China is stepping up its fight against the remnants of Hong Kong’s democracy movement, this time by taking steps to revise the territories’ electoral rules to guarantee power to Beijing loyalists.
China’s National People’s Congress adopted the new rules this week at an annual meeting with an almost unanimous vote in legislation.
The changes are directly aimed at the way elections are held in Hong Kong, ensuring that Beijing loyalists have the advantage in any election and a further sideline of opposition politicians (those who have not yet been arrested).
The aim, as Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang said, is to guarantee that there are only ‘patriots who rule Hong Kong’. This moves the area even further away from the promise of true universal suffrage, one of the demands of the 2019 protest.
This overhaul on the heels of the national security law passed this summer, which Beijing is using to stifle opposition to democracy in Hong Kong, shows how committed China is to strengthening its control over the city-state. This is an effort that has increased following the massive and sustained democracy movement in 2019.
According to experts, this last step is again an erosion of ‘one country, two systems’, the principle that is supposed to govern Hong Kong’s independence until 2047. The “one country” part means that it is officially part of China, while the “two systems” part has given some autonomy, including rights such as freedom of the press absent from mainland China.
“One country, two systems, is over,” Carl Minzer, a Chinese law expert at Fordham University Law School, told me by e-mail. “Politics is Hong Kong, as we know it.”
How Hong Kong Arrived Here
Demonstrations 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 Kongers. The struggle over this legislation has fueled months of protests, some tense and violent.
The bill was withdrawn in September 2019, but by that time the protests had turned into a much bigger battle for the future of Hong Kong and its democratic institutions.
The Hong Kong government and police’s repression against the protests has fueled opposition figures. In November 2019, pro-democracy candidates achieved major victories in the local district council elections, which were seen as a clear rebuke to Hong Kong (and China) leadership.
The coronavirus pandemic and restrictions on social distance have halted public protests for much of 2020. In the summer, China then directly intervened with the adoption of a comprehensive national law on national security, which vaguely defined activities such as secession, undermining, terrorism and conspiracy of foreign powers – basically anything that could be interpreted as undermining the Chinese Communist Party.
It is seen as a ‘death sentence’ for Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms and quasi-autonomy from mainland China. The crimes were so broadly and vaguely described that many feared they would be armed to look at someone critical or outspoken against the Hong Kong authorities or the Chinese government.
It 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 the National Security Act and conspiracy to commit undermining. Their crime? Participate and help organize unofficial primary elections for elections that are still being postponed.
Now China is going straight to the polls with these new rules. It is an attempt to dispel the influence left by the opposition before democracy.
What we know about the Hong Kong election rule is changing
One of the changes involves the election for Hong Kong’s chief executive, scheduled for 2022. (The current chief executive is Beijing loyalist Carrie Lam.) At present, an election committee of 1,200 people is electing the chief executive. It is already stacked with Beijing loyalists as it is, and that the election committee with 300 members will expand to 1500.
The expanded committee will also play a role in electing new members of the Legislative Council (LegCo), which is expected to expand from 70 to 90 members. The LegCo election was due to take place last September, but the Hong Kong government continued to postpone it, citing the coronavirus pandemic. (Hong Kong has recorded about 200 new infections in the last 14 days.)
The LegCo already has a pro-Beijing majority, and only a few of the LegCo members are directly elected, but Beijing plans to reduce the seats and is likely to install a number of pro-Beijing members – probably by the election committee .
All this is to make sure that those who serve in the Hong Kong government are ‘patriotic’, which is a euphemistic way of saying that they have proved their loyalty to China.
There are still some details that emerge about exactly how these changes will be implemented and when they will take effect, but the bigger takeaway is clear: China wants to crush any influence the democracy movement has within the Hong Kong institutions.
The scales have already turned strongly in favor of the pro-Beijing bloc in Hong Kong. Now China is just taking off the scales completely.
Why China does this is a more difficult question to answer. Jacques deLisle, an expert in Chinese law and politics at the Carey Law School of the University of Pennsylvania, told me there are two theories.
The first is that China still views Hong Kong and its democracy movement as a threat. Though the threat may be a bit exaggerated, it is yet another attempt by President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party that he is leading to become tough and expand their power over the area.
The other is that China actually just no longer cares about the optics of intercession in Hong Kong. “Xi Jinping and people around him have an attitude of: ‘We are in control here. And we are going to assert our authority. “We’re doing it on the mainland, and we’m definitely not going to be lazy to do it in Hong Kong anymore, ” deLisle told me.
In some ways, China appears to be learning the lessons of the 2019 district council election, which are local positions that regularly address daily quality of life issues. But the powerful performance of the pro-democracy camp has shown that they can still exert influence even in Hong Kong’s partly democratic system.
All of this is bad news for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Although the United States and its partners have condemned China and Xi for these moves, Biden’s 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 hearing in the House this week, told lawmakers that the U.S. “continues to follow the sanctions, for example, against those responsible for committing acts of oppression in Hong Kong.”
But it is unlikely to reverse China’s latest attempt to unravel Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.