Will Hong Kong “take a knee” to Beijing? Has it done so already? Is it already under the tyrants jackboot? Are we done for?
Or will we confound? As we’ve done for the 23 years since Fortune magazine wrote us off with the cover story, “The Death of Hong Kong”?
Since I live here I’m going to take this position: we will confound.
To do so, we need Beijing to implement the new Security Law with a light hand. That’s a big ask, to be sure.
But then consider that they took a long time to get to where we are. They didn’t immediately react to the violence in the streets last year, didn’t react to the explicit anti-Beijing rhetoric, didn’t react to the destruction of mainland businesses, didn’t react to the demonising of mainlanders (who Hongkongers called “locusts”). They didn’t roll in the tanks, or release troops from their barracks, as many had predicted (and as the British had done during the 1960s riots), or as some had even hoped for (so that Beijing could be demonised even more). And when Beijing did act, it was to implement a Security Law which is required under the Basic Law of Hong Kong, but which our local government had failed to do in the 23 years since the handover.
Many times China has said it wants to maintains the “One Country Two Systems” policy, but this gets drowned out in the anti-China rhetoric. Many times China has said it wants to carry OCTS past 2047. We should all want this. We should all support this line from Beijing. This is what we should be fighting for. To continue our very real freedoms past the OCTS timeline of 2047.
Instead we took to the streets. Even when the main aim of cancelling the proposed Extradition Law was achieved, we continued protesting, became ever more violent, morphed into the “Five Demands, not one less” and trashed our streets to that end.. Despite six months of violence, almost exclusively on the protesters’ side, only one person was killed and that by a protester throwing a brick which hit an old man, an innocent bystander, on the head and killed him. (In this way, at least, the Hong Kong protests need be differentiated from the word-wide protests then and since…)
These Five Demands grew out of the firm, widespread but unchallenged belief that Beijing was “interfering” in Hong Kong’s affairs, and that their interference was increasing, that it was a “continuous encroachment”. No evidence was ever presented for this alleged interference. Nor was there any recognition that Hong Kong is, in fact and in law, a part of China and that Beijing does have legitimate powers in areas such as foreign affairs and defence. And after all, why should every other country — Britain, the US, the EU and Australia prominent among them — feel free to comment ad nauseam on Hong Kong affairs, but Beijing not?
As for the “Beijing Interference” since 1997, what was it? Mentioned incessantly, but never specified, what does it amount to?
Having lived here before and ever since the handover in 1997, I can list the following, without going to Google:
National People’s Congress “interpretations” of Hong Kong Basic Law:
(a) I’m going to guess that not one in a hundred of the street protesters has any clue what the NPC even is, let alone how it fits into the Chinese political system and what those “interpretations” were all about. We have many friends here, both Chinese and foreign, who have never been to China. They’re proud of that! Hong Kong students are notorious for not wanting to visit the mainland, let alone work there. Their ignorance of matters mainland is profound. And hence of the NPC.
(b) The interpretations were sought by the Hong Kong government. I recall at the time that Beijing hinted it would “rather not”. But our local government, scared of a particular hot potato, insisted and asked Beijing for interpretation of the BL. One issue, iirc, was about whether mainland women giving birth to children in Hong Kong could claim residency here. Google-pedia will have more.
I’ll classify this one as: legitimate if unwilling involvement by Beijing, in several local issues at the behest of the HK government. But hardly insidious interference or “ongoing encroachment “.
Kidnapping booksellers: a bit of a bummer, this one. An own-goal really. Some mainland thugs, we don’t quite know who, kidnapped several Hong Kong-based booksellers who sold volumes the Communist Party didn’t like: ones about Xi Jinping’s family’s vast wealth, for example. After a public self-criticism on Chinese TV, they returned to HK. There are some indications that this was an unauthorised “black-op” and that the perpetrators were punished.
Either way, I’ll sure put this one in the “should’na done that” category. Nasty and unnecessary. But hardly a pattern.
Simplified characters: this is an odd one, that I didn’t realise at the time, around 2012, was so loaded. In fact I got into debates in the SCMP letters pages. I argued that if I — an adult foreigner — could learn both simplified characters (as on the mainland) and traditional unsimplified characters (as in Hong Kong and Taiwan), surely local Chinese could learn simplified characters. It’s just not that hard.
What I didn’t realise was that many locals saw the increasing use of simplified characters in Hong Kong as a sign of “Chinese interference”. It’s silly. Silly, but a fact.
I classify this in the category of: paranoia, tinged with localist bigotry.
Immigration officials at the HK end of the fast train to China: this is another one where I thought “huh?” The depth of feeling in Hong Kong was obvious, but why? The issue was that the Hong Kong government had agreed to the idea — perhaps even initiated it — that mainland customs and immigration officials should be based at the Kowloon station, the beginning of the High Speed train to the mainland. To me this seemed sensible and convenient. You could board the train here in Hong Kong, get all the paperwork done and enjoy the rest of the trip to wherever in China with no more red tape. Great! And I did it in 2019, in a train trip to Jiangxi. But to many here in HK, especially in the pan-Dem opposition, this was yet another erosion of HK autonomy and “Beijing interference”.
As above, I classify this in the category of: paranoia, tinged with localist bigotry.
So there you have it. Not much interference over 23 years. But that’s what the west glommed onto: that the protests are brave freedom fighters resisting the “ongoing encroachment” of Beijing, an alleged “steady erosion” of HK autonomy.
Whereas that narrative didn’t stack up before, it does now with the new Security Law, which has some very troubling provisions, especially its extraterritorial reach. The very bitter irony is that this was brought about by the very protests that were against a then mythical interference. Had the local government got its act together and passed our own security legislation, we wouldn’t have any of this now direct interference.
Still, some commenters are positive about the Security Law, with all its faults, and I hope they’re right. For example David Dodwell: ‘Why National Security Law won’t t be the death of Hong Kong’. And both our stock market and property prices are positive. If that continues and Beijing does amaze by using a light hand, then we shall confound!
Or will we confound? As we’ve done for the 23 years since Fortune magazine wrote us off with the cover story, “The Death of Hong Kong”?
Since I live here I’m going to take this position: we will confound.
To do so, we need Beijing to implement the new Security Law with a light hand. That’s a big ask, to be sure.
But then consider that they took a long time to get to where we are. They didn’t immediately react to the violence in the streets last year, didn’t react to the explicit anti-Beijing rhetoric, didn’t react to the destruction of mainland businesses, didn’t react to the demonising of mainlanders (who Hongkongers called “locusts”). They didn’t roll in the tanks, or release troops from their barracks, as many had predicted (and as the British had done during the 1960s riots), or as some had even hoped for (so that Beijing could be demonised even more). And when Beijing did act, it was to implement a Security Law which is required under the Basic Law of Hong Kong, but which our local government had failed to do in the 23 years since the handover.
Many times China has said it wants to maintains the “One Country Two Systems” policy, but this gets drowned out in the anti-China rhetoric. Many times China has said it wants to carry OCTS past 2047. We should all want this. We should all support this line from Beijing. This is what we should be fighting for. To continue our very real freedoms past the OCTS timeline of 2047.
Instead we took to the streets. Even when the main aim of cancelling the proposed Extradition Law was achieved, we continued protesting, became ever more violent, morphed into the “Five Demands, not one less” and trashed our streets to that end.. Despite six months of violence, almost exclusively on the protesters’ side, only one person was killed and that by a protester throwing a brick which hit an old man, an innocent bystander, on the head and killed him. (In this way, at least, the Hong Kong protests need be differentiated from the word-wide protests then and since…)
These Five Demands grew out of the firm, widespread but unchallenged belief that Beijing was “interfering” in Hong Kong’s affairs, and that their interference was increasing, that it was a “continuous encroachment”. No evidence was ever presented for this alleged interference. Nor was there any recognition that Hong Kong is, in fact and in law, a part of China and that Beijing does have legitimate powers in areas such as foreign affairs and defence. And after all, why should every other country — Britain, the US, the EU and Australia prominent among them — feel free to comment ad nauseam on Hong Kong affairs, but Beijing not?
As for the “Beijing Interference” since 1997, what was it? Mentioned incessantly, but never specified, what does it amount to?
Having lived here before and ever since the handover in 1997, I can list the following, without going to Google:
National People’s Congress “interpretations” of Hong Kong Basic Law:
(a) I’m going to guess that not one in a hundred of the street protesters has any clue what the NPC even is, let alone how it fits into the Chinese political system and what those “interpretations” were all about. We have many friends here, both Chinese and foreign, who have never been to China. They’re proud of that! Hong Kong students are notorious for not wanting to visit the mainland, let alone work there. Their ignorance of matters mainland is profound. And hence of the NPC.
(b) The interpretations were sought by the Hong Kong government. I recall at the time that Beijing hinted it would “rather not”. But our local government, scared of a particular hot potato, insisted and asked Beijing for interpretation of the BL. One issue, iirc, was about whether mainland women giving birth to children in Hong Kong could claim residency here. Google-pedia will have more.
I’ll classify this one as: legitimate if unwilling involvement by Beijing, in several local issues at the behest of the HK government. But hardly insidious interference or “ongoing encroachment “.
Kidnapping booksellers: a bit of a bummer, this one. An own-goal really. Some mainland thugs, we don’t quite know who, kidnapped several Hong Kong-based booksellers who sold volumes the Communist Party didn’t like: ones about Xi Jinping’s family’s vast wealth, for example. After a public self-criticism on Chinese TV, they returned to HK. There are some indications that this was an unauthorised “black-op” and that the perpetrators were punished.
Either way, I’ll sure put this one in the “should’na done that” category. Nasty and unnecessary. But hardly a pattern.
Simplified characters: this is an odd one, that I didn’t realise at the time, around 2012, was so loaded. In fact I got into debates in the SCMP letters pages. I argued that if I — an adult foreigner — could learn both simplified characters (as on the mainland) and traditional unsimplified characters (as in Hong Kong and Taiwan), surely local Chinese could learn simplified characters. It’s just not that hard.
What I didn’t realise was that many locals saw the increasing use of simplified characters in Hong Kong as a sign of “Chinese interference”. It’s silly. Silly, but a fact.
I classify this in the category of: paranoia, tinged with localist bigotry.
Immigration officials at the HK end of the fast train to China: this is another one where I thought “huh?” The depth of feeling in Hong Kong was obvious, but why? The issue was that the Hong Kong government had agreed to the idea — perhaps even initiated it — that mainland customs and immigration officials should be based at the Kowloon station, the beginning of the High Speed train to the mainland. To me this seemed sensible and convenient. You could board the train here in Hong Kong, get all the paperwork done and enjoy the rest of the trip to wherever in China with no more red tape. Great! And I did it in 2019, in a train trip to Jiangxi. But to many here in HK, especially in the pan-Dem opposition, this was yet another erosion of HK autonomy and “Beijing interference”.
As above, I classify this in the category of: paranoia, tinged with localist bigotry.
So there you have it. Not much interference over 23 years. But that’s what the west glommed onto: that the protests are brave freedom fighters resisting the “ongoing encroachment” of Beijing, an alleged “steady erosion” of HK autonomy.
Whereas that narrative didn’t stack up before, it does now with the new Security Law, which has some very troubling provisions, especially its extraterritorial reach. The very bitter irony is that this was brought about by the very protests that were against a then mythical interference. Had the local government got its act together and passed our own security legislation, we wouldn’t have any of this now direct interference.
Still, some commenters are positive about the Security Law, with all its faults, and I hope they’re right. For example David Dodwell: ‘Why National Security Law won’t t be the death of Hong Kong’. And both our stock market and property prices are positive. If that continues and Beijing does amaze by using a light hand, then we shall confound!
