HK rebuffs China pressure

While Hong Kong's recent general election followed a predictable pattern, the overall results, while complex, still sent an interesting message. Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports that while Hong Kong voters essentially asked China to listen to their voice, Beijing is not inclined to do so. This is surprising, since the overall result is one which gives China, and Britain, room for maneuver -- if they want to use it.

HONG KONG (JP): The first, and possibly the last, comprehensive and free democratic election for the Hong Kong Legislative Council (Legco) did not reverse the looming sense of tragedy-to-come in Hong Kong, which the British and Chinese governments have, wittingly or unwittingly, done so much to instill. But, in the Sept. 17th election, Hong Kong voters made the best of a bad situation with a clever split-level decision.

At one level, the Hong Kong electorate administered a double rebuff to China by voting quite decisively, and in substantial numbers, for those candidates whom Beijing has called "subversive" and "unpatriotic", and with whom Beijing has refused, so far, to have any dialog.

These candidates belong to the Democratic Party (DP), led by articulate lawyer Martin Lee, which, while it has not secured a clear majority of Legco's 60 seats, has certainly done much better than earlier anticipated. It is clearly the largest single party, with 19 seats, in the new and highly diverse Legco.

This was a significant victory but it was not the landslide or decisive victory which much of the world's press made it out to be. A leading local newspaper, the South China Morning Post, came out immediately after the election with the wholly misleading headline "Democrats Dominate Legco" - and too many reporters took this simplicity as the foundation for their analysis.

For any media researcher, the 1995 Hong Kong election could provide plenty of material for two major modern themes: how the press nowadays too often imitates the banal simplicities of television, instead of trying to grapple with the complexity of events which television cannot grasp; and how the press can mislead, by simplifying an event, then use that simplification as a basis for analysis.

Thus, at another level, it was equally important that the Hong Kong people, voting for all the members of Legco, for the first time in 154 years of British colonial rule, used a highly complex and cumbersome electoral system, to give London and Beijing what they wanted: a "balanced" legislature, evenly divided between those who will assert Hong Kong's rights and those who will stress compromise with the outgoing and incoming colonial powers.

In large part, China brought the first-level decision, the double rebuff, down upon itself, with an almost unbelievably clumsy intervention on election day.

Technically, of course, China, which will resume sovereignty over Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, is not a colonial power vis-a-vis Hong Kong, but Beijing certainly, and once again, behaved like one as polling began on Sunday Sept. 17.

The New China News Agency (NCNA), which acts as a de facto embassy for China in Hong Kong, issued an imperious statement reiterating the decision of the Chinese Government and China's National People's Congress (NPC) that "Hong Kong's Legco, district boards, and municipal councils will stop functioning in mid-1997".

These are all the elected bodies which have been belatedly set up by the British. China's current leaders have made it abundantly plain that they disdain all meaningful elections, especially if they take place on Chinese soil in Hong Kong, or Taiwan.

On the one hand, the statement was gratuitous, since China's decision to terminate all of Hong Kong's elected bodies needs no repeating. The statement was obviously designed to discourage Hong Kong people from voting.

On the other hand, the NCNA statement was also hypocritical, since it was already widely known within Hong Kong that China had, in fact, used considerable monetary and other resources in an effort to win support for the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), a three-year-old party which best represents the China "whateverist faction" within Hong Kong -- those who tend to argue that whatever China says or does is right.

The growth of the China "whateverist faction" within Hong Kong in the last few years has been truly remarkable, given the recent ease with which China has taken positions which are not in accord with Hong Kong's interests. Relatively few voices have been raised, for example, to protest China's decision to terminate Legco because the largely consultative body had, at last, become fully elected.

Crucially, for those in Hong Kong with eyes to see what is wrong, the NCNA statement was one more Chinese breach of Beijing's initial promise to allow Hong Kong a "high degree of autonomy", once it is returned to the Chinese Motherland in 1997. During the election campaign, China's spokesmen have made it perfectly clear that, in order to be regarded as patriotic, Hong Kong voters must do as China says, and not vote for the Democrats, or any other independent-minded candidates.

The whole performance by China, and particularly the last minute intervention, was, as British Governor Christopher Patten pointed out, not "a very sensitive way of trying to win hearts and minds."

Hong Kong responded first by voting in greater numbers than ever before, rather than ignoring the electoral exercise. To be sure, the voter turnout in the geographical constituencies was only 35.8 percent, as against 39 percent in 1991 (or the miserable 44 percent in the recent House of Councillors election in Japan). Still the increased size of the electoral register this time meant that nearly a million Hong Kongers went to the polls -- 170,000 more than in the less-comprehensive election four years ago.

The number of those voting was roughly the same as the number of those who bravely took to the streets in June 1989, to protest the Beijing Massacre, after the Tiananmen demonstrations calling for change in China.

Conversely, that Hong Kong demonstration was the event which convinced China's current rulers that they must redouble their efforts to limit and to control Hong Kong's political development.

Conversely, again, it is that manifest Chinese determination to squash all Hong Kong self-expression which has helped to sustain Democratic Party support in Hong Kong, plus broad support for Hong Kong democratic advance.

Second, the voters returned 12 democrats in the 20 geographical constituencies, together with three outspoken independents, and two members of a small party which is democratically-inclined.

Several of the democrats, and all three independents, were returned with convincing majorities.

Almost certainly the New China News Agency's intervention cost the pro-China DAB at least two seats, which were lost by narrow majorities. The DAB narrowly won two seats, one by a wafer-thin 48-vote margin.

Indicating the frequently devious, and often convoluted ways of Chinese communist politics, China's hard-liners, who clearly appear to be in control both in Beijing and in the NCNA in Hong Kong, may even have wanted this bad result for the DAB, so that they can now argue that China has no use for, and will not benefit from, democracy within Hong Kong.

Against this, the clear-cut vote in the geographical constituencies leaves China in the invidious position of having to eliminate probably 17 Legco directly-elected members when it moves to appoint its own Legco in 1997. (The widespread expectation is that China's "colonialism" in Hong Kong will use the same technique as that deployed by the British -- co-opting the elite by appointing members of it to sit in Legco.)

However, when all sixty Legco seats are considered, the overall position is far from clear-cut and probably more to China's and Britain's liking.

In addition to the 20 geographic constituencies, 10 members were chosen by a committee made up of those elected to district boards, while 30 members were selected to represent functional constituencies made up of various professions and trades.

Given the assorted small political groups and numerous independents of various convictions that have won many of these 40 seats, it is not easy to calculate the precise political composition of the new Legco. The line-up of the parties, groups and individuals will almost certainly vary from issue to issue.

But on the fundamental question of whether to stand up for Hong Kong's interests, or to give in to China's political line, the election would seem to have produced a Legislative Council split down the middle (see table on Legco breakdown by outlook).

The Democrats and their allies could probably control 31 seats, whereas the DAB (with six seats overall), the pro-business Liberal Party (with nine plus one allied independent), and others could control 29 seats. It is still too soon to be sure. Some are already calculating that the boot could be on the other foot -- 29 for the pro-Hong Kong camp, and 31 for the those who will be willing to put China first. Two independents are seen as crucial and unpredictable swing votes.

These calculations are for the future. For now, the Hong Kong people have clearly used their first and last territory-wide ballot to send China the important message -- please respect Hong Kong's promised autonomy.

China could have easily turned its rebuff into a victory if only one of its top leaders could have clearly indicated that the election results were being carefully studied; could have welcomed the electoral expressions of different opinions; and could have asserted assert that China will certainly respect the views of all Hong Kong compatriots.

To the contrary, on election day, Prime Minister Li Peng again reiterated the decision to terminate Legco. After the election, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Chen Jian asserted that "the result did not reflect the will of the Hong Kong people", while the NCNA in Hong Kong dubbed the election "unfair and unreasonable".

Unfortunately, maybe tragically, with hard-liners in the ascendant, a simple but telling gesture of reassurance to Hong Kong is beyond China's capacity to bestow.

Deng Xiaoping is supposed to have coined the slogan "one country, two systems" to express the right way to solve Hong Kong's retrocession. Li Peng, Chen Jian and the NCNA add to the long litany of China's words and deeds which already make it plain that China wants one country, one system.

Put another way, the Hong Kong election was remarkable because it produced a Legco which truly mirrors the many diverse views in the territory, a diversity which China will have to grapple with if it wants to preserve Hong Kong's economic dynamism. But the Chinese communists are only interested in a single viewpoint, their own -- a single-minded adherence with which they have stultified China's development, and will, as surely, stultify Hong Kong.

Window: For now, the Hong Kong people have clearly used their first and last territory-wide ballot to send China the important message -- please respect Hong Kong's promised autonomy.