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Hong Kong has to save itself and every Hongkonger is in this together – a sentiment expressed by a protester on July 1. Photo: Bloomberg
Opinion
Inside Out
by David Dodwell
Inside Out
by David Dodwell

It is up to Hong Kong to end this leaderless drift and save itself

  • The government needs to crawl out of its bunker and show it is not a puppet leader. The protesters need to make clear their concerns and reach for solutions. A leaderless drift will only allow thugs and hardliners to take brutal control – as happened with Tiananmen

With each of our four chief executives who have taken up office since 1997, I have said to whoever in government was willing to listen that they must, absolutely must, in their “first 100 days” do something, anything, that sends a clear message that they stand up distinctly for Hong Kong people. None has done it. Today’s pickle is part of the price paid.

This message was simple and obvious. Given Hong Kong’s flawed political system, which leaves most people’s views unrepresented, something needs to be said and done in the early days of each new administration that reminds everyone that Hong Kong people rule Hong Kong, and that the “two systems” part of the “one country, two systems” arrangement actually means something.
Failure to demonstrate in specific terms that Hong Kong’s leaders are there for Hong Kong people, focused on their specific needs despite the absence of a fully-fledged democratic election system, has distanced the administration from the community, and undermined support and credibility. Worse, it has led to a widespread view that our leaders are puppets. Once they are seen as puppets, then all parts of our community know that the only time well spent is time spent talking to the puppet-masters.
The disappearance of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s team down into a deep bunker has only made things worse. It was shocking to read the lame column of Bernard Chan, Lam’s Executive Council convenor, in Friday’s South China Morning Post. The best he could do was: “the sooner we can create a calmer atmosphere, the more we will all benefit”.
This seems to be an administration bereft of any strategic response, or plausible solution, to the social unrest that has exploded since the ill-considered extradition bill was proposed six months ago. No wonder China’s top official in Hong Kong has come out to comment publicly. No wonder there is premature gossip about the danger of People’s Liberation Army troops pouring out onto Hong Kong streets. No wonder people are predicting, not for the first time, the death of Hong Kong.
The awesome force of demonstrations against the administration and its handling of the extradition bill, and the breadth of community support, means the Lam government has no choice but to respond. It is not enough to hunker down in the bunker and tell demonstrators that our leaders will in future listen with greater care.
The failure of our administrations to notice, or respond to, the distress being felt across large parts of the Hong Kong community over such a long time is hard to understand or forgive
It is not sufficient – or even helpful – to divert attention or blame onto a minority of awful violent thugs or protesters, despite the shocking and unacceptable desecration of the Legislative Council and Beijing’s liaison office.

Nor is it useful to blame and threaten “foreign forces”. Whether true or not, they are not relevant in this crisis: sparks would not make fire without local tinder. Blaming the sparks while ignoring the mountains of flammable distress across Hong Kong’s community is to miss the point.

The West exploits but did not create the problems Hong Kong has

Nor is it helpful to imagine that the current upheavals have appeared out of nowhere. Their seeds were in the 2003 Article 23 demonstrations as well as the 2014 Occupy movement. Seeds were in the 1998 property crash, and the hardship created at that time, from which many parts of the community have never properly recovered. The severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003, and the global financial crash in 2008 have blocked any sense of recovery. Household incomes have hardly moved in the two decades since the 1998 crash. Meanwhile, persistently low interest rates during the past decade of quantitative easing have left savings depleted, and property and other asset prices roaring off over the horizon.
The failure of our recent administrations to notice, or respond to, the distress being felt across large parts of the Hong Kong community over such a long period of time, and despite clear evidence, is hard to understand or forgive. This perhaps explains why so many have joined the demonstrators, or given their support. It also explains, but does not excuse, the resort to violence.
As Professor Lawrence Lau at the Chinese University of Hong Kong wrote in a thoughtful and constructive article at the Post on July 30: “Violence cannot solve Hong Kong’s problems. The rule of law, a core value and a key competitive advantage of the city, must be upheld. Beijing also cannot solve Hong Kong’s problems. It is up to Hongkongers to plan and work together.”

Hence the spectacular inappropriateness of Lam’s bunker response. Now more than ever, our government and political leaders need to be out in the light, listening and responding to the reasonable concerns of ordinary people. A series of public forums and town hall meetings, perhaps starting on the campuses of our universities, would help to transform the inchoate anger of demonstrators into a more clearly articulated menu of concerns and priorities.

Already, a number of helpful “circuit breakers” have been identified:

  • Of course, the infamous bill must be declared dead.
  • Proper public investigations must be agreed on, into demonstrator violence and police action. Where culpability is found, the law should prevail, even if, in due course, amnesties are judiciously used.
  • Since the evidence of recent months has shown that Hong Kong’s political process, defined by the Basic Law, has clear flaws that need to be remedied, a commission to review and modernise the workings of the Basic Law would be timely. It was, after all, drafted in 1990, and much has changed or come to light since then.
  • Urgent measures must be taken to tackle the housing crisis, and the government’s reliance on land revenues. Even without building an artificial island near Lantau, or encroaching on country parks, there is ample green and brown land available to make significant headway on the problem.

In this painful but necessary process, I am sure that a number of heads will need to roll. Both our own administration and Beijing are paying the price of poor counsel, and need new and better-rooted advisers.

But so too must demonstrators recognise that inarticulate anger can achieve nothing. In the many months of protest in Tiananmen in 1989, sympathetic leaders reached out for solutions, but found no coherent response. The months of leaderless drift allowed hardliners in government to take brutal control, with dreadful, bloody consequences.

This cannot be a mere summer of discontent. The concerns underpinning the upheavals need to be clearly articulated. Fail to do this, and only the thugs and hardliners win.

David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view

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