Hong Kong’s extradition protests: one country, two systems and a vicious circle of mistrust with Beijing

Beijing is growing impatient with Hong Kong’s seeming inability to enact the national security law required under its Basic Law
And this summer’s mass protests have again revealed a deep schism of distrust between both sides, fuelled by misunderstanding and paranoia

Wang Xiangwei

Published: 9:30am, 22 Jun 2019

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Ever since the historic protests broke out in Hong Kong this month, senior politicians in Taipei have felt a touch of schadenfreude.

With Taiwan’s presidential election cycle heating up, the Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, who is seeking re-election, and potential opposition candidate Terry Gou, one of the island’s richest men, have both pointed to Hong Kong’s mass protests as proof that Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula has failed in the city.

Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen. Photo: EPA

This sentiment has been echoed across the island and shared by some American politicians and overseas media outlets.

But what has transpired in Hong Kong has in fact shown that the formula has worked, albeit not in the way imagined by its creator, China’s late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

Over the past two weeks, the mass demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people from a broad political spectrum have succeeded in forcing local officials, and their political masters in Beijing, into a humiliating retreat from their plan to introduce the controversial extradition bill, which would have allowed the city to send suspects to the Chinese mainland.

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Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has repeatedly apologised for her bungling of the bill’s introduction and it has now been shelved indefinitely. Her government has also retreated from its previous characterisation of the June 12 violent protest as a “riot”.

The people of Hong Kong have spoken and through their bravery and coverage, they have saved the “two systems”.

But 22 years after Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule, this summer’s mass demonstrations have again revealed a schism of deep distrust between Hong Kong people and the mandarins in Beijing, fuelled by misunderstanding and paranoia.

Deng’s one country, two systems was once hailed as a great political experiment which ensured the smooth and peaceful transfer of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule in 1997. Under the principle, Hong Kong was guaranteed a high degree of autonomy and the city’s way of life and capitalist system would remain unchanged for 50 years.

In the early years following the return, the formula served Hong Kong quite well as both the people in Hong Kong and officials in Beijing wanted to show the rest of the world that the unique political experiment had worked. At that time, the emphasis from both sides was on the “two systems”, with Beijing hoping that its success would provide a model for eventual reunification with Taiwan.

Indeed, previous Chinese leaders were fond of using the proverb “river water should not interfere with well water” to signal a hands-off approach and that neither side should meddle with the other’s system.

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But the close proximity and greater integration still heightened the central government’s deeply held concerns that Hong Kong, with all its political and legal freedoms, would serve as a base to disrupt and subvert the communist system on the mainland, helped by “foreign forces”.

A watershed moment occurred in 2003 because of the local government’s failed attempt to enact a national security law to prohibit treason, secession, sedition and subversion, as required by the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law. Local officials were forced to shelve the law after half a million people took to the streets over worries that the law would infringe on their civil liberties. Hong Kong’s first Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa was subsequently forced to retire.

Since then, a vicious cycle has taken hold, in which each side thinks the worst of the other, on every major political development or incident.

Protests march against the jailing of student activists in 2014. SCMP / David Wong

In Hong Kong, residents are worried about Beijing’s attempts to tighten its grip on the city, while the officials in Beijing are concerned about losing control of the city.

In 2012, the Hong Kong government under Leung Chun-ying was forced to shelve the plan to introduce national education teaching in local schools after mass protests.

Following the city’s Occupy Central protests in 2014, when protesters seeking universal suffrage shut down major roads for 79 days, government officials in Beijing were clearly agitated over the possibility of losing their grip on the city, particularly after international support emboldened a small of group of young activists to advocate independence from China.

While it was clear then, as it is now, that a majority of Hong Kong people did not support any form of independence, Beijing’s worst fears kicked in as it started to signal its impatience over Hong Kong continuing to drag its feet in enacting the national security law.

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Indeed, ever since 2003, successive chief executives have said the local government would not shirk its duty under Article 23, but would need to find a suitable time to introduce the law – although they all failed to give any time frame.

Since 2014, Chinese officials have started to suggest that “one country” should take priority over “two systems” and some mainland advisers have warned that Beijing could step in and take action if the delay continues. No doubt, such talk has in turn heightened the worries of the people of Hong Kong.

Interestingly, in the aftermath of every major protest since 2003, analysts in Hong Kong and on the mainland tended to suggest that the underlying causes were largely economic: widening income inequality, an acute housing crisis, and a lack of upwards mobility for the city’s young people who usually form the backbone of the protesters.

While those economic factors play an important part, the latest demonstrations have clearly shown that distrust of Beijing is the biggest cause.

That distrust has deepened in recent years, particularly after the infamous abduction in 2015 of the Hong Kong book sellers for selling titles banned across the border and the reports in 2017 that Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese tycoon, had been spirited away from his luxury flat in Hong Kong and detained in China on allegations of economic crimes.

Like her predecessors, Lam is also under pressure to enact the national security law but has remained non-committal about the time frame.

But Lam apparently saw the introduction of the extradition bill as a path to secure Beijing’s support for her re-election for a second term in 2022. As written in this space last week, she also believed the law could help plug a legal loophole and bring justice for the aggrieved family of the girl brutally murdered by her ex-boyfriend in Taiwan.

There is credible speculation in Beijing that when Lam first notified the central government about her intention to introduce the bill, initial reactions were lukewarm, not least because officials were more concerned with the enactment of the national security law.

Will Beijing still support Carrie Lam after extradition bill debacle?

It remains unclear why Beijing later changed its mind and decided to back Lam on the legislation, as central government officials should have been more politically sophisticated in weighing the geopolitical risks associated with the introduction of the law.

One suggestion was that Beijing started to harden its support for Lam after the British and Canadian foreign ministers expressed concerns about the proposed bill in a joint statement, along with the 28-member European Union, and after Martin Lee Chu-ming and a small team of other pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong visited Washington to seek the United States’ support to oppose the law.

Delegation of Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates, led by Martin Lee Chu-ming, centre, Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee, right; meeting Nancy Pelosi, left. Photo: Handou

Always mindful of what Beijing sees as “foreign forces” meddling in Hong Kong, that flurry of statements from Britain, Canada, the US, and the EU upset officials in Beijing and strengthened their theory that those governments had conspired to inflame tensions in the city to hurt China.

Such fears will further compel Beijing to be more assertive over Hong Kong affairs despite the climbdown from the proposed extradition bill. But any such moves are bound to meet stiff resistance from the people of Hong Kong.

The formula of “one country, two systems” is still holding on in Hong Kong but its path is narrowing because of the deepening distrust on both sides. ■

Wang Xiangwei is the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post. He is now based in Beijing as editorial adviser to the paper

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