The Odyssey - Democracy in Hong Kong

[Randy W]

Extradition Bill protest coverage split off to a separate topic -

 

see The Extradition Bill Protests

[Randy W]

Now that 40% of the MTR stations have been trashed . . .

 

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam to announce formal withdrawal of the extradition bill, meeting at least one key demand of protesters

• City’s leader finally agrees to one of protesters’ five demands after weeks of insisting bill would not be withdrawn
• Lam is to meet pro-establishment allies this afternoon to tell them of her decision

[Greg.D.]

I guess protection from spurious mainland extraditions and abductions was more valuable to hong kongers than 40% of MTR stations.

[Randy W]

Some reading material, if you're interested (or even if you're not)

 

 

from the SCMP

Hong Kong is irreplaceable for China. That’s why the PLA hasn’t rolled in yet

• Hong Kong is still China’s critical gateway to multinational capital, and mainland banks, now worth US$1.2 trillion, hold overseas assets concentrated in the city. China simply can’t afford to destroy Hong Kong’s commercial freedoms

 

 

 

Hong Kong has six freedoms other cities in China don’t have. Four of these, like in the European Union, are freedom of movement of goods, people, services and capital. The others are the rule of law (as interpreted by a judiciary independent of the government) and freedom of speech. Destroy these freedoms and you would indeed destroy Hong Kong’s special role.

 

Money flows freely across our borders – and into the mainland, which remains largely closed to protect the yuan. In the last nine years (according to my friends at Natixis Asia Research), Hong Kong accounted for 73 per cent of the mainland’s overseas initial public offerings and 60 per cent of its overseas bonds.

No less than 64 per cent of the mainland’s inward foreign direct investment and 65 per cent of its outward foreign direct investment was booked in Hong Kong. Chinese banks, which are now worth US$1.2 trillion, hold overseas assets concentrated in Hong Kong.

and the US News and World Report

This one is highly exaggerated, but makes some good points - e.g., Beijing hasn't "taken over" ANYTHING in Hong Kong, but uses "soft power" to effect massive changes. They are simply delivering, in response to the protests, more of what is being protested, based on their interpretation that THEY are the "One country".

'1 Country, 2 Systems' Faces Its Gravest Crisis

 

Beijing's moves on corporate governance and its criticism of the education system in Hong Kong raise worries about the future of the territory's most essential constitutional principle.

 

Beijing is seizing control of the management of corporations in order to ensure collaboration with state security. The most public example is Beijing directing the forced resignation of Rupert Hogg, CEO of Cathay Pacific Airways – one of Hong Kong's most prominent companies. The initial announcement was directed by President Xi and broadcast by CCTV, the state-operated television station, prior to the company's own announcement. There had been no reported disagreements between Hogg and the corporate directors that might have led to the separation. One attributed reason for Hogg's abrupt abdication was his refusal to cooperate by turning over names of employees who were sympathetic to the demonstrators.

. . .

Commentary from the state-run Xinhua News Agency has blamed the failure of Hong Kong's educational system for not including enough patriotic education and proper Chinese history education, claiming it is a "pathogen" behind the protests. Xinhua reports that Hong Kong's regulation over teachers and textbooks have been far too lax for too long, and that some "radical" teachers have been "distorting Chinese history" and encouraging students to join the protests. Xinhua has also reported that the local Hong Kong government has done nothing to review the textbooks or publish uniform textbooks, when it should have confidently done so.

 

 

Edited September 7, 2019 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

It's all that CRAP they taught you in school . . .

from China Daily on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/chinadaily/videos/530402527731679/

China Daily

3 hrs ·

Quote

School students are a major group in the illegal assemblies in #HongKong over the past two months. This has caused great concern, and people are deeply relfcting on Hong Kong's education.

 

Edited June 25, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Earlier this year, a (Hong Kong) bill was proposed but never passed to make it illegal to "disrespect" the Chinese national anthem.

Wikipedia said:

In response to the concerns and call for a white bill and public consultation, Chief Executive Carrie Lam dismissed it by stating that "I do not understand why one has to insist on the term 'public consultation'," calling the term only a "label". She also insisted the proposed bill only targets people who deliberately insult the national anthem and the residents not to worry about it.

South China Morning Post

30 mins ·

Quote

Soccer fans in support of anti-government protesters booed the Chinese national anthem and sang the protest’s new rallying song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’.

Full story: sc.mp/c6cb8

https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/1340140882829398/

Edited June 25, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

 

China's explanation?

 

from the China Law Blog

 

China Imposes Blackout on Hong Kong Bookseller’s Revelations

 

the Global Times editorial followed a predictable line — at least initially. It warned that although Hong Kong is governed by different laws from the rest of China, “all different forces in Hong Kong must respect the political system in China. It’s not right to take actions which may harm the state security and the political stability in mainland China.”

 

. . .

 

But by later on Friday morning, the link to the Global Times article had been severed.

 

 

 

 

And again ?? from the SCMP

 

Taiwanese man missing after entering Hong Kong ‘being investigated by mainland’

• Mainland authorities say they are investigating Lee Meng-chu for ‘activities that endanger state security’

 

Chinese military vehicles parked by Shenzhen Bay Stadium on August 16. Photo: AP

 

Lee entered Hong Kong on August 18, Taiwan’s government-run Central News Agency reported. He apparently sent photos to his brother and to a Taiwanese township chief showing the paramilitary troops and equipment on the Hong Kong border with mainland China, the agency said.

More to come...

 

[Randy W]

What is happening is that China is being increasingly insistent that the "One Country, two systems" and "One China" policies means the People's Republic of China.
This SCMP article explains a lot about the differences between Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau and their different degrees of answerability to Beijing.

 

China should know that Hong Kong is not Macau, and neither is Taiwan

 

• President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders need only look at the contrast between Hong Kong and Macau to see why ‘one country, two systems’ won’t work in Taiwan
• The current, albeit ambiguous, cross-strait status quo is the best-case scenario for Beijing

 

 

Portugal’s unquestioned rule over Macau was mortally wounded on December 3, 1966 – known as the “12-3 Incident” – when mainland Maoists instigated anti-government riots there as part of the Cultural Revolution.

Having already lost Goa and under serious duress fighting wars against its rebellious African colonies, Portugal decided to relinquish de facto administrative control of Macau. For the next 33 years prior to the handover, Macau was unofficially administered through business leaders and trade unions responsive to Beijing’s interests.

Hong Kong was only exposed to mainland policies after its handover in 1997 – and was naturally repulsed by Beijing’s authoritarianism.

Meanwhile, similar Maoist-inspired riots in Hong Kong in 1967 were successfully quelled by the British authorities and London continued to rule exclusively via local British governors appointed by the queen.

British occupation of Hong Kong, as ruthless as it was, had transitioned by the mid-1980s to a more representative government comprising Hongkongers.

 

 

[Randy W]

An excellent article about the REAL underlying causes of the Hong Kong unrest

 

On a timeline, Hong Kong is halfway in between British colonial rule and Chinese communism. Not a pretty place to be.

 

Beijing is making Hong Kong’s property tycoons sweat bricks – it was long overdue

• Yonden Lhatoo says the writing has been on the wall for a while, but developers who control the city’s housing market have now been put on notice that enough is enough

 

Sarcasm aside, while the anti-government and anti-Beijing protests are politically charged and driven, the underlying economic issues fuelling this uprising have always been obvious, with decades of failed housing policy at the core.

 

So it’s not surprising now to see Beijing piling pressure on our property tycoons to not only stand up and be counted in opposing all the protest chaos and violence, but also to cough up what they owe to society after so many uninterrupted decades of their unfettered monopoly, enabled by successive governments, over the city’s housing market.

And Beijing is using state media once again to call them out, demanding a metamorphosis from some of these caterpillars of the commonwealth who have munched and gorged their way to vulgar wealth while denying the unfortunates the fundamental right to have a roof over their heads and a space to rest in comfort and dignity.

 

Scathing media commentaries from across the border are now singling out unaffordable housing as a core grievance behind young people taking to the streets, and urging the Hong Kong government to ramp up land supply for homes by invoking a resumption law that would allow it to seize some of the sites that developers are hoarding.

 

“Some groups with vested interests have sought to maximise gains by obstructing the government in its bid to boost land supply, or raising the price of the land they hoarded, or by changing the land use,” the official Xinhua news agency said.

The writing was on the wall for this city’s land barons when Beijing similarly forced Cathay Pacific to start cracking down on employees taking part in illegal protests and reshuffle its top management after the airline came under severe criticism for its hands-off approach.

The same kind of pressure prompted the MTR Corporation to start closing metro stations and asking police to take action after the government-owned rail operator was accused of allowing protesters to use its network to their advantage.

Of course, there’s no glossing over a troubling aspect of this cross-border exchange and the rather awkward questions it throws up.

Is Beijing, through state media, effectively teaching the Hong Kong government how to use the means already at its disposal to start cleaning up its own mess? Is this more of the very “interference” that protesters on the streets are citing to justify all the China-bashing? Or is it a natural progression for the sovereign country to step in and restore order – even if indirectly for the time being – when the local administration seems at a complete loss as to what should be done?

 

It would be naive to assume that making our developers sweat bricks would persuade anyone to stop protesting, but it’s a long-overdue start to righting so many wrongs in this city, beginning with the basic concept of home ownership.

For now, the people are singing and they don’t want to go home. Totally understandable.

Yonden Lhatoo is the chief news editor at the Post

 

[Randy W]

Carrie Lam indeed serves "two masters" - Beijing, and the propertied elite. From the SCMP

 

The View by Janet Pau

No wonder Hongkongers are frustrated when the system is so unequal, unaffordable and uncaring

• Hong Kong’s youth and its middle class no longer believe in upward mobility and see little but more competition ahead.
• Facing economic insecurity and disconnect from older generations, they turn to protests as a way of belonging. A new social contract is needed to restore faith

Any coalition in Hong Kong looking to forge a way forward must acknowledge two key sentiments. First, people need a sense of community. The protest movement gives people a sense of community and like-mindedness that is missing when they feel like cogs in a machine, competing in a race to nowhere.

They want Hong Kong’s prosperity to be shared and a sense that they are valued and their voices are heard. Political elites have largely neglected the primal group identity that protesters have adopted, which US author Amy Chua calls “tribal politics”.

Second, people don’t want to be forced into a hierarchy of identities. Younger, more educated and digitally connected Hongkongers have more in common with their global peers than with older-generation Hongkongers. Many do not feel nostalgic about what Hong Kong used to be.

They prefer Hong Kong to be culturally comparable to other global cities. They are therefore sceptical about rhetoric from the government and other elites calling for restoring, rebuilding or returning to anything. All this talk implies going back to the old ways. A more constructive approach would be to strive for innovation, inclusion and individual initiative.

 

 

Edited September 18, 2019 by Randy W
forgot the link (see edit history)

[Randy W]

For comparison with the 1967 Communist-inspired riots - from the NY Times (hopefully, you'll have free access - if not, this is most of it)

 

Carrie Lam's "leadership" in the present crisis is non-existant to comatose.

 

In 1967, Hong Kong’s Protesters Were Communist Sympathizers

Demonstrators waved Mao Zedong’s “little red book” outside the residence of Hong Kong’s colonial governor. Credit Bettman Archive, via Getty Images

 

A protester threw a trash can at police officers in June 1967.CreditKeystone/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images

 

Demonstrators running from the police in the Kowloon area in May 1967.CreditCo Rentmeester/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images

 

In 1967, a labor dispute at a plastic flower factory led to a series of protests and lethal riots in Hong Kong, which was then a British colony. By the time it was over, more than 50 people were dead.

 

. . .

 

Longtime democracy advocates in Hong Kong warn that rising violence could turn the public against the protesters’ cause, which is precisely what happened in North Point in 1967.

But the differences between then and now may be more striking. One is that the demonstrators of 1967 were railing not against China, but against the British. And the Chinese Communist Party, which denounces the current unrest, was then quietly supporting it.

. . .

Workers became angry over wage cuts and a ban on taking leave, and mass firings enraged them further . . .

 

Those sympathizers were deeply influenced by Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, the decade of upheaval on the Chinese mainland that began in 1966 and had dramatic, often violent effects across the country. But the unrest in Hong Kong also reflected years of frustration over local problems, including a lack of social mobility.

 

. . .

 

Hong Kong banned foreign political parties in 1949. But according to “A Modern History of Hong Kong,” a 2004 book by Steve Tsang, the 1967 unrest was clandestinely organized and directed by the Hong Kong and Macao Work Committee, the local branch of mainland China’s Communist Party.

 

. . .

 

Fifty-one people were killed in the riots, including 10 police officers, according to an official history of the Hong Kong police. More than 800 people were injured.

A key turning point came on Aug. 20, when two children were killed in North Point by a bomb that rioters had apparently planted on the street. Connie Lo, a filmmaker who directed a recent documentary about the riots, said that turned much of the Hong Kong public against the rioters’ anticolonial cause.

. . .

As the protests dragged on, the colonial riot police — described by Mr. Tsang as “organized, equipped, well-trained and efficient” — controlled crowds with baton charges, the “very occasional” use of firearms and the “fairly widespread” use of tear gas.

. . .

The British authorities eventually defused the crisis, in part by introducing substantial political reforms. One was the expansion of a system for public feedback on the colonial government’s policies, which had previously been introduced on a limited scale.

Denis Bray, a former colonial official in Hong Kong, later wrote in a memoir that while the riots were largely an “overflow” of the Cultural Revolution, they also highlighted “a serious lack of communication between the government and ordinary people in town.”

. . .

Lessons for today

The current unrest in Hong Kong was prompted by opposition to a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China, and which Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, said early this month that she would formally withdraw.

Mrs. Lam, a career civil servant, apparently did not foresee how much public fury that proposal would unleash.

One parallel between the Hong Kong governments of 1967 and today is that both were “hopelessly out of touch” with public sentiment before the civil disobedience began, said Jason Wordie, a local historian and newspaper columnist.

“But of course, a key difference then as opposed to now is that you had people who were in charge who were actually in charge, and who were prepared to take charge,” he added. A key question this summer has been how much authority Mrs. Lam has, and whether China — which has ruled Hong Kong as a semiautonomous territory since Britain handed it back in 1997 — is making the real decisions.

 

[Greg.D.]

<p>Carrie Lam indeed serves "two masters" - Beijing, and the propertied elite. From the SCMP The View by Janet PauNo wonder Hongkongers are frustrated when the system is so unequal, unaffordable and uncaring

• Hong Kong’s youth and its middle class no longer believe in upward mobility and see little but more competition ahead.
• Facing economic insecurity and disconnect from older generations, they turn to protests as a way of belonging. A new social contract is needed to restore faith

Any coalition in Hong Kong looking to forge a way forward must acknowledge two key sentiments. ....

Is this article intentionally provocative? Is this Jack Ma "owned" newspaper trying to stir the pot and spread frustration knowing that Hong Kongers don't control their democratic system? I mean, they can't nominate who they want to stand in elections and the judiciary is controlled by long strings from Beijing.

 

So, there is no hope for a "new social contract". The 1% who own the property must feel that they have an understanding with the mainland power players who will be moving in and guarantee the status quo. Follow the money.

[Randy W]

 

<p>Carrie Lam indeed serves "two masters" - Beijing, and the propertied elite. From the SCMP The View by Janet PauNo wonder Hongkongers are frustrated when the system is so unequal, unaffordable and uncaring

• Hong Kong’s youth and its middle class no longer believe in upward mobility and see little but more competition ahead.
• Facing economic insecurity and disconnect from older generations, they turn to protests as a way of belonging. A new social contract is needed to restore faith

Any coalition in Hong Kong looking to forge a way forward must acknowledge two key sentiments. ....

Is this article intentionally provocative? Is this Jack Ma "owned" newspaper trying to stir the pot and spread frustration knowing that Hong Kongers don't control their democratic system? I mean, they can't nominate who they want to stand in elections and the judiciary is controlled by long strings from Beijing.

 

So, there is no hope for a "new social contract". The 1% who own the property must feel that they have an understanding with the mainland power players who will be moving in and guarantee the status quo. Follow the money.

 

 

 

Look at the 1967 riots - it's a carryover from the colonial days. And read the article about Beijing making the property tycoons "sweat bricks".

 

To my way of thinking, it's simply sad that Great Britain sold Hong Kong down the river without ever having established a legacy of free, democratically elected, and REPRESENTATIVE government - and now expects a Communist government to do exactly that.

[Randy W]

from the SCMP

 

Violence blew the lid off Hong Kong’s simmering discontent. It’s about time

• While peaceful mass protests went nowhere, violent unrest got Beijing to acknowledge the problem of unaffordable housing in the city, forced some concessions from Carrie Lam, and spurred overdue soul-searching
• But, when the protests ebb, will Beijing further tighten its grip on the city?

 

 

 

Could you have imagined the staunchly pro-government Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong buying a front-page newspaper ad demanding that the government resume rural land held by tycoons to build public housing? The DAB had in the past rejected such use of government power, to appease the tycoons. Could you have imagined state media likewise demanding the government seize tycoon-owned farmland? They did that last week.

What does all this tell you? It tells you violent protests work. In early June, an estimated one million people marched peacefully against Lam’s extradition bill after she dismissed concerns by the legal and business sectors. She responded to the peaceful protest by pressing ahead with the bill.

Then the violence started. Protesters stormed the Legislative Council, defaced the national emblem at Beijing’s liaison office, threw a national flag into the harbour, hurled petrol bombs at police, and trashed MTR stations.

The difference between Occupy and extradition protests? Violence

It was only after the violence that Lam’s “let them eat cake” arrogance gave way to humility. First, she suspended the extradition bill, then declared it dead, and finally withdrew it. Violence forced her to back down, not mass peaceful protests.

 

[Randy W]

How Britain planned for the current situation all the way back in 1981. Macau's citizens are eligible to emigrate to Portugal.

 

from the SCMP

 

Maybe Britain or the US will come to Hong Kong’s rescue. And pigs might fly

• Britain will not reverse policy and start recognising Hong Kong BN(O) passport holders as citizens. The US will not throw open its doors to Hongkongers.
• No one is coming to our rescue. The only capital city worth visiting in a pickle is Beijing

For the second time in a fortnight, holders of British National (Overseas) Passports rally outside the British consulate in Hong Kong, on September 15, to demand the same rights as British passport holders. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

 

In 1979, then-leader Murray MacLehose became the first British-appointed governor to visit the mainland since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. He met China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Precisely what was said remains murky, except on one point: Hong Kong people should put their hearts at ease because the future would be fine. This message was duly passed on to the good citizens of Hong Kong.

Following the visit, the British government began to consider the possibility that there might be no role for the country to play in Hong Kong after 1997. It also foresaw a danger that post 1997, something might happen to cause Hongkongers to lose confidence in the territory and consider emigration.

Whitehall prepared for this contingency by introducing the British Nationality Act of 1981, which provided inter alia that with effect from January 1, 1983, residents of the various British Territories would have different residency rights. Their passports (British Dependent Territory Citizen ones for those not from the UK) would give right of abode only in the British territory from which they came. The Hong Kong-only BTDC passports were later superseded by BN(O) ones.

At one time, there were around 3.4 million people holding a BN(O) passport, but bit by bit as their uselessness became more apparent, renewals dwindled and by 2006, only around 800,000 were current. By 2017, the number had dropped further to 60,000. Most local people now carry the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passport. Which brings us to the present day, with a Conservative prime minister leading a minority government struggling with Brexit.