China must honour its promise to Hong Kong
Pieces of paper have a poor reputation among political realists, and history is littered with the torn-up fragments of solemn treaties. Seventeen years after a tearful Chris Patten, the last colonial governor of Hong Kong, sailed away on the royal yacht Britannia in July 1997, two pieces of paper are in contention, and they’re sparking an increasingly bitter confrontation over the right of Hong Kong’s people to choose their own government.
More than 700,000 people voted for that right last week in an unofficial referendum organised by Occupy Central, a pro-democracy movement founded in 2013. And on July 1 tens of thousands took to the streets in Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy rally in more than a decade. The referendum was denounced as an “illegal farce” by mainland newspaper Global Times; ballot boxes and papers intended for use in the referendum were seized; the online poll came under repeated cyber attack; and every mention of the referendum, and of Occupy Central, has been scrubbed from the Chinese Internet.
At the heart of the confrontation is the joint declaration, the 1985 agreement between Britain and China, and a white paper published by the Chinese government last month. Along with the mutually agreed basic law, which came into effect in 1997, it pledged to guarantee Hong Kong’s continuing liberties, rights and way of life for 50 years, during which time Hong Kong would run its own affairs under Deng Xiaoping’s formula of “one country, two systems”.
Beijing has repeatedly delayed the introduction of a fully democratic system and, critics say, steadily expanded its influence in Hong Kong’s affairs. The issue has come to a head over the conditions for the next legislative elections in 2016, and elections for chief executive in 2017. Beijing wants to allow only approved candidates who “love China” to stand.
The white paper seems to reinterpret Xiaoping’s guarantee of freedoms and to propose, among other things, that Hong Kong’s judges, as well as its political candidates, should be selected on political criteria. The paper has provoked such outrage that the text has been publicly burned on Hong Kong streets. For the veteran politician Anson Chan, Hong Kong’s governability is as stake, as well as its freedoms. If its political leaders have no credibility, she argues, confrontations can only escalate.
The growing protests will not only test China’s willingness to allow Hong Kong’s people to vote freely for the candidates they choose, they will also affect China’s international standing. If China wants to be seen as a “new kind of great power” and a benign force in the world, honouring solemn promises written on paper is essential.