The latest film version of Alice in Wonderland is now playing to great acclaim in Hong Kong cinemas, providing a timely reminder of its similarities to another show, currently on in Beijing: the National People's Congress. The sub-plot of the NPC's proceedings involving Hong Kong is lamentably close to the Alice story.
Lewis Carroll's famous book tells of a little girl sucked into a world of fantasy where nothing is as it seems. It is a bizarre world presided over by a king and queen who rule it with a rod of iron and are prone to arbitrary decisions. Fortunately, this world turns out to be a dream, and Alice can leave it with the blink of an eyelid. Unfortunately, the NPC does not work like that.
Yet the similarities are uncanny. The nothing-is-as-it-seems factor is very much in play in a legislature whose leaders are 'elected' yet face no real election, where decisions are supposedly made - except that they are made in advance of the proceedings - and where debate is supposed to take place yet is confined to such narrow parameters as to render it largely meaningless.
Hong Kong was drawn into the mysterious world of the NPC well before the handover of power. Delegates to the legislature were appointed to represent the former British colony, in part, to emphasise that China did not recognise foreign rule over its territory. The appointment of Hong Kong representatives, however, had and continues to have a more crucial strategic purpose - building united-front backing for the Communist Party.
Hong Kong delegates are carefully chosen to mobilise the Hong Kong elite in support of the party and to reward influential people for steadfastly promoting the party's interests. In the pre-handover period, appointments to the NPC and other state and provincial bodies helped in moving the bulk of the old colonial establishment into the court of the new order.
Now these representatives want a greater direct say in the running of Hong Kong, but they are overtly barred from doing so by Beijing. It is astute enough to recognise the problems of having two power centres vying for a role in local government. The reality, of course, is that there is only one real power centre - in Beijing - leaving the Hong Kong government to do its utmost to keep its masters satisfied.
Yet bodies like the NPC provide an important channel of communication between the central government and Hong Kong. Lamentably, it is largely used by the NPC delegates to curry favour with their masters rather than to reflect what keeps being described as 'the actual situation' in Hong Kong. Only Allen Lee Peng-fei and the late Dorothy Liu Yiu-chu ever had the temerity to do otherwise.