The Backlash to Belt and Road

February 16, 2018 A South Asian Battle Over Chinese Economic Power By Andrew Small When Beijing announced its One Belt, One Road initiative five years ago, the global reaction was immediate and pronounced. OBOR, as it became known, was hailed as a transformative effort to deploy China’s economic might in service of its strategic goals. By going out of their way to reject analogies to the United States’ Marshall Plan in Europe, Chinese leaders in fact invited the comparison. Chinese ports, pipelines, roads, and railways would expand commercial, investment, and infrastructure linkages from Asia to Europe. They would build new markets, integrate poorly connected regions, and stabilize the Chinese periphery. Ultimately, they would lay the groundwork for a Sinocentric global order. No region seemed to make a more promising target for such ambitions than South Asia. Sparsely populated Central Asia is a transit route and energy source rather than a serious market. East Asian trade and infrastructure connections are already well developed. EU public procurement rules preclude a privileged role for Chinese companies. Russia is in economic decline. South Asia, by contrast, appeared to have all the right ingredients for the Chinese economic model: large populations, fast-growing economies, GDP per capita comparable to China’s a decade earlier, weak connectivity, and major infrastructure deficiencies. When Chinese Premier Li Keqiang undertook his first overseas visit in 2013, South Asia was the location he picked to tout two new economic corridors, a version of OBOR avant la lettre. But five years on, such hopes have proved unfounded. The region has instead become the main battleground for OBOR’s future—with India as its chief opponent, Pakistan as its chief enthusiast, and, in between, countries from Nepal to the Maldives facing economic choices that have become highly politicized. While the hope may have been that Chinese investment schemes would help mitigate competition in the region, the result so far has been precisely the opposite: OBOR has fused with and reinforced existing divisions. If China wants the economics of the initiative to achieve its intended strategic effects, it will need to square the politics first. South Asia illustrates the obstacles Beijing will face when it fails to do so. CHINA AND INDIA AT A CROSSROADS At the crux of this contest is the Sino-Indian relationship, which has deteriorated sharply in the last few years. In other regions, Beijing offered careful reassurances to countries that might try to frustrate Chinese investments in their backyards. With Russia, for example, China noted that OBOR would complement and reinforce Moscow’s own connectivity plans. Beijing made no such efforts with India. New Delhi had been willing to join earlier Chinese-led initiatives, such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), when Chinese diplomacy displayed deftness and a multilateral spirit. China’s conduct around OBOR in South Asia took a clumsier and more unilateral form. Its quasi-official maps of the initiative included Indian ports, despite the lack of any consultations between the two sides. The economic corridor linking Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar was likewise folded into the scheme without Indian agreement. Most controversially, China announced that OBOR would include the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an investment scheme potentially worth tens of billions of dollars, which India has formally objected to on the grounds that the route passes through disputed territory. In practice, the cross-border aspects of CPEC are modest—some fiber optic cable installations and road upgrades had already been under way—and the projects in the contentious region of Gilgit-Baltistan are similarly small in scale. CPEC is essentially an investment package rather than a serious transit route. But the “corridor” terminology and ambitious claims from the Pakistani side about future railways and pipelines implied a more significant change to the status quo. This only deepened New Delhi’s long-standing anxieties over Sino-Pakistani relations, which have for decades been built around the common security goal of counterbalancing India. While China has sought to portray CPEC as a means to stabilize Pakistan, India sees it as emboldening Islamabad. OBOR’s takeoff in the rest of the region triggered a fresh round of concern about the security risks of China’s growing economic reach. For India, Sri Lanka exemplified its gravest fears. Beginning in 2007, China began supplying arms and diplomatic cover to the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, which played a crucial role during the brutal denouement of the country’s civil war. Beijing also lent an already indebted government funds to pursue several vanity projects, which enabled Rajapaksa to woo his political base. Alarm bells went off in New Delhi when China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) submarines paid port calls in Colombo without advance notice, the last straw that prompted Indian efforts to bolster the opposition to Rajapaksa in the 2015 election. But the new president, Maithripala Sirisena, who wanted to extricate Sri Lanka from some of the Chinese contracts, quickly found that the terms were inflexible and had left the country with virtually unserviceable levels of debt. China was willing to negotiate but sought a debt-for-equity swap that would give Chinese companies a long lease on Hambantota port. Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks during the Belt and Road Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, May 15, 2017. In spite of this, India has maintained the upper hand politically. The 2015 elections proved that there was a price to be paid by Sri Lanka for ignoring New Delhi’s redlines. With the Hambantota lease deal, the Sri Lankan government carefully assured Indian officials that sensitive port operations, including security management, would be controlled by a Sri Lankan company and that the port would not be used for military purposes. It also denied subsequent requests from the PLA Navy to make port calls in Colombo. New Delhi’s message resonated throughout the region, prompting other governments to provide private reassurances that Chinese investments would not be a prelude to militarization. Beijing may find friendly governments to work with temporarily, but with the exception of Pakistan, it will find it very difficult to establish a dual-use port in South Asia that the PLA Navy can count on. But Sri Lanka’s case also offered a warning to India of the economic realities working against it. Colombo was forced back to the negotiating table with China for lack of any better options. India has since improved its efforts to offer countries appealing economic alternatives. But its various limitations—in its resources, its capacity for direct investment, its significant infrastructure needs at home—have necessitated partnerships with other concerned countries. The most important of these has been with Japan, which created in 2015 the new “Partnership for Quality Infrastructure,” an expansion of the infrastructure resources provided by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and in cooperation with India developed an “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor.” Perhaps the most telling Indo-Japanese intervention was in Bangladesh, which in 2015 was in the advanced stages of agreeing to a package of Chinese financing for a new deep-water port. But political pressure and economic incentives (including the largest yen loan that the Japan International Cooperation Agency has ever offered for developmental assistance) pushed Dhaka to opt for a Japanese deal instead. Almost as important, Sri Lanka handed India a propaganda coup. In Colombo, a convincing story has taken hold, one that paints OBOR as predatory, a debt trap, and a route to military expansionism. In reality, the new Chinese highways have been beneficial; and the expansion of the Colombo port has been an economic success, with the overwhelming majority of the port’s activity consisting of trans-shipment to India. Yet that more nuanced picture is overshadowed by the evocative sight of Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, a gleaming, fully staffed building with virtually no passengers, no planes, and an empty departures board, surrounded by sweeping highways on which cars are outnumbered by auto rickshaws, cows, and elephant dung. It is that image that has come to embody OBOR in Sri Lanka, much to India’s delight. A ZERO-SUM FUTURE? Beyond South Asia, India has been notably effective in influencing the debate over OBOR by consistently raising its concerns at the highest political levels to countries with plenty of reservations of their own. It was no coincidence that in October 2017, fresh off a trip to New Delhi, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about OBOR “going through disputed territory.” India, alongside Japan, has reinforced the Trump administration’s competitive stance toward China and encouraged the adoption of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy that is partly intended as a counterpoint to OBOR. When the newly resumed security “quad” (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) met in November 2017, these strategic economic issues took up much of the agenda. Clearly, none of these developments will stop China’s economic advances in South Asia. There are over $20 billion worth of projects moving ahead on the ground in Pakistan. The Southern Expressway in Sri Lanka is progressing ineluctably to connect Hambantota and Colombo. China has just ended India’s Internet monopoly in Nepal. And states elsewhere in the region will continue to take advantage of China’s growing role to gain leverage in their dealings with New Delhi, the traditionally dominant power in their neighborhood. But alongside its partners, India does place certain limits on OBOR in the region by creating an environment in which it is politically costly to pursue various projects without taking Indian interests into account. This puts OBOR at a crossroads in the region. There are three potential scenarios for what could happen next. Beijing could make a unilateral course correction, opting to have a greater portion of its efforts in South Asia look more like those of the AIIB: more transparency, less onerous loan terms, a closer partnership with multilateral institutions, and more focus on regional connectivity than bilateral links to China. Beijing is not going to turn the whole of OBOR into the AIIB—it wants to preserve its prerogatives to pursue politically targeted projects with narrower bilateral benefits—but a shift would reduce the levels of criticism and opposition. China and India could also reach an informal agreement over the scope of OBOR, given that there is still considerable room for negotiation, even over Indian sensitivities about CPEC. Particularly if China made progress on other thorny issues, such as on India’s membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, New Delhi’s stance on OBOR could end up resembling Japan’s: retaining economically competitive elements while identifying targeted areas for cooperation. As former Indian National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon has argued, India’s interest is in seeing more projects like Colombo port and fewer projects like Hambantota. If India more actively engaged China on the rules of the road, its capacity to shape OBOR would arguably be greater. The most likely scenario is that the competition continues and hardens. Dynamics in South Asia are increasingly taking on a zero-sum quality. And with improving U.S.-Indian and Chinese-Pakistani relations set against a decline in U.S.-Pakistani and Chinese-Indian relations, such dynamics are becoming mutually reinforcing. This is an unhealthy trend, given the pressing need for a better economically integrated region. The connectivity deficit in South Asia remains significant: the World Bank estimates that intraregional trade accounts for only five percent of the total, compared with 25 percent in Southeast Asia, 35 percent in East Asia, and 60 percent in Europe, while intraregional investment stands below one percent overall. Although in East Asia, rivals have been able to sustain mutually beneficial economic relationships, in South Asia, security rifts have stymied trade and investment. Outside parties, including the United States and China, still have an interest in alleviating this problem rather than allowing the economics of the region to turn into an extension of political and military rivalries. The window for doing so is now closing. So far, OBOR’s rollout in South Asia demonstrates the barriers Beijing will face unless it makes adjustments. Beijing pushed the narrative that growing Chinese trade and investment would spur development, stability, and a more integrated region. But the project’s early promise has been soured by China’s failure to reach a consensus with the region’s major power and to answer serious questions about whether its handling of Sri Lanka is sui generis or symptomatic of its general approach. Even in sympathetic Pakistan, similar concerns are quietly expressed, and the Maldives is shaping up to be the regional test case for 2018. There is still an opportunity for Beijing to push forward a version of OBOR that is likely to command broader support and consent, including from competitors and rivals that can still see benefits in certain Chinese investments. But token efforts, such as recent offers to rename CPEC, are not enough. If Beijing wants a clearer run to advance the economic and strategic goals that underpin OBOR, it needs to do its political homework first. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-02-16/backlash-belt-and-road

A Weapon Without War: China’s United Front Strategy

June Teufel Dreyer February 6, 2018 Less headline-grabbing than China’s military advances and expanding economic reach is China’s united front activities, which have become an increasing cause for concern among countries in Asia, particularly U.S. allies. Not as benign as the name might sound, united front work aims to influence the policies of foreign states toward Chinese ends, through means that may be legal, illegal, or exploit gray areas. The term has a long history, going back to Vladimir Lenin’s desire to unite all enemies of colonialism and imperialism as an intermediate stage toward the ultimate triumph of communism, after which the colonialists and imperialists could be discarded. In his successor Joseph Stalin’s colorful phrase, they would have been squeezed out like lemons and dropped into the dustbin of history. The early history of united front work in China was not a happy one: ordered by the Communist International to ally with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on two separate occasions, the infant Chinese Communist Party (CCP) found that the KMT, too, was capable of squeezing and discarding; many CCP members, including Mao Zedong’s wife, were executed in what became known as the White Terror. After its victorious conquest in 1949, the party adapted the united front concept to suit the new circumstances: China, led by the party, would unite people from all social classes and walks of life. The concept was given concrete institutional form with the creation of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). Externally, the party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) coordinated visits by sympathetic non-communist leaders, professional groups such as doctors and professors that they wanted to establish rapport with, and cultural exchange programs. The UFWD also established contacts with Chinese diaspora communities. After Deng Xiaoping’s opening to the outside world in 1978, more Chinese left the PRC, usually to study or conduct business. Many stayed, becoming citizens of those countries while retaining varying degrees of ties with their native land. The party’s popularity suffered a sharp downturn after its brutal suppression of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in China in 1989, with international opinion critical of its actions as well. The leadership’s feeling of isolation deepened when, a few months later, the Soviet empire began to crumble, leaving the concept of communism itself discredited at the same time. The leadership found nationalism a useful substitute to bolster its legitimacy at home and abroad. As part of this outreach, it became more interested in cultivating overseas Chinese communities and mobilizing them in support of PRC goals. With more and more young Chinese choosing to study abroad, Chinese student associations proliferated and could be mobilized to support the party’s policies. Non-Chinese, particularly those who enjoyed positions of respect in their communities and varying amounts of wealth, were sought out as well, earning the honorary title of “Friends of China.” Apart from minor incidents, like protesting the arrival of visitors from Taiwan, the organizations had little salience. This changed with Xi Jinping’s ascension to the leadership of party and government in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The time had come for China—now strong and confident—to move beyond Deng Xiaoping’s advice to hide its assets and bide its time. Delegates to the Party Central Committee’s 18th National Congress were lectured on the importance of united front work, and the bureaucracy hastened to comply. Soon, there were signs of alarm in several Western countries at the forms this was taking. Australia: Infiltrating Society at All Levels A joint investigation by journalists from Australia’s Four Corners and Fairfax Media exposed what it called a campaign by the Chinese government and its proxies to infiltrate the country’s political process, its targets including universities, local student and community groups, the Chinese language media, and some of the nation’s leading politicians. And Duncan Lewis, head of the Australian Security Investigation Organization (ASIO) warned, with clear if unspoken reference to China, that “espionage and foreign interference are occurring here on an unprecedented scale, with the potential to cause serious harm to this nation’s sovereignty, its security, and . . . the integrity of our political system.” In 2015, a team of counterespionage officers raided the Canberra home of a Chinese woman married to a former high-ranking Australian intelligence official, seizing classified Australian intelligence documents. The woman, identified as Sheri Yan, was described as a socialite with connections to senior levels of government in both Australia and China. Her husband, Roger Uren, had until 2001 been Assistant Secretary at Australia’s Office of Net Assessments, the agency that provides secret intelligence briefings to the prime minister. Ms. Yan was also said to have been the intermediary in the transfer of $200,000 into the bank account of a United Nations official whom another wealthy Chinese-Australian donor said he wanted to become his “sincere friend in [China’s] Guangdong Province.” This was clearly illegal: Ms. Yan was charged, pleaded guilty to bribery charges, and served a jail term. In the weeks before the raid, ASIO analysts had been tracking the links between political donors in Australia and the CCP, with Lewis warning the heads of major political parties that, although no laws had been broken, the donations might come with conditions attached. According to Australian academic Clive Hamilton, Allen & Unwin, a publication company in Australia, delayed publication of his book, Silent Invasion, detailing these and other activities to influence politics, as a result of pressure from China. In the same time frame, Senator Sam Dastyari was forced to resign when it was revealed that he had allowed a company owned by Huang Xiangmo, a Chinese billionaire with close connections to the highest levels of the CCP, to pay a legal bill for his office. Later, in a clandestine meeting with Huang, Dastyari warned Huang that his phone was likely being tapped in connection with an investigation into his activities. Additionally, at a Chinese media conference, he had endorsed China’s stance on the South China Sea, contradicting his party’s policy. These revelations prompted the introduction of new laws barring contributions to Australian political parties and individuals. A former senior intelligence analyst called for an urgent review of an arrangement whereby a Confucius Institute was embedded inside the New South Wales Department of Education, citing the words of a Chinese official that the Confucius Institutes are an important part of China’s overseas propaganda establishment. Others objected to emplacement of an Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) inside the University of Technology Sydney: ACRI was founded by donations from the aforementioned Huang Xiangmo. Clive Hamilton testified at an Australian parliamentary hearing on national security legislation that UWFD efforts aimed as well at intimidating and coercing the Chinese Australian community, not just persuade them to advance the PRC’s interests.[1] The Chinese foreign ministry’s response was that its activities do not constitute interference in the domestic affairs of other countries and that these allegations are baseless creations of the biased Australian media, and prompted by racism. New Zealand: Accessing Sensitive Government Information In New Zealand, the issue of Chinese interference in politics came to a head with Member of Parliament Yang Jian. Yang, born and educated in the PRC, had omitted to mention on his application for New Zealand citizenship that he worked in China’s military intelligence sector for fifteen years. The People’s Liberation Army would not have allowed anyone with his background to go overseas to further their studies unless they had official permission; even so, Yang would have had to wait at least two years and to obtain permission from his former employer to leave China. This apparently did not happen. Having entered parliament, Yang accompanied two successive prime ministers in meetings with visiting senior Chinese leaders, which gave him privileged access to New Zealand’s China policy briefing notes and positions. Normally, someone with a foreign military intelligence background would not have been given the security clearances necessary for this access, but elected members of parliament need not apply for such clearances. Taiwan: New Parties and Education Opportunities According to the Taipei Times, in 2005, Wang Huning, then-director of the CCP’s Central Party Research Office and now a Politburo member, targeted more than 20 political figures from Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) who had been marginalized by their respective parties and invited them to serve as organizing central committee members of a new, pro-Beijing, party. A book by exiled Chinese dissident Yuan Hongbing, The Taiwan Crisis, provided corroboration, stating that in June 2008 the Politburo had passed a political strategy for settling the Taiwan issue that listed organizing a political party in Taiwan as its most important united front tactic. In late 2017, investigators searched the residences of four prominent members of the New Party. The party, which espouses policies that echo those of the CCP, is legitimate under Taiwan law. The content of the materials seized in the raid has not been disclosed, but it has been alleged that the New Party had founded a paramilitary New China Youth Association with the goal of “wartime control.” Former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui has stated that China’s united front work in Taiwan includes sponsoring organized criminal activities to stir up inter-ethnic conflict and destabilize society. A spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office compared the raid to Chiang Kai-shek’s White Terror and condemned the authorities for “wantonly suppressing and persecuting the forces and people who advocate peaceful unification of the two sides of the Strait.” The UFWD also sponsors “exchange” tours to China by Taiwanese students, their teachers, and principals. It has established a Student Baseball League in Shenzhen—the game being very popular in Taiwan—in which players compete against the backdrop of a large banner reading “both sides in the Taiwan Strait are one family.” At the tertiary level, students from Taiwan are offered scholarships at China’s most prestigious universities. Already, according to China’s official press agency, two Taiwanese studying at China’s highest rated institution, Beijing University, have applied to join the CCP, one of them vowing his fervent desire “to become a participant in the mainland’s joint rejuvenation.” The large number of PhDs from Taiwan universities who have not been able to find employment there have been offered jobs in China. In January, Taiwanese-born Hsieh Kuo-chun was selected to the top advisory board of the CPPCC, the non-party institutional face of the united front. The target of China’s UFWD work appears to be the “independence by nature” generation, meaning those who came of age after the lifting of Taiwan’s emergency decrees, sometime referred to as martial law. They have no memories of life in China, have grown up under a democratic system, and see no need to declare an independence the country already enjoys. Since the bulk of Taiwan’s trade is with China, special attention has been devoted to business people. Those who endorse policies favorable to China receive appointments to PRC organizations and favorable treatment; those who do not find opportunities cut off. The Role of Chinese Students’ Associations A major conduit for transmitting the Beijing government’s policies has been Chinese students and scholars associations (CSSAs) at universities. An Australian professor was forced to apologize to students for a map that showed Arunachal Pradesh, contested between China and India but under Indian administration; another for referring to Taiwan as a country. In the United States, the CSSA vigorously protested the University of California at San Diego’s invitation to His Holiness the Dalai Lama to give the 2017 commencement address, with an interviewer for the Voice of America—a U.S. government-funded organization—asking this author if she did not think it reasonable that, because Chinese students “paid so much money to the United States [sic]” that their wishes be respected. There are links between consulates, Confucius Institutes, and student associations. The CSSA at the University of Miami encouraged students to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping to Mar-a-Lago in 2017—while also counter-protesting pro-Tibet and pro-Taiwan demonstrators—offering transportation, banners, and signs subsidized by a local China-funded Confucius Institute. In early January, responding to a letter from Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the University of Texas at Austin decided it would not accept funding from the China-U.S Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) for its newly established China Public Policy Center. Senator Cruz’s letter referenced conversations with American intelligence officials, saying that the foundation is affiliated with China’s united front system. He pointed out that CUSEF is headed by Beijing’s hand-picked first governor of Hong Kong and now a vice-chairman of the CPPCC and that its board members are well-known supporters of Beijing. The UT Austin center was founded with a mandate to make “fresh and enduring contributions to the study of China-related policy topics while advancing U.S.-China relations,” though its first event was described as infused with propaganda. The university president’s has vowed to seek funding for the center elsewhere. Post-Employment Opportunities for Officials Sympathetic to China Another development of concern has been former high-ranking officials or parliamentarians taking jobs with Chinese companies after leaving office. Former Foreign Minister of Australia Bob Carr became chairman of the Australia China Research Institute, whose director and major donor is the aforementioned politically suspect billionaire Huang Xiangmo; Mr. Carr has been a reliable defender of Beijing. As a case in point, Carr responded to charges of PRC intervention in Australian affairs, by saying “we are in danger of being ‘hung out to dry’ if we listen to the ‘China hawks’ and don’t more fully engage with China.” A member of the New South Wales parliament, Eric Roozendahl, went to work for Mr. Huang after leaving government. Former New Zealand Prime Minster John Key acts on behalf of U.S. media giant Comcast on its business projects in China; he refused to answer New Zealand media questions about the sale of his property to an undisclosed buyer at prices described as well above market rates for the area. Former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley chairs the New Zealand branch of the China Construction Bank, one of the PRC’s largest, and former National Party leader Don Brash chairs the board of another large PRC financial giant, the Industrial Bank of China. According to intelligence analysts cited by London’s Financial Times, relatively soft targets like Australia and New Zealand serve as testing grounds for China’s global espionage activities, which have in the past five years massively expanded. Though the majority of cases have concerned those two states, examples in other countries have surfaced as well. For example, David Cameron, former British prime minister, created a sensation when he took a job supervising a £750 million fund to improve ports, roads, and rail networks between China and its trading partners. However, said the Financial Times, British banks were reluctant to participate due to concerns about the lack of transparency in the finances of the projects and their heavy reliance on Chinese contractors. At the end of January 2018, ASIO deputy director Peter Vickery told a parliamentary inquiry that “espionage and foreign interference activity against Australian interests is occurring on an unprecedented scale. . . . Foreign intelligence services [have] used Australian proxies to clandestinely seek classified and/or privileged Australian information at the expense of our national interest. . . . A foreign intelligence service . . . collect[ed] information about the diaspora community in Australia” and described these activities as the most extreme threat to Australian security. [2] Although Vickery did not name the country, Beijing’s People’s Daily immediately denounced the report as a hysterical reaction to China’s peaceful rise and development. Racism is a frequently invoked charge when China’s activities are revealed. Another recent case in point occurred when Chinese Canadians demanded a further investigation into an incident of a Muslim girl wearing a hijab alleging that she had been attacked by an “Asian” man. After a police investigation ascertained that the girl was lying, the case was closed. Although the girl had said only that the man was Asian, the still dissatisfied demonstrators demanded an apology from the prime minister, claiming that “there is always discrimination visible or not, against Chinese people in Canada.” People’s Daily cited the view of a Canada specialist at Beijing’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that because Chinese “are not good at participating in politics [this] makes them the target of attacks,” in effect arguing that Chinese need a greater voice in Canadian politics. Greater Vigilance Needed to Combat China’s United Front Strategy The sum total of these developments is worrisome. It is only right, fair, and reasonable that as the numbers of those from other countries who settle in Western democracies increase, they are entitled to representation in the institutions of government. Reciprocally, it is right, fair, and reasonable for these democracies to expect that the new citizens are loyal to their adopted country and that they are not acting as tools—willing or otherwise—to advance the interests of any other state, particularly when that state challenges the values of openness, diversity, and tolerance that democracies consider to be their core values. China is using the openness of democratic societies as a method to exploit them, while denying that it interferes in the domestic affairs of other countries and attempting to deflect criticism by charging that it is prompted by racism and fear of China’s rise. Until democracies see these charges for the distractions they are and pay close attention to the conditions attached to the apparent largesse of China’s development plans, we are complicit in our own demise. A founding signatory of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, the PRC frequently cites its commitment to avoid interfering in the domestic politics of other states. It is up to those states to call China out when it fails to live up to its principles. Sadly, we do not. [1] Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Bill 2017, National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill. 2017. Canberra, Australia, January 31, 2017, p. 55 [2] Ibid, p. 18. https://www.fpri.org/article/2018/02/weapon-without-war-chinas-united-front-strategy/#.WoytMiKx3AA.twitter

In China eyeing post-Brexit trade links, British PM under pressure to discuss Hong Kong

British Prime Minister Theresa May arrived in China on Wednesday as she seeks to bolster her country’s global trade links ahead of its contentious divorce with the European Union. May began her visit in the central industrial city of Wuhan and will be in China until Friday in what the Chinese foreign ministry has touted as a “historic visit”. Later on Wednesday, May will head to Beijing, where she will meet Premier Li Keqiang. “My visit will intensify the ‘Golden Era’ in UK-China relations. The depth of our relationship means we can have frank discussions on all issues,” she said earlier this week. May was travelling as she battles criticism over her Brexit strategy back home, where the House of Lords is scrutinising a key piece of legislation on leaving the EU and a leaked government report showed only economic downsides to leaving the bloc. Britain’s ties with China have grown in importance as London contemplates its economic future after it officially leaves the EU in March 2019. May travelled with her husband, Philip May, along with a delegation of 50 businesses and organisations, which her office said was “the largest” Britain has ever taken overseas. “The visit will focus on exploring new opportunities for British business, both now and post Brexit, maximising the benefit to the UK from China’s economic opening,” a Downing Street spokesman said. May will also take the opportunity to discuss a wide range of other issues, including climate change and North Korea, but she was also under pressure to address the political situation in former colony Hong Kong and human rights abuses in mainland China. China also has high expectations that London will endorse its Belt and Road initiative, a massive infrastructure project aimed at reviving ancient Silk Road trade routes and creating greater market access for Chinese companies. “It’s natural that Belt and Road cooperation is an opportunity for the two sides to tap into our cooperation for win-win results,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters on Tuesday. The British government, however, has been less sanguine about the project, with May’s spokesman saying that while the idea holds promise, it is “vital that BRI projects meet international standards”. She will hold talks with President Xi Jinping on Thursday and finish her visit Friday in the eastern business hub of Shanghai. Rights and Hong Kong Before her trip, the former British governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, urged May to address concerns about the political situation in the semi-autonomous city, which London handed back to Beijing in 1997. In a letter to May’s Downing Street office, Patten said Hong Kong was facing “increasing threats to the basic freedoms, human rights and autonomy” that its people were promised at the 1997 handover. Human Rights Watch also urged the British leader to “get tough with China” on rights. But business is the focus of her trip. Britain has said it will leave the EU’s single market and customs union so that it can strike its own trade deals with countries outside the bloc, making China’s huge market an attractive target. In preparation, a parade of British officials travelled to China in recent months. Trade minister Liam Fox discussed market access for British exports, including its key sector of financial services. Finance minister Philip Hammond worked on final preparations for a “stock connect” linking the London and Shanghai exchanges, and mulled the possibility of connecting their bond markets as well. The post In China eyeing post-Brexit trade links, British PM under pressure to discuss Hong Kong appeared first on Coconuts. https://coconuts.co/hongkong/news/china-eyeing-post-brexit-trade-links-british-pm-pressure-discuss-hong-kong/

A future for Agnes on the golf course?

After delaying moves towards representative government in Hong Kong for years, Beijing is now obviously moving the city away from it. The older pan-democrats are toothless and have nothing to add to their traditional pleas-and-marches. The younger radicals scare the Communist Party, and are being hounded out of participation in what is anyway an increasingly ceremonial participatory process. Where will they go and what will they do instead?

For an in-depth look at the Agnes Chow-disqualifying Leninization of Hong Kong’s political system, see HK Free Press’s opinion piece here (parts 2 and especially 3). (If you prefer your analysis insipid and pointless, try the SCMP’s full-page thing here – the contrast is quite something.)

Beijing presumably hopes to intimidate and disillusion Hong Kong people into sullen acquiescence. But this is still not the Mainland, where the dictatorship can eliminate opposition and criticism any way it wants and sweep the mess under the carpet. Chinese officials must find it frustrating to have to confront dissent so timidly and ineffectively, rather than just crush it like they would back home.

It would help the Communist Party if its puppet Hong Kong leadership could divert the population’s attention with halfway-decent governance. The city faces a huge range of livelihood and quality-of-life issues (housing, the elderly, health, traffic, air, etc) begging to be fixed. Instead, despite vast financial resources and the world’s highest-paid civil service, Carrie Lam’s administration is clueless and inert.

There must be scope for localists like Agnes to branch out into populist rabble-rousing here. One amusing little example is what to do with the Hong Kong Golf Club course at Fanling, which is begging to be fixed as a site for housing. Critics can make the government squirm by pointing out that if it spares the golf course, it is admitting that the ‘shortage of land’ that justifies unaffordable housing is a fiction.

On the subject of real estate being wasted on the tedious and the tacky, there’s Hooters facing closure for non-payment of rent, again. And quicker than you can say #MeToo, Steve Wynn’s palatial money-churning operation in Macau finds itself in a roughly similar position. Couldn’t happen to nicer people.

Posted on January 31, 2018 by biglychee

http://biglychee.com/?p=19132

HK’s executive-led government in practice

Posted on January 29, 2018 by biglychee

For a decade or two, Beijing officials and apologists have maintained that Hong Kong is an ‘economic city not a political one’. While people still had faith in ‘One Country Two Systems’, the Basic Law and other apparent commitments, this phrase sounded merely inane. But the Communist Party is now open about its intentions. It wants to Mainlandize Hong Kong’s government structure – create a fully unitary, centralized, top-down system without meaningful separation of powers or popular representation.

The predictable barring of Agnes Chow from the ballot is another step in that direction. (Edward Yiu will presumably follow, making the rigging of the game even more farcical. See David Webb on the absurdity of confusing ‘upholding’ versus ‘agreeing with’ a law. Also consider that the bureaucrat supposedly responsible for barring Agnes Chow was essentially claiming to be able to read her mind.)

The pro-democrats hope that they can resist this gradual process through logical arguments or rule of law (or weekend protests). They are certain to be disappointed. Beijing’s method is to chip away to see where the next ‘Western-style’ constitutional obstacle is – and then eliminate it.

The screening of candidates (and weakening of legislators’ powers) is aimed at turning the Legislative Council into a pure rubber-stamp assembly; it also turns a supposedly impartial civil-service function (overseeing elections) into a political one. If you think the courts will come to the rescue, you are going to be wrong. Beijing has already established a precedent for pre-empting court cases (through ‘interpreting’ new retroactive law into existence in the previous disqualifications). And the NPC’s imperial edict authorizing the rail terminus co-location arrangement establishes a precedent for overriding even the Basic Law (via endorsement of – you guessed it – the rubber stamp legislature).

So the legislative branch is being neutered, and the judicial branch sidelined where it might infringe the Party’s monopoly of power, just as civil-service neutrality (notably in police and prosecutions) has been replaced by political direction as required.

By openly reducing separation of powers and popular representation to symbolic levels, Beijing is implementing its much-vaunted ‘executive-led government’ in Hong Kong.

But this will not increase the local administration’s power. As we see from the barring of Agnes Chow, co-location, and the bulldozing of discredited Teresa Cheng as Justice Secretary, Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her muppet ministers are just following Beijing’s orders. The visible executive branch is being reduced to a ceremonial entity along with the rest of the Hong Kong government. The real power will be that of the Leninist party-state, hidden behind closed doors.

http://biglychee.com/?p=19117

Democracy activist Agnes Chow's election ban has 'far-reaching implications', Hong Kong legal expert says

University of Hong Kong Principal lecturer Eric Cheung said that the disqualification of democracy activist Agnes Chow from the March Legislative Council by-election race does not comply with procedural justice. He added that the government’s decision to ban her could have “far-reaching implications” for elections in general.

HKU legal scholar Eric Cheung. File Photo: Apple Daily.

Chow’s party, Demosisto, advocates “self-determination” for Hong Kong people. On Saturday, election officers rejected Chow’s candidacy, saying she “cannot possibly comply” with electoral laws after promoting or advocating notions of self-determination. In a Saturday press release, it said that the idea – and changing the city’s system by a referendum that includes an option of independence – was “inconsistent with the constitutional and legal status of the HKSAR.”

‘Very ridiculous’

Speaking to HKFP on Saturday, Cheung questioned whether the returning officers – civil servants who oversee elections – had the power to carry out such political screenings: “It does not comply with even the most basic procedural justice and natural justice principles, as she did not ask Chow to explain her stance and merely checked the group’s past record in deducing that she did not uphold the Basic Law – notwithstanding that she already signed the declaration. This is the biggest problem.”

Election hopefuls must sign a declaration stating that they will uphold the Basic Law and pledge allegiance to the Special Administrative Region. Chow signed the agreement and has denied she is pro-independence.

“Whether you uphold the Basic Law and pledge loyalty to the Hong Kong government — these are very broad and general terms and there could be different interpretations,” Cheung said. “If [the understanding] is different to the government and, after reviewing my past speech, they say that I do not uphold the Basic Law and do not allow me to run — that is very ridiculous.”

Interview: Pro-democracy by-election candidate Agnes Chow: who is she and why does she want your vote?

“And if one doesn’t accept the National People’s Congress Standing Committee’s authority — and there are many of of these individuals — does this mean I do not accept the Basic Law, and does this mean that I can’t run for election?”

Agnes Chow shows her election race disqualification notice to reporters on Saturday. Photo: In-Media.

Cheung said that the decision also means that a returning officer could determine that one is not loyal based on their past Facebook records, their interactions with other foreign organisations, the passports they once held, their associations with certain groups or any other public comments they made.

He said that the level of due diligence taken by a returning officer — such as how deeply they checked a candidate’s background, and whether they checked at all — would also come into play.

Cheung said that once returning officers have such powers, it could have “far-reaching implications” for elections, as a high level officer could arbitrarily decide whether a person can run. It impacts not just the March by-election, but also future legislative and chief executive elections, he added.

Chow has said that she will remain in the party despite the ban. The democrats’ have agreed to field Southern District Councillor Au Nok-hin as their Hong Kong Island constituency candidate instead.

Oath taking saga

Chow is not the first to face disqualification. Since the 2016 legislative election, 12 Hongkongers have been banned from standing or disqualified from the legislature after being democratically elected.

The March by-elections are taking place to replace four lawmakers who were ousted by courts over their oath-taking. Six were disqualified by the courts in total, but two appeals lodged by Lau Siu-lai and “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung have yet to be completed.

In the 2016 legislative race, election officers barred five contenders from running because they did not accept that they would “uphold the Basic Law” – a proviso for entering the race. Candidates were also asked to sign pledges in which they promise to uphold the mini-constitution and pledge allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Convener of the pro-independence Hong Kong National Party Chan Ho-tin filed an election petition against the electoral officer’s apparent power to disqualify candidates after his bid was rejected in 2016. The hearing was completed last May, but the High Court has still not delivered a verdict on the matter. Edward Leung, then-spokesperson of localist group Hong Kong Indigenous, and advocate of Hong Kong’s return to the United Kingdom Alice Lai both also filed election petitions after they were barred from running.

The pro-democracy camp is organising a rally outside government headquarters at 5pm on Sunday.

https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/01/27/democracy-activist-agnes-chows-election-ban-far-reaching-implications-hong-kong-legal-expert-says/

Leading Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow banned from vote

by AFP / Today, 15:56

One of Hong Kong’s best-known democracy activists was banned Saturday from standing as lawmaker in upcoming elections, the latest blow to freedoms in the city as Beijing tightens its grip.

Agnes Chow, 21, a former leader of the mass Umbrella Movement protests of 2014 that called for political reform, had her nomination rejected because she supports self-determination for the semi-autonomous city, the government said.

It comes as fears grow that political debate in the city is being shut down under pressure from an assertive Beijing, with the recent jailing of democracy activists fueling concern.

The emergence of campaigners calling for independence for Hong Kong since the failure of the Umbrella Movement to win reform has incensed Beijing, and President Xi Jinping has made it clear that he will not tolerate any challenge to Chinese sovereignty.

The pro-Beijing Hong Kong government has previously barred independence activists from standing for office, but Chow’s ban is the first against a more moderate campaigner.

She had been hoping to stand in by-elections in March, which were triggered by the disqualification from the legislature of six lawmakers who protested while taking their oaths of office in 2016.

“Self-determination or changing the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) system by referendum which includes the choice of independence is inconsistent with the constitutional and legal status of HKSAR,” the government said.

It added that someone who “advocates or promotes” self-determination or independence cannot uphold the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

Chow is a member of Demosisto, a political party co-founded by leading democracy campaigner Joshua Wong, who is currently out on bail after being jailed for his role in the 2014 rallies.

Demosisto does not campaign for independence but advocates self-determination and a referendum for Hong Kong people to decide how they want to be governed.

The ban on Chow has wide-scale implications for other similar activists wanting to stand for office, including Wong.

Demosisto said it “strongly condemns” what it called a political decision.

“The government’s motivation is to eliminate the hopes of an entire generation of young people,” it said in a statement.

The ban is also another set-back for the pan-democratic camp, which is trying to win back the six seats it lost due to the disqualifications.

Losing the six seats robbed it of the one-third minority vote needed to block important bills in the pro-Beijing legislature.

Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” deal that grants it a partially elected legislature and rights unseen on the mainland, including freedom of speech and the right to protest.

But there are growing fears those liberties are being eroded.

The Basic Law specifies that Hong Kong is an “inalienable” part of China, but activists say that does not mean views that challenge that status should be silenced, given that freedom of speech is protected.

The post Leading Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow banned from vote appeared first on Coconuts.

https://coconuts.co/hongkong/news/leading-hong-kong-democracy-activist-agnes-chow-banned-vote/

A sordid electoral affair

The HK Government, via its Electoral Affairs Commission, has tarnished HK's reputation for free and fair geographic elections for half of its Legislative Council, just to exclude a few candidates who were previously on the political fringe. There is nothing inconsistent between pledging to uphold the constitution and seeking to change it, and the Government now risks the courts overturning the election results. We also explain the fragmentation caused by HK's version of the party list system which has now reached epic proportions.

A sordid electoral affair
17 August 2016

Something must be said about the Hong Kong Government's idiotic, sordid approach to the Legislative Council elections, which is undermining what little credibility the rigged assembly had. Until now, whatever you think about the small circle corporate elections (or uncontested nominations) for many of the so-called functional constituencies, you might at least have believed that in the 5 Geographic constituencies which elect 35 seats, the process for nomination was fair and open. No longer.

In addition to the standard nomination form, which requires candidates (nominated by 100-200 electors) to declare that they will "uphold the Basic Law and pledge allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region", this time around, the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) has devised a new form, noting in a press statement that "recently there has been public opinion concerning whether the candidates do fully understand the Basic Law". Apparently, in Hong Kong, procedures are now devised on the basis of "public opinion" rather than legal requirements.

The EAC (the members of which are appointed by the Chief Executive) has singled out three Articles of the Basic Law which it presumably believes are particularly misunderstood, although they seem perfectly clear to us, and the new confirmation form requires the proposed candidate to confirm as follows:

"I understand that to uphold the Basic Law means to uphold the Basic Law" (with you so far) "including the following provisions:

Article 1

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is an inalienable part of the People's Republic of China.

Article 12

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be a local administrative region of the People's Republic of China, which shall enjoy a high degree of autonomy and come directly under the Central People's Government.

Article 159(4)

No amendment to this Law shall contravene the established basic policies of the People's Republic of China regarding Hong Kong."

Now this confirmation really adds nothing, because when you pledge to uphold the Basic Law, that includes all of its provisions, and indeed, the first thing an elected legislator must do after sobering up from celebrations, under Section 19 of the Oaths and Declarations Ordinance, is take the Legislative Council Oath in Schedule 2 of that Ordinance, which reads:

"I swear that, being a member of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, I will uphold the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, bear allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China and serve the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region conscientiously, dutifully, in full accordance with the law, honestly and with integrity."

That's all fine as far as it goes, but here's where the Government has gone too far: via the Returning Officers (all of whom are full-time civil servants, mostly District Officers,appointed by the EAC) the Government has been vetting the proposed candidates to determine whether, in their view, the candidates are bona fide (in good faith) in signing the declaration in the nomination form.

First of all, that's not a function of returning officers. If anyone is alleged to have made a false statement in an election-related document (for example, by claiming a bogus doctorate), that is a matter for the police to investigate, the Department of Justice to prosecute and the courts to determine after a fair trial. The duties of the Returning Officer are stipulated in the Electoral Affairs Commission (Electoral Procedure) (Legislative Council) Regulation, particularly Section 16, and they don't include second-guessing the candidate's intent or polygraphing them.

Second, even if you think that Returning Officers can make such a determination, what do they mean by bona fide in this context, and by what criteria do they determine this? They are conducting e-mail interviews and trawling through past public statements by, or attributed to, the candidates to determine whether or not the candidate supports the notion of HK sovereign independence (or some higher degree of autonomy than HK enjoys). If the Government (via the ROs) determines that the candidate does not agree with the said Articles of the Basic Law, then the declaration is deemed by the RO to be not bona fide and the candidate is disqualified, even if they have signed both forms. One such example is the rejection of Edward Leung Tin Kei, who ran in the previous New Territories East by-election earlier this year and received 15.4% of the Vote.

Upholding the law does not mean agreeing with it

Here's the problem. Any person can disagree with the contents of a law, including a constitutional law, while at the same time and in good faith pledging to uphold it as long as it is the law. Indeed, upholding the law is fundamental to the rule of law. There is nothing inconsistent between bona fide pledging to uphold a constitutional law and seeking to change it, however outlandish those proposed changes may be. If this was not true, then no constitution on Earth would ever be amended, because anyone seeking an elected office would have to pledge (on pain of criminal prosecution for lying) that they don't want to change the constitution. Although HK legislators cannot introduce a bill to amend the Basic Law, under Article 159, any amendment requires a two-thirds majority of all LegCo members. So if "upholding" the Basic Law means agreeing with all of its contents then no proposed amendment would ever obtain that approval.

You may campaign to abolish constitutional freedom of speech or religion, which are embedded in the Basic Law, but in the meantime, you can and must, if you run for elected office, pledge to uphold it. You may seek to raise or lower the constitutional minimum age (40) for becoming Chief Executive, but again, you uphold the current limit while it stands. Members of the UK parliament have sought independence for Scotland, something which would repeal the Acts of Union 1707, but there is nothing illegal about seeking that while at the same time upholding and abiding by the current law, otherwise Scotland would have very few MPs in Westminster - all the Scottish National Party members would be disqualified.

So even if the Returning Officers can make a determination that a declaration is not bona fide (and we say that is not their role), and even if a candidate is calling for constitutional change, that doesn't mean that he won't honour his declaration to uphold the Basic Law in its current and future forms.

By imposing this filtration system on the views of candidates, the HK Government via its EAC is leaving itself wide open to judicial review, the result of which could be the overturning of the election of all the legislators in each constituency where someone has been denied a valid nomination. Indeed, it may go further than that, because it is arguable that potential candidates have been deterred by this new vetting mechanism from coming forward, and that therefore the elections (or uncontested nominations) in all of the constituencies are tainted, whether or not a candidate for that constituency was rejected.

Perhaps the Government knows this, and is hoping to argue that when the dust has settled, a sympathetic judge will rule against the filtering but allow them to get away with it until the next elections in 2020, rather than conduct a re-run, in which case it will have succeeded in excluding certain people from LegCo. We hope not, because it cannot be said that a challenge to this procedure was a surprise, as putative candidates have already applied for a judicial review and been told to wait.

Stoking the flames

The correct political strategy for dealing with ideas that most of your population would find unworkable is to ignore them, but the Government has chosen to stoke the fire, starting with the Chief Executive's policy address on 14-Jan-2015 when he poured oil on a Feb-2014 HKU student magazine article and a 2013 book advocating Hong Kong's self-determination which until then had garnered very little attention. Now they have become recommended reading, if you can find a copy. 

The attention on independence advocates has been further increased by claims from Beijing's officials in HK that even discussing independence on a "large-scale" would besedition under the Crimes Ordinance. The problem with that claim is that the definition of "seditious intent" in Section 9excludes an intent "to persuade Her Majesty's subjects or inhabitants of Hong Kong to attempt to procure by lawful means the alteration of any matter in Hong Kong as by law established" (for "Her Majesty", read "The PRC"). So calls for constitutional reform by lawful means are explicitly excluded from seditious intent. There is nothing illegal about them, futile though they may be.

And if that wasn't enough, the HK Government (and at all times, we must assume the PRC Government's wishes accord with it) has, via the Companies Registry, been refusing to register companies which it thinks may represent political parties which call for independence, while the Post Office has been filtering election materials for their mentions of "civil referendum" or "self determination". The Government has, through its own heavy-handedness, boosted popular sympathy for what was previously a small minority on the fringes of the political map and given them more publicity than they could have dreamed of.

This publicity and sympathy, together with HK's peculiar electoral system, is why, if the candidates had been allowed to run, they would probably have secured several seats in LegCo. Ironically, by banning them, the Government has boosted the chances of the traditional pan-democrats who will now face a bit less fragmentation of the vote.

The electoral maths

Perhaps Beijing is now coming to regret the system of "proportional representation" which it introduced after 1997, abandoning the previous first-past-the-post system with 1 seat per constituency. They introduced this party list system to guard against the pro-democracy parties sweeping all the seats. Instead we have 5 jumbo constituencies, where the two largest (New Territories East and New Territories West) each have 9 seats, so mathematically, one only needs 10% of the votes plus 1 vote (the Droop quota) to be certain of election, and there is a good chance of election with substantially less than that. As we explained in our 2004 article One Vote, Wrong System, if there are L lists of candidates for S seats, and Vvotes are cast, then it is theoretically possible to be elected with only V/LS+1 votes.

The Government knows this. It's their system. They wanted it. Two other aspects lead to fragmentation of the vote, particularly for the pan-democrats who are less tightly-coordinated than the pro-government camp. First, the system uses a Hare Quota (V/S) rather than a Droop Quota (V/(S+1)) to allocate seats, so split lists are more efficient. For example, in a 5-seat constituency, a list needs 36% of the votes to guarantee 2 seats, or 18% per seat, whereas 2 separate lists will certainly succeed if they each get 16.67%. Second, votes are not transferable (electors must choose 1 list only and cannot rank lists in order of preference), so single-member lists with low support have a chance of election rather than seeing their votes transferred to more popular lists of candidates.

The Single Transferable Vote (STV) system is in fact used in 4 of the so-called Functional Constituencies (Agriculture & Fisheries, Heung Yee Kuk, Insurance and Transport), although it only comes into play if there are at least 3 candidates, which has only happened twice in the SAR era, both times in the insurance constituency (1998 and 2008). It won't happen in 2016, with 2 of them uncontested and the others having 2 candidates each.

In 2016, the fragmentation in the geographic constituencies has reached epic proportions: in New Territories East, there are 22 lists competing for 9 seats, and across the SAR there are 84 lists for 35 seats, compared with 67 lists for 35 seats in 2012, 53 lists for 30 seats in 2008 and 35 lists for 30 seats in 2004.

In NT East in 2012, there were 19 lists and the lowest-scoring successful candidate, Gary Fan Kwok Wai, was elected with 6.16% of the votes, while the highest-scoring was Leung Kwok Hung with 10.39% of the votes, still less than the Hare Quota of 11.11%. This year's lottery should produce some interesting results.

© Webb-site.com, 2016

https://webb-site.com/articles/legco2016.asp

The Empire Strikes Back: Hong Kong edition

26 January 2018

Author: Ray Yep, City University of Hong Kong

2017 was a year of disillusion and anxiety for Hong Kong’s people.

It started with a false dawn. The unexpected decision of the hugely unpopular Leung Chun-ying not to seek a second term as chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region offered a glimpse of hope for the local community. Many see Leung as a divisive and manipulative visionary; by contrast, his successor Carrie Lam is a civil servant-turned-politician and has a reputation as a competent and fair-minded administrator. She has also filled her cabinet with people of similar career trajectories: the majority of the ministers have served in the civil service before.

Lam’s strategy of governing is simple: stay away from political controversies and focus on policy matters. She was unequivocal in her first policy address: the new administration has no specific timetable for rekindling the debate on universal suffrage. At the same time, she remained evasive on the issue of Article 23 legislation — a law proposed in 2002 that would suppress seditious activities against China in Hong Kong. She instead reiterated that her priorities included matters like housing supply, welfare reform and economic development. Lam’s strong hint that her administration would increase public spending also helped her score a few points in opinion polls.

A considerable segment of the local population is frustrated with the relentless political dramas of the Legislative Council as well as with the general stasis in policy processes over the five years of the Leung administration. Lam’s strategy has consequently made progress in winning public support.

The Chief Executive has an unfortunately peripheral role in dictating the rhythm of Hong Kong politics — Beijing’s position matters most. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made the most authoritative articulation yet of its Hong Kong policy at the 19th Party Congress held in late 2017. Two clear messages were crystallised in the Congress pronouncement: Beijing enjoys ‘comprehensive jurisdiction’ over Hong Kong and has zero tolerance for any form of separatism. The former confirms Beijing’s full authority over Hong Kong despite the promise of a high degree of autonomy under the framework of ‘one country, two systems’.

The CCP believes that it is perfectly entitled to get involved in the domestic affairs of Hong Kong if circumstances permit. One of these possible ‘circumstances’ is when the CCP perceives its imperatives of national dignity and territorial integrity to be under threat. Beijing will not hesitate to respond and will take whatever measures the situation warrants when this occurs. A more proactive approach in handling Hong Kong is thus on the horizon.

These affirmations are nothing new — Beijing did not shy from taking provocative measures to reverse ‘undesirable’ trends in Hong Kong in 2017. Upon the ‘request’ of the Hong Kong government in late 2016, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress interpreted a clause of the Basic Law (Hong Kong’s mini-constitution) on the oath-taking procedure in the Legislative Council. The move effectively removed two popularly elected legislators (Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus ‘Baggio’ Leung) who showed great disdain for the People’s Republic of China. Both individuals displayed flags printed with the slogan ‘Hong Kong is not China’ during the swearing-in ceremony of the Legislative Council.

The saga continued in 2017 as another batch of four legislators, including ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung, were disqualified on the same grounds in July. Yau Wai-ching, Sixtus Leung and these four legislators cumulatively commanded about 200,000 popular votes in the 2016 election. They are all seen by Beijing as separatists and are thus a threat to national sovereignty. Beijing’s inclusion of the newly passed National Anthem Law into the Annex of the Basic Law in November further attests to the CCP’s irritation with Hong Kong’s trend towards sedition and ‘unhealthy development’. This irritation is a reaction to the numerous cases of booing and insults towards China’s national symbol during international football games played in Hong Kong. The new law could make any disrespectful behaviour towards the national anthem punishable in local jurisdictions.

Beijing does not necessarily see its intrusion as a matter of dignity and political concern. It could also be a gesture of care and support for its compatriots in Hong Kong. In late December, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress approved the Hong Kong government’s proposal of a joint check-point for a cross-border high-speed rail in Hong Kong. One of the reasons behind this approval was that Beijing sees further integration between Hong Kong and the mainland as imperative to the economic future of Hong Kong. Nevertheless, the arrangement does imply mainland officials can enforce national laws in part of the West Kowloon Terminus in Hong Kong. All of these developments exacerbate trepidation towards the incessant erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy and further undermine local confidence in the future of one country, two systems.

Ray Yep is Professor of Politics and Associate Head of Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong.

This article is part of an EAF special feature series on 2017 in review and the year ahead.

http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/01/26/the-empire-strikes-back-hong-kong-edition/

HK survives first week of 2018

Posted on January 5, 2018 by biglychee

Even at January 5, it looks certain that 2018 will be a year of continuous, quite possibly accelerating, Mainlandization in Hong Kong. Not a day is going by without another step towards authoritarianism – a young activist being tried or retried, a pro-dem academic losing his job, an opinionated foreign visitor being turned away at the airport.

The effect is (presumably intentionally) numbing. But Beijing’s imperial edict on co-location (officially termed an NPCSC decision) is different. It crosses a line, partly because it enables Mainland law enforcement to operate openly in part of the city, but mainly because it shatters the idea that the sovereign power might be subject to any legal constraints within Hong Kong. By conjuring a legal justification for co-location out of nowhere, without any reference to the Basic Law, let alone the local laws and process, Beijing establishes law by fiat, rule by man, might-is-right as a reality here. In principle, all bets are now off.

South China Morning Post business columnists, who would normally ignore non-financial affairs, show signs of discomfort. This is Beijing’s way of convincing us that it is in charge, says one, which points to things like censorship down the road, adds another.

Most companies here have exposure to and interests in the Mainland, and they will be unperturbed so long as Beijing doesn’t crush the life and freedoms out of Hong Kong too quickly or unexpectedly. The question from a business viewpoint is: will the Communist Party be able to criminalize opinions, neuter the legislature and sidestep judges and juries discreetly and gradually enough?

It’s possible that the forthcoming Legislative Council by-elections on March 11 will be the last ones before candidate-barring and LegCo procedure-rigging make running/voting a pointless farce. (Serious prediction for when boycotts bring the turnout below 30-40%: the government makes voting mandatory.) I declare the weekend open with a suggestion to watch two fun issues that could embarrass pro-Beijing forces – the ding rights-selling village house developer scam, and the juicy prospect of converting Fanling Golf Club to affordable housing.

http://biglychee.com/?p=18989

Some mid-week links…

Posted on January 3, 2018 by biglychee

…to test everyone’s paywall-avoidance skills.

The Financial Times reminds us to update the Hong Kong version of the Celebrity Death Listwith a look at the aging octo-/nonagenarian tycoons whose cartels monopolize our domestic economy.

Back in the 1980s, the Chinese Communist Party, perhaps imagining that the richest people in Hong Kong created rather than skimmed off the city’s wealth, co-opted the property moguls as a local support base. We sometimes hear that Beijing now feels the Hong Kong plutocrats’ role in fostering social discontent makes them more trouble than they are worth – which supposedly accounts for Mainland giants usurping them in (say) land auctions.

But their public and private rent-seeking holdings continue to leech billions out of the productive economy, thanks to Hong Kong government efforts to push up housing prices, flood the city with tourists, splurge on white-elephant infrastructure projects, and other cronyism. (Well, whaddya know?) There’s no sign that this will end when the old tycoons die – assuming they ever do.

A New York Times op-ed poses the question of whether Hong Kong is really a part of China. Various pedants and naifs who read the column literally will object to it on historical, constitutional or simply logical grounds (though few twist and falsify history as energetically as the CCP). But this misses the point – the writer is mischievously endorsing the localists’ position that Chinese sovereignty is incompatible with Hong Kong people’s rights and freedoms. (See also the comment by ‘Sifu628’ on how the older pro-dems’ faith in Beijing was betrayed.)

By ‘mischievously’ I mean the article is exquisitely, wickedly designed to go down like a cup of cold sick and send all the right people ballistic.

http://biglychee.com/?p=18971