The National People’s Congress(NPC) has decided to make amendments to the Hong Kong electoral arrangement so that “patriots ruling Hong Kong” is ensured. Who is considered a “patriot”? Nowadays, the criteria held fast to by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has gone beyond the initial resolution of Deng Xiaoping, the architect of “one country, two systems”, which was “we don’t demand that they be in favor of China’s socialist system, we only ask them to love the motherland and Hong Kong”. Song Ruan, the Deputy Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Commissioner’s Office in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), said: “When we say being patriotic, we don’t refer to having a love of Chinese culture or history, but the present-day People’s Republic of China(PRC) headed by the CCP. It is necessary for patriots to show respect for the CCP.” Zhang Xiaoming, the Deputy Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, further elaborated that since there were not so many items on the “negative list” in the Deng Xiaoping era, “respecting and maintaining the fundamental system of the state and constitutional order of the Hong Kong SAR” has to be stressed now, and those challenging the fundamental system of the state cannot be deemed patriots”.

The “negative list” put forward by Zhang is as funny as it is embarrassing. “Negative list” is a legal concept from the realm of investment following the principle: “Everything which is not forbidden by law is allowed”. Restrictions or bans on certain types of proceedings must be listed clearly, so that unpatriotic behaviors are perspicuously put on a blacklist that all rulers of Hong Kong can observe. However, such a negative list will never come into being in any legal sense. At an exchange conference held by Our Hong Kong Foundation chaired by “number one patriot” Tung Chee-hwa, Jat Sew-tong, S.C. and former Chairman of the statutory Independent Police Complaints Council, queried whether it is appropriate to use an “examination” or a “questionnaire” to make out “patriots”. If a questionnaire that dredges up facts of the past works, it is highly probable that the answers about the June Fourth incident 30 years ago to the questionnaire prove that former Chief Executive and one of the current state leaders Leung Chun-ying and delegate to the NPC Standing Committee Tam Yiu-chung, both of whom condemned Beijing for cracking down on the students, are not qualified as a patriot.

“Being patriotic” is a kind of emotional preference which is value-oriented rather than something that can be delimited legally. Human beings are social animals, the sociability of whom in families, ethnic groups and even countries involve both affinity in terms of space and locality, and cultural accumulation in terms of time. Attachment and affection to a “social group” generated in “spontaneous order” is natural. To a certain extent, affection is normality rather than exception. But in the current context of Hong Kong, according to the definition by the central government, the anti-extradition movement that took place last year is categorized as unpatriotic behavior. Millions of “unpatriotic people” took to the streets in Hong Kong, not because of affection becoming exception, but the “country” becoming so.

Deputy Director Zhang Xiaoming opined that the major political issue in Hong Kong at present regards a contest between those who intend to seize power and those act counter to seizing power rather than democratization of political arrangement. Actually, Article 2 of the General Principle of the Constitution of the PRC states: “Power belongs to the people.” Why do the people seize power from their own hands? “Power to the people” in a country is an universal rule, but the general rule in China is “power to the Party”. Being at the helm, the CCP is not authorized via democratic universal suffrage. After General Secretary Xi Jinping rose to power, CCP’s collective leadership, a democratic clique, made a U-turn and headed back to “power to the supreme ruler”.

The CCP argued: The Party’s leadership is conferred by the Constitution. But in reality the Constitution was drawn up by the Party. The CCP legitimizes itself by this circular justification. The CCP professed: The unpatriotic(indeed patriots not having a love of the Party) Hong Kong people can live and work in Hong Kong as usual, but are not allowed to take up any post in the team that rules Hong Kong. As such, “patriots” are caught between a rock and hard place: In a city where all men are equal before the law, and expression is relatively free, how can a bunch of rulers who “must have a love of the Party” govern millions of “unpatriotic” Hong Kong people? On the one hand, the rulers are criticized by public opinion from the mainland for being “loyal good-for-nothings”(from Tian Feillong) and “pseudo patriots” incompetent to rule Hong Kong(from Zheng Yongnian); on the other hand, the approval ratings of the Hong Kong major government functionaries are nosediving.

The NPC has decided to set up a commission on credentials to screen out those who are not qualified for running in elections, but there isn’t a transparent and fair “negative list”. So, any dispute over the definition of “patriots” is like how the lyrics of the theme song of a soap opera from the mainland put it: “If you say yes, you mean no; tell me no if you mean no, yes or no?” How can “patriots ruling Hong Kong” stemming from such a will of those in authority be legitimized?

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