HK Observer | Stalemate

The present stalemate over political reform has been long coming. Tiananmen Square in 1989 was probably the most important turning point. Others were the failure in 1993–4 by then Governor Chris Patten and Beijing to reach an agreement on the post-1997 political elections; and when the subsequent legislative assembly elections in 1995 were not recognized by China. There followed in 1997 a Beijing-selected provisional legislature, and then the massive anti-national security law march in 2003. The Scholarism movement, which began in 2011, is notable for politically motivating students in Hong Kong, and for triggering a second volte-face by the government in response to the protest. Finally there was the decision in the summer of 2014 to implement much stricter than expected electoral rules for the next chief executive election, and this led to a much bigger than anticipated Occupy Central, soon taken over by student groups.
The 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests and subsequent tragic events were likely the most significant turning point, because when hopes of political reform in China were dashed – as a more hardline conservative leadership assumed power – so, too, was liberal-leaning Hong Kong set on a collision course with Beijing. The fallout continues to this day, with deep suspicion and distrust on both sides of the border and among opposing camps here too. This is epitomized by the sharp divides over the government’s proposed political reform package. However, why was no compromise reached back in 1993–4? The main obstacle to compromise was the great level of mutual mistrust between the Chinese leadership and the people of Hong Kong and their leader Patten, who had been given a free hand by then British Prime Minister John Major in coming up with a more democratic electoral system. That saw the Democratic Party grab the lion’s share of votes in the first one-man one-vote district board elections, and then in LegCo elections; this happened partly out of belief in the mindset of “Let Hong Kong show the way and China will follow.” That looks naive in retrospect, but in the immediate years after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, many thought that democracy would inevitably come to China, and that they would, of course, look to where it was evolving on Chinese soil – to Hong Kong.
By 1992, with the Basic Law already passed by the legislature in China two years earlier, negotiations were in full swing as the implementations of the Basic Law were put into practice. However, with mounting public opinion in the UK that more safeguards for Hong Kong’s freedoms and citizens must be ensured, a newly elected John Major decided to replace a diplomat governor here with a heavyweight politician, Patten, simultaneously partly sidelining the Foreign Office.
Patten planned a substantially democratized district and LegCo elections in the hope that both would be part of “through train beyond 1997,” but Beijing would not agree. Patten went ahead with his plans and China went ahead with its own, having appointed its own post-1997 assembly. The people had voted, but it was clear that politicians calling for democratic reform on the mainland would not be allowed power in the legislature. The stage was set for an even deeper and lasting mistrust that still dogs relations between Beijing, the pan-democrats and their supporters.
By 2003, the well-meaning but ineffectual Chief Executive, Tung Chee-wah, was ushering through Article 23 security legislation, which provoked a protest of 500,000 and the bill’s subsequent withdrawal. A similar reaction came when there was an attempt to institutionalize national education, which was seen as CCP propaganda. While on two occasions popular protests succeeded, the third attempt – that of the pro-political reform movement Occupy Central – failed to move either the government or Beijing, even if it did mobilize students on a previously unimaginable scale.
The political system is not working and the reform package is unlikely to be passed. Stalemate.