Written evidence from Lo Chi Yeung Felix (HKG0029)

Hong Kong's democracy leapfrogged as a BDT

On Christmas eve, 1980, CBD Central's skyline on Hong Kong Island was lit up by nine brightly coloured Christmas tree patterns of lights on the facade of one of the largest British banks on Queen's Road Central with the accompanying words in bright hues saying "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" to the people of Hong Kong. That year, Christmas here was exceptionally memorable, for, Hong Kong had just received a very special gift from its governor for a few months. Sir Murray MacLehose brought forth his green paper to the public mid-year to kickstart the process of introducing chartism to the people of Hong Kong, a process all other members of the British Commonwealth have gone through to acheive their dominion or British dependent territory status by being self-governing. Almost 140 years' practice of colonial government here of purely appointing local advisors to run the affairs in Hong Kong was to make way for a brand-new look for modernising Hong Kong. Thus, Hong Kong was now at a juncture to decide how well to receive this grace you may say, of a proposed parliamentary system in the foreseeable future for addressing grievances of the community in a more effective manner to better meet the local social and economic needs. Finally, this reputable and enviable method of British governance, which was in the news for so long and is traceable to its roots back in London as a widely taught history subject - the 1832 chartist movement - and which Sir Winston Churchill proclaimed so widely to the nations around the world, calling on them to introduce democracy as a standard way of governing their peoples when the war was over - in his well-known Atlantic Charter when on board the HMS Prince of Wales in the midst of WWII - was finally coming to town, long-expected. But for Hong Kong, this is more than just for its modernisation - this was indeed the moment of truth for the community to face, both the grassroot as much as the high acheivers of the business world, as I shall discuss how this was so.

With Hong Kong assuming merely a crown colony status for about 140 years, there was some uncertainty surrounding its future starting in the late 1970s. The well-known fact about British colonies in the post-war era is that they were unassimilated places conquered and acquired by Britain mostly between the 17th century and 19th century, and if such places did not make it to becoming the dominions and dependent territories in the British Commonwealth, they mostly followed the paths taken by places such as India, South Africa and Singapore to become independent countries. Hong Kong was at a crossroad in the early 1980, as there was the perceived "time running out," as the enclave was counting its days off in its final 18 years to 1997 - the time believed by many to be the expiry of a lease Britain had obtained from China. Because a part of Hong Kong was generally believed to comprise leased Chinese territories based on an agreement with Beijing as a result of the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory in 1898, that was how some fast and furious activities were thought to have inspired a whole series of events besetting the 1980s. This contract was said to have been concluded supposedly to give the British full jurisdiction of the earlier acquired land in the vincinity by allowing the use of extra land that was necessary to ensure proper military defence of the colony around the island. Under the convention the territories north of what is now Boundary Street and south of the Sham Chun River (Shenzhen River), and the surrounding islands, later known as the "New Territories" were leased to the United Kingdom for 99 years rent-free, expiring on 30 June 1997, and thus a large swathe and 200 or so fragmented islands became added into the crown colony of Hong Kong. Claude MacDonald, the British representative during the convention talks, picked a 99-year lease because he thought it was "as good as forever." The thing is, if the land use agreed to entailed no rentals, was there a lease or no lease agreement? Now, here is the point of contention: some textbooks in Hong Kong have taught about the presence of such a lease agreement actually concluded by the two sides, while other books, such as the more serious ones dealing with primary sources and other non-school texts often made it clear that no such lease agreement was actually signed, although some texts admitted Britain did verbally demanded from China the land concerned for her use, without the deal actually ending up in a formally signed deal. To clear up the confusion, in 1979 MacLehose suddenly made some overtures to travel to Beijing and proactively raised the question of this lease with Deng Xiaopeng with respect to the New Territories area of Hong Kong (an area that encompasses all territories north of Boundary Street on the Kowloon Peninsula as well as 200 or so Islands dotting Hong Kong waters). The talks, although inconclusive at the time, eventually involved top British foreign affairs officials in a subsequent series of diplomatic exchange in the next six years. Here is the question: did Sir Murray lack confidence in what MacDonald had acheived? Or did he feel there was still uncertainty over how China might interpret the "99-year lease" that he felt he had to personally resolve any uncertainty? These are valid questions to ask because in 1982, these all came to the surface through the news media when it transpired that Margaret Thatcher went to Beijing herself to seek China's recognition of British Hong Kong to the extent that she wanted China's "yes" answer to allowing the British Hong Kong administration and the British garrison to conduct their business as usual post-1997. About this, I have already talked about this saga at length in the opening passages of my third opinion write-up.

Let's now rewind to Murray MacLehose's trip back in 1979 for a while. By the time of his visit, Sir Murray had already served in Hong Kong as governor for six years and had implemented some measures that oversaw a period of unprecedented economic growth. He made the government services free from the worse red tape by establishing an anti-graft body, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), which was often touted as the most important step towards transforming Hong Kong into a more efficient, modernised society. He later started an ambitious programme of council housing in huge new towns and expanded free education to secondary level (Form Three). The Mass Transit Railway, the underground system, that has linked up various parts of Hong Kong, without which one could spend a whole day to reach from one tip to another, was another key modernising development of Hong Kong during his tenure. His initiative and early proposed development of representative government, therefore, was a matching political development to complement the soaring ambitions of the society here, as the society was no longer just an entrepot for the importers and exporters but was bracing itself for the anticipated complexities in terms of both social and economic needs of the community - which then would require frequent debates in lawmaking to seek for the best solutions. I've read about some snippets from the diplomatic dialogue between Sir Murray and Uncle Deng back in 1979, and cannot help exclaiming - what a delightful gee whiz about the sensitive yet sensible quick wit - Sir Murray asked just the right questions to suss out Deng's intention regarding Hong Kong! In essence, Uncle Deng had only two very preliminary ideas to express about Hong Kong at the time. He said he wanted to take Hong Kong back, anyway, in 1997, and he wanted to decide for Hong Kong what its political system should be after the handover. In my opinion, no wonder why, after travelling back to Hong Kong, Sir Murray immediately planned on The Green Paper: A Pattern of District Administration in Hong Kong, which he published in June 1980 to collect the masses' opinions to suss out their proclivities regarding implementation of representative government here. On one hand, there was some awareness, certainly on the part of the governor of the dangers of allowing local grievances or any mere sense of grievance to build up without redress - ever more sophisticated opinion monitoring so as to anticipate likely flashpoints and mood changes was already being widely adopted as a common governance method for tackling this difficulty across the British Commonwealth. On the other hand, Sir Murray certainly knew that should the British colonial administration continue the archaic colonial method of appointing the commons in the parliament of Hong Kong, what could happen in Hong Kong if the place was to be transferred to China one day? Would every lawmaker here be appointed by the PRC? So, the governor had the crystal ball and prescience, and foresaw what actions he needed for democratising Hong Kong. He took efforts to follow up with another public consultation swiftly. It was not long before he issued a white paper in 1981, arguing the case for an "enhanced stimulus of public participation." 1981 is an interesting year - for, the Houses of Parliament in London collaborated on his initiatives by repealing the colonial status within the British Commonwealth altogether, through the passage of the 1981 British Nationality Act, thereby formally ushering in what Lord Balfour would have meant half a century ago as he hinted at forming a British Commonwealth in which greater autonomy was granted to its members, and about this vision George VI later made a speech in Australia and called this the new Commonwealth. Hong Kong thus shedded its old status belatedly, but still attempted a transformation for the British dependent territory status on January 1, 1983. It was due to this status change that I see how the lawmakers in London matched this change in Hong Kong. The passport to be issued now was the BDTC passport, instead of the Crown Colony passport. The formation of the 18 District Boards and the first direct election in 1982 were instituted following the 1980 Green Paper. For the first time, Hong Kong's district affairs were taken care of by these municipal councils. Among a total of 490 members in these councils, 132 (around one-third) were made to become directly elected by the general public. In 1983 the membership of the Urban Council (an advisory mechanism specialising in urban amenities and recreational services) was increased to 30. These went well before the Sino-British negotiations over the sovereignty of Hong Kong kicked off, which marked extra impetus for commencing continuous a large-scale constitutional reform in the territory's history. Although in 1983 Hong Kong had just acquired the British Commonwealth BDT status, I've also read that the Parliament in London also decided this same year (in the wake of the outcome of Thatcher's visit to Beijing) that it would pull out its administration and troops from Hong Kong in 1997. Now, I don't know how accurate this saying is, and certainly the text I read offered no explanation as to why the London parliament did not prescribe further diplomatic moves in order to strive to stay on. Due to the local anxiety created here as a result of the announced pullout of Britain's political and military resources in 1997, and coupled with the community's fear of communism, the sentiments had synergistically created the advantage of shoring up some sense of urgency for Hong Kong's parliamentary reform to race forward at an unprecedented speed and for even the grassroot to start anxiously dispelling their sloth of the local inertia that was built up by the style of an appointed system used for about 140 years. In the 141st year of British rule (in 1982), even the British business community whose representatives had for so long been routinely appointed to both houses throughout the colonial period also started to tremble, as they feared that despite their advantage of always being represented, that might not be the case when the Chinese arrived from communist China to rule. So, MacLehose's was well-received for just being the right policy at the right time, you could say. But my opinion is that there would also be considerable risks involved in this manner of management when British allowed the parliament here to grow and then leave. There was a chance that the ultimate effects acheived in due course might not be British Commonwealth in character at all in its nitty gritty (for example there seems not an overt British Commonwealth voice in the parliament here today), in spite of the legislative proceedings in general that like many other countries around the world debating on current affairs and issues that are mooted and a vote being taken on the draft bills. One could expect some side-effects when democracy was allowed to operate under a different country's flag. Anyway, the 1980 green paper stated the continual evolution of the government system through the electoral reforms. Further democratic reforms were considered in the Green Paper of 1984 published in July, just months before the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed which the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China governments agreed on the 1997 handover. This was titled "the Green Paper: the Further Development of Representative Government." The main aims of his proposals were stated with considerable British Commonwealth overtones: (1) to develop progressively a system of government the authority the authority for which is firmly rooted in Hong Kong, which is able to represent authoritatively the views of the people of Hong Kong, and which is more directly accountable to the people of Hong Kong; (2) to build this system on our existing institution, which have served Hong Kong well, and as far as possible, to preserve their best features, including the maintenance of the well established practice of government by consensus; and (3) to allow for further development if that should be the wish of the community. The main issues for consideration were the role, functions or composition of the Legislative Council, the Executive Council and the position of the Governor.

But apart from the unique political context of fear, trembling and anxiety for the aforementioned reason, the rest of Hong Kong's modernisation is just a natural development similar to many other places around the world - undergoing transmutation with a mushrooming of teritiary industry with concomitant urbanisation, education and wealth accumulation. Hong Kong, which for so long had been acting as a semi-periphery of Britain (the core), supplying the necessary raw materials procured through the import-export trade, providing labour at the cargo terminals and purchasing British manufactured goods - the relationship can be summed easily up with the definition of the dependency theory. For about 25 years, Hong Kong did develop some light industries in terms of toy, textile and electronics manufacturing between the 1950s to around 1985.Then, the mix of the dependency and modernisation theories in development studies was put to work synergistically throughout the 1970s and 1980s as Hong Kong started to specialise into a major financial centre. In modernisation theory terms, a semi-periphery modernises as the core imparts democratic values - the result of which is often upgrading the level of education of the community, coupled with the inculcation of more liberal values to the society. These values, though unheard of previously in stark legal terms in Hong Kong due to a lack of parliamentary democracy now needed to be spelt out in fine prints starting in about 1984 as Britain endeavoured to ease the minds of the business community and restore their confidence concerning Hong Kong's future. Despite this, some businesses continued to have qualms and wished to relocate their headquarters, such as the one renowned flagship British trading house that was inextricably linked to the founding of the trading post here and its flourishing entrepot trade. It redomiciled itself to Bermuda in 1984, followed by delisting on the stock exchange of Hong Kong and relisting in Singapore. Another one was the British bank that showed the nine lighted Christmas tree patterns at Christmas 1980 - it, too, was founded in colonial Hong Kong in 1865, but it shifted its headquarters to London in 1992. In between these two dates, Britain could not just do nothing to leave local businesses in their nervousness and anxiety conditions. When she decided in 1984 to pull out its administration and troops in 1997, she concluded the Sino-British Joint Declaration, stipulating some of the values which were later frequently heard mentioned in the news. The document promises that the future government of Hong Kong post-1997 shall maintain the rights and freedoms as provided for by the laws previously in force in Hong Kong, including freedom of the person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, to form and join trade unions, of correspondence, of travel, of movement, of strike, of demonstration, of choice of occupation, of academic research, of belief, inviolability of the home, the freedom to marry and the right to raise a family freely. Moreover, the document also stipulates that foreign consular and other official or semi-official missions may be established in the future Hong Kong. In terms of foreign relations of this enclave, the document says consular and other official missions already established in Hong Kong by countries which have established formal diplomatic relations with the PRC may be maintained. It even states that consular and other official missions of countries having no formal diplomatic relations with the PRC may either be maintained or have to be changed to semi-official missions. States not recognised by the PRC are allowed to establish non-governmental institutions. All these look pretty natural and plain. Now, these are just some of the promises made in the joint declaration concluded during the governorship of Edward Youde. I've read from books in the market that Sir Murray had once raised the issue of extending the "lease by 30 to 50 years," but no sooner had he raised this issue than he retired from governorship in 1982 and was made a life peer in the House of Lord. So, his initiative was not exactly followed up, until I studied Annex Three in the joint declaration, which discusses in-depth about how Britain seems to have already renewed the leases collectively with Hong Kong, whose validity spans the Hong Kong handover and Hong Kong SAR government era. Therefore, I assume that the questions regarding "the 99-year lease from China" and the permanence of British ownership of Hong Kong have been sort of resolved once and for all in 1985 upon the exchange of ratification instruments between the two sides. About this issue, I have already discussed my opinion at length in my first two opinion writeups. One more point I'd like to add here which I also read about, which is very interesting, although I don't know if it is true: there were sentiments expressed back in the days prior to the conclusion of the joint declaration that if a ballot had to be held for the circles of pro-Beijing camp figures, they also would have doubts and reservations about placing Hong Kong under Beijing's rule. I do want to include this view here even though this was a disturbingly surprising statement I read about. Yet, the source provided no examples of who made such statement, or who in which pro-Beijing circle(s) being referred to were potentially capable of such view. After all, I don't naturally assume that more than 30 years ago many of those were exactly the incumbent politicians we are familar with today. Because if I took them as fortyish in those days, they must be in their seventies today. But I believe your MPs could broaden your scope of the inquiry, if you intend to find out more, even just for the deep background purposes to a wider context so as to gauge the sentiments in Hong Kong as a whole, as well as how and why Britain would propose a policy for a planned withdrawal from Hong Kong when all that was being implemented here, such as the political reform and the core values cultivated at the time, were at developmental stages so infantile and vulnerable. Please excuse me for my opinion write-ups for being slightly repetitive because neither can I assume that some of your MPs reading this are expected to be naturally au fait with many of the particulars concerning the events and some nitty gritty which were already agenda items of a few decades ago. If taking into account the underlying historicity of these events, then the context concerns what was in the British empire and territory history in the making spanning about 170 years. But I do bear in mind to try to be concise.

Whatever might have been the cause of the planned withdrawal of the British administration and her British Commonwealth flag and regalia, one thing was certain in that era - the governors, from MacLehose to David Wilson (despite these being sinologists and always seemed fascinated with China), had maintained a somewhat steady pace of democratisation for Hong Kong's politics. Some progress in the parliament's chartist movement was made here since the election held in 1985, in which, however, no direct election was held to fill the 46 seats - 24 legislators were, returned via indirect elections based on professions and municipalities from which they were fielded and voted for by specific a narrow franchise; the rest were simply appointed seats. Still, there was no universal sufferage for the people of Hong Kong in 1985, but the move represented a small step forward, though, of giving the most preliminary notion and foretaste of the chartism yet to come. Then in the 1988 parliamentary election, everything remained almost unchanged except for adding two more indirectly elected functionial constituency seats elected from the professions, bringing the total number of indirectly elected seats to 26 from the previous 24. Then, the crucial event came in the 1991 legislative election during Sir David's governorship - it was the first ever partial direct election of the Legislative Council in Hong Kong's history. You could call this a chartist great leap forward as there was a leap from nothing to 18 members from the directly elected geographical constituencies: 21 members were indirectly elected from functional constituencies based on profession; only 17 members were appointed by the Governor, three of whom were the ex-officio members. Why was there such sudden enthusiasm in 1991? The reason is loud and clear. All that happened in the wake of the so called "legitimacy crisis" in 1989-90, which broke out in Hong Kong in the wake of the June Fourth crackdown on the student movement in Beijing in 1989, condemning Sir David over his crawling pace of democratisation here. This was mainly due to the intense fear stirred up in Hong Kong, as Beijing had called in the armoured tanks and opened fire on the protesting students in a public square. So, the governor conceded to local demand which had already upped the ante. However, the legitimacy question in the local parlance here was strangely not so much about whether China was the legitimate sovereign of Hong Kong in about eight years' time despite the intense fear aroused. Rather, it assumed the form of criticism leveled at the extant democratising efforts which were deemed too slow relative to the mood and massive changes building up in Eastern Europe and the mix of fearsome and hopeful moods those events generated. The criticism was thus a fervent reaction from the masses here, you could say, in response to a mixture of what happened in China, the fears aroused in Hong Kong and the toppling of the tyrants in Europe, such as in Romania, and in Germany, where for the first time in history the Germans seemed to manage forming a nation-state this time. There were already some very faint hints back in 1986 (perhaps even as early as 1983, at hindsight, with Reagan's rise in power in an event better known as the "Great Rise of America, 1983"). This event, starting with Ronald Reagan's condemning the USSR as the "evil empire" purported to commence grooming America in the next six years for ultimately participating in a movement of such international magnitude that later it was taken charge of by George Bush, who was central to freeing Eastern Europe in 1989 from the sickle-shackles, followed by the sledgehammers hacking the Berlin Wall to debris, and later, Mikhail Gorbachev calling it quit in late 1991. The earlier years during which the preparations were being made since Reagan's era was intensely to groom America for such sagas, and within an interval of six years or so pushed the values of democracy and freedom to a sky-high level for the post-modern world. Locally in Hong Kong, the protests in Beijing and the reactions from the Chinese officials and the way the events were handled were clearly China's reaction and resistance to change in the face of the volatile events of 1989, which already triggered the Chinese military to pull their triggers on some students in the public square in Beijing. Those events of course led to China being more cautious about America and even the Hong Kong pro-democracy groups because it held a firm belief that these groups and America deliberately targeted China. The reality is, all these events of 1989 to 1991 were a large-scale movement of international significance - across basically all major communist countries. They swept across eastern Europe like an unquenchable fire. For instance, signs of ethnic tensions fomenting across the communist blocs surfaced were good indicators of the centralised control being weakened early in the USSR as well - the first-century strife between Armenia and Azerbaijan resurfacing in the USSR, in Nagorno Karabakh in 1989, was an early tell-tale indication, and the world had a chance to revisit how such developed via the satellite pictures and news; there was also ethnic violence in Bosnia-Herzagovena between the Orthodox Catholic Serbs and Muslim Croats. Freedoms and democracy values were suddenly shown to the world audience to be in very short supply in communist-ruled places - a fact which was suddenly highlighted and came to the fore of media attention with the graphic video footages of Revolutions of 1989 and the Velvet Revolution in Germany. It wasn't so much that America had already supplied these abundantly to them in practical terms by the late 1980s, though. True, the Americans had been preaching these values through Radio Free Europe, just as the BBC and its foreign language services had been preaching similar values around the world. America had only just begun to persuade many extant communist regimes to banish their communism, probably due to prolonged frustration as a result of its prolonged economic aid supplied to the Eastern Bloc and the USSR - only after their communist regimes were dissolved were these countries able to gradually establish democracies and functional economies deemed acceptable to NATO, and clearly Gorbachev's calling the shot from the USSR since 1985 had already seen less influence as substantially weakened central control (promising no Soviet military intervention in the satellite states in the event of domestic troubles) over the eastern bloc countries for the few years attested to that. Gorbachev was chosen to undertake the tasks of perestroika and glasnost, and more, for an obvious reason - he himself bore witness to how two of his family members were starved to death under the rule of communism early on. So, he had to do it if it must be done. Many eastern European countries were later aided further by America in economic terms after the fall of their communism. While similar liberal values were already confirmed in the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1985 for the future Hong Kong, and in fact, are already a prevalent way of life in the British Commonwealth, on the international front America was seen as the most vociferous and upfront on TV in enticing these communist regimes with the economic advantages of banishing communism in favour of freedom and democracy. Thus, Hong Kong indeed experienced its own chartist movement progress by leaps and bounds attained in 1991. But due to the exigency created by Beijing and the urgency spurred on by the changes in eastern Europe and later USSR, the great leap forward here was still seen as lacking in speed by some. What's more, the second peace deal, the Hong Kong Basic Law concluded in 1990 also hampered the speedy implementation of fullest direct election possible, due to a deal set out in the document, that affixes a pre-negotiated time frame agreed to by Beijing and the pro-Beijing Hong Kong representatives to the negotiated deal, in which it states that the year for implementing full parliamentary democracy here would be 2003. Some people saw this as snail's speed. What's worth noting also (albeit a bit mind baffling to note) is that in the wake of the June Fourth incident in China, the Hong Kong Executive Council, the upper house of parliament, passed a motion to condemn Britain for not granting all the six million or so Hong Kongers the UK rights of abode, instead of making an attempt to plead with Britain to find a way to stay put after 1997 to continue to provide the necessary defence and administrative services. The condemnation sent ripples across the parliament in London, causing some spiritual unease amongst some of its MPs. In my opinion, it may be more justifiable that if the neighbouring political climate had compelled enough fear to the extent that the upper house here was clearly seen as motioning to try to find ways to evacuate all the Hong Kongers from here, the more practicable way would be that it should require Britain to stay put, rather than make her provide room in the UK for all the six million all at the same time.

Due to the stimuli from eastern Europe and China, and the reactive fear of the people of Hong Kong over the pre-arranged 1997 handover, the change of political mood across the board worldwide was paving the way for a new outlook of how Hong Kong should deal the perceived crisis. The newly elected British prime minister John Major decided that Sir David should step down as Hong Kong governor, and he also removed Percy Cradock as foreign policy adviser - those were being accused by the Hong Kong democrats for their appeasement policies todying to Beijing, presumably about the pace of introducing directly elected seats to the Hong Kong parliament. Before Sir David left Hong Kong, he left a gift to the Hong Kongers - by bestowing British Citizenship upon 50,000 Hong Kong families, for which many professionals on sensitive jobs have applied as a safeguard. To some observers, the personnel changes signaled that the British government itself had taken note of the massive tide of political catastrophe and the changes sweeping across the European Continent and USSR, and much more might be in store. Inaugurated in 1992, Chris Patten, famed for his hardline conservatism in the UK, would sweep away all that consensus reached between Hong Kong, China and Britain on what pace democracy should be introduced here, and he would race ahead with his own plans on how best to avoid being too little too late in democratising the Hong Kong's parliament in what is widely known as his Political Reform Package. What this was all about is that he would cause the whole lower house to enjoy the fullest direct election possible in the next election held in 1995, while the upper house remains untouched. The significance of the 1995 Hong Kong Legislative Council general election lays in the total change of the voting method, in that indirect election (in the form of corporate voting that was used previously in the functional constituencies, for instance) were abolished to give way to whoever individuals qualified to cast their own secret ballot votes directly. As a result, the franchise was astronomically widened under Patten, not least because the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. In addition to the one-man-one-vote introduced for the geographical constituency ballots, a 2.7 million-strong franchise was created for individuals to vote in their professional areas in which they worked. Therefore, the number of directly elected seats leapfrogged from 18 in 1991 to all 60 in 1995 - comprising 20 members from the geographical constituencies, 30 members from the functional constituencies, as well as 10 members returned from election committee (whose candidates were drawn from the incumbent municipal councillors). 920,000 (35.79 per cent turnout) cast their votes in the geographical ballot boxes, while more than 460,000 (40.2 per cent turnout) voted in their professional areas. All these drew the ire of China, whose diplomats here exchanged sharp words with the governor, while the the House of Lords in the UK also fiercely debated what they saw as Patten's hot-headed approach, with some life peers saying they feared damaging the relations between UK businesses in Hong Kong and China. Now in my opinion, the major contention and the source of controversy may have been due basically to one factor. If only the life peers concerned realised what exigency was there in the early 1990s. China, being resistant to adopting the multi-party system, was not unaffected - Deng Xiaoping actually made a candid remark during his trip to southern China, where he did comment with no qualms that failure to reform would mean a blind alley for China. He then rendered his reform mindset via a spree of sale of the state-owned assembly lines and factories on a large scale. In this context, if Hong Kong had still been run merely as a colony, very little direct election would need to be contemplated. My guess is that with the high value of democracy and freedoms that skyrocketed worldwide in the wake of the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of the USSR, Britain very much valued her name that also stands for these values. So, she changed her mind about letting Hong Kong's democratic reforms be carried out under China's communist flag after the 1997 handover - between 1997 to 2003. She must have felt that she and her system was the true and legitimate sovereign to grant these rights as long as she was still reigning in Hong Kong - since these rights are inherently her own with her multiparty system, and she has had a long tradition of liberalism since perhaps the days of Victorian enlightenment and chartism. However, Patten's pre-emptive reform was not without its shortcoming, too. The step that was found lacking in his reforms is build in the prime ministership to make the system completely British in character. Yet, he did not cause the elected majority's party whip to head a cabinet in the 1995 election. Despite this, in terms of Britain's relation with Hong Kong, which your inquiry wants to gauge and review, I think the steps taken by Patten were still indispensible for inclusion in my mention about how UK could groom Hong Kong to be a true British dependent territory through the introduction representative government just like any other members of the British Commonwealth. However, this will only be viewed valuably and favourably only if one takes into account the acknowledgement that your parliament in London could consider Hong Kong's reincorporation into the British Commonwealth perhaps after 2047, if an earlier date is not possible. I look back in order to see how the future of this place can be. The governor-general and prime ministership would be the standard political configuration, when Britain officially decides to resume Hong Kong's British Commonwealth status.

On that note, this almost brings about the conclusion to this opinion piece. I would end this piece by mentioning a few charades here which I can easily tell apart over the years. One of the most recent is experienced by the masses of this place, while the government officials seem having a tough time managing it. Both parties seem to be falling for the suggestion in the Hong Kong Basic Law that they should or must elect the chief executive of Hong Kong in 2017 via direct election by universal sufferage. This issue seems to be heading to its climax as the Hong Kong has enlisted China's central government's help in enquiring about the possibility of the green light for such presidentialism practice to be granted to Hong Kong. I myself have serious doubts about the validity of the argument that Hong Kong will be allowed complete independence by being granted the right to choose their own chief executive (or the president) via one-man-one-vote in the manner of all other republican or presidential systems. My primary argument is still this: by virtue of Annex Three of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which confirms that Britain as a constitutional monarchy only leased land to Hong Kong in 1985, insteading of Hong Kong being granted the necessary independence for presidentialism to be practised here. Secondly, of the razzmatazz currently created in the news media, the central events organised here haven't created sufficient momentum to make it believable that mere local government consultation outcomes or the street polls being conducted can easily alter the original signed deal inked by Britain and China regarding Hong Kong's current status for only 50 years. Hong Kong was confirmed to have been promised a high degree of autonomy up to 2047, but this does not mean being allowed to form an independent state separately. Thirdly, in order to acheive such daring move as choosing the president by direct, universal sufferage election, one must contemplate the need for an independent republican army to be established to protect its future capitalist, republican nationals. For the past few decades, I haven't heard Hong Kong people raise a debate about the need for an army of its own. Mere talk and media hype about wishes to acheive presidentialism does not make the process seem believably moving forward, plausible and credible. China itself, on the other hand, also seems bound by the terms in the joint declaration, so I don't believe it can easily give the green light, by unilaterally, hot-headedly granting such kind of democracy from its communist system, that itself essentially lacks such practise of choosing the president of the PRC by universal sufferage. In the past decade or so, Hong Kong has already seen a few other divisive issues whenever questions of identity arose. Two years ago, there was a debate raised about whether a compulsory school curriculum on mainland-styled civic education should be introduced at schools to impart PRC patriotic values and ethics. The schools were meant to commence holding the compulsory classes after a moratorium of three years. While some schools had already been teaching the subject on a voluntary basis at the time, the proposed compulsory curriculum led to debates on whether Hong Kongers are the true nationals of the PRC on the one hand, and whether the curriculum inculcating mainland Chinese civic values would lead to some kind of brainwashing, on the other. The proposal was eventually shelved by the chief executive in October 2012. In my opinion, the government's shelving the plan is largely due to the question of practicality and practicability of such a subject in the face of a wholly capitalistic, common law British system in Hong Kong. The level of participation of Hong Kongers in the mainland Chinese system allowed is also very limited at the moment under the Hong Kong Basic Law. Just ten years before that, a similarly divisive but more provocative issue flared up due to the proposed implementation of Article 23 of the Basic Law, which required the Hong Kong government to pass some local bills to enforce mainland national security measures in Hong Kong. While some argued that Hong Kong was obliged to fulfill such duty because of it being part of China, others argued that such was not viable because the mainland national security is based on the underlying assumptions of a socialist and communist regime. Such debate eventually drew a crowd of about 500,000 who went on a protest rally on July 1, 2003, just ahead of the tabling of the proposed bill waiting to be read in the parliament. Under intense public pressure, as well as in serious doubt over the resultant effects of the proposed bill that was meant to target the police for them to bear the duty as an enforcer of such legislation, the bill aroused much soul-searching amongst various groups in the administration and was finally withdrawn in about a week after the mass rally was held; the official drafting it also resigned thereafter. In my opinion, all these issues have one thing in common - such is simply the after-effects of separating the origin of sovereign from the exercise of it. The masses then became divided in the midst of the confusion, concerning the land, the flags, the systems operating, and even who they are. While many other countries can take similar measures adopted in their own countries for granted, Hong Kong finds these as stumbling blocks. This time, this proposal got the Hong Kong executive drag through the mud; earlier such consequences of separation led to some irksome events for the judiciary, too, as I've already outlined the saga in my third opinion write-up.

Although Wallerstein's world system theory in development studies remarks on a future world that has economic cooperation mechanisms link up with various countries economic interests, he clarifies that these are purely economic in nature and these bodies lack a political centre. I assume he is referring to the membership-based economic interest-based organisations, such as OPEC, WTO, APEC, G4, G7, G8, G20, etc. While he professes the view that countries have needs for semi-peripheries acting as political buffers to moderate differences in between the various nation-states' systems, this doesn't necessarily refer to the British Commonwealth's policy. His theory on the semi-peripheries are similar to the former experiences of Britain's keeping a range of colonies. It's really nothing new - only a theorisation of the colonial experiences. While he says these semi-peripheries are necessary, for the new British Commonwealth post-WW II most colonies have long made it to the core with London at the core centre (some even before George V's time), and the rest have become independent such as India and Singapore. The core in the British Commonwealth today are largely the UK and her dominions and dependent territories. Winston Churchill once commented with qualms about Britain joining the European Union. Whether Britain will exit the EU now remains to be seen. If she does, there is a very high chance that London will resume the full management functions in its own right in the new British Commonwealth, whose dominions and territories, spreading far and wide across the globe, sees no sunset. And there is a very high chance that London will devote an in-depth review about the Joint Declaration and ponder what decision to make when the days draw closer to 2047. My purpose of preparing this lengthy recounting of some salient events is for your inquiry to look in terms of how Britain has aided in fostering Hong Kong as a British dependent territory over the years. For the past 30 years or so, there were conspicuous steps taken to foster equity in Hong Kong to bring it more in line across the board with the British Commonwealth in general terms, but there was also the sad aspect of farewell, which at the beginning of the process seemed like a predestination. Will Hong Kong rejoin the British Commonwealth in due course as its predestination? I'll be interested to learn about Britain's view.

August 2014