September 29, 2016
Alex Hofford/European Pressphoto Agency
I returned to my native Hong Kong in 1998 after more than two decades of working as a reporter in New York City. I was hired to start a journalism program at the University of Hong Kong, my alma mater, and train a new generation of reporters to tell the stories of Hong Kong, China and Asia. It was a big and timely beat.
Hong Kong was handed over to China after 156 years of British rule 10 months before I returned. In an ingenious stroke designed to reassure the international community and Hong Kong people, China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, devised the “one country, two systems” arrangement: Beijing would assume sovereignty, but Hong Kong would keep its rule of law and capitalist ways for 50 years.
The political rules were written to ensure that pro-Beijing forces would control the local legislature, known as LegCo, and Hong Kongers were willing to accept an imperfect system in the hope that a more accountable government would evolve. Many were heartened in 1998 when, in the first post-handover LegCo election, the Democratic Party won 13 of the 50 seats and became the dominant opposition.
As I caught up with friends from my college days, I shared their excitement about the city’s future. Many veteran activists cherished the idea that cosmopolitan Hong Kong, where people enjoyed freedom of expression, could inspire democratic change in mainland China.
Fast forward to 2016. Another LegCo election took place earlier this month, four days after I retired as director of the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong. In a rebuke of Beijing, voters elected six candidates who ran on platforms calling for self-determination. The new legislators, all under age 40, see “one country, two systems” as a sham. They are taunting Beijing, which regards such talk as treasonous.
The election results portend greater political stasis and polarization in Hong Kong. The calls for independence, as unlikely and impractical as that is, reflect growing resentment for how Beijing and its local representatives have governed the city and intervened in its affairs. Discontent is especially high among the youth.
People are also angry about skyrocketing rents, a sharp disparity between rich and poor, and naked cronyism. Hong Kong’s inequality rating is among the worst in the world. In 2014, The Economist put the city at the top of a global index of cronyism.
The repression on the mainland, particularly since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, is another source of worry for Hong Kongers. Lawyers, journalists, activists and other dissidents have been arrested and paraded on state television to confess their “crimes.” And the long arm of Beijing seems to have extended to Hong Kong: Local booksellers were kidnapped and interrogated on the mainland about publications that Beijing found offensive. Beijing is also gaining more control over city institutions like the news media.
To many Hong Kongers, the result of the Umbrella Movement two years ago was the last straw. For 79 days, thousands of people camped out in the streets asking for broader representation and genuine universal suffrage. They received no concessions from Beijing.
But the LegCo insurgents and their supporters in the general public are increasingly fighting a lonely battle as powerful forces around the world are scrambling to appease Beijing. In recent decades, the fortunes of the mainland and Hong Kong have turned.
China, once Hong Kong’s poor cousin, has become the world’s second largest economy. Multinationals bend over backward to please Beijing and gain access to the world’s largest consumer market. When China’s top internet regulator visited Mark Zuckerberg in Silicon Valley, the Facebook chief made sure to display on his desk a book of President Xi Jinping’s collected speeches. Bloomberg self-censored an exposé of one of China’s richest men in order to protect its data terminal business in China. Harvard University later set up a research center in Shanghai with major funding from the same tycoon.
China has become an indispensable player in world politics, and sometimes throws its weight around, as in the South China Sea. It is also building an alternative world order: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the One Belt, One Road plan to network more than 60 countries spanning vast stretches of Asia, the Middle East and Europe are China-led efforts to offer balance to the United States.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong has lost some of its luster. Once the gateway to China, it now contends with Shanghai as the mainland’s top financial center. Its container port is losing ground to Shenzhen. Its economy is more dependent on the mainland.
Although it’s the young rebels who caught international attention in recent years, many Hong Kongers believe the city needs to seek accommodation with Beijing. These include people who appreciate how China has lifted hundreds of millions from poverty, while modernizing the country. There are also many Hong Kongers who enjoy growing personal, professional and business ties with China. In a recent poll, more than half of Hong Kong residents felt somewhat or strongly against the calls for independence.
The fact is that the fate of Hong Kong has always been linked to China, an integral part of its destiny because of history, culture and geography.
Independence is not an option for Hong Kong.
Like the rest of the world, Hong Kong people will have to cope with the reality of a rising and more powerful China.
My students will have to be prepared to tell stories of Hong Kong that have become darker and more complicated. They will have to navigate the tangled relations among Hong Kong, mainland China and the rest of the world. As citizens, they will have to struggle with the fact that Hong Kong might just be a pawn in the big global game among corporate interests and the great powers.
Yuen Ying Chan is an honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong and a distinguished fellow at Civic Exchange, an independent public policy think tank in Hong Kong.
