On the 11th, the National People’s Congress in Beijing passed a draft reform of Hong Kong’s electoral system with 2,895 votes in favor, 0 votes against, and 1 abstention. Last year, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government postponed the Legislative Council election on the grounds of the pandemic, but the pandemic was only a pretext. The real reason was that the democrats won a landslide victory in the district council elections the year before. They won more than 80% of the seats, shocking China and Hong Kong. Later they also rode on the momentum to target the Legislative Council election, launching the “35+” offensive and vowing to win the majority (over 35 seats). They made Beijing restless, and Beijing had to suspend the elections at all costs to buy time for making new rules of the game to ambush democrats.

The so-called “reform of the electoral system” of Beijing is to impose restrictions on the democrats in two aspects. One is the qualification review for candidacy, aiming to filter out radical opposition and localism. The other is curbing the democratic force to a non-threatening scale so that even if the moderates among them are lucky enough to appear on the ballots and get elected, they would not occupy more than a quarter of the legislative council and majority would be unthinkable. As Beijing has repeatedly emphasized in recent days, this is a “defense battle for governance.”

First of all, during the election of the chief executive, another organization will be established to review the qualifications of candidates. If democrats want to participate in the election, they must also win the nomination from the Election Committee, with a joint nomination by no fewer than 188 members and no fewer than 15 members from each sector. It wouldn’t be a problem for the democrats to get nominations in the professional sectors, but if they want to get nominations in the industrial and commercial sector, and especially the newly established fifth sector (that is, an organization tied with Beijing), it would be reaching for the stars. Whenever the election comes, they would be at Beijing’s mercy, dependent on the political climate and the “emperor’s amnesty.” In addition, the number of electoral committees will increase to 1,500, and the newly-added fifth sector will come from subsidiary organizations of Beijing, so the number of votes controlled by Beijing will greatly increase.

Second, rumor had it that Beijing would block members of the district councils to run for the Legislative Council and the election committee because of the landslide victory of the democrats at district elections. They might also bundle both elections for the district councils and the Legislative Council into one ballot to reduce the seats democrats could win. But now it seems like only a small gimmick. The bigger game of Beijing is backtracking to reintroduce the Election Committee that was installed around 1997 and “giving the Election Committee to elect a larger proportion of the Legislative Council.”

Now there are two versions. One is allocating 30 seats each to direct election, functional constituency, and the election committee. The other is significantly cutting down the number of seats for direct election to an allocation of 20, 30, and 40 seats respectively. If there are really only 20 seats left for direct elections, plus the implementation of the one vote for two councils, the seats the democrats could win will be almost halved.

This time, the National People’s Congress did not talk about how to allocate seats. The decision will be handed over to the Standing Committee for planning, and Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, will go to Hong Kong to listen to opinions next week.

Article 68 of the Basic Law states that the “method for forming the Legislative Council shall be determined in accordance with the actual situation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the principle of a gradual progress, with the ultimate goal of a universal suffrage for all seats.” However, if seats for direct elections drop from 35 to 20 at once, what kind of “gradual progress” toward “universal suffrage for all seats” does that mean? It is really against common sense and hardly convincing for the public.

In the future, if Beijing would be more generous to allow some moderate democrats (such as the Democratic Party) to join the election, they could only be the Macao-style tokens at the council. If Beijing would simply be cruel and block all democrats from joining, it would be difficult for them to voice their opinions, ensure checks and balances, and win resources at the council. They would suddenly regress from the “opposition” of the past 30 years to the much smaller “pressure group” of the 1970s.

I have always heard from my friends in China that Beijing is very concerned about Hong Kong’s “glaring deep-seated -contradictions” and has been dissatisfied with the various explicit or implicit boycotts of Hong Kong’s “Property Party.” However, to secure their governance, they could only partner with the businessmen and professionals to ensure their majority in the Election Committee that elects the Chief Executive and the Legislative Council. Therefore, they have been staying put.

However, after the introduction of large proportions of seats elected by the election committee, not only the seats of the democrats will be “diluted,” even the seats elected by the businesses and professionals would be further “diluted.” Not only would checks and balances by the democrats disappear, but even the value of the alliance of businesses and professionals and their veto power would also disappear. With the “voting troop” of seats decided by the election committee, Beijing could freely play tricks on the issues of land, housing, and tax system without the fear of jeopardizing the vested interests of the industrial and commercial sector, challenging the “glaring sub-contradictions.”

In the past, in order to get the majority in the election of the Chief Executive, Beijing had made some compromises with the industrial and commercial sector and yielded to some choices of candidates. However, in the future, the industrial and commercial sector can hardly hope to repeat the same game. The determining and bargaining power of the industrial and commercial sector will suffer huge blows.

If the proportion of directly elected seats in the Legislative Council is really reduced, even the value of the pro-establishment who favor direct elections would be further reduced. The red elites will instead covet the seats of the election committee, and they will focus on showing loyalty instead of their capacity to win votes to earn the favor of Beijing. The comprehensive and mature mechanism of election established with efforts over the years by the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions would also lose its value.

Moreover, unlike the proportional representation system in the past, when the establishment would send long lists to all constituencies and exhaust all means and fight for enough votes to get elected. The results of election must be earned by oneself, and pro-establishment voters were able to choose from different candidates. In the future, the pro-establishment could only win one seat in one constituency, so they would only send out one candidate. Their candidacy would definitely not be determined in “primaries” like the democrats but very likely decided through “coordination” with Sai Wan (the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government).

Now that the pro-establishment have won 60% of the votes and the democrats 40%, it would be difficult for the pro-establishment to lose that one seat in each constituency but also to gain more than one seat. Winning the election is almost certain with the “appointment” by Sai Wan, so it would become less competitive, and the dependence on pro-establishment who favor direct elections would also be reduced significantly.

In general, under the new electoral system, in addition to the democrats, both the industrial and commercial sector and the pro-establishment who favor direct elections would also become losers, and their value will be greatly reduced in the future. There is only one winner, and that is the central government, which will take high command over Hong Kong’s governance ever since.

(Cai Zi-qiang, senior lecturer of the Government and Public Administration department in The Chinese University of Hong Kong.)

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