HONG KONG — Even by Hong Kong standards, where a half-dozen demonstrations occur daily, the protest over a government budget here this spring was remarkably rowdy.
An estimated 10,000 people showed up, barricades were overturned, police let fly with pepper spray, injuring an 8-year-old, and more than 110 people were rounded up and arrested.
It’s not the scene one normally associates with Hong Kong, a stunning capital of commerce, with a forest of skyscrapers carved into a mountainside overlooking the South China Sea.
On the surface, this city of 7 million sparkles and hums.
But beneath that surface, there’s trouble brewing: a public housing crisis, a core of frustrated youth, a growing gap between rich and poor and the ceding of ever more power to Beijing have all sent temperatures rising here. Now, Hong Kong’s masters in Beijing want them to chill.
As the Communist Party of China approaches a critical transition of power next year, from one administration to the next, the last thing it wants is Hong Kong unrest spilling over into China’s mainland.
In fact, just 48 hours before the March 6 budget protest, in a closed-door session in Beijing, Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping — who will become China’s most powerful man next year — signalled to delegates at annual meetings that Beijing’s patience with Hong Kong was being tested.
At issue was Hong Kong’s unique “one country, two systems” mode of governance — guaranteed for 50 years when Britain handed the colony back to China amid pomp and ceremony in 1997.
Under that agreement, Hong Kongers enjoy freedoms of which mainland Chinese can only dream. The Falun Gong sect, for example, hated and despised as an “evil cult” by authorities in Beijing, flourishes here.
The works of dissident Chinese writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, banned on the Chinese mainland where he’s serving 11 years in jail, are sold openly here. Newspaper editorials can sharply criticize the Chinese government — unheard of on the mainland.
And Hong Kong lawyers, who in China might be disappeared and tortured like Beijing lawyer Gao Zhisheng, operate freely as much-admired citizens under Hong Kong’s Rule of Law.
But on Friday, March 4, Xi bluntly told Hong Kong delegates that there was too much emphasis now on “two systems” — and not enough on “one country.”
“He said people should have a clear understanding,” Professor Lau Siu-kai told the South China Morning Post after the Beijing meeting. “People should not regard ‘two systems’ as more important than ‘one country’ and ignore the country’s ruling power.” Still, if Xi’s Friday warning was meant to chill Sunday’s planned protest, it failed.
On that Sunday, thousands of people hit the streets — and scores of police fanned out to greet them. Worse, from Beijing’s point of view, some protestors were carrying jasmine flowers and tried to plant them at the door of government offices. Jasmine is the potent symbol of riots rocking authoritarian governments across North Africa and the Middle East.
Beijing is terrified that something similar could happen in China and those fears, coupled with tensions about the approaching transition of power, have triggered the biggest crackdown against rights activists in China since 1989. So far the government has successfully blocked attempts to mount jasmine-style protests on the mainland.
Yet here in Hong Kong, activists were getting away with it in plain view under the unique “one country, two systems” model. The activists carrying the jasmine were arrested and carted off, their flowers left behind.
But analysts here say the Chinese government will do everything in its power to prevent them from taking root. As Xi Jinping prepares to take over as secretary general of the Communist party in 2012, China will not allow anything to destabilize the country — and that includes Hong Kong.
“Xi wanted to send a clear message,” says Michael DeGolyer, a Hong Kong-based professor of government and international studies, “that it doesn’t matter if you’re in Hong Kong or Tibet or Xinjiang or anywhere else in China — it’s ‘one country’ first. And if you can’t maintain order by internal local forces, we’ll step in. That’s the implied message.”
The People’s Liberation Army units that replaced the British garrison at the 1997 handover have never moved out of their barracks and perhaps never will.
But when pushed, Hong Kongers can push back.
In 2003, when Beijing was determined to pass Article 23 of Hong Kong’s constitutional Basic Law — an article that would effectively make free political expression treasonous — 500,000 people poured into central Hong Kong.
The scene shocked Beijing and plans were rolled back.
Still, Xi must demonstrate power and control, says DeGolyer, who leads a think tank called the Hong Kong Transition Project and has lived and taught here for more than 20 years. “He cannot be seen to be less nationalist or firm-handed than (Chinese President) Hu Jintao.”
For much of the past year DeGolyer has been warning that serious problems have been bubbling beneath Hong Kong’s surface — especially the growing gap between rich and poor — problems that could “explode” into the very kind of instability Beijing fears.
Hong Kong-born Hung Ho-fung, a professor at Indiana University, agrees, calling his hometown “a dormant volcano” that could now be awakening.
“For the young especially, the future is bleak and it’s not just about jobs,” he says.
There is a mounting sense of loss about Hong Kong’s identity and way of life, he notes, “a fear of Hong Kong becoming homogenized with mainland society.”
Today, increasing numbers of mainland children attend Hong Kong schools.
Rising numbers of mainland mothers flood Hong Kong hospitals to give birth to their children here.
And when poison milk scandals erupt in China, mainland smugglers have raided Hong Kong shelves creating shortages.
In sum, despite the 50-year agreement to maintain Hong Kong’s way of life, citizens here increasingly feel they are no longer in control of their city.
“Hong Kong people no longer respect their local government because everybody knows it has to listen to what Beijing tells it to do,” says Hung.
Rising poverty is also a mounting problem, running the risk of creating a permanent underclass within the shining city.
There are “dirt poor” people in Hong Kong, says DeGolyer, and their numbers are growing. Now, with a deepening housing crisis afoot, a “hate the rich” mentality is taking hold, aimed at the tight cartel of tycoons who run Hong Kong’s economy.
Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, the richest man in China, said recently that he was “speechless” in the face of animosity now directed toward Hong Kong developers.
And yet Hong Kong remains not a democracy, but a society with enviable democratic rights.
People can exercise their freedoms of speech, assembly, worship and the vigorous practise of law here without fear. On the mainland, such practices could land people in jails or labour camps for years.
Emily Lau is proud of all of the freedoms in Hong Kong, she says. But she’s not sure how long they will last.
“We really don’t know,” she observes.
Seated in Hong Kong’s tiny, perfect Legislative Council building — a remnant of British rule, where members have offices but little real power — Lau is vice-chairperson of Hong Kong’s Democratic party and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, which directs Hong Kong’s current chief executive, Donald Tsang.
Lau often goes to local schools, she says, to remind young students that they must remain vigilant and protect Hong Kong’s freedoms.
“You have to exercise your rights,” she tells them. “You can’t take anything for granted.”
Last week Chinese authorities took steps to counter her proselytizing.
Inspired no doubt by Xi’s call for intensified “youth work,” Hong Kong authorities announced a new “national education” program that will likely be introduced into Hong Kong’s schools next year, aimed at promoting Chinese patriotism among Hong Kong children.
The program will be compulsory.
Lau worries it will amount to “brainwashing.”
It’s not a worry without foundation. After all, mainland children do not learn the truth of what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989, the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution, nor Mao Zedong’s mismanagement of the Great Leap Forward that resulted in tens of millions of Chinese deaths.
Lau also laments the relentless erosion of free speech in Hong Kong today, not by any law, she points out, but by “self-censorship.” People no longer speak their minds in Hong Kong, out of fear of Beijing, she says.
“It’s very obvious in the media,” Lau notes. “But it’s not confined there. It’s in the business community, among professionals, among politicians and in academia because many of them have to go to the mainland and they don’t want to be stopped.”
Everyone needs permission to get into mainland China and those who criticize it can be denied.
Respected political analyst Willy Lam has also watched free speech here wither.
In the business community, self-censorship started early, he says.
“For medium to big players, their market is in China, so they can’t be seen to be supportive of democracy because they might be blacklisted; they might not get the contract. So almost without exception the great majority of businessmen are ‘pro-China,’ because they have to ingratiate themselves with Chinese officials to get business done in China.”
Lam says Beijing also seems especially concerned about Hong Kong’s democratic community.
“They (the Chinese government) feel the pro-democracy people, legislators, NGOs and the so-called post-’80s generation here, might be reeling out of control.”
Beijing fears there may be “collusion” between pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and those on the mainland.
These fears are “exaggerated,” says Lam. “But they have them, and they’re determined to prevent this conspiracy theory from happening.”
Fears of Hong Kong becoming a base of subversion date back to the days when democrats here supported the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing. Chinese authorities have always worried that Hong Kong could become the “weak link in its authoritarian rule,” says Hung.
But could Beijing crush Hong Kong dissent with force?
Hung doubts it.
The preservation of Hong Kong as a safe and secure international financial centre is just too important, he says.
But he expects more confrontation ahead, as activists continue to test the limits of dissent under “one country, two systems.”
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