In Seizing Control, China Sidelines Its Allies in Hong
Kong
Local
tycoons and British-trained civil servants helped promote Beijing’s agenda in
the territory. Now Beijing seems ready to push them aside.
By Keith Bradsher and Elaine Yu
·
June 27, 2020, 12:01 a.m. ET
BEIJING — China’s Communist Party has
long pursued its agenda in Hong Kong by working through loyalists among the
city’s top officials, lawmakers and tycoons. That behind-the-scenes approach
was a key feature in preserving considerable autonomy for the territory.
Now, as the party prepares to grab more power in Hong Kong after months of
sometimes violent unrest last year, it has pushed aside even its own
allies in the city. The party’s strategy sends a clear message to Hong Kong:
In quashing challenges to its authority, Beijing won’t
hesitate to upend the delicate political balance at the core of the city’s
identity.
Party-appointed lawmakers in Beijing
are expected to pass a sweeping security law for Hong Kong on Tuesday. Yet few
among the city’s Beijing-backed establishment, even at the highest levels,
appear to have seen a draft. Its top leader, Carrie Lam, and secretary for
justice, Teresa Cheng, have both acknowledged knowing little about the law beyond
what has been reported in the news.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Ms.
Cheng said earlier this month.
Bernard
Chan, a Hong Kong cabinet official and a member of the Chinese legislature,
said that he had not even expected Beijing to act this spring. “I’m actually
surprised, caught by surprise with the timing,” he said in an interview.
The
sidelining of Hong Kong’s elite is the latest sign that in his pursuit for
power, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, is willing to defy political norms
established over decades, and will do so swiftly and secretively. Mr. Xi’s
decision to have Beijing take charge points to how deeply the months of
protests in Hong Kong have unsettled his administration’s confidence in its
handpicked allies in the city. “There was a mood among mainland
officials that we needed a second handover of Hong Kong to China, and we’re
moving toward that,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political science professor
at Hong Kong Baptist University. “I don’t think Beijing trusts the Hong Kong
elites any more.”
Even before Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in
1997, Beijing was cultivating ties with tycoons who had fled communism in China
for the city and built vast fortunes in trading, banking, real estate and
industry. The tycoons, together with British-trained civil servants, later
formed the establishment Beijing entrusted with running the city alongside an
independent judiciary, police, academic system and capitalist model.
The
elite have served as Beijing’s eyes and ears. They have defended the Communist
Party’s interests by promoting patriotism and pushing through unpopular laws,
including one earlier this month that criminalized disrespect of the national anthem.
But the establishment has struggled to
balance Beijing’s desire for control with residents’ demands to preserve the
autonomy that has shielded them from the mainland’s feared security services
and opaque, often harsh legal system.
When protests erupted last summer, the city’s leadership was
responsible for trying to quell it but was not empowered by Beijing to make major
concessions, resulting in an impasse. The pro-Beijing camp now also sees the
Communist Party’s new assertiveness as a sign of its impatience with the local
establishment’s failure to pass national security laws on its own.
“They delegated that authority to us to
do it and we failed, we failed 23 years. So they said, OK, we’ll take it back,”
said Mr. Chan, the top government adviser. “So we can’t say anymore that we
didn’t have a chance.”
Beijing also increasingly recognizes
that the influence of its pro-business allies has fueled public anger over the
small pensions and costly housing that have made Hong Kong one of the most unequal places in the
world. Support for the pro-Beijing camp has fallen to record lows: They
suffered a resounding defeat in local district elections in
November, and could see potentially heavy losses in legislative elections in
September.
The party’s push for more overt control
throws into question the role of Hong Kong’s elite in the coming months and
years. Establishment figures now find themselves in the awkward position of
having to defend a law they have not seen in detail, amid growing pressure from Beijing to demonstrate
loyalty.
“I
am also disappointed that we can’t see the bill,” Elsie Leung, a stalwart
Beijing ally and former secretary for justice, told reporters, in a rare
admission. She said, though, that she believed that Beijing had heard different
views about the law.
For
many in Hong Kong, such reassurances have largely rung hollow. The city’s
residents are accustomed to very public, sometimes rowdy discussions of new
laws by the city’s legislature. Confronted with Beijing’s secrecy, Hong Kong’s
democracy activists, scholars and former chief justices have asked: Who would
get to rule on cases? Would Hong Kong’s residents be extradited to the
mainland? Would the law be used retroactively to prosecute protesters?
Mrs. Lam, the city’s leader, has sought
to allay the public’s concerns, saying this week that Beijing had pledged to
preserve the city’s civil liberties. But she acknowledged not having seen the
specifics of the legislation.
Tanya Chan, a pro-democracy lawmaker,
said Beijing had undercut the city government’s credibility. “How could we
believe you?” she said in an interview.
“The entire law is to be imposed on
Hong Kong, but the government is willing to be a propaganda machine without
having seen the clauses,” Ms. Chan said. “Not only did they not help citizens
fight for the right to know, they were blinded themselves.”
Even
without releasing a draft of the law, China last week made clear that its
passage would grant Beijing expansive powers in the city. It would allow
mainland security agencies to set up operations in Hong Kong and for Beijing to
assert legal jurisdiction over some cases. The law calls for a mainland
security official to be an adviser to Mrs. Lam and for tighter controls on the city’s schools, which have been
hotbeds of sometimes violent activism.
The
law would make it a crime to collude with foreigners, push for independence,
subvert the state or otherwise endanger the party’s rule. Beijing has not yet
disclosed how these crimes will be defined, but many pro-democracy lawyers and
activists fear they will be applied broadly to muzzle dissent and shut down the
opposition.
The Chinese government crafted the
national security plan this spring with such stealth to prevent the city’s
tycoons and professionals from lobbying against it.
“Beijing this time has kept its secret
very well,” said Lau Siu-kai, a former senior Hong Kong government official who
now advises Beijing on the territory’s policies. These days, he added, “the
military and the national security people are more influential in Hong Kong
affairs.”
Besides marginalizing the party’s
allies in Hong Kong, Mr. Xi also removed and replaced several of Beijing’s
longest-serving officials dealing with the territory’s affairs, including Sun
Lijun, a deputy minister of public security.
Up until January, the head of Beijing’s
powerful Liaison Office in Hong Kong was Wang Zhimin, who was a fixture on the
Hong Kong cocktail party circuit, hobnobbing with bankers, captains of industry
and top civil servants. Mr. Wang was said to have been criticized in Beijing
for not foreseeing the grass-roots anger that fed Hong Kong’s protests.
He
was replaced by Luo Huining, an official from central China
who spent much of his career as a tough security enforcer in northwestern
China. Unlike Mr. Wang, Mr. Luo does not speak Cantonese, makes few public
appearances in Hong Kong and often works from a backup office in Beijing, not
Hong Kong. Mr. Xi also installed a trusted aide as the new head of
an office in Beijing that oversees Hong Kong affairs.
As Hong Kong has become deeply
polarized between Beijing’s allies and democracy advocates, a shrinking
political center has looked for compromises. But it is unlikely to wring major
concessions from Beijing.
James Tien, a moderate politician and
honorary chairman of the pro-establishment Liberal Party, has emerged as one of
the few establishment figures willing to acknowledge that Beijing’s move is
deeply unpopular and unsettling, despite the party’s assertion that the law
enjoys wide support.
“I think most people will say that we
don’t like it, we don’t want it,” he said last week in an interview with Radio
Television Hong Kong. “But there’s nothing much we could do.”
Keith Bradsher reported from Beijing and Elaine Yu from Hong
Kong.
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