Written by Philip Bowring
WED,22 OCTOBER 2014
I am not sure what I meant by that
His subjects, he says, are too stupid to vote
Most Hong Kong people are too poor and dumb to be allowed to vote, according to the territory’s Beijing-appointed leader Leung Chun-ying.
A bizarre joint interview with three foreign publications, the Financial Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal has yet again given new life to the students, and their supporters on the streets of the city.
Outrage has been mixed with derision shared even by the normally cautious daily columnist in the South China Morning Post said that when he saw it he first through it was a spoof from The Onion, the US satirical website.
Leung opined that it would be unsafe to offer those earning less than US$1,800 a month a real say in the choice of chief executive as that would likely lead to government contrary to the interests of the business community. That income threshold leaves about 60 percent of the population deemed too poor to vote.
This was in the same interview that he was trying to claim that the version of “universal suffrage” offered by the National People’s Congress offered real choice rather than choice between two or three pre-selected Communist Party approved candidates.
In this one interview CY thus showed not simply that he was following the Beijing line on constitutional development but had contempt for the masses of poorer people in Hong Kong. At the time he was campaigning for selection in 2012 he had made his concern for the poor his main platform. Yet in office he has proved just as beholden to the business oligopoly clique, principally landowners and developers, as his predecessors.
Now the interview has shown that his heart really is in support for the clique and contempt for what he deemed “populism,” meaning in effect that broad public interests take second place to a business group which makes almost all its money from control of the domestic economy rather than international or genuinely competitive local business.
In doing so, CY has focused attention on what to many is the underlying cause of discontent – the wealth and income gaps in Hong Kong which far exceed those in any economy of similar overall prosperity. Although the issue of the voting system for the next chief executive election, due in 2017, has been the main focus of protests, beneath it lie not just popular economic discontents but contempt for the quality of CY and most of his ministers, contempt shared even by many in the top 10 percent of incomes.
The publication of the interview coincided with the first actual debate between student leaders and government ministers led by the number two, Chief Secretary for Administration, the smiling, well-meaning but ineffective official fall-guy, Carrie Lam. The talks led nowhere as the government offered nothing beyond reporting issues to the State Council – not to the NPC which actually has the authority if it wishes to reinterpret decisions and give some ground to the protesters.
Nor did the government offer any other suggestions, such as making Legislative Council elections more democratic which might have given cause for demonstrators to fold their tents and see some real return from their nearly three weeks of 24-hour of street action.
The debate, insofar as there was one, showed the students to be more coherent than the clutch of officials, since more the butt of lampoons than of anger.
Irritated though many Hong Kong people are by the traffic diversions and delays caused by continued occupation of roads in the Central, Causeway Bay and Mongkok districts, the abysmal quality of government, and of CY’s leadership in particular, has ensured that radical changes must happen in Hong Kong, maybe not this year but soon if public anger at a regime which shows itself beholden not to public interests and wishes but to the dictates partly of Beijing and partly of the tycoons, who were once admired but are now loathed for their greed, is not to boil over repeatedly.
CY has long been seen as the loyal servant of Beijing. But it is only recently, with revelations of his HK$50 million covert and legally dubious payout from a deal involving the sale of his bankrupt company to an Australian group, that his personal interest in money has become apparent. In this he now joins the long list of Hong Kong’s supposed leaders found to wallow in sleaze: his rival for chief executive, Henry Tang, his processor Donald Tsang, and a former Chief Secretary Raphael Hui, now on trial for corruption and whose own court testimony has shown an obsession with money-making and spending quite contrary to what is expected of the most senior civil servant.
Meanwhile Beijing seems caught in a trap of its own making. Showing an almost total misunderstanding of business and economic affairs, and contempt for the views of ordinary Hong Kong people, its advisers on Hong Kong affairs have continued to insist that the prosperity of Hong Kong depends on these tycoon oligarchs remaining in de facto control.
As a result Beijing now suggests that the Hong Kong troubles are the work of foreign (ie US) influence. CY himself said as much himself in his interview but has yet to produce any evidence. Indeed, it is another claim which further irritates Hong Kong people who know that, whatever side they are on, they are capable of making their own decisions. As for foreign influence CY’s very own Chinese Communist Party likes to airbrush away the direct role of Josef Stalin in its founding, and Soviet financing of Mao through the Long March and after.
Beijing has however wisely so far kept out of the Hong Kong fray, though doubtless at this time (the Central Committee Plenum) there are plenty of Xi Jinping’s critics who would like to use the situation against him. Xi at least had no role in CY’s appointment. Indeed, such feeble links that CY has with top officials are generally thought to be with the protégés of Jiang Zemin. Anyway, Beijing only interferes as a last resort. For now CY must deal with the mess he has created by not even appearing to try to defend an important aspect of Hong Kong’s autonomy – the right to choose its own electoral system within the framework of the Basic Law.
The dilemma for Beijing is now formidable. Use of major force will alienate almost all Hong Kong. CY must go for the good of everyone. Beijing must know that now but cannot be seen to succumb to protests. Is a medical emergency brought on by stress the way out?
http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/hong-kong-leung-chun-ying-digs-new-hole/
