HK Observer | None of their business?

Robert Carroll

With many students turning away from the city’s two big annual marches this year — the June 4 vigil to mark the anniversary of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square crackdown, and the July 1 pro-democracy march – a new page has been turned in local political history, marking a radical shift. The decision not to attend the gatherings was not from lack of motivation or interest. Instead, it was a realization that the aims of the marches were not necessarily the way forward and that, since Occupy Central, mobilizations have failed to soften Beijing’s stance regarding political reform; and indeed may well have been counter-productive in that respect. Neither has the June 4 march had any success in altering the verdict on Tiananmen Square — a consistently declared aim of the organizers. However, many students, rather than backpedalling in the face of China’s resistance to their demands, are becoming more radicalized.
A positive for Beijing/establishment forces is that many students believe that another aim of the marches, that of democratizing China, is none of their business. This opinion has become the official stance of one of the most prestigious unions, that of the University of Hong Kong. While that should be music to the ears of Chinese and Hong Kong government mandarins, its raison d’être will be far from welcome. It’s not that these students don’t want to rock the boat in China, but many must realize that fighting for democracy and regime change on the mainland is a lost cause, and so they instead want to concentrate on issues and political development inside Hong Kong. What will stick in the throats of Beijing officials and their representatives here is that concentrating on the territory goes hand in hand with insisting on a local identity that is separate from China. According to regular academic polls, fewer and fewer young locals are Chinese first and Hong Kongers second. Worse, many now reject having a Chinese identity altogether. Worse still is the appearance of the absolutely taboo word, as far as Beijing is concerned – “(sovereign) independence” – in student leaders’ interviews and articles in student publications, while still espoused by a small minority. This does not bode well at all for relations with the stridently nationalistic central government, which places frequent emphasis on the need for citizens to be patriotic.
As the old guard of pan-democrat leaders have failed to get enough concessions from Beijing on democratic reform to satisfy many of the students, the leaders of these students feel obliged to step into the fold, and we should expect to see many younger faces in the upcoming legislative council election. The question is whether they, or younger politicians, can establish relations and a rapport with the central authorities and, more importantly, can manage to wrest concessions on political reform in the coming years when changes take place. Can they do any better than the current leaders of the democracy movement, many of whom have been at the forefront since the 1990s? What would the tactics and strategies be to move a stern and highly suspicious, not to mention ever more powerful at home and internationally? Should these younger leaders be more or less confrontational? Neither of these paths has had much success; although the latter has received fewer opportunities given the political climates and mutual distrust between Beijing and pan-democrats.
Veteran pan-democrats defend their failure to reach an agreement with the Chinese government by saying that they don’t negotiate and instead are sticking to their original positions, only giving far too little and too few concessions. Their critics say that the pan democrats have not made full use of the exchange opportunities that were offered, and have often shut the door on meetings by demanding the end of one-party rule in China, and democracy for the mainland. If the new generation of politicians emerging from the Umbrella/Occupy movement wants to have a real impact, a thorough look back and a realistic appraisal of the history of political reform talks, as well as innovative means, will be needed to get results.