Beijing Redefines Hong Kong's Autonomy

On June 10th, China’s State Council issued its first white paper on Hong Kong since the city was handed from Britain to Beijing on July 1, 1997. The document, titled “The Practice of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region,” is a heavy-handed attempt to sway public opinion that is sure to backfire.

In the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, China promised Hong Kong, then a colony, a “high degree of autonomy.” At the time, Chinese officials sought to put the hearts of their Hong Kong compatriots “at ease,” as they said, by providing guarantees.

This month’s white paper, however, essentially wrote the Joint Declaration out of existence by noting that China has “comprehensive jurisdiction” over Hong Kong and is the source of its autonomy. There was, in the words of the paper, no “residual power.” In short, Beijing has full authority to take back any and all rights that people in Hong Kong presently enjoy.

Many of Beijing’s defenders point out there was nothing new in the white paper, which is largely true. China, after all, has been trying to bury the Joint Declaration for a long time. Yet Hung Ho-feng, a professor at Johns Hopkins, points out that the white paper breaks new ground by essentially establishing a requirement for the procedures to be put in place for the election in 2017 for the city’s chief executive, the top political post there. According to Hung, writing in a private message, such procedures look like they will have to “comply with the interests of national sovereignty, security, and development.” In other words, Beijing gets to reject any election mechanism it does not like.

The paper was issued on the eve of an informal citywide referendum to be conducted by Occupy Central, which has promised civil disobedience in Hong Kong’s main business district if Beijing backtracks on promises to hold free and fair elections in 2017, the most contentious issue in Hong Kong at the moment.

If the white paper was an exercise in intimidation, as many believe it was, then it is resulting in a debacle for Beijing. The Occupy Central effort, which was flagging prior to the white paper, took on new life after the paper came out last week. As Benny Tai, a co-founder of the group, told the Economist, “We should thank Beijing for adding fuel to the fire.”  

Beijing’s effort was so inflammatory that some in Hong Kong privately suspect Chinese officials purposefully sought to aggravate the situation, perhaps to justify declaring martial law and deploying the People’s Liberation Army to patrol the streets.

It is, however, unlikely that Chinese leaders had this as their intent. For one thing, they have always been worried about unrest in Hong Kong triggering disturbances across the border in the mainland. Moreover, they like to portray themselves as representing the popular will and large-scale protests utterly destroy that narrative.

Moreover, Beijing appears behind a concerted campaign to keep people off the streets, either in demonstrations organized by Occupy Central or during the annual July 1st pro-democracy march. Some of the most prominent pro-Beijing figures in Hong Kong, such as former justice minister Elsie Leung Oi-sie, have in the last few days warned about civil unrest, foreign agitators, and “color revolutions.”

The best explanation for the white paper, as Michael Davis explains, is that Chinese leaders want “to say forcefully that Beijing is in charge.” Yet as the outspoken Hong Kong University Law School professor noted on Monday in the South China Morning Post, “The most effective way for Beijing to calm resistance is to assert less control, not more.”

Davis is absolutely correct. The pan-democratic movement is particularly divided at the moment and would fall apart if Beijing looked even slightly benign. Yet Chinese leaders sometimes cannot help themselves. They are so accustomed to pushing around their own people that they act arrogantly with everyone else. And so Beijing is now indulging its worst instincts and unintentionally aiding the cause of representative governance in Hong Kong. 

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