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How loyal trash comes into being|Au Ka-lun

蘋果日報 2021/03/19 09:59


Officials from Beijing came to the city to “consult” with Hong Kong people. Having re-engineered Hong Kong’s electoral arrangement with the framework of it definitively concluded, they still wanted to “widely listen to the public opinion”, and professed they would “be glad to have their errors pointed out”. The master said that the rotten orange which used to be split into 70 pieces is now allowed to be sliced into 90 pieces, hence more choices, more democratic and more even participation. The exotic animals and birds cooped up in a cage of the circus seriously debate about how to whack up the loot, how to join the game of freely speaking out, and how to divide the rotten orange into 90 portions. How is the orange cut? Who decides who is patriotic enough? Who is qualified for eating the orange?
While saliva is splashing everywhere, the rotten orange is crushed to pieces and juice, with its stink reaching every corner of the world. Hong Kongers can only be the spectators in the circus tent. The preposterous cheesy show is not funny, but we can witness how loyal trash comes into being.
Tian Feillong, the director of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, clarified his remarks - “loyal trash”, saying that he did not refer to any pro-establishment figures, but a pro-establishment phenomenon. Being an academic highly capable of generalizing about anything, he hit the mark with just a few words. Well said. “Loyal trash” is not a particular problem concerning capable individuals, but a general phenomenon. As such, when family members of loyal trash proliferate, the buck cannot be passed to foreign forces anymore. We have to go to the bottom of the matter, finding out the structural cause of such a phenomenon, digging out the reason why the trash comes into being.
Hong Kongers have witnessed time and again that loyal trash performed their best whenever the central government made an important move breaching the law. By and large, there are three different shows they would put on: 1) espousing it; 2) enthusiastically espousing it; 3) a more complicated one: spitting out some irrelevant words to feign open-mindedness first, then after doing three and a half consecutive somersaults, espousing it in the end.
The moves may be watchable, and the words are always pleasant to listen to. For instance, Zhang Xiaoming, the deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, accentuated the “three relationships” concerning the radical amendment to the electoral arrangement: showing respect for the right to democracy as well as practically safeguarding the interest in the development of sovereignty; respecting and safeguarding the overall jurisdiction by the central government as well as safeguarding the high degree of autonomy of the SAR; ensuring fairness and justice in elections as well as barring those opposing China and stirring up trouble in Hong Kong from getting a job in the administrative bodies. The conditions have been listed in high-sounding tone, but the red line has been drawn as well. For all definitions of terms and all implementations of procedures, they have the final say, and no one is allowed to cross the line. The point of balance in the narrow rift among the “three relationships” is just the discussion topic inside the cage where the patriots are supposed to declare their stands in tandem in campaign-style slogans and by signing a petition. After all, the final decision has been made before everything is done.
The same show in the circus tent is normal practice of the system. Every time the honorable delegates to the National People’s Congress fly to Beijing for a meeting, they can’t answer nine questions out of ten put forward to them before they get on the plane. Knowing nothing about the agenda and discussion topics beforehand, they have to make important decisions after just a few meetings in a few days. Living in such a culture, having zero experience in discussing politics fostered, and distancing themselves from the citizenry, they have been doing a very good job as a rubber stamp.
In the pro-establishment camp, there used to be some men of insight. However, day in , day out, top predators from the loyal trash have been bungling things in a perverse way, interpreting the Basic Law in an innovative manner, and quibbling with sophistry. Having detonated the social conflicts during the anti-extradition movement, they still felt good about themselves. Stomaching people’s wrath, the pro-establishment camp suffered a crushing defeat in an election. The loyal patriots harbored grievances, but they haven’t since always dared to utter a single word of discontent for surviving on.

Survival of the weakest

“Natural selection” has been in effect for a long period of time: the weakest survive while the fittest are weeded out; people of a high calibre are driven out by minions. Then the loyal trash is in power. When the vicious cycle intensifies down the line, it is hopeless trying to reduce trash at source. The new election committee takes effect right away; the pro-democracy camp bows out. Representatives of the Party join the scavengers via new constituencies for cliques such as organizations in districts(neighborhood welfare associations, associations for fellow townsmen and federations of associations) and branches of national organizations in Hong Kong(Federation of Women and All-China Youth Federation), racing to seize the strategic high ground, which means a root-and-branch alteration in the political ecology. The evolution theory in biology tells us that a life form evolves radically in a living environment that is undergoing a radical change.
In the elections down the road, as the threshold for being qualified for running for an election is raised, candidates will have to servilely beg for nomination votes from the election committee members of various constituencies. Disdaining to do so, the pro-democracy camp will withdraw; not enjoying the life of imploring, some patriots will pull out as well. The novel vetting committee is devised to examine whether one is patriotic. One is not only supposed not to do something, but there is also a “positive list”, according to which one can take the initiative to pledge allegiance by brown-nosing. In the new era, one is also required to have outstanding toadying and acting skills: yielding without anyone noticing it. The animals at bay in the circus will put up an even more desperate fight, to which the “loyal trash theory” is only a curtain-raiser.
Loyal trash is the inevitable outcome of the system. While the root cause of the trash is that loyalty is demanded from them, loyalty keeps on fostering trash. The circularity will go on endlessly.
(Au Ka-lun, veteran journalist)
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