Annual poll ahead of city’s Tiananmen memorial also reveals diminished sense of responsibility for promoting democracy and economic development on mainland
TONY.CHEUNG@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Friday, 03 June, 2016, 7:52pm
Demonstrators recalling the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown marching in Wan Chai on Sunday. Photo: Edward Wong
Twenty-seven years on, 59 per cent of people in Hong Kong want Beijing to vindicate the 1989 pro-democracy movement that ended in a bloody crackdown, the University of Hong Kong found.
The result, based on a poll of 1,001 residents from May 16 to 19, represented an uptick of seven percentage points from last year and was the highest since 2013.
Support for the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the organiser of Saturday’s vigil in Victoria Park, rose 5.5 percentage points, to 50.1 per cent, the same level as two years ago.
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However, on the question of whether human rights in China had improved since 1989, this year’s result plummeted 15 percentage points from last year to 46 per cent. The number of respondents who said Hongkongers bore a responsibility to promote the mainland’s economic development fell 5 percentage points to 57 per cent.
Both marks were the lowest for those questions since 1996.
Those who believed China’s human rights situation would improve in the next three years dropped 12 percentage points to 32 per cent, while those who said Hongkongers had a role to play in China’s democratisation dropped 4 percentage points to 62 per cent. Both were the lowest marks since 1993.
The results came a day after the country’s foreign minister Wang Yi berated a Canadian journalist for asking about his nation’s human rights record. “Other people don’t know better than the Chinese people about the human rights condition in China,” Wang said.Writing on his blog, Dr Robert Chung Ting-yiu, director of HKU’s Public Opinion Programme, said the results showed “the majority of Hongkongers still consider it a responsibility to promote China’s democratic and economic development.”
“It is the goodwill of Hong Kong people, and if the mainland government does not appreciate it, it is natural for the people’s passion to cool,” he wrote. “I can understand why young people are shifting their target to fighting for local issues and for integrating with the world, because we know who disappointed them and made them change.”
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Comparatively speaking, more young people support a reversal of Beijing’s official stance on the 1989 movement. Seventy-eight per cent of those aged between 18 and 29 supported the cause, while only 54 per cent of those aged 50 or older agreed.
Internet news portal HK01, which obtained additional data as the poll’s sponsor, said 68.2 per cent of those aged between 18 and 29 believed they shared a responsibility to make China more democratic, down 5.5 percentage points from last year. Only 59.5 per cent of those aged 50 or above agreed, down 3.1 percentage points from last year.
Veteran China watcher Johnny Lau Yui-siu said Hongkongers held a grim view on human rights prospects on the mainland because of its “tough and disappointing” policies.
“Since President Xi Jinping took office, many people believe that China has been backsliding on human rights … especially after it made a law on internet safety and amended its national security law,” Lau said.
“Hongkongers are also disappointed because they fought for more political rights but it seemed fruitless,” he added. “Since 2014, the room for reforming Hong Kong’s political system has been completely blocked by Beijing. Many young people were dismayed by that.”
He was referring to the National People’s Congress decision that year ruling that if Hong Kong were to elect its leader by popular ballot in 2017, voters could only choose from two or three candidates endorsed by the majority of a committee dominated by Beijing loyalists and business elites.
The Hong Kong government’s reform package, which strictly followed the ruling, was voted down by lawmakers a year ago.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1964105/hongkongers-view-human-rights-prospects-china-hits-lowest
