China Doesn’t Know How to Govern Hong Kong

With the vocal hubristic trumpeting of China’s prowess and might, it is easy to forget that Hong Kong is still China’s richest and freest city. There is a complex interplay between the free market economy created under the British – which led to Hong Kong’s position as a trusted market and gateway into not only China, but Asia in general – and the wealth that has streamed into the city due to those structures. China continually seeks to emulate this success by creating artificial and heavily propped up cities such as Shanghai; however, the very essence of a free market economy means that there can be no absolute control by one entity. This extends to the general relationship with Hong Kong.

For China, this is an inconvenient reality, especially after the 2014 Umbrella Movement. Since the 1997 handover, Hong Kong has been seen as China’s bad child. Hong Kong and Macau were handed over by their colonial rulers, the United Kingdom and Portugal, respectively. While Macau came home willingly and embraced China, Hong Kong was rebellious, but successful.

In June 2014, the day after the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, the Chinese central government released a white paper on Hong Kong. It stated, “The high degree of autonomy of the HKSAR [Hong Kong Special Administrative Region] is not an inherent power, but one that comes solely from authorization by the central leadership.”

The paper was meant to serve two purposes, as a warning to the people of Hong Kong to accept the undeniable rule by China, and also a warning to “foreign influences” that sought to undermine the Chinese government. It was a heavy handed, but not unfamiliar Chinese tactic; one that would prove ineffective on the people and media of Hong Kong. Within three months of the white paper, and after a series of events that showed an increased level of meddling in Hong Kong’s affairs, over 100,000 people took to the streets of the central business districts of Hong Kong in protest. The Umbrella Movement, as it came to be known, would last for 79 days and focus on the demand for true universal suffrage. It was a turning point for the people of Hong Kong and their political participation, police relations, and their broader views on China.

The event demonstrated to the people of Hong Kong that the Chinese government was unswerving in its bid for absolute control. It was an unfamiliar situation to both the central government and to the people of Hong Kong. Unlike other similar instances of dissension on the mainland, there was a sense of “us” and “the other” for the people of Hong Kong; the years under colonial rule had created a culture distinct from that of the mainland. To the people of Hong Kong, the central government was the foreign influence, more so than the British, under whose Westminster-style governance Hong Kong had flourished.

China has always understood that dissent needs to be extinguished at the very outset in order to keep things under control. Its communist roots mean that it knows and fears the collective will of the people, but it is also within this communist construct that it has been able to contain the spread of dissent by authoritarian control of news and information. But Beijing has underestimated Hong Kong’s unique, and very different, operating environment.

China has been seemingly slow to comprehend that a free media exists in the city. During the protests China had no control; it could not censor communications and it could not shut down telecommunications networks. Partially this was because to do so would risk it being instantly shamed in the global media, thereby raising questions over China’s ability to function as a truly international player; but also because it simply didn’t have the authority over private enterprises.

Nevertheless, in the two years after the Umbrella Movement, the Chinese government under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, who is considered the most powerful leader of the country in the past 40 years, has further clamped down on dissenting voices at home and abroad. This has been executed through the use of traditional tactics such as house arrests and public prosecutions in kangaroo courts, but Beijing has also engaged in extraterritorial kidnappings. None has been more public than the kidnapping of five Hong Kong-based booksellers. What was meant to be a veiled threat became a blindingly obvious overreach of power by the central government, and one that further outraged the people of Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent, the international community. In the context of Hong Kong, it was another demonstration of China’s otherness, and made the government look like hypocrites in their complete disregard for the rule of law, a term that was used heavily and repetitively during and in the aftermath of the protests. Xi has also made a point of controlling the media in particular, making the rounds to China’s semi-public news outlets demanding they acquiesce first and foremost to the government.

Increasingly too, China has taken to the use of proxies to influence global affairs. Instead of interjecting directly to further its own agenda, China now seems to exert influence via foreign governments it has significant influence over. This was most recently demonstrated when Thai authorities detained Joshua Wong, the former student leader of the Umbrella Movement and now a political activist, at Bangkok airport. Wong was in Thailand to deliver a speech on democracy on the 40th anniversary of a deadly government crackdown. He was sent back to Hong Kong the same day. There has been no clear explanation for his 12-hour detention, but Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was quoted as saying that “officials in China have requested to take Wong back. It’s Chinese officials’ business.” Two days later, the justice minister of Hong Kong said that a Thai junta representative issued a statement saying that there were no foreign influences in the decision; however this alleged junta statement was proved to precede the Thai Prime Minister’s comments, rather than being a correction.

It is in this sort of arbitrary application of the rule of law – outward lies and bumbling miscommunications – that concern the people of Hong Kong. The events since the 2014 Umbrella Movement have people asking: “Does the government truly care about the people of Hong Kong?”

In the recent Legislative Council elections in September, Hong Kong saw the largest turnout in the history of elections in the city. While these elections were not for the chief executive, the highest office in Hong Kong, they were the first significant elections since the protests. People turned out in droves, with some polling booths remaining open until 2:00 am the next morning to accommodate the five-hour queues. In the aftermath, pro-Beijing parties suffered several losses including the significant majority, and perhaps most devastatingly for the central government, the election saw the rise of a younger and more vocal localist movement calling for self-determination.

The central government has been observing the winds of opinion in Hong Kong. Government representatives have taken unprecedented steps to consult pan-democratic figures to gauge the current mood. Beijing has also not signaled any support for their man in Hong Kong, incumbent Chief Executive CY Leung. Leung has made indications that he wants to run for the top post again, and China has no reason not to support the person they appointed for the job, as that would suggest they made a mistake in their selection. But Leung is a divisive figure and deeply unpopular. It appears that China is reluctantly coming to the realization that it cannot own a free market nor has it been able to silence free speech; it seems now that China may be willing to entertain the collective voices of the city.

Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region with a unique and identifiable culture, equally proud and aware of its outward differences to the mainland. The city provides the Chinese central government with a unique opportunity to rule not with an iron fist, but a tender hand. But to what extent will China welcome back the prodigal child?