For 79 days last year, thousands of protesters occupied major roads in Hong Kong in an attempt to force Chinese authorities to grant the territory genuine democracy.
For 79 days last year, thousands of protesters occupied major roads in Hong Kong in an attempt to force Chinese authorities to grant the territory genuine democracy.
They failed.
Local leaders and their overlords in Beijing refused to negotiate for an electoral plan that would allow for a popular vote for Hong Kong’s next leader but would limit candidates to nominees approved by the Communist regime. That left opposition representatives in Hong Kong’s legislature with an unappealing choice this month: Sign off on the inadequate reform or block it at the risk of freezing the current, even less democratic, system in place.
“To kowtow, or to veto,” was the way opposition leader Alan Leong summed up the dilemma.
In the end, the opposition voted down the electoral system, which needed a two-thirds majority to pass the legislative council.
The rebuff to the regime was amplified when pro-Beijing legislators walked out in a failed attempt to delay the vote; the final tally was 28-8. It was a moral victory for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, which has made clear it won’t accept China’s attempt to gut its promise to allow universal suffrage.
In the short term, the practical result might be to leave Hong Kong with an election system that limits voting to a Beijing-controlled committee.
The territory’s unpopular current leader, Leung Chun-ying, who was chosen that way, ruled out further political concessions during the two years remaining in his term. That’s consistent with the policy of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has cracked down on dissent and rejected political liberalization since taking power in 2012.
The foreclosure of even a restricted direct election will frustrate the plurality of Hong Kongers who, polls showed, favored Beijing’s proposed system compared to no change at all.
The moderates might have a point: In other parts of the world, even limited exercises of democracy produced positive results and created momentum for greater change.
Hong Kong, however, has been polarized by last year’s Occupy Central movement and the authorities’ unyielding response to it.
The regime’s intransigence has had the effect of hardening an opposition that long has been characterized by its moderation as well as its commitment to democracy. The opposition legislators, most of whom were themselves elected by popular vote, were bound to side with the tens of thousands whose peaceful movement for change was rejected and repressed.
Slowly but surely, China is losing Hong Kong’s younger generation.
According to numerous reports, sentiment in the former British colony increasingly favors a political solution tailored to the territory, rather than to China as a whole. Hostility toward the mainland is growing: The booing of China’s national anthem by a crowd cheering for Hong Kong’s soccer team this month was widely noted.
By now, it ought to be evident — even to Communist leaders — that their political policy for Hong Kong has backfired.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it’s likely to change.
— Washington Post