Against the dictatorship of tycoons: an anatomy of the Hong Kong protests
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Joe Ying explores the details and difficulties of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.
During my brief stay at the Chinese University of Hong Kong this summer, the campus remained largely tranquil – that is, except for the revolutionary slogans hung on the Lennon Wall and news of ongoing protests in the city centre. However, this all changed on November 11th, or the day of “double-eleven”. When mainlanders were indulging in the annual online shopping carnival, conflicts between protesters and riot police broke out on campus, with flaming barricades and smoke from tear gas pervading the scene. No one managed to prevent the “ivory tower of academia” from the spiral of violence which had already been engulfing many other parts of the city since June.
To thoroughly comprehend the situation has become a rather challenging task. The confluence of multi-layer factors, the intricacy of different interest groups, and the evolution of the movement could easily consign us to the determinism of heeding one side while neglecting the viewpoints of others. Ostensibly, the extradition bill is the protagonist, whether it be objected to or favoured. The government promoted this motion as a measure to fulfil a “legal loophole”, inhibiting perpetrators from fleeing a certain jurisdiction with impunity. But antipathy towards this mechanism surfaced quickly, due to the apprehension that local political dissenters would be targeted and extradited to mainland China.
The escalation of tension has precedents. In the run-up to this summer, there have been a series of opposition movements against perceived infringements of the special status of Hong Kong since the 1997 handover. In 2003, for example, the anti-subversion law forbidding treasonous and other provocative actions against the Central Government failed to be implemented under the pressure of massive demonstrations. A curriculum of “moral and national education” was accused of being a brainwashing programme in 2010. More recently, in 2015, the disappearances of Causeway booksellers were speculated as a political crackdown. It is against this backdrop that fear of the extradition bill emerged so profoundly.
What must be recognised is that the fuel for protest stretches far beyond mere legal and political facets. If historians’ emphasis on social grievance in their analysis of unrest provides any insight, then our discourse should anatomise the real and severe social issues afflicting this prosperous city. Hong Kong is a bastion of unregulated capitalism. It flourished during the postwar era, first in manufacturing thanks to abundant cheap labour, then transformed into a service-based economy, well-known global financial centre, and free harbour. But just as mainland China is consuming up its population dividend and has decided to replace its one-child policy in coping with the consequences, Hong Kong cannot escape from the symptoms of the free market after enjoying the benefits of economic liberalism. As a consequence, it’s facing the spiraling economic inequality. Latest data of the city’s Gini coefficient in 2015 climbed to an alarming level of 0.539, the highest figure since records began. The continuation of the housing shortage, intentionally sustained by property developers to increase profitability, has resulted in the most expensive real estate in the world – even higher than London and New York. Younger generations have become disheartened by an increasingly bleak future, with which has engendered a wave of nostalgia for British rule.
It is impossible to unravel the threads of Hong Kong’s establishment without emphasising the power of real estate. When Tung Chee-hwa assumed office of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong in 1997, he proposed “the Plan of 85,000”, a promise for the annual provision of 85,000 units of housing to alleviate the shortage of supply. The timing of the policy was, however, pathetically flawed. The Asian financial crisis caused havoc on the housing market, while the programme further slashed prices, pushing many property-owning middle-class families to bankruptcy. The plan was soon abandoned in acquiescence. Unfortunately, Tung’s successor to the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Donald Tsang, could well be labelled as a representative of real estate magnates. His administration was so ungenerous with housing supply that even the establishmentarian member of the Legislative Council, Regina Ip, criticised him for conniving in “real estate hegemony”.
Not only because of its compromise with Britain, the Communist Party of China has a genuine motivation in preserving the current system. Even prior to the handover, the city of Hong Kong had become an ideal gateway for attracting foreign investment to the mainland, and has subsequently been employed as a springboard for China’s capital expansion. Hong Kong businesses enjoy reciprocity by gaining access to the enormous mainland market and flourishing of local tourism increasing their sources of revenue. Marxists argue that the role of Hong Kong in conveying capital into the mainland is tantamount to the pillage of gold in the New World by Europeans: elites in Beijing and magnates in Hong Kong work together to siphon the blood off the city’s commoners. As a result, the establishment of Hong Kong is now often associated with a tight circle of tycoons dominated by property developers colluding with the Communist Party. The whole structure is, undoubtedly, protected by the legal system of the free market.
Under this context, the struggle of the pan-democracy camp bears more transparency – the resistance against the “regime of property” and the “red bourgeois”. However, while socialists and Marxists have appealed for a proletarian revolution in Hong Kong, mainstream public opinion is not concentrated on the far-left. The default mode of the movement, as argued by a left-wing journalist, still resembles what has been described as “scholarists’” liberalism and right-wing “citizenist”. Despite falling victim to the system, the citizens of Hong Kong take pride in the ideal of free market capitalism as the defining characteristic of their identity. The seeming contradiction is both bewildering and intriguing. Some protesters hail “Do you hear the people sing” as their spiritual tune, inspired by the momentum of the French Revolution, but no one has been heard to sing “Internationale”, although both songs would be sufficiently anti-establishment under the current situation. Referring to the ideas of the French Revolution reveals the conspicuous demand for civic liberty and the rule of law. In relative obscurity, however, is the call for social equality and wealth redistribution. As such, to the dismay of many left-wingers, the predominant voice of this movement inclines more to classical liberalism rather than social democracy. Such a complex mentality of political spectrum could perhaps be interpreted as the desire of some to construct a capitalism on their own terms, free from the manipulation and trickery by oligopolists. Far too often throughout history has a social movement been catalysed by a founding myth like this one.
As the stalemate persists, its consequences have been taking a toll on the society. Peaceful demonstration has lost its prevalence to violence, defended in the name of “force and bravery”. More fraught is the phenomenon of polarisation of ideas resulting in far-right groups emerging at the forefront. Hong Kong Indigenous, for example, has been campaigning for the city’s secession from China, and vehemently objects to the “incursion” of mainlanders whom it claims to be reducing the “ratio of local population”. Ideas like these are being disseminated at an astonishing rate. When Hong Kong police were reported to be escorting a group of mainland students back to their homes after a day of chaos on campus, remarks were made such as “Locust from mainland”, and “Safe Journey”, which in Chinese bears a sarcastic meaning of cursing one to death – implying the journey to hell. Such radicalisation could be attributed to the accumulation of disillusionment with the failure of pan-democracy in achieving any hypostatic reform in recent years.
As such, it is the left-wingers who find themselves increasingly marginalised in these beliefs. The misconceptions of many observers, and perhaps participants, have distorted reality. The idea of the “left” has been inextricably linked with the “Red” authority. When post-it notes appear on the Lennon Wall outside the Government Complex, the protesters in their minds forge spiritual solidarity with the Velvet Revolution, as their Czechoslovak counterparts did in the 1980s, against the “Communist Dictatorship”. What lies before us, however, is that the Party regarded as Communist has actually swung to Conservatism. Western conservatives who have signalled support and empathy for the movement are only aiming at geopolitical gain. And more seriously, the tendency of far-right moves attempting to exploit political disputes for cultural prejudice against mainlanders, are still misconstrued by many opinions as liberal causes based on the principle of “self-determination”. Just as left-wing activist Avery Ng (chairman of Hong Kong’s League of Social Democrats) lamented the ignorance of the struggle among western leftists, it would be regrettable if our stereotypical depiction of the political spectrum prevents us from deciphering the perplexity and unveiling the nature of the protest.
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