BEIJING – The Communist Party of China already has a disproportionate influence on the political scene in Hong Kong. His allies have long been in control of a committee that chooses the leader of the territory. Its supporters dominate the Hong Kong legislature. He took four of the city’s opposition opposition legislators last year.
Now, China plans to impose restrictions on Hong Kong’s electoral system to eliminate candidates that the Communist Party considers unfair, a move that could prevent defenders of democracy in the city from running for any elected office.
The planned reform reinforces the Communist Party’s determination to nullify the few remaining vestiges of political dissent after the anti-government protests that rocked the territory in 2019. It is also based on a national security law for the city that Beijing enacted last summer, giving authorities wide powers to direct dissent.
Collectively, these efforts are transforming Hong Kong’s partial and unruly democracy into a political system more like the authoritarian system of mainland China, which requires almost complete obedience.
“In our country, where socialist democracy is practiced, political dissent is allowed, but there is a red line here,” said Xia Baolong, director of China for Hong Kong and Macau affairs, in a heavily formulated speech that outlined the intentions from Beijing. “It must not be allowed to damage the country’s fundamental system – that is, to damage the leadership of the Communist Party of China.”
The central government wants Hong Kong to be run by “patriots”, said Xia, and will not allow the Hong Kong government to rewrite the laws of the territory, as previously envisaged, but will do it itself.
Xia did not elaborate, but Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam affirmed the broad outline of the plan, saying on Tuesday that many years of intermittent protests about Hong Kong’s political future forced the national government to act.
When Great Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the territory had promised a high degree of autonomy, in addition to the preservation of its capitalist economic system and the rule of law.
But in the decades that followed, many of the city’s 7.5 million residents began to distrust Beijing’s invasion of its freedoms and unfulfilled promises of universal suffrage. The Communist Party, for its part, is alarmed by the increasingly open resistance to its government in the city and has blamed what it calls hostile foreign forces committed to undermine its sovereignty.
These tensions increased in 2019 when masses of Hong Kong residents took to the streets in protests for months, calling in part for universal suffrage. They also made a strong rebuke to Beijing for granting pro-democracy candidates an impressive victory in local district elections that had long been dominated by the establishment.
The latest planned reform aims to prevent such electoral upheavals and, more importantly, would also give Beijing much tighter control over the 1,200-member committee that will decide early next year who will be the city’s chief executive in the next five years.
Different groups in Hong Kong society – bankers, lawyers, accountants and others – will vote this year to choose their representatives on the committee. The urgency of the Communist Party’s action suggests a concern that pro-democracy sentiment in Hong Kong is so strong that the party may lose control of the committee, unless it disqualifies defenders of democracy to serve.
Lau Siu-kai, a senior adviser to the Chinese leadership for Hong Kong politics, said that the national legislature led by the Communist Party of China must carry out electoral reform when it meets in Beijing for its annual session beginning March 5. .
Lau, a former senior Hong Kong official, said the Chinese legislature, the National People’s Congress, would likely take steps to create a high-level group of government officials with legal authority to investigate each candidate for public office and determine if each candidate is genuinely loyal to Beijing.
The plan would cover candidates for nearly 2,000 elected positions in Hong Kong, including the committee that chooses the chief executive, the legislature and district councils, he said.
The new electoral law being drafted will not be retroactive, said Lau, and current district councilors will retain their seats as long as they comply with the law and swear allegiance to Hong Kong and China.
Beijing officials and state-run media made a series of calls last month for Hong Kong to be run exclusively by people who are “patriots”. For Beijing, this term is strictly defined as loyalty to mainland China and, in particular, to the Chinese Communist Party.
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, raised the issue in late January with Ms. Lam, telling her that having patriots ruling Hong Kong was the only way to guarantee the city’s long-term stability. And on Tuesday, the Hong Kong government said it would introduce a bill requiring district councilors to take oaths of loyalty and prohibit candidates from running for five years if they were found to be false or insufficiently patriotic.
“You can’t say, ‘I’m a patriot, but I don’t respect the fact that it’s the Chinese Communist Party that leads the country,'” said Erick Tsang, secretary for Constitutional Affairs and Mainland Hong Kong, at a news conference.
Michael Mo, a pro-democracy district councilor who has been outspoken in his criticisms of the government, said he planned to take the loyalty oath, but that he had no control over whether that would be enough for the authorities.
“It is not for me to decide whether I am a patriot,” said Mo. “The so-called pass mark is unknown.”
Government measures may further cool free speech and political debate in the city. Since Beijing imposed the national security law, city officials have used it for widespread repression. They arrested more than 100 people, including activists, politicians, an American lawyer and a pro-democracy publisher.
“I can only say that people care about this – for example, if criticism of the Communist Party or the political system in China would be considered unpatriotic, then they have that kind of self-censorship,” said Ivan Choy, a senior government speaker. and public administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Before last year’s security law, Beijing generally allowed the Hong Kong legislature to draft and enact laws that governed the territory. In a sign of how drastic the new approach is from previous years, some Hong Kong politicians initially expressed skepticism that Beijing would once again bypass local authorities to enact legislation.
On Monday, hours after Xia’s speech, Chinese official in charge of Hong Kong affairs, Holden Chow, a pro-establishment legislator, said he still hoped Hong Kong would formulate electoral changes on its own, as was tradition.
But on Tuesday, while a battery of officials declared their expectation that Beijing would act directly, Chow said he had changed his mind and fully supported the central government’s intention to act from above.
He said Beijing’s actions have not lessened the influence of Hong Kong’s leaders. “I don’t think you will find these things very often,” he said of direct action on electoral reform and national security law.
“It is only in connection with these two main and important issues,” said Chow. “I still believe that, from now on, we still have a role to play.”
Keith Bradsher reported from Beijing, and Vivian Wang and Austin Ramzy from Hong Kong. Tiffany May contributed reporting from Hong Kong.