By Greg Rushford

Wednesday, August 15, 2019

World headlines are full of the crisis in Hong Kong. That great international port city is in the grip of civil unrest that has brought an astonishing two million people (out of a population of seven million!) into the streets. They were sparked, above all other things, by their desire to live their lives without fear of the heavy hand of repression from mainland China, a corrupt surveillance state controlled by the Communist Party. The smell of tragedy is in the air, with still-fresh memories of Beijing’s bloody Tiananmen Square massacre thirty years ago. We don’t yet know how this immediate story will play out, other than we’re all watching an historical milestone in the makings.  

What is clear is how this crisis developed. That, and the identities of the three people who are most responsible for building the frustrations that have now spilled into the streets. First and foremost: Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Communist Party and president of China since 2012. Xi has ruled like an emperor — but is clearly frightened by the notion that China should keep its promise to let Hong Kong people keep on enjoying the democratic freedoms that the Party denies to mainland Chinese subjects. 

Second is the acerbic C.Y. Leung, one of Beijing’s men in Hong Kong who served as the city’s chief executive from 2012 to 2017.  There isn’t room in this space to tell you about Leung’s full record, other than to note that he put the interests of his political masters in Beijing ahead of Hong Kong’s.

The third person most responsible for the present political instability is Carrie Lam, a politically tone-deaf bureaucrat who formerly ran the civil service for Leung, and then was tapped in 2017 by Beijing to become chief executive. Lam declined to comment for this article. She wouldn’t even say whether it bothered her that Beijing’s heavy hand has been steadily eroding the freedoms and dedication to the rule of law that have distinguished Hong Kong from all Chinese mainland cities. Of course not: from all appearances, she’s kowtowed to Bejing at every opportunity. 

I first visited Hong Kong when it was a British colony in 1969, and have flown to the city nearly every year since the Brits withdrew in 1997, when Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of China. There’s naturally a lot of history of the last fifty years to be told, as Hong Kong turned into a global financial center defined by — to repeat for emphasis, because this is the most important point — qualities no mainland Chinese city has ever enjoyed. These are: a remarkable civility in public discourse, a world-class civil service, and a bastion of economic freedoms. Above all, Hong Kong until recently has stood for a respect for free speech and the rule of law that the British left behind in 1997.

But to understand the root causes of the frustrations that are now playing out in Hong Kong’s streets, just looking back at a few key events of the last five years are sufficient to explain.

In August of 2014, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing released a document that outlined how the Communist Party intended to carry out mainland China’s promise that Hong Kong people could one day elect their chief executive by universal suffrage. That had been the key deal that was enshrined in Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the city’s so-called mini-constitution that came with the 1997 British handover to China. Instead of universal suffrage, Hong Kong’s chief executives since the handover had been “elected” by a committee of 1,200 Hong Kongers, most of whom were marked by their loyalties to the mainland. 

From the Chinese mainland’s perspective, Hong Kong people — unlike their peers in other world-class cities like London, Paris, Tokyo and New York — were not mature enough to be trust to pick their own leaders. 

In its White Paper five years ago, the Standing Committee established its bottom line. Universal suffrage would (finally) be allowed in the 2017 election for the next chief executive, as long as there would be a guarantee that “the chief executive shall be a person who loves the country and loves Hong Kong.” The catch: The Beijing-controlled 1,200-person election committee would pick three candidates who met the approval of the Communist Party. Hong Kong people could then vote for one of them. In other words, Xi was confirming that he intended to break China’s responsibilities as contained in the Basic Law. This was a very big deal, to understate the matter. 

Immediately there was a public outcry that the mainland communists had, once again, demonstrated that they only liked “elections” where they could pick the winners. But Hong Kong’s political establishment just sort of sat back. 

Not the young people. In September, tens of thousands of outraged Hong Kong residents, lead by intrepid student leaders who emerged from seemingly nowhere, went into the streets. What had begun as peaceful Occupy Hong Kong with Love and Peace demonstrations soon morphed into what’s now mostly known as the Umbrella Movement. For several months, the young people obstructed access to government buildings, and blocked roads and disrupted traffic in key commercial districts. Such disruptive tactics, however, gradually cost them their initial widespread public support, as C. Y. Leung and Xi had calculated.

Leung’s political strategy was never based on reaching a legitimate political accommodation, but to use the Hong Kong police with their teargas and pepper spray to wear down the young people. It worked.

Xi and the mainland communists reacted the same way in late 2014 as they have in the past weeks: threats of mainland repression if the “rioters” and “terrorists” didn’t go away, coupled with a crude propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting the protestors. And like they have again done this month, mainland agents then unleashed targeted violence instigated by criminal triad members with their sticks. 

When I visited Hong Kong in 2015 and spoke with both pro-Beijing politicians and some pro-democracy Hong Kong leaders, there didn’t seem to be much interest in working out an amicable settlement. Emily Lau, a respected pro-democracy member of Hong Kong’s legislature, just shrugged and said the prospect of future violence was “Beijing’s problem” to worry about. If Xi persists, Ms. Lau told me, the city would someday become “ungovernable.” While I didn’t appreciate her insights at the time, today observers are using the same word. 

Hugo Restall, the editorial page editor at the Wall Street Journal Asia, had called for a political compromise in a column during the demonstrations back in September, 2014. He reasoned that the widely unpopular C.Y. Leung, who had clearly lost the public’s trust, should resign as chief executive. But mainly, Restall pointed to President Xi as the man who really could resolve the conflict: “Mr. Xi’s hardline stance on Hong Kong’s political system created this standoff.” 

Noting that Xi was fond of quoting Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher, Restall framed his challenge to the Communist Party leader in classic Confucian style. A central component of Confucian politics holds that whenever emperors break their faith with the Chinese people, they lose the necessary “mandate of heaven” to continue to govern legitimately. 

Xi’s breaking his faith with Hong Kong, Restall reasoned, had cost him that mandate. But now, “if the emperor is honest with his people, there’s a chance he can regain the mandate of heaven,” Restall concluded. (Full disclosure: Restall was then my editor at the Wall Street Journal Asia, which I have occasionally contributed to since 1995. He remains a trusted friend.)

But Emperor Xi and his minions scoffed at the notion they might wisely reflect upon honored Confucian traditions to best serve the Chinese people. Instead, they gradually tightened the screws on dissent in Hong Kong.

Democracy activists from the 2014 Umbrella Movement like teenager Joshua Wong have been in-and-out of jail ever since, on charges ranging from obstruction of justice to contempt. The energetic Wong is now all of 22 years old. His real “crime” has been his passion for democracy, that and his natural talent for leadership. Beijing’s hidden hand has been the driving force behind the repression.

Perhaps you’ve read in the South China Morning Post about the five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing in 2015, and “eventually turned up in the custody of mainland China authorities.” Or of the various pro-democracy politicians who were duly elected to Hong Kong’s legislative council, only to be disqualified because of their (peaceable) political views that Beijing feared. C.Y. Leung and Carrie Lam’s roles during this unfortunate series of events: mostly keeping their mouths shut while allowing the dirty work to be done behind the scenes.

Or you might recall news accounts from a year ago this month concerning Victor Mallet, the veteran Hong Kong-based correspondent for the Financial Times. Mallet lost his working visa last year for taking Hong Kong’s traditional respect for free speech a tad too seriously. Mallet, who was vice-chairman of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, invited a Hong Kong dissident who was daring to call for independence from China — an extreme stance that the vast majority of Hong people have never supported — to explain his reasoning at an FCC lunch. Predictably, mainland authorities went ballistic. 

Talk about a fine opportunity for Hong Kong leaders to remind Beijing that Hong Kong’s reputation as one of the world’s leading financial centers is based on honoring the free flow of speech and information. Instead, Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her subordinates took the unprecedented step of kicking the Financial Times journalist out of Hong Kong. 

It was a simple case of repression-by-bureaucracy. Mallet’s working visa was not routinely renewed. (Dictatorships like Vietnam play such nasty games to keep journalists in line, not Hong Kong until these days.) Mallet also was subjected to various indignities, including a four-hour interrogation by Hong Kong authorities. He has not been allowed to return, even as a visitor. This was Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s work. She has grudgingly acknowledged the ultimate decision was hers, but has never fully been truthful about that sad episode.

There’s a lot more that could be said, but that’s the essence. This year, the tone-deaf Lam worked overtime to press legislation that would allow Hong Kong authorities to extradite anyone to mainland China, where they would be subjected to China’s corrupt judiciary. That was simply going too far — especially when Lam was accused of playing sneaky games to bypass established procedures to get the legislation through Hong Kong’s legislature. 

So Hong Kong people were once again left with no alternative but to go into the streets. Faced with such a fierce public outcry, Lam finally apologized, and backed off, sort of — but has refused to withdraw the offending legislation permanently. Like Leung before her, she has relied upon Hong Kong’s riot police, instead of looking for a peaceful political negotiated outcome to end the unrest. 

That’s the best I can now offer, by way of trying to explain how the crisis that threatens Hong Kong’s cherished way of life has been building up for years. As always, it’s impossible to predict with certainty what will unfold in the coming days, weeks, and perhaps months. All we know is that another important historical milestone is being shaped in one of the world’s most wonderful cities. Stay tuned.