Hong Kong's cyber-dissenters get real
By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - They call themselves the "post-1980s generation", and their anger
is boiling over in the streets of this city. As many of them are well into
their 20s, post-1980 is a more accurate description. Whatever they are called,
they are making some noise.
They started speaking up years ago, but Hong Kong's old guard wasn't listening.
Now they are screaming to be heard and literally trying to force their way into
the corridors of power.
While their elders look on with dismay, analysts debate what principles this
new youth movement stands for, besides a reflexive opposition to the status
quo. Under British rule, following World
War II, their grandparents and parents built this city into a prosperous Asian
hub, and now they want their fair say in post-colonial Hong Kong.
But what is it they are trying to say? Internet-driven, they have no
identifiable leadership or coherent view of the city's future as they coalesce
on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook over a wide range of
concerns - from the 11-year jail sentence handed down on Christmas Day to
dissident writer Liu Xiaobo to economic and conservation issues in Hong Kong.
Although generally educated and articulate, their lack of a unifying vision and
their organizational base in cyberspace leaves them weakly linked and open to
easy criticism from conventional commentators.
Nevertheless, their mounting activism has tapped a general dissatisfaction with
a Hong Kong government that, increasingly out of touch with the people, appears
to have been reduced to a mere puppet whose masters in Beijing pull the
strings. Although the teens and 20-somethings who make up the post-1980
generation may lack leadership and a clear stand on the way forward for Hong
Kong, their frustration with a post-colonial order that simply doesn't work for
them has captured popular imagination and clearly shaken the authorities in
Beijing, who are busy building a firewall against an army of cyber-dissidents
on the mainland.
Hong Kong's youthful malcontents were heavily involved in protests against the
demolition of the iconic Star Ferry Pier in 2006 to make way for further land
reclamation and commercial development in Victoria Harbor, the shrinking
stretch of water separating Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon peninsula. Two
years later, they staged sit-ins at equally venerable Queen's Pier, which was
torn down for the same reason.
Their most recent cause celebre is the government's HK$66.9 billion
(US$8.3 billion) express rail link to the mainland, which was approved by the
Legislative Council (Legco), the city's mini-parliament, in December.
The wisdom of the underground, 26-kilometer link - the most expensive stretch
of railway on the planet per kilometer - has been questioned by experts and
opposed by many of the city's pan-democratic politicians. But Chief Executive
Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and his ministers have bulldozed ahead with the plan,
counting on the government-friendly majority of an assembly where half its
members are democratically elected, to push it through.
What the Tsang administration was not counting on, however, were the thousands
of demonstrators, many of them in their teens and 20s, who besieged the Legco
building on January 16 as the vote on the rail link was taking place. The
protesters surrounded the building for two days while pan-democratic lawmakers
inside threw up procedural obstacles in an attempt to block a vote they knew
they would lose.
When the pan-democrats finally ran out of tricks, and news spread that funding
for the new express line had been approved by a vote of 31 to 21, the carnival
atmosphere which had prevailed among demonstrators up to that point, turned
nasty.
Some protesters stormed the building, and police answered with pepper spray. As
the clash continued, Hong Kong's Transport Minister Eva Cheng and
pro-government lawmakers were trapped inside until well into the night.
protesters also tried to crash through the gates of Government House, the
official residence of the chief executive.
In the end, as usual, the government won the battle, but it was a pyrrhic
victory for the demonstrators, once again revealing the pretense of the "one
country-two systems" mantra that has supposedly defined the relationship
between Hong Kong and mainland China since the 1997 handover from British rule.
As critics have pointed out, Hong Kong's rail network already goes to
Guangzhou, the capital of southern Guangdong province, although not at high
speed. The cost of the new express line, scheduled for completion in 2015, is
astronomical, while Tsoi Yuen village in the New Territories will be demolished
to make way for the line, forcing residents to relocate. But the symbolic
importance of hooking up directly to China's 16,000-kilometer, high-speed
national rail network in this case overrode both economic and humanitarian
concerns.
For the government and its supporters, the rail link is a metaphor for Hong
Kong's future inter-connectivity with the mainland. For protesters, it is a
boondoggle genuflection to Beijing. And the raging controversy no doubt
reinforces Beijing's fears about granting full democracy to Hong Kong, another
of the post-1980 generation's demands, which is also guaranteed within 50 years
of the handover in Hong Kong's constitution, the Basic Law.
Many of the same demonstrators who laid siege to Legco were among the throngs
that turned out for a New Year's Day pro-democracy protest during which dozens
attempted to breach a 1,000-strong police cordon outside the Central Government
Liaison Office, which represents Beijing in Hong Kong. Once the protesters were
repelled, the demonstration carried on peacefully, but the office's director,
Peng Qinghua, who rarely speaks in public, was alarmed enough to issue an
appeal for calm.
"While we respect citizens' expression of various views and demands, we hope
these expressions can take place in a rational and peaceful atmosphere," Peng
said. "If some actions which are too radical arise in the process, this is
against the expectation of citizens. We hope in the future, rational discussion
can be conducted on major political, economic and livelihood issues in Hong
Kong."
Trade unionist Cheng Yiu-tong, a delegate to China's National People's Congress
(NPC), went further, saying of the protesters, "If the majority of people are
like that, Beijing will have to send troops here."
The chief executive, who during his annual duty visit to Beijing last month was
advised by Premier Wen Jiabao to address "deep-rooted conflicts" in Hong Kong
society, added his own condemnation of the Legco siege.
"The irresponsible behavior of some protesters trying to storm into Legco
violated the core values of Hong Kong, the spirit of the rule of law and the
general interests of society," Tsang said. "The government and the general
public will absolutely not accept such behavior."
The problem for Tsang is the stronger the pleas, warnings and threats from
Beijing and the Hong Kong government become, the more emboldened the
protesters. Hong Kong people have voiced opinions that the demonstrators, most
of whom did conduct themselves in a peaceful fashion, have a point to make.
Another case of the distance between the government and the people was the
resignation from Legco of five popularly elected pan-democratic lawmakers on
Tuesday. Their political stunt has triggered by-elections in which the issue
will be a call for a de facto referendum on universal suffrage for Hong Kong
and "an uprising" against the government.
Since it was proposed months ago, the resignation and by-elections, which will
cost taxpayers HK$150 million to stage, and has created divisions among the
democrats themselves, was widely seen as ill conceived, unnecessary and,
because of low voter turnout for by-elections in the past, unlikely to
demonstrate a mandate for universal suffrage or anything else. Pan-democrats
could even lose one or more of their seats in the by-elections - all for the
purpose of sending a message to Beijing about democracy that has already been
sent many times and in many forms before, critics warned.
As the time for the resignations approached, however, skittish leaders in
Beijing felt compelled to issue another rhetorical blast, with China's State
Council denouncing the effort as a violation of the Chinese constitution and
the Basic Law.
"No matter how different the opinions on the constitutional development of
[Hong Kong] were", the council statement said, "the Basic Law should be
obeyed".
As if on cue, the biggest pro-Beijing party in Legco, the Democratic Alliance
for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, followed the statement by
expressing qualms about taking part in the by-elections, and the smaller
Liberal Party has already backed out.
Now that the central government has turned what had previously been perceived
as a hare-brained scheme into a potential constitutional crisis, pan-democrats
are even more determined to press forward, and interest in the by-elections has
never been greater.
The blood of the post-1980 generation may be about to boil again.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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