China is stepping up its crackdown on what remains of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, this time taking steps to redo the territory’s electoral rules to help secure Beijing supporters’ power.
The National People’s Congress of China approved the new rules in law with an almost unanimous vote during its annual meeting this week.
The changes directly target how the elections are conducted in Hong Kong, ensuring that pro-Beijing supporters have an advantage in any elections and setting aside pro-democracy opposition politicians (those who have not yet been arrested).
The goal, as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said, is to ensure that there are only “patriots ruling Hong Kong”. It further removes the territory from the promise of true universal suffrage, one of the demands of the 2019 protests.
This electoral reform, which comes in the wake of the national security law passed this summer that Beijing is using to quell the pro-democracy opposition in Hong Kong, shows how committed China is to consolidating its control over the city-state. It is an effort that increased after the massive and sustained pro-democracy movement in 2019.
This latest move, experts say, is yet another erosion of “one country, two systems”, the principle that should govern Hong Kong’s quasi-independence by 2047. The “one country” part means that it is officially part of China, while the “two systems” part gave it a degree of autonomy, including rights such as freedom of the press that are absent in mainland China.
“’One country, two systems’ is over,” Carl Minzer, a specialist in Chinese law at Fordham University Law School, told me by email. “Politically, Hong Kong as we know it is over.”
How Hong Kong got here
Protests erupted in Hong Kong in 2019 in response to a controversial extradition bill that critics feared would allow the Chinese government to arbitrarily detain Hong Kong residents. The struggle for this legislation has sparked months of protests, some tense and violent.
The bill was withdrawn in September 2019, but by then the demonstrations had turned into a much bigger fight for the future of Hong Kong and its democratic institutions.
The Hong Kong government and the police crackdown on the protests fueled opposition figures. In November 2019, pro-democracy candidates won major victories in the elections for the local district council, in what was seen as a clear rebuke to the Hong Kong (and China) leadership.
The coronavirus pandemic and restrictions on social distance frustrated public demonstrations for much of 2020. Then, in the summer, China intervened directly with the passage of a broad national security law, which aimed at vaguely defined activities such as secessionism, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces – basically anything that can be interpreted as undermining the Chinese Communist Party.
This was seen as a “death sentence” for Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms and mainland China’s near-autonomy. The offenses were so broadly and vaguely defined that many feared they would be turned into weapons to pursue anyone deemed too critical or open against the Hong Kong authorities or the Chinese government.
This has already started to happen. Dozens of pro-democracy figures were arrested under this law earlier this year. In February, 47 people were formally charged with violating national security law and conspiracy to commit subversion. Your crime? Participate and help organize unofficial primary elections for legislative elections still postponed.
Now, China is pursuing these elections directly with these new rules. It is an attempt to eliminate any influence that the pro-democracy opposition has left.
What we know about changes in Hong Kong’s electoral rules
One of the changes involves the election of the chief executive of Hong Kong, scheduled for 2022. (The current chief executive is loyal Carrie Lam in Beijing.) At the moment, an 1,200-person Election Committee selects the chief executive. It is already full of Beijing supporters, and the Electoral Committee will expand from 300 members to 1,500.
This expanded committee will also have the function of choosing new members for the Legislative Council (LegCo), which is expected to increase from 70 to 90 members. The LegCo elections were due to take place last September, but the Hong Kong government continued to postpone them, citing the coronavirus pandemic. (Hong Kong has reported about 200 new infections in the past 14 days.)
LegCo already had a pro-Beijing majority, and only a few of the members of LegCo are directly elected, but Beijing plans to reduce these seats and will install – probably through the Electoral Committee – a group of pro-Beijing members.
All of this to ensure that those serving in the Hong Kong government are sufficiently “patriotic” – which is a euphemistic way of saying that they have proved their allegiance to China.
There are still some details that are emerging about exactly how these changes will be implemented and when they will take effect, but the biggest conclusion is clear: China wants to crush any influence that the pro-democracy movement has on Hong Kong’s institutions.
The balance was already heavily skewed in favor of the pro-Beijing bloc in Hong Kong. Now, China is just dismantling the scales.
Why China is doing this is a more difficult question to answer. Jacques deLisle, an expert in Chinese law and politics at the Carey School of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, told me that there are two theories.
The first is that China continues to see Hong Kong and its movement for democracy as a threat. While this threat may be somewhat exaggerated, it is another attempt by President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party that he leads to harden and relax his power over the territory.
The other is that China really does not care about the perspective of intercession in Hong Kong anymore. “Xi Jinping and the people around him have this attitude of, ‘We are in control here. And we will assert our authority. We’re doing it on the continent, and we’re certainly not going to be much more lax about doing it in Hong Kong, ”” deLisle told me.
In a way, China appears to be learning the lessons of the 2019 district council elections, local positions that often deal with everyday issues of quality of life. But the powerful display of the pro-democracy camp proved that even in Hong Kong’s partially democratic system, they could still exert influence.
All of this is bleak news for the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement. Even if the United States and its partners condemn China and Xi for these measures, the Biden government and international partners are likely to be limited in what they can do to put pressure on Beijing.
Secretary of State Blinken, speaking at a House hearing this week, told lawmakers that the United States must “continue to enforce sanctions, for example, against those responsible for committing repressive acts in Hong Kong”.
But this is unlikely to reverse China’s latest attempt to undo Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.