Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

A Tale of Two Cities: Hong Kong and Dubai

By Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Celebrating Disappearance/Appearance

Hong Kong and Dubai have more in common than towers wearing architectural brandnames. Being hubs between what has commonly been called the “East” and the “West,” both cities have been submitted to spectacular developments that transformed them within a few decades from fishing villages deprived of any urban history into international metropolises. Both cities possess port locations that are central to trade and both cities have attracted massive international capital as well as large expat communities. Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai occupies a central position within its respective region as a producer of goods, but both function as centers of facilitation and are rather para-sites than sites. Dubai is the third most important re-export centre in the world just after Hong Kong and Singapore. Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai has transport rivers and, at present, neither city has a significant amount of raw materials. Though the foundation of modern Dubai depended very much on initial oil reserves that are no longer available, it is correct to maintain that both cities owe their present existence to obstacles that forced them to invest in non-traditional economies. Finally, both cities came to symbolize globalization and an extreme form of urbanity based on aggressive international capitalism.

Attracting international investments, but little “culture” (and being deprived of local cultural resources), for a long time, Hong Kong’s entire existence as a city depended on financial markets. Dubai’s existence can be defined in the same terms. As a matter of fact, Dubai has been quite commonly called “the Hong Kong of the Middle East.” Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai are “real” cities in the conventional sense because neither has preserved its historical context.

Hong Kong and the Celebration of Disappearance

In the 1980s, when Hong Kong owned the world’s largest container cargo terminals, the city’s image was that of a cultural desert determined by superficiality, internal fragmentation, consumerism, and the lack of urban history or local identity. Today all this is seen as typical for Dubai. However, a “cultural turn” promoting a local ethos based on a common language and a particular geographical location, seemingly reversed Hong Kong’s cultural situation in the 1980s, creating a film industry focusing on local stories and local people that would become famous as the Hollywood of the East. In popular music, Cantopop has been a local genre since the 1970s. This, together with a belief in typical Hong Kong virtues such as rationality and discipline, would give Hong Kong the cultural identity it needed, which changed the perception of the city. This individualist cultural system was even strong enough to oppose big businesses.

In a way, Hong Kong became a “postmodern” city: Hong Kong is neither “pre-modern” because it does not exhibit a continuous string of histories, traditions, and culture, nor is it “modern” in the sense of de-cultured, or simply functionally economic. Mike Featherstone has called this type of city, which decides to return to culture, style, and decoration, “postmodern” because here cultural elements are most often “decontextualized, simulated, reduplicated and continually renewed and restyled.”

It is for these precise reasons that it is wrong to characterize Hong Kong’s cultural ascendance as a straightforward process of acculturation. Ackbar Abbas describes Hong Kong’s “cultural self-invention” as a device that is linked, in a paradoxical fashion, to a complex concept of “disappearance,” which comprises at least three things: First, “disappearance” addresses Hong Kong’s frantic cycle of construction, demolition, and reconstruction that yields the impression of a constant disappearance of architectural substance. Second, as Hong Kong has been submitted to more and more aggressive and advanced stages of globalization, the newly built Hong Kong architecture remains restricted to that of the brandname kind. This tendency creates a global environment that, once again, threatens to erase the newly achieved local culture and makes the city “invisible” within an international context, letting topical cultural experience disappear into an anonymous international system. This internationalization concerns also the film industry as its productions have been more and more geared towards international (and Mainland-Chinese) markets. The third meaning of disappearance has to do with the “real” disappearance of Hong Kong as it is taken over by China and will presumably, sooner or later, be absorbed into an oversized motherland.

The first two developments are not unique to Hong Kong, but what is unique is the way in which Hong Kong copes with them. As a matter of fact, Abbas links all three developments (which partly overlap and are difficult to disentangle) to the nostalgic experience of the disappearance of colonial space, which created, in his opinion, not simply a space from which “the colonial” has disappeared, but rather a “colonial space of disappearance.” Abbas’ point is that “disappearance” does not lead to disappearance at all, but rather to a sustained “aesthetics of disappearance” creating, in the case of Hong Kong, the particular cultural space of a “floating identity.” Hong Kong cinema, for example, is eager to keep pace with a subject that is always at the point of disappearing.

Dubai and the Colonial Space of Appearance

Hong Kong will not disappear but it has installed its existence within a peculiar aesthetics of disappearance. Abbas actually believes that Hong Kong will remain almost unchanged for another fifty years. The floating state of Hong Kong’s existence makes it a true forerunner of Dubai, which seems to be suspended in a similar state of floating existence, though at the opposite end of the spectrum. Dubai will simply not appear. For this city, the act of becoming has been charged with such complicated connotations that “becoming” seems to have been eternalized. While Hong Kong revels in what is (almost) no longer there, Dubai revels in what is not yet there. While Hong Kong engenders the feeling of a déjà disparu rooted in an irretrievable, colonial ex-past, Dubai installs itself in a perpetual not yet there that speaks to us through the veil of an indiscernible ex-future.

Dubai has been financed by colossal debt from international banks and its neighbor Abu Dhabi, but “Dubai as an event” has from the beginning been staged as a spectacular and eternally postponed “not yet there.” Apartments were sold long before they were built and would change their owners five times. While in Hong Kong, property speculation causes the absurd state of affairs that sooner or later any building, no matter how new or monumental it is, will vanish from the map, in Dubai maps have been written in the future tense from the beginning. We assist in the creation of Borges’ map that covers the earth because the map is supposed to be the earth. At the airports of Dubai and Abu Dhabi expensive color catalogues of the most famous architectural attractions are handed to tourists for free though a large part of the buildings presented in these catalogues do not yet exist. They are scheduled for the (sometimes very distant) future. The only positive impression that these pictures yield is that of a déjà vu of a not yet there.

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is assistant professor of philosophy at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait and the author of Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick, and Wong Kar-Wai (2007), Aesthetics and Politics of Space in Russia and Japan: A Comparative Philosophical Study (2009), and The Cool-Kawaii: Afro-Japanese Aesthetics and New World Modernity (2010).

Liu Xiaobo’s Sacrifice—Is It Worthwhile?

By Nathan Faries

Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese citizen, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. An active participant in the Tian’anmen Square demonstrations and author of a 2008 petition calling for radical reform in the People’s Republic, Liu sits now in a prison in northeast China.

Liu is a good choice, a man of principle fighting a lonely struggle in an increasingly apathetic political climate. This new attention should reenergize human rights advocates and shine light on groups which Liu himself has supported: the mothers of Tian’anmen victims, for example (http://www.tiananmenmother.org/).

But will the Peace Prize push forward Liu’s cause of reform? The dissident himself sounds pessimistic. Liu Xiaobo believes change will inevitably come to China because of a natural human bent toward freedom, but he is not sure that he will live to see the reforms. He has trouble imagining a Chinese Gorbachev, and he has said there will be no “timeline for political reform” offered by the government of his China. Liu Xiaobo is willing to give his life for this cause, though he expresses no confidence that his eyes will see the new China for which he hopes.

Reform must come to China by this individual path, his model teaches. The Olympic and Nobel Committees are somehow irrelevant to the process, as are the will and words of the Chinese Communist Party. Liu Xiaobo and his ilk are trying to live out a new kind of “Chineseness,” an identity that depends neither on the government to grant freedom, nor on international bodies to pressure the Party to expand liberties. Such dependence is to miss the point, even to work against the ultimate goal.

Does Liu even believe himself to be a good candidate for the Prize? He has opposed grand gestures made in the service of his cause before. As Tibet-sympathizers and other groups criticized the IOC, saying Beijing should be denied their Olympic Games, Liu claimed this kind of national sacrifice was unnecessary: “We want the Games and we want human rights to be respected.” Liu won’t ask his fellow Chinese to give up the honor and pleasure of the Olympic Games; instead he lives out a more powerful personal sacrifice.

What stands in the way of that goal? The Chinese government is good at redefining the terms of debate. The Tian’anmen “incident” in 1989 started off as a conversation between citizens and their government, but ended up as a divide between intellectual and soldier; a political debate was recast as class conflict. Ever since 1989, university students all over China have been sent off to mandatory “military training” to heal this divorce between the intelligentsia and the peasant People’s Liberation Army. The government has succeeded in changing the subject from politics to social class.

And from politics to economics. There is economic inequality in China, and there are frequent protests, but nothing seems likely to grow into a national movement. A life of sacrifice to an abstraction like political freedom grows ever more difficult in the face of concrete freedoms like the ability to travel where you want and when you want in your own car. Life in China today moves along smoothly enough for most people; Liu Xiaobo is a man to be admired, not imitated.

Perhaps to my shame, I understand the political apathy of those masses of Chinese who choose not to follow the way of Liu Xiaobo. In many respects, China is moving in the right direction, however slowly. The Soviet Union’s traumatic experience with overnight reform is constantly before the Chinese people’s eyes. I can’t help but wonder if Liu Xiaobo’s sacrifice—though certainly noble—is really necessary. If China is changing, and can only change, slowly, does Liu need to live and die in a prison cell? Is Liu Xiaobo himself preaching gradualism while living out revolution? Do a few individuals need to suffer voluntarily in today’s China to make life better for future generations?

Bad things have happened and continue to happen in China at the hands of a government that does not care enough about the suffering of individuals. Given the current state of global economies, pressure from outsiders to reform, be it from Scandinavia or the United States, holds little to no sway over the Chinese government. This loss of outsider influence stands in stark contrast to the ever-increasing international economic and political leverage wielded by the Chinese Communist Party. We need the Communists to negotiate with North Korea and to underwrite our own national debt. The Americans will to play hardball with the CCP, never an immense pool to begin with, is quickly draining away.

Giving Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize may do nothing material to advance the cause of reform in China, given today's lack of revolutionary energy within China and without; but for the sacrifice he has offered up for the vague hope of some future good for all the rest of us, Liu Xiaobo has earned his reward.

Nathan Faries is associate professor in the English Department at the University of Dubuque. He has taught for nearly 15 years in the United States, Bejing, and Hong Kong. He is the author of The Inscrutably Chinese Church: How Narratives and Nationalism Continue to Divide Christianity.

China's Rise in Historical Perspective and U.S.-Chinese Relations Event at East-West Center in Washington on Oct 29

The East-West Center in Washington is hosting an Asia Pacific Security Seminar Book Launch on October 29th from 12:30pm to 2:00pm featuring Dr. Brantly Womack, editor of China's Rise in Historical Perspective, and Dr. Robert G. Sutter, author of U.S.-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Pragmatic Present.

Location: 1819 L Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, D.C.

This event is free and open to the public, and lunch will be served.

To RSVP, please click this link: http://www.eastwestcenter.org/go.php?107 (by Oct 28).

Sub-sovereignty is a necessary evil: The Case of Hong Kong

Written by Danny Wai-hang TSUI and edited by Simon Shen

If the 1999 Right of Abode case was the first debate on the autonomy of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR), the current debate is the second. This time, the discussion touches upon the external autonomy of the HKSAR.

Realpolitik Operation of International Law

Public international law operates on the basis of Darwinist realpolitik. No matter how vehement the protestations of idealists over the centuries, international law is a “winner takes all” and “first speaker” legal arena. Stephen Krasner even went as far as to comment that sovereignty is an “organized hypocrisy” in describing the oxymoronic nature of the concept in the post-Westphalian era. The USSR, in the course of negotiating with the U.S. on founding membership of the UN, requested that all 15 Soviet Republics become member states. With the threat of its counterpart doing the same, Stalin withheld his much fantasized idea. Therefore, it was quite comical when it came to the author’s attention that someone had used “sovereignty” to criticize his own countrymen, whose late Qing ancestors were traumatized by the same pretext in the 1844 Opium War and the 1900 Boxer Rising. Genuine patriots should be more sensitive with this taboo.

Celestial Court under Heaven

Equality has never been our world view. Whether justified or not, China has claimed to be the celestial court under heaven. John Schrecher observed that the term “sovereignty” had mostly been used when the Chinese state was weak (i.e. in 1909 - 2 years before the Republican revolution). States have been flexible with the operation of “Equality” (“Compatibility”), if not; there would have been some faux pas. Deng Xiaoping was the vice-premier of China when he visited the U.S. in 1979, ten years later, Comrade Deng, in his civil capacity, met General Secretary Gorbachev in Beijing. Also, it was not the Republican Party chairman who met with Secretary Gorbachev in the 1986 Reykjavík Summit, but President Ronald Reagan. Nor would Colonel Gadaffi of Libya have been greeted by military officers when he paid foreign visits. Should the principle of equality be enforced in such a stringent manner that Manila would have no compatible counterpart to entertain calls from Sir Donald Tsang, modern diplomacy would not be able to operate day in and day out. At the end of the day, international politics is built on the realist calculation of power, and thus respect.

Domestic Intervention

In recent years, the Chinese government has become ever more sparing in its use of the term “sovereignty” (Charlson 2005). If we were obliged to adopt a doctrinal analysis of international law, one would find that domestic affairs are not totally immune from outside forces. In Nicaragua v United States of America ( [1986] ICJ Reports 14), the ICJ laid down four major principles reflecting the view that foreign governments cannot intervene in the home state’s choice of political, economic, social and cultural institutions, or in its foreign policy making. Operationally, one state must not seek to intervene in another state’s political affairs, nor support separatist movements and topple other states. There are reasons for intervention, such as enforcing international treaties, intervening on humanitarian grounds, protecting life and property, and preserving the state’s reputation. In any event, provided it does not violate Article 4 of Chapter 2 of the UN Charter — which stipulates the principles of non-violence, no threat of force and no compromise of local jurisdictional powers — intervention may be legal. In such a case, helping the local legal enforcement authorities to investigate and adopting other necessary means to protect lives and preserve the dignity of a state are clearly legal.

Delegation of Powers

However, these propositions all depend on whether (1) the HKSAR can undertake the aforementioned types of state behavior on behalf of its sovereign, i.e. the PRC; (2) the HKSAR’s action falls within the scope of its delegated powers in accordance with the State Constitution and the Basic Law; (3) ultra vires action taken by the HKSAR (in this case, calling Arroyo without proper authorization from the CPG) can be ratified by the CPG on an ex post basis (otherwise, it would still be unconstitutional).

Furthermore, which party can ratify such action? According to Articles 17 and 18 of the PRC Legislation Law, the NPC is entitled to repeal and amend local laws, self-autonomy ordinances, and unilateral ordinances of local provinces and regions. This legislation does not cover executive action taken by local governments, nor is it applicable in HK. Neither the Constitution nor the PRC Legislation Law includes any specific provisions on this issue. If the SC were to complain, Audrey Eu may have to seek a remedy from the Supreme People’s Court by requesting that it issue a judicial interpretation on this case. Should we seek approval from the President of the PRC? After all, he represents the state in its activities. Alternatively, should we look to the NPCSC — the state’s highest power organ, constitutionally— or turn to the State Council, which issued and offered the appointment letter to CH and Yam-kuen?

If one adopts the principle of proportionality or reasonableness, one may very possibly accept that the President of the PRC can call the president of the US directly, though the State Constitution only stipulates the “performing state activity” provision.

As for Article 13 of the Basic Law and the possible application of Article 151, this really depends on whether the CPG adopts a hands-off or hands-on management style. There would be no question of constitutionality should the CPG be obliged to take care of all details, as this would imply that Yam-kuen has no power to call, whether or not the call is answered, because it is ultra vires all along. In that case, the CPG may have to consider whether or not to ratify Yam-kuen’s ultra vires action. Should we accept that delegated foreign-related behavior is subject to ex ante CPG approval, ex post ratification may be the only remedy capable of redressing the illegality. An example is the PRC Ethnic Autonomous Region Law, which empowers the regional government to partially enforce or cease enforcing the CPG’s directives after seeking the superior organ’s ex ante approval.

Another example of this is the U.S. War Powers Act. The U.S. President is the commander in chief and the power to declare war rests with Congress. According to this Act passed in 1973, the president can send troops after the U.S. has been attacked or is under serious threat of force. The president is required to inform Congress within 48 hours, and if the proposed action is not endorsed by the Hill, the president must withdraw forces within 60 days.

Possible Application of the Common Law Principle

Had the court been able to adjudicate the case and adopt a judicial activism approach, “Callingate” would have been constitutional. This prediction is based on the premise of Minister of Home Affairs v Fisher ([1980] AC 319), which held that our mini-constitution should be interpreted in a generous and purposive manner. Yet this case merely involved individual liberty and did not touch upon executive action per se. In the case of Ma Wai Kwan, J Patrick Chan stated that the principle asserted in Attorney General of the Gambia v Jobe ([1984] AC 689) and R v Sin Yau-ming ([1992]1 HKCLR 127) can be adopted to interpret the Basic Law. The Court of Final Appeal clearly stated in the Ng Ka Ling case that the Basic Law is a “living document” aimed at coping with changing circumstances. The courts must therefore avoid interpreting the law in a literal, technical or parochial manner. Should we have the luxury of the local courts adjudicating the issue, “Callingate” would not be found to have contravened Articles 13 and 151 of the Basic Law. Nonetheless, the foregoing discussion merely represents the author’s hypothetical projection which will not be tested in practice.

The Politics of Law

From the political perspective, Beijing would be best advised to act generously by allowing the demoralized chief executive to make the call when Hong Kong’s “subjects” are under threat overseas. Legally speaking, to transplant the agency law principle of commercial law, Yam-kuen was the agent of necessity who did the necessary thing (though it was ultra vires per se) in the case of absolute imminence, albeit without proper authorization from Beijing. Even under such circumstances, the court would perceive it as a legal and reasonable delegation and exercise of power under the doctrine of necessitous intervention.

In conclusion, “Callingate” was reasonable, proportionate and necessary.

Simon Shen is associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, chief coordinator/adjunct associate professor of the Master of Global Political Economy Programme at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the co-editor of Online Chinese Nationalism and China’s Bilateral Relations.

Watch a Video about Tessa Morris-Suzuki's To the Diamond Mountain

 

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, and author of To the Diamond Mountains: A Hundred-Year Journey through China and Korea and Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan's Cold War (2007).

WHAT PRICE PATRIOTISM? The Implications of Macau’s New National Security Law

By Suzanne Pepper

Hong Kong, March 3, 2009. Balancing personal freedom and national security is a challenge for governments everywhere, but rarely does the trade off stand in sharper focus than it does today in Macau and Hong Kong. This is because citizens are not just being forced to choose between more or less of one or the other. They are instead being asked to accept a whole new paradigm in the name of patriotic duty. The shift is from Western-style civil liberties to Chinese definitions that equate national security with the authority of the government, its leaders, their policies, and the communist-party-led political system itself.

Now governed as Special Administrative Regions (SARs) within the People’s Republic, Macau and Hong Kong reverted from colonial to Chinese rule in 1999 and 1997, respectively. Both were promised a “high degree of autonomy” and an unchanged “way of life” for fifty years. All these promises were written into Basic Laws that govern the first fifty years under Chinese rule, but the two mini-constitutions also contain guideposts designed to keep everyone on course toward eventual integration with the Chinese body politic. Most worrisome in this respect is the Article 23 mandate that aims to bring both regions within the ambit of China’s national security regime by requiring the SAR legislatures to pass laws criminalizing transgressions against the central government. These are treason, secession, subversion, sedition, unauthorized acquisition of state secrets, and various actions by foreigners. Article 23 is identical in both Basic Laws.

HONG KONG’S EXPERIENCE

Hong Kong attempted to introduce such legislation but it provoked a backlash so intense that 500,000 of its seven million citizens took to the streets in protest on July 1, 2003. Although the 2003 legislation was shelved, that experience marked a watershed in Hong Kong’s political evolution. From that time, official Chinese decisions have intruded more overtly into the space Hong Kong initially assumed would be filled by its high degree of autonomy. Hence apprehensions are rising again amid reports that now routinely assume the Article 23 legislation will be re-introduced by Hong Kong’s current chief executive before he leaves office in 2012. Propelling the reports is a new strategy whereby neighboring Macau would proceed with a toned-down “lite” version of the legislation. Initial enforcement is expected to be “lite” as well, in order to convince Hong Kong that there is nothing to fear.

Predictably, the new plan also provoked little opposition in Macau. Its population, now numbering half-a-million, has always lived in closer harmony with mainland Chinese values of whatever hue, reflecting the different political cultures in the two cities that evolved under two different, Portuguese and British, versions of colonial sovereignty. Macau’s new law received near-unanimous approval when the final vote was taken on February 25.

CHINESE PRECEDENTS

Hong Kong is not reassured, however, because the main dangers in its aborted 2003 law are still present. The aim is to introduce Chinese concepts of national security based on what Macau promoters called the relevant Chinese counterpart. This is China’s 1997 criminal code that incorporates the proscriptions of the 1988 state secrets law and the 1993 national security law. Dangers thus lie first and foremost in definitions, or more precisely in the distinctions between the current mainland Chinese and Western practices those definitions signify.

For example, Hong Kong has gradually learned that the words “autonomy” and “elections” as used in the Basic Law are being defined by Beijing to mean something very different in practice than was originally thought. Application is in fact moving ever closer to definitions associated with the constitution of the People’s Republic. Even more than elections and autonomy, however, Article 23 lies at the heart of a “way of life,” with its many safeguards for political expression that were supposed to last for fifty years.

MACAU’S NEW LAW

In Macau’s version, only treason is defined narrowly enough to transcend the cultural divide. Only Chinese citizens can commit this crime and they can do so only by taking up arms against the People’s Republic. Otherwise, anyone can be prosecuted for all the other crimes, which replicate the Chinese precedents. Hence the crime of secession or “separation from state sovereignty” should not be confused by Western assumptions about territorial integrity. Tibetans are regularly castigated as splittists (secessionists) although their leader, the Dalai Lama, now says he recognizes Chinese sovereignty over all of Tibet and wants only autonomy. Chinese officials nevertheless define his calls for “genuine” autonomous government (that is, not subject in all its aspects to Beijing’s unified comprehensive party-led administration) as separation from state sovereignty, which by their use of the term it is.

Crimes of subversion and sedition are even more difficult to avoid committing for those who advocate, as many in Hong Kong do, directly elected local government and an end to one-party dictatorship in China. Theft of state secrets will create similar dangers because the crime includes not just thieving but buying and otherwise acquiring secrets that will endanger “security” in all its many guises. And there is more: like unintentional offenses, helping foreigners disseminate “false or distorted information,” preparatory acts, secret trials, and so on.

Once these laws are promulgated, in other words, SAR authorities will have all the power they need to enforce the mainland-style culture of political conformity they are now trying to create locally through persuasion alone. The great irony is that while many concerned Chinese are looking forward to a day when progressive change can bring an end to such constraints, Macau and Hong Kong are being forced to move in the opposite direction. They are being asked to join the nation as it presently is, instead of being allowed to stand as an example of what in future generations China can become.

Suzanne Pepper is an American writer and long-time Hong Kong resident. She is the author of Keeping Democracy at Bay: Hong Kong and the Challenge of Chinese Political Reform (Rowman & Littlefield 2007) and Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949, Second Edition (Rowman & Littlefield 1999).
(For a fuller version of this blog, see chinaelections.

Electioneering Hong Kong-Style

By Suzanne Pepper

Hong Kong politician Greg So Kam-leung was one of many foreign observers who spent time on America’s campaign trails during the 2008 primary election season. Later, back home in Hong Kong, he told a television audience about the experience. His favorite among the candidates was Barack Obama, an unusual choice at the time because Hong Kongers, as onlookers from afar, initially preferred familiar names and faces whether Democratic or Republican. Greg So seemed impressed equally by Obama’s inspirational message and by the grassroots operations that were projecting it nationwide. The idealistic plea for a bipartisan sense of common purpose was just what Hong Kong needed, and So hoped the lessons could be applied to its own coming election for the local legislature in September.

The interview actually revealed much more about China’s political development in its experimental Hong Kong setting than about lessons learned from America, leaving local viewers to question whether their government might be more or less democratic as a result. This is because they understood the context and code words and long-term implications of their vote.

When it reverted to China in 1997, Hong Kong was promised autonomy for 50 years, meaning that its “way of life” including all existing civic rights would remain unchanged during that time and China’s socialist system would not be introduced. This promise, spelled out in a Basic Law constitution and popularized as “one country, two systems,” allowed Hong Kong’s young democracy movement to hope for the best. By 2047, people reasoned, China’s communist-led government would surely have succumbed to the globalized lure of democratization.

Perhaps by 2047 that lure will have taken hold but for the time being, movement is mostly in the opposite direction as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) improvises protective barriers against any democratizing challenge that might weaken its centralized leadership. For Hong Kong, the result has been a systematic erosion of autonomy as governing institutions and personnel are reshaped and pressured in ways that now seem designed to achieve “one country, one system” by 2047.

The most important of these ways, which have become more apparent during the past year, derive from Beijing clarifications of the Basic Law’s gray areas. Chinese officials are thus exercising their right to approve all top Hong Kong government appointments and to promote national patriotic education for everyone. Even more significant was the December 2007 decision to delay, until 2020, the Basic Law’s promise of universal suffrage for the local legislature. Only 30 of its 60 seats are currently elected by direct one-person, one-vote elections. The 30 seats indirectly elected by special interests are designed to guarantee an amenable pro-government majority. Beijing has not sought to change the Basic Law’s requirement for a two-thirds majority to pass all major political reforms, opting instead to delay them by official fiat. Evidently the hope is that by 2020, Hong Kong’s voting public will be ready to elect similarly amenable legislators, which it currently is not. Since 1991, when direct elections were introduced at this level, candidates who openly declare themselves for Western-style elections and civil liberties have consistently won at least 60% of the votes cast.

Such are the perspectives that Greg So carried with him to America in 2007. As one of its rising stars, he had recently been appointed vice chairman of Hong Kong’s main pro-Beijing party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB). It is assumed to be a cover for the CCP’s local branch, which has remained unacknowledged since the early decades of the last century. DAB partisans have adapted well to Hong Kong’s partially democratic election system but in direct legislative contests have never been able, on their own, to poll more than a third of the popular vote.

Obama’s plea for unity may have struck a familiar cord, but the constant refrain of apolitical harmony reiterated by Beijing, the HK government, and the DAB has a very different aim, namely, to discredit Western-style democratic ideals in deference to mainland-style leadership norms. These, too, are based on universal suffrage but only at grassroots levels, with indirect elections creating all the people’s congresses above and CCP-vetting of all candidates from top to bottom. The underpinnings of this system are already being built in Hong Kong, and the September 7th legislative council election was guided by what has become a competition between the two systems as each works to keep the other at bay.

The harmonious rhetoric did achieve a surface calm that reduced turnout and maximized the effect of the DAB’s more disciplined electioneering routines. Everyone is now patriotic and everyone now glosses over political matters in deference to livelihood issues. But the usual multiplicity of pan-democratic candidates united around common demands to preserve civil liberties and achieve “real” universal suffrage. In response, voters split in the usual way: 59.4% for pan-democrats, 31.2% for the DAB and associates, 9.2% for miscellaneous conservatives. Democrats retained their all-important veto power with a total of 23 representatives in the new legislature. Despite the system being so clearly stacked against the democratic majority, voters persist in sending the same clear message. Hence, absent some draconian crackdown, Hong Kong’s political stalemate can easily last until 2020—unless of course Beijing itself heeds the lesson about bridging partisan divides and agrees to something other than one-size-fits-all communist-dominated governance.

Suzanne Pepper is an American writer and long-time Hong Kong resident. She is the author, most recently, of Keeping Democracy at Bay: Hong Kong and the Challenge of Chinese Political Reform (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).

“Thrown Down the Memory Hole”

By Anne-Marie Brady

It was a crisp, wintry day in Beijing when I set out to pay my respects to the San jiao di notice boards, the historic signage at Peking University that had recently been demolished by the university authorities. San jiao di, or “the Triangle,” had been the favored spot for student protest meetings since the late 1970s—especially in 1989—and its notice boards were the conduit for information on the latest in student thinking and activism.

Unusually, given the sensitivity of the topic, the tearing down of the boards had been front-page news in the print version of Beijing Youth Daily a few days before. It was this factual, though extremely brief, report that had first alerted me to the destruction of this historically significant structure. According to the article, university representatives had stated that San jiao di was demolished because nowadays all “important” information was available online so the notice boards were no longer necessary for the spread of information. They also claimed that the billboards were being used for commercial messages and were thus not suitable for maintaining a tidy environment at Peking University.

Although I used to be very familiar with the campus, I had to ask my way; everything had changed so much. The university is currently a mass of construction sites and ugly new high-rises. I avoided asking the younger students, not sure if they would know the significance of the boards or their destruction. I finally found a man in his late thirties, who would have been about twenty in 1989. When I told him what I was looking for, a faint smile of understanding crossed his face. He gave me very precise directions to the spot, then instantly rushed off before I could ask him more.

Yet when I finally got to San jiao di, I felt bewildered and overwhelmed. It was as if the notice boards had never existed. The area was ringed by trees as before; there was still a bookshop and a convenience store on one side, dormitories on another. But something was missing. I searched my memory; trying to remember the scene from my many other visits. In the past, I’d often come to look at the boards, trying to keep up with student activities. The place looked much the same, yet somehow, something had altered.

It was only when I looked very carefully at the triangular spot of ground that is the heart of the San jiao di area that I noticed what had changed. A thin line of recently dug dirt ran around the inside of a concrete-lined grassy triangle. This was the only trace to show where the San jiao di notice boards had once stood.

I’d never noticed before that the boards were grouped around a number of ancient pine trees. Now these trees were revealed, and someone (surely ironically) had recently pasted a large notice for rental accommodation at the very top of one of these trees, well out of arms’ reach.

I glanced around the area and noted that there was a long row of display cases to the side of where the old San jiao di boards had been. These were pristine and glass covered, full of glossy government propaganda photos. They were very different from the informality and democratic nature of the rusty old signage, where anyone was free to post and anyone was free to come and read.

The San jiao di notice boards were a historic site with an important role in the story of dissent from authoritarian rule in modern China. It didn’t matter what was pasted on them in recent years, just having them there was enough to give a glimmer of hope that this tradition was preserved, however faintly. When I was a visiting fellow at Beijing University in the late 1990s, people would still gather there to meet.

San jiao di is certainly much tidier now than it was before. I took some photos of the scene, though there was little to focus my camera on. I was studiously ignored by the throngs of people passing by, though they all carefully got out of my way. A young stringer for a foreign newspaper came up and asked me for a comment, she said no Chinese person was willing to talk to her on the subject of the demolition of the boards.

Knocking down San jiao di and saying that the Internet has now replaced it is an example of why the Internet in China is regarded by the party-state as an effective tool of both control and propaganda. San jiao di was once a symbol of Peking University’s proud intellectual independence; it looks as if that independence is very weak indeed these days.

Anne-Marie Brady lectures on Chinese politics at the University of Canterbury. She is the author of Marketing Democracy: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).