Can we ever trust Beijing again?
Ever since the Basic Law interpretation last month, Chinese officials have been making statements in an attempt not only to explain the move but, more importantly, to reassure the people of Hong Kong.
However, they should realise that they have no credibility any more. Their words and actions show that statements made by Chinese officials, no matter how senior, are no longer credible. In the past, people believed such reassurances but, as the saying goes, you can fool all the people some of the time, and some people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Take the statements by Qiao Xiaoyang, the deputy secretary-general of the National People's Congress Standing Committee. On April 6, immediately after the interpretation, which changed the original meaning of the Basic Law, Mr Qiao said at a press conference in Beijing that Hong Kong people had misunderstood the Basic Law. The interpretation, he said, simply made clearer what was originally in the Basic Law.
However, the interpretation was inconsistent not only with what people in Hong Kong, including the legal community, thought, it was also the opposite of what Beijing officials had been saying in previous years, when they needed our support. For example, Lu Ping, then the top official responsible for Hong Kong affairs, said in 1993: 'The future development of Hong Kong's democracy is a matter entirely within Hong Kong's autonomy. The central government will not intervene.'
This statement appeared on the front page of the overseas edition of the People's Daily on March 18, 1993. Mr Lu was speaking in an official capacity and represented the Chinese government. A similar statement was made the following year by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
When Mr Qiao came to Hong Kong to try to soothe feelings, Yeung Sum, chairman of the Democratic Party, asked him about Mr Lu's statement. Mr Qiao said that no matter who said what, the Standing Committee's interpretation was final.
This means that no weight can be given to whatever Chinese officials have said in the past or may say in the future. All promises, no matter how solemnly given, cannot be relied upon.
We have now learned, to our detriment, that we should not have put our trust in the central government when Mr Lu made reassuring statements. That being the case, there seems little reason to put our trust in explanations and reassurances given by today's central government officials, including Mr Qiao. Whatever is said now can be overturned tomorrow by the simple expedient of issuing an 'interpretation' of the Basic Law.
Since 1984, when China and Britain signed the Joint Declaration, Beijing has sought to reassure the people of Hong Kong and the international community that its promises will be kept and that its commitments are genuine.
The promises made in the Joint Declaration were incorporated in the Basic Law, which was enacted by the NPC in April 1990. Now, in one fell swoop, the central government has shown that those promises are not worth the paper they are printed on. China's commitments will be honoured if it suits Beijing's purposes, and will be repudiated if they turn out to be inconvenient.
The central government may not realise what a serious mistake it has made. It has squandered the trust and goodwill accumulated over the past two decades by issuing an interpretation that was totally unnecessary. There was no possibility anyway that demands for universal suffrage in 2007 and 2008 could be met without its consent.
Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator
