Beijing to HK - No democracy in 2012

You know, I'm not sure it has anything to do with oil, I think it's more that China is too strong now. And who's fault is that, well it's the west that buys up their cheap goods allowing the Chinese government to use huge sums of money to develop weapons. I think the West is afraid of China now. If the whole worlds stopped buying Chinese goods and boycotted the Olympics would it work? Who knows, maybe it's too late...ciao

Er, about the oil, It was kinda a joke. You know .... like America invaded Iraq to get the oil but said that it was for democracy ..... maybe if HK had oil......

As for the boycott. If the West boycotted Chinese goods their economies would take a massive hit because of consumer goods price inflation, and if they boycotted the Olympics they would violate one of the key principles of the moder games which is that you should keep politics out of sport. Besides, China would win a heap o medals and then crow about it for years to come. And that is without all of the money that the west would have wasted on training its own athletes.

This looks like a job for

• SUPERPOWER!

Defender of truth, justice and…

how does the rest of that go?

Yep, certainly a job for SUPERPOWER. Unfortunately Beijing has a good ol' stockpile of economic-Kryptonit ready for just such an emergency.

So who in the West do you look to? And how do you suppose they might help? You have always taken a realpolitik point of view, so why are you so shocked at realism on the part of the rest of the world?

The reversion of Hong Kong was a case of Britain backing down. Not from any sort of superior negotiation, but because of the threat of military force by PRC. The Brits obviously were not strong enough, and had been divesting themselves of their empire for the previous half century. None any of the other powers could justify intervening to help support a vestigial empire. And I suspect that you were as glad to see the British leave as anyone else.

What could the US do? As you say, US and PRC are so interlocked that any rift between them would lead to mutual economic meltdown. And our aircraft carriers which, in the case of intervention in Taiwan, would be "floating tombstones" would be equally vulnerable in the case of Hong Kong. The US has also been giving up its overseas territories since WWII, and doesn’t have the presence in the area to be effective. And I suspect that US intervention would be the last thing you would welcome.

Did anyone ever doubt that the outcome in HK would be any different? "Two systems - one country". That was the promise concerning Tibet in the fifties. How do you expect that Hong Kong will be treated any differently?

I wish I could say that the fate of Hong Kong depends on its people. The sad truth is that anything like Tiananmen in Hong Kong would be broken up by PRC and forgotten by the rest of the world.

Mahatma Gandi or Martin Luther King could have made a difference – in any country other than PRC.

In situations like this I generally draw people's attention to the irony and the hypocrisy of it all, and to the fact that the West can't/won't act because almost everything that they could possibly do to China would create significant ripples that China could weather better than they could.

I'm well aware that Britain sold Hong Kong out 10 years back, and I am aware of many of the multitude of reasons why. I've got emotional investment in this one.

I'm also aware that back then it was part of American foreign policy that European nations should shed the last remains of their empires. Think about this for a minute and tell me how this likely shaped US policy on the Britain's role in the handover of Kong Kong.

Britain did not sell out Hong Kong – the lease was up. When the US lease on Guantanamo is up, I pray we will leave with equal grace. England did what it could for the Hong Kongese – it left in place the present democratic institutions and it offered British passports to all. Are you taking part in the former or enjoying the latter.

Are you saying that US anti-imperial policy was a bad thing? That US policy had anything to do with the break-up of the colonial empires? The two are related, yet independent. The US did block the expansion of empires wherever it was feasible, from the Monroe Doctrine through the Open Door to Suez – find out why Bill Donovan, head of the WWII OSS is considered a hero in Thailand. But that was for the sake of access to markets, not for anything idealistic.

But the US had nothing to do with the decline of the empires. Even before WWII, the British realized that the empire was not paying for itself, without factoring in the added expense associated with figures like Gandi, Roy, Aug, Kenyatta, Nasser……….. Now if the US had held on in Viet Nam and converted it to our own colony, maybe we could have supported our fellow colonialists, then HK would still be enjoying the benefits of being a colony.

So how did US policy influence the reversion of HK? Sorry – I haven’t heard that one. The US is responsible for a lot of bad things in the world: banana-republic dictators, repressive governments in any part of the world where we can’t buy any other kind of ally, oilogarchies whose ruling family pay more to Daimler-Benz than to their own populations. But you can’t pin this one on Uncle Sam.

Dave Zimmerman:

Not to be confrontational, but I'm sorry, you are wrong on a number of fronts.

Firstly, HK under article 4 section 1 of "Hong Kong (British Nationality) Order 1986" residents were given the right to "apply" (acceptance was not automatic, or guaranteed) for a BN(O) Passport, not a British passport. A BN(O) passport offers "HK citizens" some privileges in Britain that outright foreigners do not have, but it is quite quite different form a British passport. For example, a BN(O) passport does not give its hold right of abode in Britain. You have a BN(O) passport, you have to go through imigration and border control just like everybody else. Equally, the BN(O) does not grant its holder any rights in Europe (British passport holders can work in any EU nation and travel/live in the EU for an unlimited period of time without a visa.

What's more, for HK Chinese the BN(O) is basically worthless when it comes to protecting you from Beijing. You get no consular protection or even assurances. If you step across that border and out of the SAR's freedom laws you're on your own and at the full mercy of Beijing. The British government doesn't even have consular access rights. Only non-Chinese BN(O) have any diplomatic rights.

Secondly, Hong Kong doesn't have truly democratic institutions, at least as you would know them. In most cases at least half of the members of the government must be appointed/approved by Beijing. Democratic member of government can not have the majority. Hong Kong is not a democracy, it's just not a dictatorship in the same way that the mainland is. Also, Beijing has the final say in any constitutional changes. That's hardly democratic, is it?

Thirdly, when I said Sell out, I meant that BOTH Britain and America did little or nothing to assure freedom and democracy in Hong Kong in the future. Both nations could have held out a lot longer and for a lot more assurances, but they didn't, and when China started eating into the promises made and pushing universal suffrage back further and further, neither nation raised more than a token objection.

America might not have stepped on HK, but it didn't lift a finger to help either, before or after 1997. They came for the .... and I said nothing.

The number of fronts on which I am wrong seems to have been three.

Yes, I was wrong about the passports. They do, however, however, offer a way out which many have taken advantage of. Vancouver, Canada, one instance that I know, has become home to many former Hong Kongese.

Secondly, that the institutions left in place by UK (which I realize they never would have allowed during their rule) have been subverted by PRC since 1997 is not the fault of UK or US. This seems to me to be the same phenomenon as the recent PRC announcement of treaty with Japan, which included two clauses that the Japanese had rejected and were not included in the signed treaty.

Thirdly, “holding out longer” was not an option in the face of military action, a possibility mentioned outright by the PRC negotiators when they weren’t getting their way. When PRC started going back on its word, any objection in any forum would have been no more than a token. Does Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel Peace Prize get her out of house arrest? Does the Dalai Lama’s Freedom Medal get him on the bus?

Fourthly, your last sentence said nothing to me; your elision was an allusion that eluded me.

You have been vehement in your denunciations of the US as the wannabe “world’s policeman”, but now you’re wondering where the police are.

If you want to claim that the US is a faithless ally, even if our alliance is with UK, not HK, I’ll top you and mention the Mongols and Uighurs in 1949, the Tibetan resistance based in Kingdom of Mustang in 1972, and the Kurds at least four times in the 20th century.

Again I ask: “What do you want the US to do?”

Actually, you were wrong on more than three fronts, but there is something to be said for keeping things brief. Though I will point out that many many Chinese living overseas are/were actually either economic migrants or refugees. The BN(O) merely allowed you to leave via plane, rather than by fishing trawler, and even then many holders simply couldn't leave for financial reasons or because they had family who couldn't get a BN(O). For example, many HK residents had parents and grandparents who fled from the Mainland who were not eligible for the BN(O). The truth is that Britain was afraid of mass Asian migration and wary of upsetting relations with China and so put in place a weasel passport that offered very little to comparatively few. You might also be surprised to see how many wealthy HK and HK civil servants received papers when compared to how many poor HK residents

There were two primary forces keeping democracy down during the last 20 years of British rule. The first of these were the Taipan and kindred who wanted to rule HK themselves, and the second was the British government who was afraid that moves towards democracy would 1) hurt their economic relationship with China 2) Cause people to ask awkward questions about British motives and action elsewhere and in other spheres.

Sure, China did threaten to have invaded, but that's what allies are supposed to be for. The secret to negotiating with Beijing is not to force China to back down, but to engineer a situation where Beijing can offer a compromise that makes it look like the victor in the eyes of its own people. You push up the negotiations with a secondary issue until your actual goal appear to be a side issue. China then offers a compromise on your goal and you back down on the secondary issue. Beijing then doesn't loose face.

America could easily have waived MFN at China (it was not ratified as having fully permenant status until 3 years after the handover) over multiple issues of the time and used it as a lever, and that's just for starters.

"You have been vehement in your denunciations of the US as the wannabe “world’s policeman”, but now you’re wondering where the police are."

No, I have been vehement in my denunciations of the US interfering in other countries affairs in order to promote US economic and social ideals, or in order to further its own economic ends. This falls right into line with what I'm saying. America had no economic interests in a free and democratic HK, but it did have economic interests in maintaining war relations with China. It didn't even offer asylum to long term HK residents who were born on the Mainland who were threatened with deportation.

As for what I'd like America to do today? Well, speaking out would be a start. Mention this move in the same sentence as Beijing 2008 wherever possible, loose the Mainland some face.

For preference, the US should do what I mentioned above. Pile on the pressure elsewhere and then once Beijing compromises on the elections loosen up, then pretend that the two events aren't linked Beijing doesn't loose face.

Of course, it's mostly too late now. But when 2012 roles around, and if China reneges again, that's a different story. I expect America to put its foot down or be recored as having sat by and done nothing by historians for generations to come.

One person one vote DOES NOT guarantee anything. Many countries in Africa and Middle East have this kind of voting system, but they are in a mess. Some Hong Kong people are too obsessed with ideology. May be someone wants to be the first Prime Minister of Hong Kong, that is why the persons concerned are so enthusiastic in the fight for “Democracy”.

Yeah, but Africa and the middle east places are a mess for other reasons. Usually because of ethnic/tribal tensions, poverty, and corruption. HK has none of those problems, it is stable, prosperous and peaceful. The only thing that it isn't is free to direct its own affair.

I want a democratic HK and I'm not gunning for the top job. Neither are the vast vast vast majority of the HK residents who march and campaign for democracy each year.

This item reallly touched me. No anger, just individual resolution. From http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/01/year_after_year_xu_xing_and_he_ji awei.php

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While the resigned law professor Xiao Han just broke the Tiananmen Massacre taboo in a university classroom, it is not the first time such words have been written and published in the Chinese blogosphere. Here is a blog post written by the Beijing-based author Xu Xing on June 4th, 2006, translated by M.J.:

I always write something this time every year, there’s not much meaning to it. Every year I write a little less, as if I have less and less to say. But then if I don’t write, I feel as if I didn’t do something important, and I am ill at ease.

On this day last year, I said that I was helpless. But I have the power of memory, I defy with my memory. Year after year, this day comes again. I really have nothing much to say, more and more I have less and less to say, but the more I have nothing to say, the sharper the edges of memory that slice across my mind. I rejoice secretly in the fact that I have a son, I rejoice in that my son is not Chinese. Son, all the restrictions that your father has had the fortune to enjoy do not exist for you. You should remember this day; if later in life you become useless and feeble like your father, then you can at least do as you father has done, imprint this date upon your mind. Because, son, personally speaking, this date is of utmost importance to your father – it changed everything for him.

And here is a poem written by Zhejiang-based poet He Jiawei (何家炜) entitled "That Year We Were Seventeen," translated by M.J.:

That year we were seventeen, we poured onto the streets and gave a few shouts; those shouts have followed us for the rest of our lives Since then we have acted on nothing, since then we no longer shout, since then we have lost the streets

That year we were seventeen, we scattered from the same path, every person walked towards himself

Since then we were wanderers, some ventured to the sea, some to the highlands, some to every place that he could be.

That year we were seventeen, a country wounds a people, an old man wounds a youth

Since then we doubt everything, since then we defy all, since then we only worship freedom.