Beijing calls Hong Kong into line: You're with us or against us

Beijing's zero-sum loyalty trap loses a profitable Hong Kong. Can the new chief make a difference?

Twenty years after the handover from Britain to China, the fate of Hong Kong continues to be measured by a yardstick that many would find risible were it not for the raw emotion it arouses and the hardening of polarised politics.

At the heart of this feckless debate is whether Hongkongers are pro- or anti-Beijing. This banal and irrelevant discussion has seemingly derailed sensible discourse on pressing issues like the usurious price of housing, education drift, caring for the elderly, health care, the dismal state of exports, and flagging private consumption.

The promise of the Year of the Fire Rooster appears elusive with the economy at an all-time low, barely pulling forward from the estimated 1.5 per cent GDP growth for 2016. It is time for Hong Kong to act. But where are its leaders?

A steady stream of bureaucrats schooled in the art of following orders by colonial masters has run the city since 1997, bereft of ideas. Bowing to Beijing has come naturally to some, a welcome relief perhaps. That Hong Kong is part of China and the mainland holds the key to the territory’s growth is not in doubt. But the haste with which the city’s bureaucrat-turned-politicians have aligned themselves with oftentimes inscrutable mainland thinking has had an unsettling effect.

Beijing faces a profound dilemma. It is a conservative parent with two offspring — one grudgingly obedient as long as the pocket money comes in; the other, recalcitrant, headstrong and averse to parental authority after an interlude of exploitative but strangely emancipating British tutelage.

It has two stark choices. Spare the rod and spoil Hong Kong, at the risk of losing the docile larger sibling too — in essence, an abdication of authoritarian Communist-led rule. Or the employment of quiet, even overt, intervention to bring a pint-sized city to heel.

The much experienced new Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has a grand opportunity to change the course of Hong Kong’s history. To do this, she needs to abandon the distraction of the “pro- vs. anti-Beijing” prism, and to view matters in a clear non-partisan manner. She needs a vision for Hong Kong. Leaders need to lead — not simply administer — and this faltering financial city has not seen enough of that.

Much of Hong Kong’s so-called ‘independence’ and pro-democracy activism so feared by Beijing and led by student groups is neither an independence movement nor some articulate political juggernaut. Photo: Reuters

The fact is that much of Hong Kong’s so-called “independence” and pro-democracy activism so feared by Beijing and led by student groups like Demosist-o is neither an independence movement (which would be patently unfeasible) nor some articulate political juggernaut. It is a clumsy and disjointed student awakening, only surfacing with the help of a more recent catalyst — former CE CY Leung’s poor people skills and inability to read the local pulse.

This is not to say Hong Kong does not need civil awareness to try and involve people somehow in the “closed” political process, as the misguided Occupy movement attempted to do. But pro-democracy advocates and autonomy-seeking fringe groups have fallen straight into the “pro vs. anti-China” trap masterfully laid by Beijing. You are either with us or against us.

Recent official pronouncements from Beijing have reflected mounting concern and urgency, peppered with references to “love the motherland”, “patriotism”, “national tongue”, and “national security law” (under Article 23 of the Basic Law to deal with “treason, secession, sedition”).

For her part, an avowedly Beijing-friendly Carrie Lam needs to place the city within a China context but also make Hong Kong internationally relevant again with progressive laws, safeguarded freedoms, a robust free press, and quality education that welcomes debate and fosters both Putonghua and English. Most of all she needs a bold economic vision.

Putonghua remains a flashpoint. Europeans, South Americans and Indians often speak two to three languages fluently. Why should Hong Kong be any different? The city needs to learn that English and Putonghua are not Trojan horses with some dark imperialist intent. They are a practical imperative for survival and growth in a global economy.

Cantonese and its vibrant local culture must be preserved assiduously, not just as window dressing for cash-dispenser visitors, but for residents. Hong Kong is a Cantonese enclave. The city would do well to promote local art, creativity and small-scale industry, hard pressed by rising rents and the steady creep of an uninspiring mono-culture designer brand ethos.

For all its energy and bluster, Hong Kong has slowed discernibly and lost its way, in equal part due to residents’ deep fear of Beijing (which puts many people in opposition to all suggestions emanating from China, good or bad), legitimate worries about a loss of identity (that has given rise to the localist movement), and a regressive desire for status quo. It is an odd pass for a city so favoured by pirates and adventurers who once chuckled at Singapore’s schoolroom society.

Hong Kong has energy, vitality and that famous can-do risk-taking attitude. What it lacks is leadership. Vision.

The discussion needs to move away from whether pan-democrats, youngsters, academics or the government are with or against Beijing, to whether they are for a strong, progressive, open-minded Hong Kong that welcomes change. Clearly, much of what strengthens Hong Kong helps strengthen China. The two are indivisible.

If the city is to reinvent itself and compete on the world stage, its wealth measured not just in terms of money but in manners and mores and human capital, Carrie Lam — an able administrator, former chief secretary, would-be social worker and Cambridge scholar — must take a stab at this. There is too much at stake.

The author is editor, Asian Conversations