Protesters
in Hong Kong on Oct. 4. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
By Eric
X. Li October 6
Eric
X. Li is a venture capitalist and political scientist in Shanghai.
The
umbrella revolution won’t give Hong Kong democracy. Protesters
should stop calling for it.This is about inequality, not politics, so
democracy can't fix the problem.
HONG
KONG — The prevailing media narrative about the Hong Kong
protest — namely that the citizens are politically dissatisfied and
are fighting for democracy against the tyranny of Beijing — is
false. What’s actually happening is this: A fringe of radical (or
sometimes, more charitably, merely naive) ideologues are recasting
the real and legitimate economic grievances of people here as a fight
about Hong Kong’s autonomy. The movement is part of a global trend
you might call maidancracy (rule of the square, from the infamous
Maidan in central Kiev where the Ukrainian protests began). If
carried out to its full extent, it will not end well for Hong Kong.
Maidancracy is
an increasingly common post-Cold-War phenomenon. From the former
Soviet Union to Southeast Asia, from the Arab world to Ukraine, it
has affected the lives and futures of hundreds of millions of people.
Hong Kong’s iteration shares certain characteristics with the ones
in Cairo and Kiev: First, there is general popular discontent over
the prevailing state of affairs and the region’s probable future.
Second, while the foot soldiers are largely well-intentioned people
with genuine concerns for their own welfare and that of the Hong Kong
society, they are led by activists with a strong ideological agenda.
As a result, their aim becomes the overthrow of the government or
sometimes the entire political system. Third, the press relentlessly
cheers them on and thereby amplifies the movement and turns it into a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Fourth, democracy is always the banner.
These
movements generally fail when they are put down violently, with
tragic loss of life (think of Syria). In the rare cases in which they
succeed, they lead to long periods of suffering and destruction
(think of Ukraine, where more than a decade of continuous color
revolutions have torn the country apart and now threaten the nation’s
very survival). Some maidan movements seem to run on a perpetual
cycle: get on the square to remove a government, only to return to
the square to remove the next one (think of Egypt). In the meantime,
paralysis, chaos and even violence reign.
Those
trends have already developed in Hong Kong. Tens of thousands of
protesters are occupying the central city district of one of the
world’s largest financial centers demanding a particular method for
electing the city’s future chief executives. They even set a
deadline for the current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, to resign,
or else. (In accord with the typical maidan arc, violent skirmishes
have begun between protesters and residents frustrated by the
inconvenience and fearful of long-term threats to their livelihoods.)
But
the protest message, as described by the loudest activists, is
problematic, because its central theme of democracy for Hong Kong is
all wrong. The degree of political participation in Hong Kong is
actually at its highest in history. Before 1997, Hong Kong was a
British colony for 155 years, during which it was ruled by 28
governors — all of them directly appointed by London. For
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, to now
brand himself as the champion of democracy is hypocrisy of the
highest order.
Only
after the return of sovereignty to China 17 years ago did Hong Kong
gain real public participation in governance. Today, half of the
legislature is directly elected by the public and the other half by
what are called functional constituencies. The chief executive, a
native Hong Konger, is selected by a committee of 1,200 other Hong
Kongers.
Further,
Beijing has now devised a plan for voters to elect the next chief
executive directly, rather than by committee, in 2017 among
candidates fielded by a nominating committee — also made up of Hong
Kongers. The proximate cause for today’s upheaval is the
protesters’ demand for direct public nomination of candidates, too.
But
the context matters: General discontent has provided fertile soil for
this movement, and the sources of that dissatisfaction have nothing
to do with imaginary diktats from Beijing. Hong Kong is going through
a tough period of economic and social dislocation. Its unique
advantage as the only port into and out of China has largely
disappeared as the mainland’s own market economy scales up. Its
manufacturing base, which provided ample employment, has been moved
to cheaper locations. Globalization and the expanding Chinese economy
have elevated the city’s position as an international financial
center, but the economic benefits have mainly accrued to landowners
and those who are engaged in financial intermediation and deployment
of capital. Median income has been stagnant and is dropping, but
costs of living, especially housing, have been rising. The
wealth gap is among the highest in the world.
Empirical
data demonstrates the nature of public discontent, and it is
fundamentally different from what is being portrayed by the
protesting activists. Over the past several years, polling conducted
by the Public Opinion Program at the University of Hong Kong has
consistently shownthat well over 80 percent of Hong Kongers’ top
concerns are livelihood and economic issues, with those who are
concerned with political problems in the low double digits at the
most.
When
the Occupy Central movement was gathering steam over the summer, the
protesters garnered 800,000 votes in an unofficial poll supporting
the movement. Yet less than two months later an anti-Occupy campaign
collected 1.3 million signatures (from Hong Kong’s 7 million
population) opposing the movement. The same University of Hong
Kong program has conducted five public opinion surveys since
April 2013, when protesters first began to create the movement. All
but one showed that more than half of Hong Kongers opposed it, and
support was in the low double digits.
Hong
Kong’s economic issues are daunting challenges for any government.
But they have been made even more difficult by protesters attempting,
successfully it seems, to manufacture a narrative that Beijing is the
cause of Hong Kong’s troubles. By misdirecting the frustration and
anxiety of Hong Kongers to Beijing, the maidancracy ideology
has overtaken rational discourse about the root causes of Hong Kong’s
problems and their solutions.
Given
all this, the future of Hong Kong is not nearly as bleak as it looks
on the streets at the moment. Hong Kong is fundamentally different
from the likes of Egypt and Ukraine. The economy is largely
prosperous. Rule of law still prevails. Resources are abundant and
can be directed and allocated in the right ways to address the
structural challenges. The vast majority of Hong Kongers want to
solve problems and are not ideological. And most of all, Hong Kong
remains an integral part of an economically vibrant and politically
stable China. As Martin Jacques wrote in Britain’s
Guardian newspaper, “China is Hong Kong’s future – not its
enemy.”
At
the moment, the situation is tense. If either side makes the mistake
of escalating, we know that maidancracy can be destructive.
Hong Kong’s current conditions do not call for such destruction.
Let calm return to the City by the Harbor. Hong Kong needs problem
solvers, not revolutionaries.
English
version ( The Washington Post )
中譯本 (
四月網 )
