Who was the sole National People’s Congress delegate who abstained from voting on the motion enacting sweeping reforms to Hong Kong’s election system last Thursday? The answer would be interesting but hardly crucial as none of the delegates voted against the motion while 2,895 did what they were told to do, followed by 30 seconds of applause.

So, here we have a definitive demonstration of what to expect for a “democratic election system with Hong Kong characteristics”, the description offered by Wang Chen, the Vice Chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.

Like all authoritarian regimes, the Chinese Communist Party is wholly in favor of elections as long as they deliver the desired results.

The late Sir David Akers-Jones, who served briefly as Hong Kong’s Acting Governor before retiring and becoming an outspoken apologist for the regime in Beijing, once told the last Governor, Chris Patten, that the reason why the Party disliked open elections was that they caused uncertainty. A well regulated country, he explained, needs predictability.

Predictability has now been delivered as there is little doubt that the result of the new election system will be to eliminate any real opposition from the Hong Kong political system. Inevitably there will be a bit of window dressing and some house trained opponents will be able to sit somewhere on the sidelines. As ever they will become what the Soviet leader VI Lenin contemptuously described as being “useful idiots”.

The bigger question that arises is what will follow. How on earth will Beijing find people of sufficient calibre to take part in the ‘reformed’ political system? Surely no one seriously pretends that the motley collection of yes men and women who populate the pro-China camp will be up to the job?

Even under the old system it was hard to get them to even attend Legco sessions, let alone make a useful contribution to the proceedings.

And a cursory glance around those who have been promoted to the highest offices in government suggests, to put it mildly, an ability-deficit. Ask practically anyone in the legal profession what they think of the abilities of the Secretary for Justice Terresa Cheng and eyes start rolling. How about the almost terminally clueless, albeit affable Finance Secretary Paul Chan? I’ve never come across anyone in the financial sector who actually thinks he is up to the job; at best they mutter darkly about he could be replaced by someone worse.

Hong Kong sends a variety of people to populate China’s consultative bodies at regional and national level. Many of them are complete nonentities, others are well known but their outstanding characteristic is to have contributed nothing of great value to the proceedings. Indeed it is probably not the intention for them to do much more than simply raise their hands on demand.

Once the political system comes fully under Beijing’s control, there will no longer be any excuse for their inadequacies. For years both government officials and the pro-Beijing camp have been able to blame the opposition for stalemate in the legislature, for failure to tackle grassroot issues and for holding the government to ransom.

This was largely nonsense but in some ways, plausible nonsense. Now there is nowhere to hide – with total control, comes total responsibility. And the blunt truth is that these people are not even vaguely up to the job.

As matters stand everyone from Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive in Name Only, barely dares to raise an eyebrow without getting the nod of approval from Beijing. In practise this usually means dashing off to the Central Liaison Office for orders or moving higher up the chain of command for bigger issues.

The leaders in Beijing are already showing signs of exasperation over the sheer uselessness of their Quislings but hitherto this exasperation has been kept in check. How long will that last? Moreover how long will it be before these useless people are simply pushed to one side, allowing Beijing officials to step in directly as they have done in Macau?

At the moment the local pro-Beijing camp is salivating over the prospect of fighting elections that they are guaranteed to win and are looking forward to gaining important sounding positions by way of appointment.

However they need to be very careful over what they wish for because they are dealing with a ruthless political party in Beijing that eats its own people with alacrity. The purges of those who were once considered to be the most loyal on the Mainland stand as testament to the precarious nature of being a capricious regime’s loyal servants. The regime is notorious for turning on its own closest supporters, often when the fatal blow is least expected.

Like the famous Marshall Lin Bao, who did so much to secure the Communist victory in the civil war and was instrumental in fostering Mao Zedong’s cult of personality, the Hong Kong Quislings may discover what it’s like to fall out of favor. Maybe, like Comrade Lin, they too will literally fall out of the sky in mysterious circumstances.

(Stephen Vines is a Hong Kong-based journalist, writer and broadcaster and runs companies in the food sector. He was the founding editor of ‘Eastern Express’ and founding publisher of ‘Spike’. In London he was an editor at The Observer and in Asia has worked for international publications including, the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, BBC, Asia Times and The Independent and, during Hong Kong’s 2019/20 protests, for the Sunday Times. He hosts a weekly television current affairs programme: The Pulse”

Vines’ latest book Defying the Dragon – Hong Kong and the world’s largest dictatorship, will be published early next year by Hurst Publishing. He is the author of several books, including: Hong Kong: China’s New Colony, The Years of Living Dangerously - Asia from Crisis to the New Millennium, Market Panic and Food Gurus.)

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