In Hong Kong, Is Limited Democracy Better Than None?

In Hong Kong, Is Limited Democracy Better Than None?

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CreditAnthony Kwan/Getty Images

Specifically, the protests articulate opposition to new election rules in the special administrative region, effectively giving Beijing “the right to screen candidates for the post of Hong Kong’s top official,” the reporters write. “Starting in 2017, they would allow residents to vote directly for the leader of the city’s government, the chief executive, but a nominating committee dominated by pro-Beijing loyalists would be used to restrict how many and which candidates could enter the contest.”“Thousands of Hong Kong university students abandoned classes Monday to rally against Chinese government limits on voting rights,” report Chris Buckley and Alan Wong for The New York Times, “a bellwether demonstration of the city’s appetite for turning smoldering discontent into street level opposition.”

Hong Kongers are especially resistant to such stringent oversight. Since the city was returned to China in 1997, following more than 150 years of British colonial rule, it has “enjoyed considerable legal autonomy under the ‘one country, two systems’ formula, in which Hong Kong residents retained rights not available elsewhere in China,” The Times reports. Hong Kong’s constitutional document reads, “The socialist system and policies shall not be practiced in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and the previous capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years.”

In an op-ed written for The Financial Times (registration required), C. Y. Leung, the chief executive of the S.A.R., attempts to paint a picture of a better Hong Kong under Chinese rule. “For the first time, all Hong Kong’s permanent residents, including those who are foreign nationals, are being offered the chance to vote directly for their next leader,” he writes. “The 28 British governors who ruled Hong Kong for a total of 155 years before 1997 were dispatched by the British government without any input at all from the Hong Kong people — or the British people, for that matter.”

Since the transfer of sovereignty, Hong Kong’s chief executives have been selected by a special election committee. And during those years, Hong Kong, “with the full support of Beijing,” has been “working towards achieving universal suffrage.” Beijing has, at long last, offered Hong Kongers the opportunity to select their own leader, and this, Mr. Leung insists, is not a privilege to be scorned. “The question that the Hong Kong people and our legislators need to address now is whether we embrace this opportunity offered by Beijing for major democratic progress, universal suffrage in 2017, or would rather opt for stagnation by retaining the election committee. Do we want to take one step forward or two steps back?”

But pro-Beijing rhetoric, like that of Mr. Leung’s, is intentionally misleading, write Kin-Ming Kwong and Chiew Ping Yew for The Diplomat. “The chief executive hails the election of the city’s political chief by universal suffrage in 2017 as ‘major democratic progress,’ asserting that a rejection of the political reform will be ‘two steps back’ for Hong Kong. But make no mistake about it: to call Beijing’s restrictive framework ‘political reform’ would be a misnomer.”

“Under Beijing’s conservative framework rolled out on August 31 this year, a candidate would have to clear a far higher hurdle to stand in the 2017 chief executive election,” they report. “According to the decision by China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, a candidate running for office has to be endorsed by more than half of the members in the 1,200 nominating committee, to be modeled after the existing election committee made up of mostly Beijing loyalists. This high nomination threshold effectively rules out any possibility that a democrat or a candidate not approved by Beijing may have in contesting the 2017 election, ensuring that the five million eligible voters in Hong Kong would only get to choose among two to three pre-vetted candidates.”

The debate over electoral policy in Hong Kong, however, has implications beyond the tiny, densely populated island city. As Evan Osnos writes for The New Yorker, the crisis will “likely grow,” determining not only Hong Kong’s political future but also “which political ethic will prevail across China in the years ahead: globalism or nationalism, two fundamentally different conceptions of how China will relate to the rest of the world.”

At Al Jazeera, Kevin Holden wonders whether tremors emanating from this tension will inflame historical wounds. “China’s decision to allow the people of Hong Kong to have tightly controlled elections is triggering the formation of a broad-based democracy movement that in many ways resembles the one that was crushed a generation ago at Tiananmen Square,” he says. “Beijing has already begun official denunciations — branding the pacifist protesters as would-be rebels — even as the People’s Liberation Army periodically moves its armored personnel carriers through the streets of Hong Kong.”

This is, perhaps, exactly what mainland officials want, says Stephen Vines, writing for The South China Morning Post. “Beijing’s proposals are designed to foster confrontation and show that the central authorities will not blink when it comes to maintaining tight control over the Special Administrative Region,” he claims.

Similarly, Beijing has cleverly shifted the debate in such a way that frames the expectation for total, unfettered democracy as unrealistic, even childish and impudent. “The usual suspects, who nurture intense dislike for the democratic movement but pretend to occupy the middle ground, have emerged with glee to berate true believers in universal suffrage for not accepting that something is better than nothing,” Mr. Vines explains.

And it is doubtful party officials will stop there. “Against this background, we can understand why Beijing is looking for confrontation to bring Hong Kong people under control,” he says. “Anyone naive enough to imagine that this will be limited to imposing a phony form of democracy clearly knows nothing about how dictators work.”

bellwether - 전조

smolder-그을다, 울적하다, 연기피우다

stringent - 엄중한, 긴박한

oversight- 실수, 간과, 감독

for that matter - 그문제에 관해서

sovereignty-통치권, 자주권

at long last-오랜 시간이 흐른 후[마침내]

misnomer-부적절한 명칭

rubber-stamp-(법률・계획 등을) 잘 살펴보지도 않고 인가하다

vet-점검하다, 심사하다

implications 결과 영향

tremors - 미진

emanating - 발하다

denunciations - 맹렬한 비난

glee - 신남

berate - 질책하다

phony - 가짜의