Democracies die. If you lived or live in a well adjusted country where the probability of an authoritarian leader can rise in a few years and the instituitions are solid enough, this death may not be so easy to grasp. People living in such places more or less take for granted that their rights will not be arbitrarily striped. But, even so, there is always a risk that given enough time, such tragedy will happen. Those democracies slowly may fade away, turning first in semi-democracies, where authoritarism and nullification of many freedoms will be accepted under the guise of “protecting the children” or “counteract terrorism” (we all have listened such excuses before), and then one day you realise you are living under an authoritarian rule.
For Hong Kong, that never was a true democracy, the day when it will become part of a totalitarian state is already set to July 1st, 2047. But, kind of unexpected, this city-state have had a taste of limited democracy, but still something to be proud of, and it is sad to see that so quickly this place, that saw many of freedoms and rights unthinkable to anyone in China, has dived into semi-totalitarism. How could it came to be, under millions of silicon eyes and in the era of instantaneous flow of information? This is the thing I want to think along this two posts, because I already typed 8 Word pages and filled only half of the things I wanted to say, so I split in two because I can.
A brief history of Hong Kong’s beginning
As many fights and territorial disputes that lasts until today, we can put the blame on the British Empire. In 19th century, silver was the standard for the currency in “international” (many nations wasn’t formed yet) commerce, and the British spent a lot of it buying Chinese goods, including the classic tea-silk-porcelaine, but offering not so much in exchange, making much of this not so rare metal into the way of China (I know, China wasn’t a country yet, it was more of a Qing Dynasty, but let it be, let it be…), creating a trade unbalance not so favoured to the British. The stocks of silvers was decreasing in Europe while making a de facto currency in Qing’s territories. So, to counteract that, the British thought they had a really good idea: what if we grow opium in near India and sell it to the Chinese to counterbalance the trade deficit? Opium is good, is valuable, is… addicting. And then, it worked! The customers always returned to buy more (obviously), making part of the Chinese population so dependent of this drug that started to impact their own economy (drugged people don’t work), but the silver is flowing back to us, so no worries. Very clever (if you aren’t a Chinese peasant that time).
So, they fight back. Opium was made illegal, izi pizi, end of history.
Obviously not! As everyone trying to fight against drug smuggler in every fucking country since the start of the time knows, the trafficking never stops. The British ships bring opium, the Chinese smugglers, well, smuggle into the “country”. But, with low offer and high demand, prices rises, the smuggler make greater profits, and the cycle never ends. Besides, the very Qing Empire has tolerated opium for some time, because the silver the British received from the opium selling was going back into China through new purchases of Chinese goods, effectively bringing back profits. Only after many economical and socials issues brought by opium it was decided to ban it, blocking and/or destroying many warehouses containing it. Tensions escalated, etc, and boom: they are battling each other in military field, starting from 1839. To end the war, in 1842, among other types of compensation like money, Emperial China ceded the Hong Kong Island to the British. Due insatisfaction with this first peace treaty that ended the First Opium War, in 1856 they were fighting again in the Second Opium War, with the Chinese being defeated again, relinquishing the control of Kowloon Peninsule in 1898, forever. And again, in 1898, China leased the Hong Kong’s New Territories for 99 years.
From UK to China, with love
“As good as forever”. A known phrase when the 99-years lease of the New Territories was signed. But, time passes, we had the First World War in 1914, the Second World War in 1937, the Cold War thereafter, the moon landing, the dissolution of Soviet Union in 1991. But nations and states don’t dissolve so easily (except for USSR), the British Empire became United Kingdom, the Qing Empire became China, a communist country, in which the government entails itself in many societal layers. In this context, in 1984 UK has agreed that, in the end of New Territories’ 99 years lease, will not give back only this, but all of leased territories back. In exchange, China must agree to keep a promise: for 50 years, until 2047, Hong Kong shall not be totally incorporated into China, and must keep its own government and legal system. This agreement is called the Sino-British Joint Declaration. As you from 2020 know, the promise was already broken.
The cracks start to form
2003. Before widespread social media, instant messaging, internet 5G and stupid algorithms, the Hong Kong government had proposed a so called National Security Bill. This bill was made to cover what the Article 23 of the Basic Law, a Constitution-like piece of paper that every other law should abide and not breach (or at least, depending on who you ask in Supreme Court). One of the biggest proponent of the bill was Regina Ip, Secretary of Security under the command of Chief Executive (“president”) Tung Chee-hwa. She lays out her favourable arguments that you can read here that I won’t discuss into details, but has aged very bad in “Some of those now criticizing the proposals have often been quick in the past to predict the erosion of Hong Kong’s civil liberties and economic freedoms.”. Anyway, I want to show you some legalese.
Article 23 of Basic Law states:
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies.
As any other “constitution”, is just a piece of paper. It needs to be regulated under ordinary law, and enforced by state agents aka people who gives value to what it is written there. Using this article as basis for proposing the bill, it was first read in Legislative Council in February 26th, 2003. The full text you can find here, it is kind of hard to read because the legal text and the font doesn’t help either, but basically one of the things that startled me was that it gives imprisionment for life for anyone commiting sedition, in other words, inciting anyone to commit treason (colluding with foreign forces to overthrow or instigate the central government, aka, China), subversion (overthrow or destabilize China) or secession (withdraw any part of China from its sovereignty, incluiding HK, clearly), which these very acts carry its own imprisionment for life. If you are a nationalist (I’m not) you may say “well deserved, no one should betray his own country and it is a duty to preserve it”, and I think that is a fair point to be discussed, although I totally disagree. The problem always lies in the details, so I ask you: what exactly can be considered sedition? I ask because sedition is speech, not the act which it is trying to persuade. Today we already now that the flag in the banner photo is considered sedition by HK government after the 2020 National Security Law because “instigates secession”, and people have been arrested for that. Questioning the very own NSL can be considered some kind of sedition or subversion. And even it is a fucking apologism to separation or independence, it is a fucking freedom of speech!
Besides, the wording on Article 6 was especially problematic, because it punishes even publications that may cause the offence above (is the Chinese version more clear?). Read it by yourself the entire article, that modifies the Criminal Ordinance:
9A. Sedition
(1) A person commits sedition if, subject to section 9D, he—
(a) incites others to commit an offence under section 2 (treason), 2A (subversion) or 2B (secession); or
(b) incites others to engage, in Hong Kong or elsewhere, in violent public disorderthat would seriously endanger the stability of the People’s Republic of China.
(2) A person who—
(a) commits sedition by doing an act referred to in subsection (1)(a) is guilty ofan offence and is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for life;
(b) commits sedition by doing an act referred to in subsection (1)(b) is guilty ofan offence and is liable on conviction on indictment to a fine and to imprisonmentfor 7 years.
9B. Inciting sedition not an offence
Inciting others to commit an offence under section 9A (sedition) is not an offence.
9C. Handling seditious publication
(1) In this section, “seditious publication” means a publication that is likely to cause the commission of an offence under section 2 (treason), 2A (subversion) or 2B (secession).
(2) Subject to section 9D, a person who—
(a) publishes, sells, offers for sale, distributes or displays any seditious publication;
(b) prints or reproduces any seditious publication; or
(c) imports or exports any seditious publication, with intent to incite others, by means of the publication, to commit an offence undersection 2 (treason), 2A (subversion) or 2B (secession) is guilty of an offence andis liable on conviction on indictment to a fine of $500,000 and to imprisonment for 7 years.
Is displaying the flag from the banner sedition? Is chanting the HK’s anthem sedition? Is it to burn a Chinese flag sedition? What about to propagate anti-Beijing messages? And speak ill of One Country Two Systems slogan? You that lives now in 2020 already knows the answer.
Fortunately, that time, such stupid law didn’t pass, but not without a lot of noise and protest. After smaller gatherings here and there, the city has received one of the largest public demonstrations of its history. In July 1st, 2003, starting around Victory Park in the central and well-off district of Hong Kong, from 350 thousand to 500 thousand people marched to the legislative building direction, from afternoon until night, in the middle of the SARS outbreak (what a coincidence try to pass a security law during a pandemic!). It was a bigger protest than everyone could imagine, and I can speculate that people at that time was already worried about the CCP’s authoritarism pairing over the city. They were already aware of the expiration date of their freedoms, and knew that one day a fierce battle has to be fought.
Eventually, with many public criticism and amid tentatives of the government led by Tung Chee-wha trying to pass the bill, including some changes and amendments to try to soft the bill and contend come of the critics, the pro-Beijing politics could not gather enought coucilliors to vote for it, and finally it was indefinitely postponed, in practice, shooting down the proposal. Amidst all the turmoil, Regina Ip just resigned from her position of ministry, although earning for three times in a row a seat in the Legislative Council. The impopular Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa would resign two years later, during his second term.
From that time, I could find an article from Apple Daily (more about them later) in Chinese, that I translated via DeepL to English, covering these protests (unfortunately, find English news covering for the 2003 rallies is harder than I expected). A translated slogan from the rally’s manifest says something in the lines “No to Article 23, return political power to the people”. I could find some old and low quality video with some footage of that day that you can watch below (don’t ask, I don’t understand Chinese), but I will download anyway in case it is taken down (I would be happy if someone could translate the lyrics of the music).
A wild dictator for life appears
Democracy is a very recent concept, and some countries didn’t have any even today. That includes China, especially since the communists took the power of the country, leading to many oppositors to flee to Taiwan (that would give a heck of history, but I need to study more), erasing many of material and immaterial milenia-lived Chinese culture, pushing the country to the dark side of oppression and widespread famine (and I’m not even taking in account the Japanese occupation, and their many war crimes commited). It’s estimated around 30 millions have died due the policies of Mao Zedong, that included expropriating fertile land to redistribute it, losing any advantage that specialized farmers had, in favor of a “collectivised” society. But it is not about Mao. Anyone able to save a starving society, bringing food, education and economic prosperity has a huge advantage, because people will turn a blind eye in the means of how this prosperity was achieved, as long they are satisfied. I think that partially explains how the Chinese dictatorship came to resist so much time, and I don’t blame too much the citizens. Look at the graph below:
Look at this fucking sharp increase! In a few decades, from 80s, China just came from a poor to a middle class country. After seeing many ancestors dying of famine, why people wouldn’t be satisfied with this capitalistic-in-market-communist-in-civil-liberties model? In this situation, any government able to keep this growth will be able to stay in power, as long people are materially satisfied. It is in this context that in 2013, a man become the latest Chinese dictator: Xi Jinflu – I mean, Jinping.
China now has become a middle class country, and do you know what happens at this point? A lot of especulation from my side, but the Great Leader needs to deal with the middle class trap, when it becomes expensive to produce goods locally due the higher cost of labor, decelerating the growth. I think that soon people will start to complain, societal divides will emerge and eventually those people in power will be a target of the biggest population in the world, unsatisfied, especially who couldn’t catch the gold rush. What the dictator Xi Jinping can do to avoid such turmoil? Yes, the hammer of communism: crush anyone trying to point to the cracks on the wall. Because mainland China already have in place dystopical systems to put the population under control, a territory bordering Shenzhen is overflowing of democratic ideals. If such thoughts start to lurk into China, I can see the CCP’s power being threatened in long range. Looking from now, it is natural to think that Xi Jinping is just antecipating the conflicts to come, and so, in 2018, he just decided to stay in power forever: approved by 99.9% of CCP delegates, Xi changed the Constitution eliminating the term limit, in practice giving him the dictator seat until his death. With a hardened stance in anything that resembles independent thinking, dictator Xi is try to kill any tentative to open China to democracy. And that is when Hong Kongers saw again a threat under their noses, and the one of the biggest HK’s movements emerged: the Umbrella Movement.
Looks like it is raining today
Hong Kong never really had an universal sufrage system. The executive branch has large powers and it is not chosen by direct vote, and the legislative branch is made of 70 seats in one chamber, called Legislative Council (LegCo), in which only 35 seats can be filled by direct vote, with the other 35 being filled by… a mess. I am trying to wrap around how the voting system of Hong Kong works and it is bad, pretty bad. Although the Article 68 of Basic Law clearly express “The ultimate aim is the election of all the members of the Legislative Council by universal suffrage.”, it is a dream that never happened, and probably never will. Let’s break down a little about how LegCo works.
Of all the seats, 30 of them are filled though a retard, stupid, idiot thing “functional constituency”. And what is it? Basically, it is a group of people or companies that represent a economic sector. For exemple, in HK we have the constituency for the engineering sector, or for civil construction sector, or health care sector, or law sector, and go on. In easy words, a professional association-like institution (you can find all of them here). So, each one of them can vote for a person that will represent them in LegCo. Very democratic, right? Well, totally not. Because one vote is not really equal to one vote. So, if your FC have, let’s say, 1000 members, these 1000 members will decide for 1/70th of the seat in LegCo, in other words, each person has 1/70000 of power in LegCo. But you aren’t part of any FC? Ok, now you are of general public, with, let’s say, 3 millions voters, that will decide for half of the seats (35/70), that means you have only 1/6000000 of power in legislative – and of course, much less power to elect the next chief executive. Besides all of this stupidity, companies, corporations, can vote too! In some sectors, like tourism, insurance and industrial only companies can vote. Who designed this part of Basic Law should be immediately hanged in a electric chair.
The worst is not over. The LegCo has (breath in, breath out) no power to select the chief executive. “No power” may be an understatement, it has almost no power. The committee to select the chief executive is composed by 1200 members, including LegCo members, members of economic sectors (again, corporate votes), and even the deputies that represents Hong Kong in National Congress in China (Ties with CCP? No way, right? Right?), and many others. Some of them has never been elected even by indirect vote in any way! And no, I don’t care that in Annex I of the Basic Law is written “The Chief Executive shall be elected by a broadly representative Election Committee” because it just for the show. In every article that I find about the political system in Hong Kong I can see that the city’s freedoms was already destined to fail someday, because the law, the procedures, the way the government is formed was always to please the CCP, while giving appearence of legitimacy to external observers. The British had made a huuuuuge stupid and fucked up deal (or it was on purpose, I don’t know) with the Chinese Communist Party, and now they are afraid of Hongkongers immigration influx into the Queen’s land. Go fuck yourself UK!
Rant over.
2014. The National People’s Congress Standing Committee of China aka the Xi’s Supreme Puppets, has decided that the following 2017 election for the Chief Executive of Hong Kong would be made through… universal sufrage! Yay, finally all the wishes of pro-democracy people in HK was fulfilled, thanks Xi, end of history.
It was a lie.
The proposal was, instead of having a committee to choose the CE, it was to have a committee to nominate candidates, two to three, for the position, and then people would vote in a diversified portfolio of… Beijing’s puppets candidates. These nominees should be people that “loves the country and loves Hong Kong”, and must be appointed by more than half of the committee (plus they should lick Xi’s boots everyday morning at 8 am, who wouldn’t love that?). Again, pretending to be a democracy while still keeping tight control under the table. Remember how the people of the committee are selected? Yes, is changing but not changing the system. I know some may argue, Hong Kong it is not a real country at all, it is under Chinese sovereignty, it just more than obvious that a dictatorship won’t relinquish easily from the power which a prosperous and rich city-state has. This is a strong argument, is hard to refute, however, China is not keeping up the Sino-British agreement on the territory (semi-autonomy until 2047), China is a country in which “human rights” is a forbidden expression and Hong Kong is “sold” as a free place inside a dystopian-like controlled country, where you can move your money and invest. Moreover, Hongkongers have much more contact with Western ideologies on politics and democracy than the Chineses, that would be stupid to think that nothing was going to happen when such measures are proposed. But happened.
Let me introduce you Benny Tai Yiu-ting. You may don’t know who he is, but he was (in past tense) a professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong at that time (I could say many things about the role of HK universities during the 2019-20 massive protests, but this text is already long enough and I need to study more). Although as a professor of Law he may be considered part of intellectual elite of Hong Kong, it was in January of 2013 that he sparked something among his students and many others political activists: he published an article in Hong Kong Econonomic Journal (paywall) laying down some steps of how to pressure the government to adopt universal sufrage on the territory. It is a short piece that you can read in Chinese or in English, but it can be resumed in how the population can act to reach the maximum effect (“lethality”) to force the universal suffrage through civil desobedience, at the same time gathering support from many people as possible, without resorting to violence. Number of people, timing, non-violence and even bearing legal responsability for their actions are some of the key points, because the central idea was to occupy the Central district even if it means disobeying orders from police or judges, stepping into ilegality. As you may have saw during last/current year democratic demonstrations, I can see some of these concepts being applied, bringing a cohesive and very well organization of how to display their insatisfaction, without having a centralized leader or a command center.
And, in September 2014, it started to rain. Small clashes between demonstrators and police had been occurred since start of the month, with the civilian side protesting against the new rules for CE election. During these small clashes, a group of students, included one of the exponents of 2019-20 HK protests, Joshua Wong, was arrested under charges of police assault (a article of Business Inside tries to paint him as… extremist?). Arrests were made during these demonstrations, including arrests of pro-democratic legislative conciliours and many students. An organization called Occupy Central with Peace and Love, in which professor Benny Tai was one of the founders, were planning a sit in demonstration from October 1st, 2014, the day when it is commemorated the foundation of authoritarian, communist, dystopic, murderer China, in 1949, but due such a turmoil and expecting to get into momentum of societal insatisfaction, decided to move the date forward, and from September 28th, a mob gathered to occupy part of Central district, blocking roads around one of the richest places of Hong Kong and drawing attention to their demands. Because of many roads closed, police came to disperse the crowd and clean the streets, but the participants resisted to comply the orders – after all, it was truly a civil disobedience movement – and the government forces start to shoot rounds of tears gas. Because we are talking about HK’s protesters, they came well prepared: beside safety glasses and bottles of water, they widely used umbrellas to protect themselves from the ammunition, leading to one of the beautiful symbols of fighting for democracy in my view: the umbrellas. Later on, the yellow umbrella has becomed the most prominent symbol, although I couldn’t find a reliable source on why the yellow color – that was the color of a ribbon to be attached to the clothes, to show sympathy to the movement, and although this BBC article says it stems from women’s suffrage campaign in US in 19th century (I’m not sure I can trust BBC with historical facts, but don’t care, I like it anyway), still don’t confirm that is the reason for the color.
Even with many fights between police and civilians, impacting a important economical center of the city, and with many sector of popultion opposing it, because I think we can agree that it brings political and economical instability – that is not a bad thing, necessarily – such sit ins, that even had tents for people to sleep, was held until December. It was estimated that even 100 thousand people participated in the most crowded protests, but I couldn’t find a figure for the whole movement. During all the time, they had to resist attacks from police itself and even gangs/triads, that threatened pro-democracy people – some may suspected they were paid by HK’s government, China’s government or by local business that had losses because of the movement. But no proofs so far.
As in every movement, eventually people became tired and slowly started to abandon the in-street fighting, specially when no goals were reached, but not without Hongkongers leaving a mark that one day they will be back to fight (and they did!). All of these demonstrations can collectively be called the Umbrella Movement, although many different groups has organized independently around the city, like the Hong Kong Students Federation. Whatever the name or what is called, their job, strength, tatic and resistance laid down the foundation for the fiercest battle they were going to fight, 5 years later, against a much more powerful China.
For today, that is it. My fingers are hurting of typing too much, I already typed 8 pag…, no, now it is 11 pages of Word!
In a future post (not necessarily the next one), I don’t know when, I want to talk about the Anti-Extradition Bill Protests that occurred in 2019-20, why the fuck they needed to do such a proposal, how they were able to make a year long protest, the authoritarian HK Security Law approved by China in the middle of a pandemic, and how I see the future for this city. Rest well that I’ll be back.
References
Many of them I already linked above, but I am too lazy to check which one. Also, Wikipedia can be a magnific source, if you know how to dive in its sources.
The galleries on Flickr of Studio Incendo and
Leung Ching Yau Alex have not only beautiful photos of the neverending fighting, but also stunning views of Hong Kong.
http://oclp.hk/index.php?route=occupy/article_detail&article_id=23
http://www.cmab-cd2012.gov.hk/doc/consultation_document_en.pdf
https://app3.rthk.hk/mediadigest/content.php?aid=185
https://bennytai.github.io/HongKongReflections/%E6%80%9D%E8%80%83%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF6/2--The%20Most%20Lethal%20Weapon%20of%20Civil%20Disobedience.html
https://books.google.com.br/books?id=NIcq7y3oBQYC&printsec=frontcover&hl=ja&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests#cite_note-Cheung-14
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Basic_Law_Article_23
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_(Legislative_Provisions)_Bill_2003
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Movement
https://hk.appledaily.com/local/20030702/XRW5B7Q7UA7TVUXND6Z4KWXKA4/
https://thediplomat.com/2014/10/hong-kong-police-triads-infiltrated-occupy-movement/
https://time.com/3471366/hong-kong-umbrella-revolution-occupy-central-democracy-explainer-6-questions/
https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclawtext/images/basiclawtext_doc1&2.pdf
https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclawtext/images/basiclawtext_doc26.pdf
https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclawtext/images/basiclawtext_doc25.pdf
https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclawtext/index.html
https://www.basiclaw23.gov.hk/english/focus/focus5.htm
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-29437497
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Opium-Wars
https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/hong-kong-examining-the-impact-of-the-umbrella-movement/
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/27/hong-kong-protests.html
https://www.legco.gov.hk/general/english/intro/about_lc.htm
https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr02-03/english/bills/c007-e.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/19/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-yellow-blue.html
https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1600129/central-not-tiananmen-thankfully (a view against the 2014 protests)
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1582079/beijing-scholar-says-hong-kongs-candidate-nominating-system-out
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1615353/police-says-triads-sent-infiltrators-camps-occupy-supporters-and
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1977717/concerns-about-hong-kongs-functional-constituencies-and-vote
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3849688
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/26/xi-jinping-china-presidential-limit-scrap-dictator-for-life
https://www.voterregistration.gov.hk/eng/statistic.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/03/giving-historys-greatest-mass-murderer-his-due/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69EVxLLhciQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP9XB3JIa0o
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003%E5%B9%B4%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E4%B8%83%E4%B8%80%E9%81%8A%E8%A1%8C
