By James Pomfret
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Since Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, opposition activists have been trying to bring total democracy to the city, believing that China would fulfill its promise to one day allow universal suffrage to elect the city leader.
On Friday, that campaign suffered its biggest blow. Chinese parliamentarians in Beijing have revealed details of a plan to reform the political structure of China’s freest city that, critics say, practically voided one person’s promise, one vote.
China’s decision comes months after a comprehensive national security law was imposed on the Asian financial center, repressing dissent, and more than a year after months of sometimes violent protests against China and pro-democracy that swept the city.
“There is not much we can do to effectively change what they are deciding,” Democratic Party chief Lo Kin-hei told Reuters.
The structural changes will include increasing the city’s legislative seats from 70 to 90, with some now being decided by a committee made up of Beijing supporters. The vacancies likely to be controlled by Democrats will be eliminated or reduced.
A 1,200-person committee that will choose the Hong Kong leader will be expanded – “further improving” a system controlled by Chinese “patriots”, according to Wang Chen, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China.
Wang told reporters that the measures, which would involve reshaping parts of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, would consolidate China’s “general jurisdiction” over the city and resolve “deep problems” once and for all.
It was in the Basic Law that Beijing promised universal suffrage as the ultimate goal for Hong Kong.
But Friday’s measures can now nip in the bud the risk of any resurgence of the democracy movement, founded after Beijing’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.
With many leading Democrats now imprisoned or forced into exile, including Lo’s predecessor, Wu Chi-wai, who was denied bail this week along with dozens of others for an alleged plot to “topple” the government, Democrats will try to use network bases to keep your ideals alive.
“Confidence in the system is waning … and it is not a good sign if we want a more peaceful society that does not allow different voices to be in harmony,” Lo told Reuters.
‘MOVING BACKWARDS’
Another veteran democracy activist said that Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who became head of the Communist Party in 2012, changed the trajectory of Hong Kong’s movements towards full democracy, going against the often-cited promise of China’s late leader, Deng Xiaoping, to leave Hong The people of Kong “rule” Hong Kong.
“It is a great tragedy,” said the source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the political environment. “They are moving backwards, not forward, and taking us back in time to a dark, dark place.”
With the likelihood now that the opposition will become a permanent minority in a revamped legislature, the move towards China’s one-party model will create openings for new patriotic factions, say critics and some pro-Beijing politicians.
China, given its rise to a global superpower, now has the power and resources to extend its autocratic governance, despite criticism and sanctions from the West.
Some see Hong Kong’s British customary law system as the last bastion against China’s authoritarian grip.
More than 50 democracy advocates squeezed into a city court this week, some of whom face potential life imprisonment on charges of subversion under the national security law enacted directly by China’s parliament last June.
Two Democrats, veteran activist Leung Kwok-hung and former law professor Benny Tai, had to travel between two courtrooms for simultaneous hearings, while others were taken to the hospital after falling ill during marathon sessions.
Under the security law, the onus is on defendants to argue for a bail case – which critics say nullifies the common law tradition.
Hong Kong returned to China in 1997 under the formula “one country, two systems”, which guaranteed its way of life, freedoms and independent legal system.
Lawyer Martin Lee, 82, nicknamed the father of democracy in the city, wrote in a 2014 editorial in the New York Times that universal suffrage was the only way to honor Deng’s formula “one country, two systems” and “prevent your project would become a litany of broken promises “.
Current movements can be a final departure from that.
“This is now an exaggerated correction,” a senior Western diplomat told Reuters.
“When trying to regain control, there is a danger that they will exaggerate and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
(Additional reporting by Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Nick Macfie)