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Hong Kong in 2020 - involution of “one country, two systems”|Lin Thung-hong

蘋果日報 2020/12/30 10:46


In 2020, Hong Kong seemed to have fast-forwarded to the year 2047. The year marks the end of the “one country, two systems” policy. Having made their voices heard in the anti-extradition protest movement, Hong Kong people now find themselves in a city mired in the doldrums, plagued by the coronavirus and governed by repression. Some activists have gone into exile. How did the city come down to this? And how will things develop in the future?

Pandemic weakened response of international community

After Xi Jinping became the sole leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012, Hong Kong moved into a new era of “one country, two systems”. Leung Chun-ying succeeded Donald Tsang, a technocrat trained under the British colonial rule, and defeated his election rival Henry Tang, who represented the moneyed class. Between 2012 and 2019, Leung proactively promoted patriotic education, while the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) in Beijing handed down the “August 31 decision”, which sparked the Umbrella Movement. The ensuing Legislative Council (LegCo) election saw the rise of localists. Subsequently, Beijing disqualified some LegCo members and interpreted the Basic Law. Activists related to clashes with police in Mongkok in 2016 were handed down heavy sentences. Afterwards, Carrie Lam came to power, and leaders of the Umbrella Movement were prosecuted. Lam also pushed the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance. Abuse of power by the police prompted people to put up resistance in the anti-extradition protest movement. All these were akin to a spiral that kept speeding up.
The spiral was set in motion when Beijing attempted to push legislations to reinforce its patriotic propaganda and political control. Yet that only gave rise to resistance of Hong Kong’s civil society. With relations souring between the Hong Kong government and the people, Beijing has further reined in political control over Hong Kong. In the end, the cross-strait setting and international setting in which the CCP used to have the upper hand fell like dominoes.
The protest movement in 2019 lasted for more than half a year and implicated the financial sector and the real estate sector, which were still prosperous a year before. Eventually, the movement came to an end after the pro-democracy camp won 112 District Council seats while the pro-establishment camp suffered a crushing defeat. The election results enabled the international community to glean a better understanding of the general public opinion in Hong Kong. They also helped shape the results of Taiwan’s presidential election a little more than a month later. Xi’s idea of applying the “one country, two systems” arrangement to Taiwan was out and the negative notion of “Hong Kong today, Taiwan tomorrow” was in. What took people by surprise, however, was that the ability of Hong Kong’s civil society to mobilize people was later significantly weakened by the coronavirus epidemic that spread from Wuhan to the whole world in the first half of 2020. The pandemic has also indirectly undermined the capacity of Europe and the US to draw up policies to provide diplomatic support to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

Mass arrest in the name of national security

At the end of June 2020, the NPCSC capitalized on the pandemic to impose a national security law on Hong Kong. In mid-July, more than 600,000 Hong Kongers took part in the pro-democracy camp’s primaries. But the Hong Kong government later disqualified 12 pro-democracy candidates and prosecuted six pro-democracy activists abroad. When the LegCo election nomination period was about to end in late July, Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced that the election would be postponed by a year, citing the pandemic. The US State Department was quick to introduce economic sanctions on 11 officials including Lam. On August 10, China announced a list of 11 Americans to be sanctioned as a way to get back at the US sanctions. Then, founder of Next Digital Jimmy Lai was arrested and the police searched the headquarters of Apple Daily. Late at night, the police arrested activist Agnes Chow. On September 25, the US ended Hong Kong’s special trading status and US-bound Hong Kong exports must drop the tag of “Made in Hong Kong”.
On August 23, the CCP intercepted 12 protesters who attempted to flee Hong Kong on a speedboat. In the early morning of October 10, Hong Kong police arrested nine people in Kowloon and the New Territories, accusing them of providing funds and transportation and arranging the lives of the 12 protesters after arriving Taiwan. That night and the following two nights, China Central Television broadcast a program about some so-called Taiwanese spies confessing their crimes.
From then on and until the end of the US election, Beijing and the Hong Kong authorities seemed to have suspend the crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists, although a small number of localists were arrested and prosecuted. Apparently, they wanted to keep a distance from the election. On November 9, mainstream media in the US declared that Joe Biden won the election, while State Secretary Mike Pompeo announced sanctions on four persons who implemented Hong Kong’s National Security Law. They include Li Jiangzhou, deputy head of the Office for Safeguarding National Security of the Central People’s Government in Hong Kong. China then waited until November 30 to announce sanctions on four US diplomats with democracy promotion ties over Hong Kong.
With the picture of the US presidential election becoming clear, the Hong Kong government set off to carry out mass arrests again. On December 2, young pro-democracy leader Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam were sentenced to seven to 13.5 months in jail for their roles in the siege of the police headquarters last year. Ex-lawmaker Ted Hui later revealed that he decided to go into exile in the UK. The police were quick to freeze his and his family’s bank accounts, saying his previous crowdfunding initiatives involved money laundering. Hui is wanted under the National Security Law. On December 7, Arthur Yeung, a graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and a few other young people were arrested for allegedly participating in an unauthorized assembly or violating the National Security Law during a demonstration at the CUHK graduation ceremony on November 19. Meanwhile, the US State Department and the Treasury Department announced sanctions on 14 NPCSC vice-chairmen. In the morning of November 8, eight pro-democracy figures, including Leung Kwok-hung, Figo Chan and Chu Hoi-dick were arrested.
On December 12, Jimmy Lai was arrested and chained like a prisoner. He was accused of “colluding with foreign forces” and “endangering national security”. The other day he was released on bail. During this time, it was reported that some pro-establishment figures wanted to form the Bauhinia Party to guard the CCP from the outside. A poll conducted by CUHK indicated that 15 percent of Hong Kongers had acted to prepare for migrating to other countries. It is estimated that a million people want to leave the city.

Spiral of involution

Recently, the academic term of “involution” has become all the rage among intellectuals in mainland China. The concept has been used in social sciences for a long time. “Agricultural involution” was coined by American anthropologist Clifford Geertz to describe the phenomenon whereby small farmers in Southeast Asia intensified wet-rice cultivation and yet production output was offset by growth in population. Indian scholar Prasenjit Duara applied the concept to the agricultural society in Republican China and came up with the idea of “state involution”. He noted that when the Nationalist Government enlarged local governments and increased tax revenue, many warlords and rogues joined local governments. Before public services were ever expanded, low-ranking officials already started to pillage resources and engaged in corrupt acts. The more state leaders tried to build up the country, enlarge the government and increase tax revenue, the more people resisted and revolted. Consequently, a failed state was born.
Xiang Biao, a Chinese anthropologist at Oxford University, has used the phenomenon to explain the situation facing contemporary China. He argues that people in China are facing a competition whereby neither failure or withdrawal is allowed and people are simply wasting their efforts in their day-to-day life.
The concept of involution is quite apt for describing Beijing’s policy towards Hong Kong. In 2020, Hong Kong saw the involution of the “one country, two systems” arrangement into a one-country dictatorship. The CCP keeps trying to promote mainland-style political and social control in Hong Kong, pushing the city into an abyss of dictatorship. As Europe, the US and Taiwan are busy fighting the virus, Hong Kongers cannot secure timely support or move to other countries. The spiral has also affected geopolitics in neighboring countries and triggered confrontation between both sides of the strait, South China Sea disputes, and US-China confrontation.

Hong Kong gloom and Taiwan’s advanced plans

From the perspective of the outsider, it is not that difficult to halt Hong Kong’s involution. The key is to slow down political and economic integration between Hong Kong and China and make some concessions in accordance with public opinion. However, that is not an option for Beijing as Xi’s regime is trying to shirk its responsibility for the pandemic and wants to extend his term in 2022. The CCP is actually using the change of power in the US and the worsening pandemic to speed up its “laam chau” (scotched earth) policy. It wants to show off its power to Biden. The spiral of involution will probably lead to the continuous deterioration of Hong Kong’s situation in 2021.
The CCP’s policy towards Hong Kong is one that uses businessmen to dominate politics and deepen its united front propaganda. The speeding up of Hong Kong’s fall is a wake-up call for freedom and democracy and the future of Taiwan. At a time when the US is going to have a new government and vaccine research is offering a ray of hope, how Taiwan should make advanced plans to help Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp, adjust its relations with Hong Kong and rein in Chinese investment are set to be the biggest challenges for the island in the two years to come.
(Lin Thung-hong, research fellow of the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, and director of the Center for Contemporary China, National Tsing Hua University)
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