BEIJING – They are businessmen, born in mainland China, who serve on the main advisory committees in Beijing and profess patriotism for their country. One recently traveled to an obscure village in southeastern China to study Xi Jinping’s doctrine to guide the country to greatness.
Now, they are trying to bring that ardor to Hong Kong, as the founders of the city’s newest political party. They are crying out for social stability to unify a deeply fragmented society and repair a damaged economy.
“You can’t have a protest every day,” said Li Shan, the party’s founder and president.
The arrival of the Bauhinia Party has fueled furious speculation about the future of Hong Kong’s once vibrant and sometimes undisciplined political scene. The party, led by executives who moved from the continent to Hong Kong, is getting into the fray amid strong moves by the Chinese government to crack down on dissent after massive 2019 pro-democracy protests defied its government.
The authorities have already expelled opposition lawmakers from the Hong Kong legislature and disqualified and arrested candidates for candidates. Many in the pro-democracy camp see the new party as yet another sign that Hong Kong – a former British colony that promised 50 years of semi-autonomy when it returned to China in 1997 – is becoming just another city on the continent.
But the news was equally, if not more, disturbing for Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing bloc, the coalition of local trade tycoons, established politicians and unions that have long been allowed to govern as representatives of the central government. Many wonder whether the emergence of the new party is a sign from Beijing that it is of less use to traditional energy brokers and can replace them with numbers considered more effective or reliable.
Although the pro-Beijing camp has always professed loyalty to the central government, its members have been careful to emphasize the differences between their city and the continent.
The Bauhinia Party seems to be offering itself to Beijing as a new model for allies, those who are more open about their ties to the central government and their admiration for its top-down approach.
Mr. Li is a delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a Beijing advisory body, and hardly speaks Cantonese, the local language of Hong Kong. Another co-founder, Chen Jianwen, is a delegate to a regional arm of the advisory body and leads an association for alumni at a training academy for Communist Party officials.
The central pillars of the party platform include combating discrimination against transplants from the continent to Hong Kong and promoting love for the Chinese language and culture. Mr. Li said he wants to encourage more Hong Kong students to study at universities on the continent and go through “patriotic education”, an echo of Mr. Xi’s own calls to Hong Kong youth to “increase their sense of belonging to the homeland. “
Even the way Li established the party nodded to the central government. He officially founded it aboard a cruise ship in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor, a reference to the founding of the Chinese Communist Party by Mao Zedong aboard a boat in eastern China, according to party tradition.
The perception of loyalty to Beijing may be the most important factor in securing approval from central authorities in the coming years, said Willy Lam, professor of Chinese politics at Hong Kong’s Chinese University.
If more people with origins on the continent participated in Hong Kong’s politics, Beijing could “be sure” that the city would be led by those who “presumably would be more loyal to the motherland,” he added.
The founders of the Bauhinia Party deny that they are puppets of Beijing or that they seek to supplant existing parties. Li said the party is focused on selecting the city’s chief executive, not winning legislative seats.
The chief executive is chosen by a committee of just 1,200 voters, many of whom are close to Beijing.
Although Li said he does not plan to run for president over the next year, he has repeatedly hinted that he would someday be interested in the job.
“If the community demands that I dedicate myself to this job or responsibility, I am willing to sacrifice myself,” he said in an interview in Beijing last month.
Li said he did not tell central or Hong Kong officials that he was starting a party before doing so. He then notified Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, and the Central Liaison Office, Beijing’s official arm in Hong Kong.
He was irritated by the suggestions that he was a stranger. “I’ve been a permanent resident for 20 years,” said Li, a financier who moved to Hong Kong in 1993 after completing his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Co-founders say they want to reach government opponents as well as their supporters.
In its stated principles, the party professes a commitment to universal suffrage – a central demand of the pro-democracy camp – and a promise to make Hong Kong “one of the most free, democratic and open cities in the world”. Mr. Li said he wants to preserve the “one country, two systems” structure for another 50 years.
But the pro-democracy camp dismissed these openings as lines. An editorial in the Apple Daily, a fervently pro-democracy newspaper, called the party a “Trojan horse” that would allow the Communist Party to operate openly in Hong Kong. Lo Kin-hei, the Democratic Party president, wrote on Twitter which was the “Hong Kong branch” of the Communist Party.
The pro-Beijing camp has been just as hostile. Many scoffed at the Bauhinia Party’s stated goal of attracting 250,000 members, about five times more than the largest pro-Beijing party in Hong Kong. Li said on Friday that the party had fewer than 100 members so far.
“It is easy to start a party, but it is not so easy to establish your party as a viable political force,” said Jasper Tsang, the founder of that largest party, the Democratic Alliance for Improvement and Progress in Hong Kong.
Tsang rejected the idea that the Bauhinia Party had Beijing’s support or that Li could become the chief executive. He stressed that the two main Hong Kong-backed newspapers paid little attention to the new party, which he said suggested a lack of official support.
Regina Ip, founder of another pro-Beijing party, said that Li approached her about possible collaboration and that she “was by no means interested”.
“I don’t think he starts to understand how complex the job is,” she said of Li’s tips on running for president. “If you have any financial credentials, it doesn’t mean that you are qualified.”
Mr. Li acknowledged that he was not fluent in Hong Kong politics, despite his long residency in the city. He said he never voted until the end of 2019. Asked about his position on a controversial proposal to allow Hong Kong residents living in mainland China to vote in the city’s elections, he said he had not heard of the issue.
Some were more receptive to the Bauhinia Party.
Christine Loh, a former pro-democracy legislator who also worked on the administration of a pro-Beijing chief executive, said she did not know much about the new party. But she said Hong Kong residents should be more open to political figures more in line with the continent’s system.
“It is not that it will be extended to Hong Kong, but it is not completely disconnected,” she said of the continental system. It is possible, she said, that people connected with him could help Hong Kong.
Although Li insists that he did not consult with any Chinese official before establishing his party, he acknowledged having discussed some of his proposals with officials since then.
Last month, he visited a museum in Xiadang, a village where Mr. Xi worked as a young Communist Party cadre in the 1980s. Mr. Li said he would like to learn more about the early development of “Xi’s Thought Jinping ”, Mr. Xi’s ideological manifesto.
Another co-founder, Wong Chau-chi, objected in an interview to The South China Morning Post when asked whether members of the Bauhinia Party were secretly members of the Communist Party.
“It is not right to judge our party whether we have clandestine members or not,” he said. “It is irrelevant to our governance.”