Commentary
Hong Kong’s chief executive Leung Chun-ying was supposed to appease the city’s citizens with solutions to their political and social angst in his annual policy address—instead, he infuriated them by backing unpopular Beijing policies, and laid out plans to more closely integrate Hong Kong into mainland China.
In a televised address on Wednesday, the Hong Kong leader announced his blueprint for key issues in city, such as housing, economic development, and education.
Leung promised to build 480,000 apartment units, including 200,000 rental units, in 10 years to solve Hong Kong’s housing shortage and cool rising property prices.
A capital investment scheme that allowed foreigners to become residents if they put HK$10 million ($1.29 million) in government-approved investments was scrapped.
More elementary and middle-school students will have to study at least once on the mainland, while the Education Bureau has been tasked with reviewing the Chinese and world history courses.
Leung also discussed constitutional development and the city’s youth, two hot topics in light of a two-month long public consultation on political reform launched by the Hong Kong government last week, as well as the recently ended student-led pro-democracy demonstrations.
The public consultation is supposed to assess the popularity of the Aug. 31 ruling of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), the Chinese regime’s rubber stamp legislature, on the 2017 chief executive elections. Hongkongers will be allowed a free vote, but can only elect two or three candidates who have been screened by a pro-Beijing, 1,200-strong nominating committee.
The NPCSC’s decision angered pro-democracy supporters, and inspired youthful protesters to occupy major roads in government and business districts for 79 days to demand fully democratic elections. Protesters were also calling for Leung, who is hugely unpopular and regularly mocked for his 689 tally out of 1,200 possible votes, to resign.
While the street occupations were cleared by the authorities in December, protesters are still carrying out the Umbrella Movement with small-scale, flash mob style demonstrations in the Mong Kok commercial neighborhood.
Although the momentous civil disobedience movement has attracted international attention, Leung made no mention of the Umbrella Movement in his policy address or showed any signs that he was troubled by it.
“We fully recognize the aspirations of our young students for democracy and their concerns about political reforms,” said Leung in his policy address, but added that Hong Kong’s five million eligible voters cannot yet nominate candidates for the city’s leader since it goes against the NPCSC’s decision and the Basic Law, the city’s governing document.
“Hong Kong’s power comes from the central government,” Leung said, echoing a controversial June 2014 NPCSC white paper, which claims Beijing’s comprehensive jurisdiction over Hong Kong and the power to alter the Basic Law as it saw fit.
Indeed, while Hong Kong is allowed a “high degree of autonomy” to govern itself under a “one country, two systems” model as part of the British handover treaty, the city doesn’t have “absolute autonomy” from Beijing, Leung said.
Rather, it is the Basic Law that provides the framework for how the Chief Executive is elected, not an “overseas precedent” or “international standard,” as protesters have been suggesting, according to Leung.
“The rule of law is the foundation of Hong Kong,” said Leung. “The democratic development of Hong Kong must therefore be underpinned by the same.”
“As we pursue democracy, we should act in accordance with the law, or Hong Kong will degenerate into anarchy.”
Leung also chastised students for advocating Hong Kong independence, a “dangerous” idea that “violates the constitution.”
Leung specifically singled out a February 2014 issue of the Undergrad, Hong Kong University Students’ Union magazine, Hong Kong Nationalism, an academic title, as well as the Hong Kong Federation of Students’ protest slogan, “Hong Kong shall resolve Hong Kong problems,” for promoting “self-reliance and self-determination.”
“The issue concerning the independence of Hong Kong is not a [matter of] ordinary academic research or discussion,” Leung said. “It is indeed advocacy, and we should not take it as a trivial matter.”
Leung added that “political figures with close ties to the leaders of the student movement to advise them against putting forward such fallacies.”
After the CY’s policy address, Hongkongers were up in arms.
Fury
Disappointed with Leung’s proposals and issues not covered, Hong Kong residents made a flurry of angry calls to the joint radio phone-in program which Leung attended later that day to explain his third annual report, according to the South China Morning Post.
Also, only 30 percent of 640 residents polled by the University of Hong Kong immediately after the policy address were satisfied with Leung’s report.
Pro-democracy lawmakers were possibly the most furious at Leung’s policy address.
Before Leung made his speech, most pro-democracy lawmakers unfolded yellow umbrellas and banners before walking out. Two recalcitrant pan-democrats stayed in their seats and called Leung a “traitor” and “shameless.” They were eventually carried out, kicking and screaming, by legislature’s security.
In a legislature session Thursday, Lee even compared Leung to Mao Zedong.
“Are you trying to stir up a Cultural Revolution in Hong Kong?” Lee asked, referring to a decade long political upheaval engineered by the Chinese communist leader.
“Are those criticisms your only reflection on the youth issue after the Umbrella Movement? Are you trying to suppress freedom of speech until ‘one country, two systems’ is destroyed?”
Civic Party leader Alan Leong said the policy address failed to target the main issues that gave rise to the Umbrella Movement, and added that throwing money at the youth problem—Leung set aside a HK$300 million ($38.7 million) kitty to help young people start businesses—won’t help Hong Kong’s long-term stability.
Benny Tai, a key leader of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace protest group, noted that the Hong Kong leader is incapable of thinking outside a “one country” framework.
And Joshua Wong, the prominent teenage face of the Occupy protests, reminded Leung that “apart from defense and foreign policy, all Hong Kong matters should be resolved by Hong Kong” as outlined in the Basic Law.
“I don’t think the Chinese Communist Party needs to handle Hong Kong’s traffic problems,” said Wong, alluding to the city’s commuting woes and responding to Leung’s charge that students’ claim of “Hong Kong shall resolve Hong Kong problems” is “unconstitutional.”
In the University of Hong Kong’s latest poll on Leung’s popularity, only 23 percent of about 1,000 people surveyed between Jan. 2 to Jan. 8 approved of the Chief Executive, a “depressing” level of popularity that could foreshadow a “governance crisis.”
As the poll results were released before the policy address, Hong Kong’s top leader should have some political sense to heed public sentiment and show that he is at least looking into Hongkongers’ call for greater democracy.
Instead, Leung chose to back the NPCSC’s “one country, one system” rulings, apparently forgetting instructions to him by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Power Struggle
Xi has mentioned at least three times—twice in Leung’s presence—that democratic reform in Hong Kong must be in line with the “one country, two systems” model.
During the APEC economic summit in November, Xi began his meeting with Leung by asking the latter to comprehensively and accurately understand the “one country, two systems” principle and the Basic Law.
And when in Macau to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the territory’s return to China, Xi said that “at no time should we focus only on one side to the neglect of the other” with regard to “one country, two systems.” Leung was present during Xi’s speech.
As Xi has never explicitly endorsed the NPCSC’s decision but stresses respect for “one country, two systems,” why is Leung, who is so keen to back Beijing, not listening to the man who is supposed to be his boss?
It is likely because Xi, while leader of China, is not yet the master of his own party, and Xi is apparently not Leung’s true patron.
Close watchers of Chinese politics will discern an on-going power struggle between major Party factions: Xi Jinping and anti-corruption chief Wang Qishan on the one side, and former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin—with his various confederates like vice premier Zhang Dejiang, the chairman of the NPCSC, on the other.
Under the guise of an anti-graft drive, Xi has been meticulously removing “tigers”—the code name for high-ranking officials that happen to be part of the Jiang network—since he took power in 2012. Among some of the biggest names are Bo Xilai, the Party Secretary of Chongqing and a Politburo member, and Zhou Yongkang, the former security chief who was presumed untouchable.
With Xi turning up the heat on Jiang’s followers, Zhang sought to engineer a crisis in Hong Kong to provoke a violent crackdown, which would serve to discredit and embattle Xi, thus swinging the balance back in Jiang’s favor.
Under Zhang’s leadership, the NPCSC passed the controversial June white paper and Aug. 31 ruling that incensed Hongkongers and sparked the Umbrella Movement. Before that, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, who is widely held to be an underground Party member and a Jiang loyalist, had already softened the ground with unpopular policies that angered Hongkongers, keeping the city on tilt and on the brink of chaos.
And Zhang and Leung nearly succeeded on Sept. 28 when Hong Kong police fired 87 tear gas canister into the protester crowd, and when triads with suspected Communist Party links beat up students as police stood by.
Thus Leung’s policy address, seen in the context of the Chinese regime’s power struggle, starts to make sense: why else would an unloved leader adopt a hard line towards his people time and time again if he is truly his own man?
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