Seeing the theatrics going on in the USA leads me to muse on “Democracy” and what it means in Hong Kong terms. Is there a template into which every model must fit, or is it a broad concept which encompasses not only its technical structure but also the values it seeks to uphold ?
Structurally, one would say that Hong Kong is pretty “democratic”. Half the legislature is constituted by persons elected into office on the basis of geographical constituencies, and half by functional constituencies. Within the functional constituencies, the process of selecting a representative is by a one-person-one-vote process.
In 1985 I stood as a candidate in the Legal functional constituency and campaigned in the way a candidate would in any other part of the world: though I didn’t kiss babies. I came second to Martin Lee who went on to form the Democratic Party.
As regards election for appointment of the Chief Executive, it is a two-stage process. There is first a Selection Committee broadly representative of Hong Kong society as follows: 25% comprising the industrial, commercial and financial sectors; 25% comprising the professions; 25% labour (including trade unions), grass-roots, religious and other sectors; 25% HK deputies to the National Peoples’ Congress and representatives of HK members of the National Committee of the CPP’s Consultative Conference. The total membership is 1,200. From the Selection Committee comes 2 or 3 candidates who then go on to the second stage: election by universal suffrage of the candidate put forward for appointment by Beijing.
The government certainly tries to uphold liberal civic values: lawfulness and transparency in government ( in HK there is a powerful ICAC: with far more powers than those of the ICACs in Australia ), respect for the law, freedom of the press, religion, education, expression, movement, inviolability of the home, etc.
What impact the new national security law will have on those values is at present unknown: it will depend to a large extent on how the courts process the prosecutions.
This is Democracy with Hong Kong characteristics, I suppose.
Is a nation governed by a system where a person who loses a nation-wide election for the presidency by 3 million popular votes 4 years ago could still assume that office a Democracy ? One would say, a Democracy with US characteristics.
Or should one just say, with Thomas Carlyle: ”For forms of government let fools contest, whatever governs best is best”.
Enough of these musings.
I much enjoyed the latest issue of Pearl: in particular Cavan Hogue’s article “The elephant and the mouse”. I thought his comments on the Prime Minister’s reaction ( or overreaction ) to the twitter photoshop were spot-on. It should have been dismissed at the prime ministerial level as a low-down jibe. The unassailable position is that Australia has done that which no other nation has dared tackle: to seriously look into war crimes allegedly committed by its own soldiers.
It is an undisputable fact that, for many centuries, the Middle Kingdom was the dominant force in the SE Asia-Pacific region, with many regional powers voluntarily paying tribute to the Son of Heaven: and President Xi Jinping is basically reasserting that ancient role, and including “newly discovered Australia” into its embrace.
Do you recall how Lord Macartney dealt with analogous situation in 1793 ? After much parley with the Imperial ministers it was arranged that Lord Macartney would “kowtow” by going down on one knee, but would have a portrait of King George III on the floor in front of him, ( the portrait unseen by Emperor Qianlong ) and thus satisfy the rituals of paying tribute to the Son of Heaven …. Not that he got anything out of all that. He was sent away by the Emperor with the message ringing in his ears: “I set no value on objects strange or ingenious” said Emperor Qianlong. As it turned out, he was the last of the Qing Dynasty Emperors who was able to maintain that attitude of distant hauteur.
Emperor Qianlong ended his letter by saying:
“……I do not forget the lonely remoteness of your island, cut off from the world by intervening wastes of sea, nor do I overlook your excusable ignorance of the usages of our Celestial Empire”.
So much for Britons regarding China as in the “Far East” …..
Henry Litton CBE, GBM is a retired permanent Judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. Litton founded the Hong Kong Law Journal in 1971. In 2019, Litton published the book ‘Is the Hong Kong Judiciary Sleepwalking to 2047’ in which he criticised numerous aspects of Hong Kong’s legal system, focusing particularly on the misuse of judicial reviews in recent years.
Comments
6 responses to “What is meant by ‘democracy’ in Hong Kong.”
It was never a democracy under the British, it was a colony of the British Empire, then came the 99 year lease which ended in 1997. No one got to vote in any form of democracy under British rule.
So it was OK for the British to avoid democracy during the entire time of occupation, but not for the PRC when they simply took back Chinese land after it had been taken (stolen) by British under duress after the very unfair first Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking in 1842.
After 150 years of colonial rule in HK where politics and dissent are not tolerated despite school lessons on Democracy and its practice at a local city level, the British has left behind a dry powder pack for the new HK administration, intentionally or otherwise, which have been shown to be ignitable bya foreign spark. Henry Little & commentators George Mendle and Meeple have described current HK well. Shenzhen a Hakka fishing villiage 70 years ago, now transformed into a metropolis of 13.44 million (US$31,000 GDP) compared to HK (popn 7/45 GDP49,354) is fast catching up to HK and can replace HK as a fast growning financial centre. Both cities are culturally similar but HK has the ‘old British” luggage & RE typcoons; which could prove to be difficult to overcome. Political stablility must be maintained in order for prosperity to begin again in HK. Violent protests, property damage and foreign interference goes a long way to suppress HK gowth and future. When peace on the street reurns and the HKSAR government talks to her people, things will recover swiftly.
“… President Xi Jinping is basically reasserting that ancient role, and including “newly discovered Australia” into its embrace.” Now that would be very scary, for most Australians!
“… President Xi Jinping is basically reasserting that ancient role, and including “newly discovered Australia” into its embrace.”
Very ridiculous remarks. Nowadays, the etiquette of Chinese people meeting national leaders is only a polite handshake. In the eyes of some people who pretend to know China well, China is trying to restore the bloated empire of ancient time.
It’s just that the end of the article is quite exciting. The British continue ignorance China and the Far East from 200 years ago to now. But the Chinese have learned more positive things from history: to be humble and understand any civilization that they don’t understand. hope you could understand.
“For forms of Government let fools contest. Whate’er is best administered is best.” ― Alexander Pope
Well, if you spend a little less time on the Western definition of Democracy by procedure and focus on the actual OUTCOME then clearly HK is not democratic despite being supposedly 2nd in the CATO Freedom Index higher than US or Australia. I guess it’s free if you are rich but you can only live in a dog box if you are not.
You can’t blame China because she’s got her hands tied by the 1 country 2 systems agreement Deng struck with Thatcher back in the day. However, HK does serve as a useful failure case of unbridled capitalism so all is not lost. Remember China inherited a system set up by the Brits.
HK due to it’s small size, is completely controlled by Real Estate tycoons at the expense of common people. When the 1st Chief Executive of Hong Kong Tung Chee-hwa wanted to set up an IT development zone, it got taken over by the Li Ka-shing and turned into another RE bonanza. Everytime HK government wants to expand public housing and infrastructure, the sh.t kicking bought-and-paid-for so called “pro democracy” politicians protest as it will lower house prices. Hang on isn’t high house prices the problem in the first place, sounds awfully familiar.
Shenzhen has completely taken over HK’s place since then in terms of technology and future development while HK is now merely a financial centre to the West as it surrendered its future to these RE tycoons. It’s importance will keep diminishing along with importance of the Western financial system as China is setting up her own rules. However, you won’t find RE tycoons blaming themselves. What happened in 2019 was classic CIA style colour revolution that tends to exploit existing social discord to overturn governments and install US friendly ones but it ultimately failed. It’s never about democratic outcomes for the common people.
The easiest way to visualise the stark contrast between Shenzhen and HK can be summarised in the photo below. Guess which side is HK and which side is Shenzhen.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/bf/47/41bf47ec38d5f101ed4bc981942a6538.jpg