One would think that the market for pro-China, anti-democracy political parties in Hong Kong would be saturated at this point.

There’s the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, the Federation of Trade Unions, the New People’s Party… none of whom have even come close to winning elections without their opponents being arbitrarily disqualified. The last thing Hong Kong needs is one more political party with no support base parroting Peking’s talking points and lecturing us about the greatness of One Country Two Systems.

But alas, this week the South China Morning Post, with all of the subtlety of an HK01 exclusive, broke the news of the establishment of a new Bauhinia Party composed of China-born businessmen living in Hong Kong.

Immediately, questions arose: was this new party the work of Peking? What policies does it promote? What does its appearance at this moment in Hong Kong’s history represent?

On the first question, many revealing facts emerged very quickly.

One of the Party’s founders and its current chairman, Li Shan, is a representative to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference(CPPCC), vice-chairman of Tsinghua University’s Institute for Governance Studies, and the vice-chairman of the Silk Road Planning Research Centre, a research center under the CPPCC. These are not, one must note, “outsider” positions.

Another founder, Chen Jianwen just so happens to be the chair of the Industrial and Commercial Professionals Alumni Association of the Central Party School in Hong Kong. Not too subtle, my commie friend!

The third founder, Wong Chau-chi, is slightly more subtle, but did write a column for Sing Tao about how the satellite industry can contribute to the Belt-Road Initiative, which is the type of mind-numbing thing that only a Party hack could write.

The establishment of the party, finally, was announced in a speech by Li Shan at Tsinghua University’s Institute for Governance Studies: an unintentionally revealing choice, one might say, for a party that claims to want to win over public opinion in Hong Kong.

This is all of course circumstantial evidence, but anyone who remains unconvinced that Bauhinia is a Chinese Communist Party(CCP) front could consider a counterfactual case: would three businessmen with such extensive links to the CCP establish a new political party without the Party’s blessing? The current political environment, after all, is not particularly amenable to establishing political parties that Peking dislikes. And if they did dare to do such a thing, would they choose to announce the establishment of that party in a speech at Tsinghua?

Another counterfactual case to consider: could any force other than Peking misunderstand Hong Kong politics and culture so thoroughly as to think that the city needs another pro-establishment party? To think that this is an efficient use of time for people who already have day jobs?

Insofar as the answers to these questions are painfully obvious, let’s move on to the party’s platform.

The Bauhinia Party claims to support universal suffrage as guaranteed in the Basic Law: a seemingly audacious stance for a pro-establishment party to take nowadays. On closer inspection, however, one can see that Bauhinia promotes universal suffrage in the service of authoritarianism: in his speech at Tsinghua, Li Shan proposed transforming the Legislative Council into a bicameral legislature, with a directly elected lower house and an upper house composed of legislators hand-picked by a “political consultative committee.”

Anyone who is familiar with the work of political Confucianists in China today will immediately recognize this as a variation on their subordination of a democratic legislature to an elite hand-picked legislature: essentially entrapping universal suffrage within an authoritarian system in which it can have no real impact. Li Shan has clearly benefited from his “intellectual exchanges” at Tsinghua.

Li furthermore provides no details on how, or indeed even if, his proposal for universal suffrage would impact the selection of the Chief Executive, but his non-democratic upper house is not particularly reassuring in this regard.

The Bauhinia Party also proposes extending One Country Two Systems and the Basic Law that guarantees it for another fifty years to 2097. This used to be an interesting idea, back when city-state theorists first promoted Eternal Basic Law half a decade ago. The only problem, of course, is everything that has happened since. The CCP and its enablers in Hong Kong have completely obliterated One Country Two Systems and the Basic Law. Proposing extending Basic Law for another fifty years today is like vowing to maintain your virginity after an orgy.

The Bauhinia Party also has some (not so) new ideas in the field of education, including expanding openings for Hong Kong students in China, as well as allowing Hong Kong students to join in universities’ military training programs, initiated after the PLA’s 1989 massacre to make people identify with their oppressors. Bauhinia claims that such policies would promote greater “patriotism” among Hong Kong students, a belief that belies their complete and utter lack of understanding of Hong Kong. There are so many cases that clearly show that exposure to contemporary China’s doctrinaire education system and totalitarian political culture is far more likely to produce a sense of difference and a corresponding desire to maintain Hong Kong’s uniqueness from such nonsense.

In other fields, the Bauhinia Party’s policy proposals are painfully predictable. They are excited about the Tomorrow Lantau Vision, the Greater Bay Area, and the Belt-Road Initiative. Why not just set up an Xi Jinping Thought Research Center at Hong Kong University while we are at it?

I don’t see anything in the proposals above that seems likely to win over millions of votes. Yet the reality of Hong Kong today is that in order to be politically influential one does not in fact need to win over millions of votes: one simply needs the support of Beijing. If you don’t believe me, just ask anyone in the pro-establishment camp, who are certainly anxiously eyeing Bauhinia: and not because they think it will be popular.

The only characteristic that differentiates the new Bauhinia Party from the rest of the pro-establishment camp is that it consists of people born in China with quite open and obvious links to the CCP. Thus far, the CCP’s colonization of Hong Kong has been exercised in the political field by loyal pro-establishment proxies. Yet as the political situation in Hong Kong grows increasingly complex, Peking would undoubtedly have no issues with discarding these local proxies and would find solace in the idea of its “own people” playing a role in the political field. In this sense, the Bauhinia Party represents a low-key coming out party for the CCP in Hong Kong politics.

Rhetorically promoting decolonization while shifting toward ever more direct rule by outsider loyalists whose views diverge markedly from mainstream public opinion in Hong Kong, the emergence of the Bauhinia Party at this critical moment in the city’s history heralds, in my reading, the next stage of CCP colonization.

(Kevin Carrico is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Monash University)

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