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HONG KONG: Since Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, opposition activists have tried to bring full democracy to the city, believing that China would fulfill its promise to one day allow universal suffrage to elect the leader of Hong Kong. the city.
On Friday (March 5), that campaign took its biggest hit. Chinese MPs in Beijing revealed the details of a plan to revamp the political structure of China’s freest city that critics say has ended with the promise of one person, one vote.
China’s move comes months after a sweeping national security law was imposed in the Asian financial center, cracking down on dissent, and more than a year after months of sometimes violent anti-China and pro-democracy protests. that swept the city.
“There is not much we can do to effectively change what they are deciding,” Democratic Party chief Lo Kin-hei told Reuters.
READ: Top Chinese Officials Outline Plan To Ensure Only ‘Patriots’ Run Hong Kong
The structural changes will include increasing the city’s legislative seats from 70 to 90, and some of these will now be decided by a committee packed with Beijing loyalists. The seats Democrats are likely to control will be eliminated or reduced.
A 1,200-person committee electing Hong Kong’s leader will be expanded, “further improving” a system controlled by Chinese “patriots”, according to Wang Chen, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China.
Wang told reporters that the measures, which would involve rewriting parts of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, would consolidate China’s “general jurisdiction” over the city and solve “deep-seated problems” once and for all. all. It was in the Basic Law that Beijing promised universal suffrage as the ultimate goal for Hong Kong.
But Friday’s measures may now nip in the bud the risk of any resurgence of the democracy movement, founded after Beijing’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.
With many prominent Democrats now jailed or forced into exile, including Lo’s predecessor Wu Chi-wai, who was denied bail this week along with dozens of others for an alleged conspiracy to “overthrow” the government, the Democrats will try to use their bases. networks to keep their ideals alive.
“Confidence in the system is fading … and it is not a good sign if we want a more peaceful society that does not allow different voices to be in harmony,” Lo told Reuters.
READ: Comment: The rope around Hong Kong is tightening
“MOVE BACK”
Another veteran democracy activist said Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who became head of the Communist Party in 2012, had turned the trajectory of Hong Kong’s movements toward full democracy, going against the late’s often-cited promise. China’s leader Deng Xiaoping to allow Hong Kong The people of Kong to “rule” Hong Kong.
“It is a great tragedy,” said the source, who declined to be named given the sensitivity of the political environment. “They are moving backwards, not forwards, and they take us back in time to a dark and dark place.”
READ: Hong Kong was removed from the economic freedom ranking that it once dominated
With the opposition now likely to become a permanent minority in a reshaped legislature, the shift to China’s one-party model will create opportunities for new patriotic factions, critics and some pro-Beijing politicians say.
China, given its rise to a global superpower, now has the power and resources to extend its autocratic rule despite criticism and sanctions from the West.
Some see Hong Kong’s British common law legal system as the last bastion against China’s increasingly strict authoritarian control.
More than 50 democratic defenders crowded into a court in the city this week, some of whom face possible life in prison on a subversion charge under the national security law enacted directly by the Chinese parliament last June.
Two Democrats, veteran activist Leung Kwok-hung and former law professor Benny Tai, had to move between two courtrooms for simultaneous hearings, while others were rushed to the hospital after falling ill during marathon sessions.
Under the security law, the onus falls on the defendants to defend a bail case, which critics say nullifies the customary law tradition.
Hong Kong returned to China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula, guaranteeing its way of life, freedoms and an independent legal system.
82-year-old attorney Martin Lee, dubbed the father of the city’s democracy, wrote in a 2014 New York Times editorial that universal suffrage was the only way to honor the “one country, two systems” formula. Deng and “prevent your project from becoming a litany of broken promises.”
The current moves could be a final departure from that.
“This is now an excessive correction,” a senior Western diplomat told Reuters. “In trying to regain control, there is a danger that they will go overboard and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
