The vast majority of the people of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) support further democratization, with 65 percent favoring a clear timetable for the commencement of elections based on equal suffrage. This book is about their quest for democracy and Beijing's blockage of it.
Canadian political scientist Sonny Shui-hing Lo sees Hong Kong, with its political freedoms and rule of law, as a model for China. “Hong Kong can politically modernize the PRC” (p. 232). But so far the authorities in Beijing favor “democracy with Chinese characteristics.” Although we do not know what the latter would entail, as early as page 5, Lo gives us a pretty good idea of what it would not: there would be no tolerance of dissent (instead, there would be “social harmony”). There would be no public government accountability; rather, government agencies would be “monitored internally by the audit commission and anticorruption bodies.” Public officials would not be answerable to the public, though someday there could be one-party elections—tools used “to enhance the accountability of the CCP cadres and bureaucrats.” There would be no independent judiciary, though gradually rule of law would somehow be realized otherwise.
That this is the kind of “democracy” Hong Kongers want to avoid is amply demonstrated by the history of Hong Kong's democratic movement. The author takes us through this step by step, with portraits of the leading personalities promoting (and opposing) democratization. He begins with Hong Kong's role in, and reaction to, China's 1989 student demonstrations and the crackdown on them, and carries on through the failed “reform” package of 2005, and on to the various political controversies of 2009. The many public demonstrations over the years are examined in detail. There are excellent and thorough chapters on the various political parties and a rare account of the district councils. Of course, this is not the book in which to seek an understanding of how the Hong Kong government actually operates. Nor does the author examine the price Hong Kongers pay for the absence of democracy, such as environmental degradation and a huge disparity between wealth and poverty.
At times, the author seems to bend over backward to accommodate official logic and terminology. We are told that “political culture in the PRC is by no means conducive to the development of Western-style democracy” (p. 9). But if it is Chinese political culture we are talking about, the case of Taiwan would seem to disprove that, and if it is Marxist-Leninist political culture that is at issue, many former Soviet-dominated countries bring that into question. He maintains that Chinese characteristics of “democracy” are “unique.” (The essentials are not unique; they have long been pretty standard stuff among dictatorships.) Hong Kong's pro-Beijing elements are “patriotic elites.” The Beijing massacre of 1989 is usually referred to as the “Tiananmen tragedy”—the first word being inaccurate (see below), and the second gently subjective. Doubtless the author would say that he is presenting two sides of the argument, but the tolerance of communist jargon sometimes exceeds this reviewer's comfort zone. After all, when one speaks of “Western-style democracy” versus “democracy with Chinese characteristics,” one is talking about public empowerment versus public disempowerment. Let us not allow euphemisms to obfuscate that. (Some of the problems could have been taken care of with judicious use of quotation marks, such as repeated unhedged statements that SAR chief executive Tung Chee Hwa resigned for health reasons.)
On the other hand, Lo can on occasion be withering in his assessment of the Neanderthal views of the Hong Kong establishment. Regarding the canard that universal suffrage would produce a welfare state that would be inhospitable to investors, he writes that this reflects “a remarkable degree of conservatism and ignorance” (p. 85). And the government's supporters in the business community, who had been “spoiled” under the British, now spinelessly take their cues from the real authorities—in Beijing (pp. 196–98).
Lo's assessment of public opinion in Hong Kong is based on various polls that have been taken, which present a somewhat mixed picture of public support for democracy. But the polls often reflect people's sense of what is possible, and what goals it would be counterproductive to pursue. If there sometimes seems to be lukewarm support for one person, one vote, this is because people realize what a price Beijing would extract if a majority of people seriously sought it; it does not stem from a sense that democracy is not fundamentally a good idea.
The book could have been better edited and is also marred by a few errors. The author refers to “students killed on Tiananmen Square” on June 3–4, 1989 (p. 29); actually, the killings occurred a substantial distance from the Square—from which the students filed out peacefully. Ding Zilin's name is misspelled (p. 40). And Hong Kong could not possibly have seen “38 billion” mainland visitors between 2003 and 2009 (p. 217).
But these are minor shortcomings in what is a balanced and thoughtful account that probably will long stand as the definitive work on Hong Kong's indeed tragic quest for self-governance during the past two decades.
