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Opinion
The View
by Peter Guy
The View
by Peter Guy

Hong Kong's end of history

Mainland decision on HK's version of democracy could compromise the city's Western-style legal system and judges culturally and politically

Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen
Now that the mainland's decision on Hong Kong's version of democracy has finally been rendered, its consequences will reveal themselves in the inherent ifs, errors and commitments over time, which will be the ingredients of high drama and tragic history.

Whether most Hong Kong people know it, all the great promises and words were cancelled for this generation. Beijing cannot countenance any election system that disturbs the oligarchy of tycoons it has consigned the city and its people to.

The outcome has long-term ramifications for Hong Kong's society, business and economy. The city has arrived at a political and socioeconomic inflection point. Whether its residents realise it, Hong Kong has reached its own version of the end of history. Its political development is no longer exceptional; it cannot exceed the mainland's own pace. And that has changed everything.

Average citizens do not debate about what constitutes a democratic election system, but rather the inability of our government to deliver real improvements in the city's quality of life. Important problems like property prices, education and economic cartels may never be tackled in what has become Putin-style oligarchy. In the past, emigration from the city was driven out of fear of the unknown. Now, it will be driven by fear of the known.

Large-scale middle-class emigration to Vancouver began in the 1980s. Recent events only confirmed it was the right choice. The only way to secure a safe future is to hold a foreign passport whether you continue to do business in China. Living in Vancouver has become an increasingly attractive choice for Hong Kong people. The city is a Chinatown. The racial mix is greater than 50 per cent Asian and you do not need to speak English to live or do business there.

However, another vote before the decision by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress demonstrated more ominous signs. Solicitors voted to unseat Law Society president Ambrose Lam San-keung in an historic no-confidence vote for his remarks backing Beijing's white paper on Hong Kong.

Even more disturbing were the number of lawyers who voted against the second resolution that called on the Law Society to issue a statement that the rule of law and judicial independence are Hong Kong's core values and should not be undermined by the white paper. The paper referred to judges as "administrators" and stated they had to be "patriotic".

Ambrose Lam

The motion was passed by 2,747 votes in favour and 1,186 against. So 30 per cent of our city's lawyers think judicial independence can be undermined. Or think of this from another viewpoint - only 70 per cent believe in an independent judiciary. At what point in the city's theoretical judicial deterioration do all Hong Kong lawyers accept that our legal system cannot even appear to accommodate the mainland's legal concepts, which are completely alien and unworkable outside the country? An evolving, adversarial Western legal system requires robust and unequivocal support from all quarters of government, industry and society.

No one, from local citizens to multinational companies and financial institutions, wants Hong Kong's Western-style legal system and judges to be compromised or politicised by vague Orwellian terms such as "patriotism" or "love of country".

Investors' complaints over Alibaba Group Holding's autocratic corporate governance are based on the fact they possess no legal recourse against a mainland firm in the country. Hong Kong will become a backwater - another mainland city, except with unrestricted internet access - if its legal system becomes culturally and politically compromised.

Hong Kong could become a mirror image of the mainland; a regime that no longer has any guiding ideal around which it is organised, run by a Communist Party supposedly committed to equality that presides over a society marked by inequality.

The Hong Kong and the central governments argue the city's citizens are culturally different and will always prefer benevolent, growth-promoting dictatorship to a messy democracy that threatens social stability. But it is unlikely that a spreading middle class will behave all that differently on the mainland from the way it has behaved in other parts of the world.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: End of history
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