China Breaks Promise on Democracy in Hong Kong

February 22, 2004
By Jasper Becker in Beijing

Hong Kong was heading for confrontation with the Chinese Communist Party yesterday after Beijing took off the gloves and bluntly ruled out the democracy promised before the handover in 1997.

Beijing's anger was made public by commentaries in the Chinese press quoting Deng Xiaoping as saying that only "patriots" were fit to rule.

"There is a standard for Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong, and that is that patriots, making up the main body of the Hong Kong people, must govern Hong Kong," Mr Deng was quoted as saying, as the People's Daily marked the seventh anniversary of his death.

The gesture is intended to remove the last shred of ambiguity that Beijing will tolerate direct elections in Hong Kong despite the massive demonstrations last July against the unpopular Beijing appointee Tung Chee-hwa. Beijing could have waited until after the Taiwanese vote in a tightly run presidential election, since the move is bound to give a boost to its enemy, the pro-independence incumbent Chen Shui-bian. When the ballots are cast on 20 March, Mr Chen intends to hold Taiwan's first referendum, a dress rehearsal for a referendum on independence, which China warns,will trigger an invasion. The United States is so nervous that President George Bush has warned Taiwan not to go further and jeopardise the status quo.

Mr Deng dreamt up the "one country, two systems" formula in 1979 with an eye on ending the unfinished civil war with the communist's rivals on Taiwan, the Koumintang. Instead, the formula was used in the negotiations over the fate of the former British colony. Beijing promised that after the British left it would be "Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong", giving a vague timetable of direct elections for all legislature seats. The post of chief executive was outlined in Hong Kong's mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

Yesterday's blunt signal ends weeks of behind-the-scene warnings, with some mainland China watchers saying Hong Kong might be allowed to choose its own leaders only in 2030 or even 2040 when the 50 years of "two systems" naturally expires. Last month, Tung Chee-hwa, whose term ends in 2007, abandoned plans to hold public consultations on the next stage of democratic reforms.

China has been forced to take off the gloves by the immediate prospect that it will lose control over the Legislative Council in the next round of voting in September when additional seats are opened to direct elections. Although divided, the democrats could swing enough seats to block legislation of the Tung Chee Hwa administration. The Tung administration has had to postpone introduction of a sweeping national security law last year after 500,000 people took to the streets.

China's Xinhua News Agency quoted unidentified Chinese officials as saying earlier this week that Hong Kong must be governed by local people "with patriots as the main body". On Friday, the China Daily's Hong Kong edition declared that some senior politicians in Hong Kong's democracy camp were insufficiently patriotic and thus inherently unfit to rule.

Many of the territory's leading democratic politicians came to prominence during the massive protests after the pro-democracy movement in Beijing was crushed in June 1989, and the communists still fear Hong Kong could become a base for subversion. Hong Kong's Communist Party newspaper, the Wen Wei Po, quoted "a concerned person" warning them on Monday that if they stir up more public protests there will be a crackdown. "I have a knife, which I don't usually use. Now it's you who force me to use this knife," the source reportedly said.

Hong Kong's constitution allows the possibility of direct elections for chief executive and all of the Legislative Council from 2007. Opinion polls show two-thirds of Hong Kong people want to elect their own leader and all of their legislators from 2007. Democracy campaigners are vowing to fight onand to take to the streets.

The democrats refuse to be intimidated. They are planning a grand rally for 1 July to mark the seventh anniversary of the handover and to coincide with last year's unexpectedly large turnout. One activist, Joseph Cheng, said: "We want Beijing to understand that if the people's demands are not addressed, they will only get angrier."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=493565