The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce(HKGCC) CEO George Leung Siu Kay made politically incorrect remarks the other day in the programme Letter To Hong Kong, indicating that Hong Kong has been a stable and orderly society for half a century, but the large-scale conflicts between the police and citizens nowadays “feel like an illusion” for “the people aged above 50, the age at which a person should know the decrees of Heaven according to Confucius”, and are “unacceptable”. With the attacks from both political turmoil and Wuhan pneumonia, corporates got bogged down in a predicament. He pointed out that “for the time being, it is hardly possible for the people in such a torn society to agree to differ and work together with one heart in times of difficulty, like what our previous generation did”. While big corporates and small companies are amid both significant and minor political disputes that are all over the place, “some of them are at a loss as to what to do and would be blamed for whatever they do”. He believes Hong Kong is no longer a businessmen’s paradise. Meanwhile, he said government’s measures against the epidemic are harsh, providing helpless grant-in-aid. The business sector in Hong Kong has been going along for a free ride for decades. Does the HKGCC know the evil consequences of today are brought about by the nearsightedness of Hong Kong businessmen?

Corporates used to be able to keep aloof from political confrontations while corporate managers were not pressed to declare their stands in the past. They counted on representatives from the functional constituency to be their political agents who would never take means to extremes, being pro-establishment as well as making a good relationship with the pan-democrats, like what real estate mogul Abraham Shek Lai Him has been doing. In fact, the HKGCC used to have its own representatives from the functional constituency: Sir James McGregor before 1997 who was pro-democracy, and James Tien Pei Chun from the Liberal Party after 1997 who was conservative in social policies and pro-government in political orientation, but not yet a puppet of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government(LOCPG). After Tien turned a traitor in 2003 to make the legislation of Article 23 come within a hair’s breadth of getting enacted, the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) embarked on disciplining the business sector. The first endeavor was to disband the Liberal Party and replace it with the Business and Professionals Alliance for Hong Kong(BPAHK), which is led by the LOCPG. The functional constituency representative of the HKGCC was then changed from anyone from the Liberal Party to Jeffery Lam Kin Fung from the BPAHK.

CCP-controlled representatives in the legislative body are not able to have their bread buttered on both sides. Former pro-establishment figures that have independent thinking, like David Li Kwok Po, Peter Wong Hong Yuen and Eric Li Ka Cheung, have vanished without a trace. It is believed Abraham Shek would be the last one. As the CCP is pulling strings behind the administration, legislature, district setups and professional bodies, free will is annihilated, and corporates are not free to stay reticent about their stands amid political confrontations. The political stands declared pursuant to the request made by the CCP are not at all instrumental in realpolitik. Take the vice-chancellors of the eight universities in Hong Kong as an example. Even though they have been declaring their stands frequently, their attempts have simply been wrecking their social status and making themselves despised by their students. However, since CCP’s bureaucrats in Hong Kong need to fulfil their duties, everyone has to do their job. Such a cosmetic move escalates social and political confrontations so that corporates are damned if they do, and damned too if they don’t.

The business sector is culpable for such a losing game in Hong Kong. They have been bending to the power, staying away from politics and blindly objecting to democratization. For 30 years, their only political discourse has been: “Lee Cheuk Yan would win in direct elections”. They thought they had been ensured the vested interests with the political shield, but had never thought one day the Sino-U.S. community of interests that commenced in 1972 would disintegrate, and the U.S. would impose sanctions on Hong Kong to make the latter lose its special status inch by inch, to say nothing of the CCP employing extreme measures against Hong Kong at the cost of “Lam Chau” - mutually-assured destruction. The HKGCC should have heaved the sigh much earlier, and now it is simply showing its ignorance. When it became the lackey of the LOCPG in the LegCo and Andrew Leung Kwan Yuen the hatchet man, they should have known the day that everyone is required to declare their stands would come sooner or later.

Revolution is not a dinner party. The HKGCC should seriously study the history of Shanghai in 1949!

(Lau Sai Leung is a political commentator based in Hong Kong and a former full-time member of the HKSAR Central Policy Unit. )

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