Beyond the Barricades

On December 1, Voice of America reported that “hundreds of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters clashed with police,” but “hundreds of riot police armed with pepper spray and batons pushed back, injuring several protesters. .  .  . Scores of volunteer medics attended to numerous injured, some who lay unconscious and others with blood streaming from head gashes. Police said at least 40 arrests were made.” One could almost hear the strains from Les Misérables: Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? / Somewhere beyond the barricade, is there a world you long to see?

So what happens for Hong Kong when tomorrow comes? What of the pledges in the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 and the constitutional guarantees contained in the Basic Law that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region would continue “to enjoy a high degree of autonomy except for foreign and defence affairs. It shall be allowed to have executive, legislative and independent judicial power”? Beijing gave its response when, according to a BBC report, the Chinese embassy informed a group of British MPs seeking to conduct an inquiry into the situation in the former crown colony that they would be denied entry into Hong Kong.

A major Beijing propaganda theme in attempting to deny the democratic aspirations of the people of Hong Kong is that outside agitators, chiefly from the United Kingdom and the United States, are behind the wave of unrest. China’s government mouthpiece, the Global Times, editorialized earlier this fall that “the more [extremists] count on support from Washington and London, the more absolutely they will fail.” President Obama was put on the defensive on Hong Kong by his Chinese hosts at the APEC summit. In a joint press conference with Xi Jinping, Obama declared, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, “On the issue of Hong Kong, I was unequivocal in saying to President Xi that the United States has no involvement in fostering the protest that took place there.”

Xi responded with a stern warning that “Hong Kong affairs are exclusively China’s internal affair, and foreign countries should not interfere in those affairs in any form or fashion.” Still, as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel pointed out in congressional testimony on December 3, the United States continues to have extensive commercial interests in Hong Kong, with more than 1,400 American companies investing there and with Hong Kong alone still representing the ninth-largest market for U.S. exports.  But these economic ties alone cannot resolve political questions.

The political uncertainty hanging over Hong Kong is, of course, nothing new. In December 2004, while en route to the city, veteran congressman Henry Hyde succinctly summarized its ongoing dilemma. “The danger,” he observed, “is that Hong Kong will end up being just another Chinese city.” Hyde expanded on his concerns in a speech there. He observed: “Whether or not the people of Hong Kong and the government in Beijing wish or even recognize it, the unique status and relative freedom of this former crown colony have made it the preeminent testing ground of the possibilities of China’s political evolution, the most difficult and important test being whether greater freedom and democracy can be made compatible with the regime’s insistence on order and stability.”

Erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms under the “one country, two systems” formula was already well underway by the time of Hyde’s speech. One area of almost immediate decline was press freedom. In May 2002, while on his way to appear at a congressional hearing on North Korea, veteran journalist Jasper Becker was unceremoniously fired as the Beijing bureau chief of Hong Kong’s premier English-language daily, the South China Morning Post. In Becker’s account, as reported in the Washington Post, a process of self-censorship was being used to curb Hong Kong’s once-freewheeling press. The editorial policy of Becker’s former paper was determined to be secondary to the mainland Chinese investments of the newspaper’s owner. Not only was Becker let go, but one of its editors, Willy Lam, an expert on mainland China, was shown the door as well. Lam was replaced by an editor from Beijing’s official mouthpiece, China Daily.

Almost simultaneously, the New York Times reported on April 16, 2002, that prominent Chinese prison labor critic and U.S. citizen Harry Wu had been denied entry into Hong Kong—raising serious doubts over the purported independence of Hong Kong immigration procedures as guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” formula. These had been affirmed in the Hong Kong Policy Act passed by Congress in 1992—an act recognizing Hong Kong as a separate customs and trade area with resulting special considerations, considerations the new Congress may wish to review in light of recent events. Hong Kong immigration has subsequently denied entry for political reasons to Tiananmen Square activist Wuer Kaixi, Falun Gong practitioners from New Zealand and Taiwan, and leaders of Taiwan’s Sunflower movement.

The resulting bumpy ride in Hong Kong does not fit well with Chinese president Xi Jinping’s self-proclaimed vision of the “China Dream.” Nor does it provide a clear path for Beijing’s ultimate goal of reuniting the so-called renegade province of Taiwan with the mainland, following in the footsteps of the former British crown colony. According to the Los Angeles Times, Xi had pointed this fall to Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” as the model for ending the political separation of Taiwan. The Times went on to quote Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council as pointing out “that more than 70 percent of Taiwanese people” consider Xi’s suggestion “unfit” for consideration. 

Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, cut to the crux of the situation by pointing out in a November 1 interview with the New York Times, “If mainland China can practice democracy in Hong Kong or if mainland China itself can become more democratic, then we can shorten the psychological distance between people from two sides of the Taiwan Strait.” Ma, the Times noted, “risked antagonizing Beijing .  .  . by voicing support for protesters in Hong Kong and for greater democracy in mainland China.”

The current crisis exposes Beijing’s ongoing dilemma: how to achieve a balance between protecting a unique status for Hong Kong and maintaining overall control? As Hong Kong’s economy has become progressively less important to the mainland, Beijing’s pledge to Margaret Thatcher in 1984 that Hong Kong would be able to maintain its capitalist system and unique way of life for 50 years after reversion—until 2047—may seem of less importance to Communist party leaders. And preventing cultural and political “pollution” from penetrating across the frontier from Hong Kong into mainland China may become paramount to regime stability. 

As a result, Xi Jinping, modeling himself after former leader Deng Xiaoping, seems to have decided that he also can brook no rebelliousness from pesky students. Xi, in fact, appears to have won the latest round, as three of the protest leaders, with a pro-government crowd jeering, turned themselves in on December 3 at a local police station for taking part in “unauthorized assembly.” Hyde’s fear that Hong Kong will become “just another Chinese city” is looking sadly prophetic.

Dennis P. Halpin served at the U.S. embassy in Beijing at the time of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from British rule. He is a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, and a consultant to the Poblete Analysis Group.