Have you heard of the China Democratic League, which claims to have 282,000 members, or the Jiusan Society, which claims over 167,000 members? I guess not, yet they are, allegedly, a key part of the Chinese political system. They are among the eight parties which combine with the Communist Party of China to form the state’s multi-party political line-up.

Their history of irrelevance provides a chilling hint of how Beijing views the way ahead for political diversity in Hong Kong.

China is not a one-party state. According to official propaganda, it tolerates a diversity of political parties and views. This is, of course, total nonsense but the façade exists as part of the smoke and mirrors process designed to obscure the true nature of the dictatorship.

The so called ‘democratic parties’, who are authorized under the PRC’s political system, even have representatives in bodies such as the Chinese People’s Political Conference, essentially a ‘united front’ concoction that echoes whatever the only political party that really matters, wants it to echo.

Although the alleged multi-party system is blatantly farcical apologists are not even slightly embarrassed to elaborate how it works in practise.

Wang Xiaofeng, an academic and member of the Jiusan Society, wrote a piece for The Diplomat in 2018 describing how members had a “chance to have a say in public affairs”. According to Wang the advice and suggestions of party members are eagerly sought and acted upon by officials. An example of the party’s profound influence on governance, cited by Wang, relates to how the Beijing city government accepted a suggestion from a party member about “removing the disorganized billboards near the Beijing international airport”.

My oh my, that’s real earth shaking stuff. There may be other examples of party members’ profound influence on governance but Wang did not cite them.

What he inadvertently managed to do was to reveal the laughable nature of this so-called multi-party system.

It may be laughable but there is every indication that it is how Beijing sees the way ahead for Hong Kong with a plan to create a ‘loyal’ opposition that will be a smokescreen for authoritarian rule. We already know that Beijing is poised to dismantle the SAR’s election system to prevent democrats from wining seats. We also know, because national security prosecutions are already underway to place in jail those involved in opposition election campaigning.

The new mantra is that only ‘patriots’ can take part in the political process and while the meaning of the term patriot has yet to be fully elaborated, Xia Baolong, the Director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, has made it clear that to be a patriot involves loving the Communist Party.

Hong Kong’s Quislings are more than ready to declare their love for the Party and so will have no trouble being classed as patriots.

But what about the fellow travellers who claim to be realists accepting the current order without necessarily fully endorsing it? As night follows day we will see them wriggling and wringing their hands but they will fall into line because that’s what they always do.

What follows will be the drawing up of a list of ‘acceptable’ opposition parties in Hong Kong but the conditions for their acceptance will be crisscrossed with red lines reducing them to little more than a shabby ghost of anything resembling democratic government. But maybe, just maybe, the new ‘oppositionists’ may also get an opportunity to help change the signage at Hong Kong’s International Airport.

This raises the question of why bother with this charade in the first place? Why not just say that the Communist Party is in charge and that, more or less, is the end of the matter?

The answer is things do not work this way because authoritarian governments crave respectability and rarely fail to erect complex edifice to support their claims to credibility.

This is why elections are held in North Korea because elections suggest credibility and the fact that 99.9 per cent of voters endorse the ruling Worker’s Party of Korea can be seized upon as clear evidence of popular support.

In China the edifice of credibility is more complex. There have even been attempts, now extinguished, to have something resembling open elections at local level. And there is the multi-party system and a vast web of United Front bodies designed to bring those outside the Party closer to it while ensuring that obedience is the main requirement for proximity.

Most depressing is the sure knowledge that in Hong Kong a great many people will be willing to take part in this charade. Some of these opportunists used to be part of the democratic movement. Shame is unknown to them.

(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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