BBC News - Hong Kong protests: Tension mounts at office stand-off
Hong Kong protests: China warns of ‘unimaginable consequences’ if demonstrations continue - Asia - World - The Independent
How much of this is due to HK's 'ambiguous' position?
HONG KONG’S EXTERNAL RELATIONS: AMBIGUITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF CHINESE FOREIGN POLICY
Amazon.com: Hong Kong, China: Learning to belong to a nation (Routledge Contemporary China Series) (9780415426541): Gordon Mathews, Eric Ma, Tai-Lok Lui: Books
The HKSAR governance, ambiguous patron-client relationships embedded in the “One Country, two systems” framework | Raphaëlle Roffo - Academia.edu
Here's a good overview from a couple of days ago:
Are the Protestors Justified? A Short Legal History
Democracy in Hong Kong is a very touchy subject.
The British got control of Hong Kong from China in the late 1800s though a series of treaties, one of which was a 99-year lease that expired in 1997.
The British, as a colonial power, gave Hong Kong a large number of freedoms and political rights (which turned a barren island into one of the world’s great economic centers), but Britain stopped short of giving it full universal suffrage.
The expiration of the Hong Kong lease in 1997 led Britain and China to sign a Joint-Declaration of the Hong Kong handover. The declaration enforced the “One Country, Two Systems” principle, wherein Hong Kong would become part of China but Hong Kong’s capitalist economic system and way of life would remain unchanged for 50 years. (Nothing is said about what happens in 2047.) Hong Kong’s “Basic Law” was drafted and the Joint-Declaration affirmed that it would serve as a sort of constitution for Hong Kong during those 50 years. The final ‘interpreter’ of the Basic Law is China’s Standing Committee.
Hong Kong Basic Law Article 45 states in part:
The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be selected by election or through consultations held locally and be appointed by the Central People’s Government.
And:
The method for selecting the Chief Executive shall be specified in the light of the actual situation in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress. The ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures.
So Hong Kong didn’t have full democratic elections at the time of the handover, but the Basic Law provided for them. But there was ambiguity over when they would happen and how it would occur. But notice and remember the final clause, “upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures.” The Basic Law requires candidates for Chief Executive to be nominated by a nominating committee.
In 2004 popular Hong Kong opinion was in favor of holding full democratic elections in 2007, ten years after the handover. But China ‘interpreted’ the Basic Law to prevent universal suffrage before 2012.
This launched a debate and negotiation over when China would allow universal suffrage. The pro-democracy groups pushed for as soon as possible, fearful of what might happen when the 50 year window was up. Pro-China groups stated a preference for 2017.
Not surprisingly, the pro-China groups won. In 2007, China decided that:
the election of the fifth Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the year 2017 may be implemented by the method of universal suffrage
That sets the stage for the current protests. China announced that a ‘nominating committee’ would select two or three candidates that Hong Kong could then vote on. China said that in keeping with the “One Country, Two Systems” principle, the candidates would have to love both China and Hong Kong.
This is the announcement that sparked the current protests. But it’s not immediately clear that China violated the spirit of the Basic Law. As we saw above, the Basic Law already required a nominating committee. And it’s easy to see how the election of a strongly anti-China leader would violate the “One Country, Two Systems” principle: Hong Kong would essentially be violating the ‘One Country’ aspect of that while China upheld the ‘Two Systems’ aspect.
Of course, pro-democracy supporters in Hong Kong fear that China has gutted their promise of real democracy and replaced it with the illusion of democracy.
This issue raises the essential contradiction at the heart of a ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle: one country can’t be ruled by two systems if the systems ever disagree. The Basic Law and the Joint-Agreement are inherently ambiguous. That works fine until one side wants a crisp definition, for that forces the underlying disagreements out into the open.
The fairness of China’s measures could in large part depend on how ‘broadly representative’ the nominating committee is. China says that the nominating committee will be chosen the same way as the current Election Committee is, which is a sort ofElectoral College, whose members come from economic sectors. “The New York Times wrote that sectors that were politically closer to Beijing, such as traditional Chinese medicine, were over-represented in proportion to their share of the population, when compared to sectors deemed hostile, such as social workers or lawyers.” So that makes some people think the nominating committee won’t be ‘broadly representative’. But until we see the committee and the candidates it selects, we just won’t know whether China is fully abiding by it’s agreement.
Summary
In sum, it’s not obvious that the protestors are fully justified. China certainly isn’t giving pro-democracy supporters what they want, but China also isn’t obviously breaking any promises or violating Hong Kong’s Basic Law.
The real problem is that Hong Kong’s Basic Law is an ambiguous attempt to prop up the contradictory ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle. The pro-democracy protesters fear China is trying to break the ‘Two Systems’ part, while China fears the pro-democracy protesters are trying to break the ‘One Country’ part.
The Hong Kong Protests | Wielding Power
This will have wider effects:
October 2, 2014 2:52 pm
Silencing Hong Kong would harm democracy everywhere
China’s attitude to the Occupy Central movement highlights a changing policy, writes Wang Dan
T
he people of Hong Kong have waited for 17 years, but have yet to see universal suffrage. For many, a political cyclone infused with feelings of depression, anxiety and helplessness has condensed into a sense of despair.
With little hope of short-term gain, tens of thousands of citizens have occupied central Hong Kong and joined an uncompromising public protest against Beijing. Neither side seems likely to back down...
The strengthening of China’s economy and the mentality of a rising great power have emboldened the ambitions of the Communist party leadership. A new blueprint is gradually emerging; one that envisages the possibility of a new global campaign. China is not about to take charge of a Soviet-style campaign of militaristic adventure. This time the slogans will not be based on the traditional concepts of socialism or communism. Instead they will be packaged around more ambiguous language – the “Chinese model” and “the rise of a great power”. China’s economic achievements will be held up as evidence for the idea that the concentration of power can achieve great things.
The aim of this expansionism is to propagate, however gradually, Beijing’s own style of development and system of values. This ideology, in a nutshell, elevates the primacy of economic growth and a strong state over democracy and human rights. These are the fundamental reasons why China’s policies towards others are growing tougher and tougher.
For this reason the Occupy Central movement is not merely a matter for Hong Kong. It is also an issue for China, an issue for Taiwan, an issue for overseas Chinese and an issue for the civilised world. The silencing of Hong Kong would intensify the authoritarian tendencies of the Communist party, and this will harm democracy everywhere, starting with Taiwan.
The writer was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and is now based in Taiwan
Beijing has also thumbed its nose at Britain, because what it has done contradicts the spirit, if not the letter, of the undertakings given in 1997 at the time of the handover of Hong Kong. In addition, the Chinese authorities have made the brazen demand that the British parliament abandon an inquiry into political developments in Hong Kong by the Commons foreign affairs committee. This inquiry, Beijing says, is a “highly inappropriate act which constitutes interference in China’s internal affairs”. We could reasonably reply that China has broken the promises it made.
There is a French saying that “one only exits ambiguity at one’s own disadvantage”. This is exactly the situation in which Xi Jinping and his colleagues now find themselves. The 1984 agreement on the return of Hong Kong, with its 50-year lease for “one country, two systems”, was always ambiguous. For one thing, it pushed the final arrangement 50 years into the future – the very same method that Deng Xiaoping used to defuse the island issue with Japan, which has now blown up in both countries’ faces.
Moreover, the terms of the agreement were highly ambiguous about the changes that could be made during the transition period (the British are in part to blame for only making a stand for full democracy in the final years before 1997, but it is doubtful that they could have obtained more from Beijing in any case).
Hong Kong Central vs. China’s centre | European Council on Foreign Relations
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