinghuai, deputy director of the Contemporary Chinese Politics Research Institute at Shenzhen University, calls on pan-Democrats to “express ideas in a rational way, and not think that they can scold the government at will”.
“It’s okay to criticise, but not to attack. If you say China needs to reform and democratise, sure, but if, day in, day out, you are scolding the government for being corrupt, of course it wouldn’t speak with you. There’s a matter of face.”
He adds: “It’s about compromise, but the pan-Democrats don’t know how to compromise.”
This is where moderates within the camp, who meet every Wednesday, will have their work cut out for them – working with radicals who will be more hardline, as well as those sceptical of Beijing’s trustworthiness in cutting deals. It won’t be easy, acknowledges Dr Cheng. But they will work at it, he says. “Ultimately, we still have optimism and idealism that what we propose will be good for Hong Kong, good for China’s policy towards Taiwan, and good for the promotion of reforms in China.”
