By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
Western news agencies’ references to the Hong Kong “pro-democracy” demonstrators is misleading, suggesting that Hong Kong currently has no democracy. A more correct descriptor would be “secessionists,” equivalent to the U.S. facing a group that advocated “the South shall rise again.”
Hong Kong has operated since 1997 under “The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.” This “Basic Law” serves as the Constitution of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. While it was formally adopted on April 4, 1990, by the mainland’s Seventh National People’s Congress and signed by President Yang Shangkun, it was crafted through the offices of Deng Xiao-Ping and the British Foreign Service, including much effort by the last British Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patton. He was appointed by England and was in no way elected.
To understand why Hong Kong was returned to China, we must realize that Hong Kong was a “prize of war.” In the 1800s, Britain had a trade imbalance problem; they were buying tea from China and revenue was flowing only one way. That was solved by shipping opium from British colonial India to China and addicting the southern Chinese. When the Chinese Emperor sent Commissioner Lin with an army to toss out the opium traders, Britain returned with overwhelming naval firepower.
Britain easily won the Opium War. They took Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula. Needing more farmland to provide food, they leased the New Territories for 99 years. Those New Territories would have to return in 1997. But the city of Hong Kong had grown well into the New Territories. In 1975, I lived at the corner of Argyle and Boundary Street. Boundary Street was named because it was the boundary line between the old colony and the leased territories. The New Territories could not return to China and preserve the Hong Kong colony without putting up a Berlin-like wall. And maintaining the British colony—a product of an unjust Opium War—was likewise indefensible.
Before 1997, Hong Kong’s colonial constitution of the Letters Patent and Royal Instructions sent court appeals to Britain. When the Basic Law came into effect on July 1, 1997, all court appeals remained in Hong Kong while country sovereignty over Hong Kong was transferred to the People’s Republic of China. For over 22 years, Hong Kong has operated under the “one country, two systems” model. The Basic Law consists of nine chapters, 160 articles and three annexes, and Hong Kong continues to have full market capitalism and a free press.
Governmental affairs are managed by a Hong Kong administration and laws are made and modified by their elected Legislative Council or “Legco.”
However, the one limitation in the Basic Law is that Beijing must approve the governor of Hong Kong. They will not allow a governor who might attempt to lead Hong Kong to secede from China. That would violate the Basic Law, not the “two systems” but the “one country.”
Otherwise, Hong Kong has been handling its own internal affairs as a democracy for over 22 years. It is this inability to elect a governor in favor of seceding from China that is used to protest about “democracy.”
When Hong Kong was handed over by the British in 1997, their British-hired mercenary Gurkha troops and went back to Nepal while a small contingent of the Peoples Liberation Army replaced them in out-of-sight barracks. But both before and after the 1997 handover, it is the well-trained Hong Kong police who have maintained law and order in Hong Kong, using a minimum of force. Recent footage clearly shows that their use of force against a small number of violent protestors, some armed with Molotov cocktails, was both justified and necessary.
The Hong Kong police have handled organized violence before. During the Cultural Revolution (1965-1975), communist zealots in Hong Kong protested, some throwing bombs. The Hong Kong police had to house their police families in special one-block buildings for protection. But they kept Hong Kong safe then, and they can do so now.
There have been prior occasions when Hong Kong demonstrators have protested their Basic Law. When China extended its high speed train into Hong Kong, it integrated the system with its mainland system, which some considered an intrusion. And two members of a publishing company that published books critical of Beijing were also spirited out of Hong Kong by the mainland intelligence, also a worrisome act, but also a confirmation that this could not have been done by legitimate cooperation with Hong Kong.
But the trigger of the current demonstrations was the proposed extradition law. Ironically, the origin of this was a Taiwan request for extradition of a Taiwan man, accused of murdering his wife, who fled to Hong Kong. The problematic part of the proposed extradition law was that it might also allow a Hong Kong resident to be extradited to mainland China for a political crime.
What goes unnoticed in the American press, but not in Asia, is that this is exactly what is occurring with Canada’s holding of the Huawei executive for extradition to the United States for what is obviously—to them—a “political crime.” Therefore this issue of how to structure Hong Kong’s laws on extradition are a serious dilemma, but hardly merit the “pro-democracy” label used by Western press for the demonstrators.
There is a very similar discrepancy today in the United States, where our Presidents are elected not by popular vote, but by the Electoral College. A National Popular Vote effort was initiated after the 2000 election where Al Gore won more votes but not the Electoral College. It gathered momentum after Hillary Clinton’s similar popular win but electoral loss in 2016. So technically, the National Poplar Vote effort could be labeled a “pro-democracy” effort also focused on changing how we elect our top leader, similar to Hong Kong. But Americans would be seriously disturbed if another country intervened in this “internal affair.”
Likewise, the Hong Kong situation is an internal affair for Hong Kong to solve. China and Hong Kong remain two systems, but they are one country.
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.