The Odyssey - Democracy in Hong Kong

[Randy W]

This is an ongoing topic - click here for Most Recent Post

. . . from the People's Daily. Some revealing attitudes expressed here. You can bet the people of Taiwan keep a close eye on papers like this.

 

Hong Kong political system - why go step by step?

 

Quote

. . . As the British and Hong Kong authorities had no intention of offering democracy to the general population of Hong Kong, it is generally held that Hong Kong enjoyed freedom rather than democracy and that Hong Kong residents did not have a strong sense of democracy at the time, which is one of the features of the Hong Kong society. Naturally, it is best that a society without the democratic tradition should gradually develop democracy to ensure prosperity and stability and Hong Kong's smooth return to China.

 

. . . The implementation of radical democracy might lead to great instability in Hong Kong if it sweeps through like a violent storm.

 

. . . It was demonstrated later that the reform was not so much a measure of returning power to the people of Hong Kong as one of looking to create agents after the "ignominious retreat" of the British. Currently, key opposition figures in Hong Kong maintain close contact with Britain and the U.S. They lobby for radical democracy and claim that it would develop the economy and improve standards of living, but their real intention is to disrupt Hong Kong's administration. In this sense, the gradual development of democracy encounters opposition both at home and abroad.

 

The article is edited and translated from Լרҽ۰ source: People's Daily Overseas Edition, author: Lian Jintian, a reporter of People's Daily

 

 

 

 

Go to Last Entry for most recent posts.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

. . . from the People's Daily. Some revealing attitudes expressed here. You can bet the people of Taiwan keep a close eye on papers like this.

 

Hong Kong political system - why go step by step?

 

 

 

700,000 votes cast in Occupy Central poll, but ballot 'still not credible'

Many voters said they had turned out to the polls due to Beijing's white paper on Hong Kong

 

(you may need to register to be able to see the full article)

 

More than 700,000 ballots have been cast in an unofficial poll on Hong Kong's electoral reform that a former top mainland official in charge of the city's affairs dismissed yesterday as unrepresentative.

The turnout for the Occupy Central "referendum" was well above expectations, believed to be fuelled by a public backlash against Beijing's reassertion of its sovereignty over the city in a white paper two weeks ago.

 

But Chen Zuoer, deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office from 1998 to 2008, said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post the exercise was not a frank indicator of how residents wanted to elect their chief executive in 2017.

 

Chen also insisted that, as all three proposals shortlisted for the poll violated the Basic Law, it was illegal.

 

"The media have reported that there are dishonest elements during the process of conducting the public vote, which will result in its failure to truly reflect public opinion," he said, without elaborating on those claims.

 

Chen's comments are sure to rile pro-democracy activists, already stung by the white paper, which critics see as a heavy-handed attempt by Beijing to quash support for Occupy Central, the civil movement advocating a democratic election in 2017.

 

. . .

 

Occupy co-organiser Benny Tai Yiu-ting said Chen should beware of dismissing the poll as unlawful. "He will have to bear the responsibility if he misjudges [public sentiment] and gives Beijing the wrong advice," Tai said.

 

But Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung said the voting could "be regarded as no more than an expression of opinion by the public".

 

The poll started on the internet on Friday. By midnight, the turnout had exceeded 700,000, including 48,000 voting at 15 polling stations from 10am to 10pm yesterday. The exercise will continue until Sunday, with City University open for voting on evenings this week.

 

The Occupy poll lists three reform plans, all of which want the public to be able to nominate candidates - an idea Beijing rejects.

 

[Randy W]

An op-ed piece about Taiwan (from a Taiwan contributor) in the Global Times yesterday

 

Occupy Central won’t affect cross-Straits ties

Relatively speaking, on the Taiwan question, leaders from the mainland have gradually found ways to get along with the Taiwanese people. Beijing's attitude toward Taiwan has transformed from "tit for tat," to "wait and see," then to try to make subtle efforts.

In addition, many people are worried that Hong Kong's "referendum" by Occupy Central will have a negative influence inside Taiwan and even take the cross-Straits relationship backward. I believe that Taiwan has experienced two rounds of alternating political parties and has been making unremitting efforts to promote the transformation and consolidation of its democracy. Hong Kong's Occupy Central for universal suffrage is not a big case in Taiwan's democratic process for the Taiwanese people.

 

. . .

 

The author is a professor of the Graduate Institute of American Studies, Tamkang University based in Taipei.

 

The piece includes this statement about the current state of affairs

 

Beijing's attitudes toward Hong Kong and Taiwan are different. Hong Kong has already returned to the country and Taiwan is the target of future unification process.

 

[Randy W]

In the Wall Street Journal - a new group OPPOSING the efforts of Occupy Central

 

A Million Sign Hong Kong Petition as Democracy Fight Ratchets Up

Launched by pro-democracy activists, Occupy Central organizers are threatening to shut down the financial hub’s downtown through civil disobedience should demands for a democratic system that conforms to international norms fail to be realized. In recent months, the group has gathered momentum, sponsoring an unofficial referendum on democracy in June that involved more than 780,000 participants. To date, its civil disobedience tactics have already led to more than 500 arrests.

 

But a new group opposing Occupy Central, called the Alliance for Peace and Democracy, says it’s gathered more than 930,000 signatures since they began collecting them ten days ago on busy streets around Hong Kong. Each signature is submitted on a form that begins: “I oppose violence. I oppose Occupy Central.”

 

[Randy W]

This from the Asia Sentinel

 

‘White Terror’ Behind Hong Kong Web Closure?

It stopped dead so suddenly that stunned staffers weren’t even informed of its demise, coming to work to find the doors locked. Tsoi himself has been unreachable and, friends say, may have moved out of his home into a serviced apartment so he can’t be found.

 

When he shut down House News, however, he left this astonishing written statement on the screen where the publication had been:

 

“I fear. The current atmosphere of political struggle is extremely unsettling. A number of the democratic camp members are being stalked, smeared, and having some old stories dug out. A wave of white terror envelops this society, and I feel it. And, as a businessman who often travels up to the mainland, I have to admit every time I cross the border I would get jittery. Am I just being paranoid? That feeling is inexplicable to outsiders. But what unsettles me most is my family also feels this pressure, and they worry about me all the time ... That breaks my heart."

 

What those pressures are is unknown but the term “white terror” carries a special resonance. To Chinese and particularly Taiwanese, the term refers to a four-decade period in Taiwan in which then-dictator Chiang Kai-shek and his successors imprisoned 140,000 Taiwanese, of which perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 were executed because of their resistance to the Kuomintang regime.

 

. . .

 

Pro-Beijing newspapers and television stations have been primed to follow political figures and bombard them with questions over the money passed by Lai. Cameras have followed children of the campaign's targets as they emerged from school. Concerns are rising that the city’s Independent Commission Against Corruption will be asked to investigate, drawing out the situation for months if not years.

 

“There is a growing feeling, especially among the young, that Hong Kong's mainstream media is no longer free to represent the full diversity of perspectives within this city,” Fowler wrote in an op-ed piece in the South China Morning Post.

 

“There is too much about the sudden closure of House News that does not add up to attribute it to being merely a business decision. It is not unreasonable to conclude that, whatever the details and mechanics of the pressures that forced House to close, the level of this pressure was beyond the expectations and the ability of a man as able as Tony Tsoi.”

 

[Randy W]

The nerve of those Brits . . .

 

British lawmakers release angry letters from China urging end to Hong Kong inquiry

The full extent of China’s anger over what it sees as Britain’s meddling in Hong Kong affairs has emerged in two letters sent to British lawmakers.

 

A letter from the National People’s Congress Foreign Affairs Committee called for Britain to cancel an inquiry on Hong Kong and stated that the territory was part of China and dealt with under Chinese internal affairs.

 

“What your committee did has sent a wrong political signal to the outside world and disrupted Hong Kong’s political reform process, and will have a negative impact on the relations between our two countries,” the uncompromising letter from the NPC committee said.

 

 

[tsap seui]

I don't get it. Hong Kong belongs to China. China will institute democracy when China feels like it, not at the beck and call of those whom want to portray themselves as white masters. I'd be pissed at idiots swimming against the tide, too.

 

tsap seui

[Randy W]

Seems like it's primarily the former colonial governor, Chris Patten, who is urging the Brits to "have a dog in the fight".

 

It's Chris Patten against David Cameron on Hong Kong, not Tung Chee-hwa

 

But does Britain still have a dog in the fight? That's a question to be disputed not between Patten and Beijing, for whom he was once "a sinner of a thousand epochs" - a fact now utterly irrelevant - but between Patten and David Cameron. The British prime minister has long concluded there is little to be gained fighting China over Hong Kong and prefers to further his country's trade and commercial interests with the country - hence nary a word about the city or China's human rights when Premier Li Keqiang visited London in June to sign trade and investment deals worth £14 billion (HK$178 billion).

 

Besides being a former colonial master, Britain is also a party to the Sino-British Joint Declaration. So Patten is right that Britain has moral and treaty obligations towards Hong Kong. But it's an entirely different question whether they can be translated into any material influence. With China's economy now four times that of Britain, Beijing and Cameron have both concluded the former empire has little or no leverage at all over the rising power.

 

In effect, Patten is asking Britain to take a noble stance - that of Don Quixote.

 

[Randy W]

. . . from the People's Daily. Some revealing attitudes expressed here. You can bet the people of Taiwan keep a close eye on papers like this.

 

 

 

Two views of a meeting between Xi Jinping and a Taiwanese delegation of pro-reunification groups at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 26, 2014.

 

From the Global Times

 

Xi says no wavering in reunification

"No secessionist act will be tolerated," Xi said. "The path of Taiwan independence is unfeasible.

 

"We treat our Taiwan compatriots equally and without discrimination. We welcome anyone willing to promote peaceful cross-Strait development, whatever stance he once took."

 

Curbing secessionism is a must for ensuring the peaceful development of cross-Strait ties, he said.

 

 

. . . and the WSJ

 

Be Like Hong Kong? Taiwan Tells Beijing No Thanks.

Wu Jieh-min, a researcher at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, also slammed Mr. Xi’s suggestion, saying heavy handedness from Beijing would only fuel greater public support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and anti-China sentiment on Taiwan. “Hong Kong’s current struggle for genuine election shows China has no intention of ever carrying out the ‘one country, two systems’ model. Beijing has zero credibility in this regard,” he said.

 

Analysts in China have long described Hong Kong under “one country, two systems” as a rehearsal for a possible reunification with Taiwan. But Beijing’s insistence earlier this year that candidates for Hong Kong chief executive in the 2017 election will be selected by a panel of mostly Beijing loyalists instead of by popular vote has convinced many in both Hong Kong and Taiwan that Beijing will never tolerate genuine democracy in territory it controls.

 

. . .

 

In a statement, President Office spokeswoman Ma Wei-kuo said Mr. Ma has made clear in the past that “one country, two systems” is not a working solution to resolve the question of reunification, because unlike Hong Kong, “Taiwan is a democratic country that operates independently. We elect our own president and legislature.”

[Randy W]

Drone video of protesting in Hong Kong over Beijing's insistence of approving all candidates to be placed on the ballot

 

 

WATCH: Dramatic drone footage captures enormity of Hong Kong protests

While the video's choice of a techno-thriller sound track seems strange, the sight of these typically car-clogged streets overrun by thousands of protestors is bound to send chills up the spine of anyone who's visited Hong Kong.

 

The drone footage was captured last night and shows both protestors and riot police moving through the streets.

 

. . .

 

The Hong Kong government said in a statement today that riot police will be withdrawn from the area following heavy-handed police tactics, including tear gas and baton-charges, against protestors. According to reports, police are still scattered on the sidelines but in less severe numbers, while thousands of protestors are still swarming streets.

 

[Thomas Promise]

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6856663/hong-kong-democracy-protests-photos

[Randy W]

. . . and coverage this morning from the South China Morning Post (no, they're sleeping)

 

 

 

OCCUPY CENTRAL - THE FIRST NIGHT: Full report as events unfolded

[danb]

I don't know. Seems like some people are playing with matches ( fire). Believing in democratic type government, perhaps it would be nice to see the Hong Kongers get what they want but I don't Beijing would care for that idea. They don't like mass movements that they don't have control over and that might ignite into other problems. I believe Beijing will put a stop to this but not sure how. In some ways I sympathize with Beijing and China. She will have her hands full. If Hong Kongers get their way who will be next to ask for more freedom. Also say if Texas, California or say Montana decided that they want to just seceded from the US, how well would that be received in Washington? Would they sent in troops in in one form or another if the protests got out of hand in those states. China has gone thru a lot of changes since 1978. I think they will continue to change and evolve. Isn't Anthony Bourdain asking about Shanghai, the busiest city in China, "Is this communist China." Or something like that? Hope both sides can come to a peaceful agreement. Danb

[Randy W]

Some comments in the Global Times

 

Street movement ruins Hong Kong image

 

These activists are jeopardizing the global image of Hong Kong, and presenting the world with the turbulent face of the city.

Hong Kong is a financial and fashion hub of the world. As Chinese mainlanders, we feel sorrow over the chaos in Hong Kong on Sunday. Radical opposition forces in Hong Kong should be blamed.

US media is linking the Occupy Central movement with the Tiananmen Incident in 1989. By hyping such a groundless comparison, they attempt to mislead and stir up Hong Kong society.

China is no longer the same nation it was 25 years ago. We have accumulated experience and drawn lessons from others, which help strengthen our judgment when faced with social disorder.

The country now has more feasible approaches to deal with varied disturbances.

Recent years have witnessed many severe mass incidents, but none had the ability to disturb the thinking of society. China has tackled these incidents smoothly.

. . .

The radical activists are doomed. Opposition groups know well it's impossible to alter the decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on Hong Kong's political reform plan.

 

[Randy W]

 

Monday night

LIVE: Mood turns festive as thousands of Occupy protesters light up Hong Kong streets