Letters | For Hong Kong, the only way out of a prisoner’s dilemma is to give and take

Closed-door discussions between the pro-government and pro-democracy camps on universal suffrage and national security legislation could be a first step to restoring harmony

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In a prisoner’s dilemma, two parties must choose whether to keep faith in one another, without any indication of whether the other side will do the same. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:15am, 29 Nov 2019Updated: 7:15am, 29 Nov 2019

Students of economics would be familiar with the term “prisoner’s dilemma”, in which two prisoners must, without communicating with one another, choose whether to testify against the other. If the two prisoners refuse to betray each other, they end up with a solution which is better for both of them.

Today, Hong Kong is trapped in its own prisoner’s dilemma. Mistrust and fake news have been disseminated across society, and a spirit of non-cooperation and an aversion to dialogue have made people choose violence over negotiations. The sad result is that we are at a depressing equilibrium, which will not change if either side believes the other is likely to cheat in the future. Could there be a way out?

First, we must examine the sources of the mistrust. For the pan-democrats, it is the fact that universal suffrage, despite being promised and written into the Basic Law, has not yet been realised. For the pro-establishment camp and Beijing, the be all and end all is the absence of a national security legislation, which is also written into the Basic Law.

Inasmuch as both demands are written into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the lawmakers who drafted the law did not seem to envisage a problem in their harmonious coexistence.

The problem is which one should be realised first? It is hard to find a sequence of events that would satisfy both sides.

So how about tackling them simultaneously?