Mass social upheavals since the guillotine-crazed Jacobin terror of the French Revolution have had a habit of getting out of hand. Along with violently jettisoning the status quo, they have demonstrated a perverse habit of devouring their own.
A long list, from Robespierre and Danton to Trotsky will attest to this. To be sure, liberté, égalité, fraternité is etched on our minds, an inspiration for generations. Yet, in the end, too many revolutions are better known for their gore, not glory.
Small wonder, then, that governments have an inherent aversion to
mobs, no matter how exquisitely phrased their angst. And so Hong Kong’s
demonstrators should also beware of becoming victims of their own excess. Popular
support can be both fickle and fleeting.
Communist China is no stranger to student movements and violent protest. It was, in many senses, born out of such a movement on May 4, 1919, when students congregated in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to decry what they saw as a huge
betrayal by Western powers and then Chinese leaders in the appeasement of Japan after World War I.
The Communist Party diligently commemorates the
May Fourth Movement as a heroic struggle. In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution chaos, the party played an active role in the
Hong Kong riots. But, since the
1989 Tiananmen episode, its appetite for such unmanaged revolutionary outpourings has diminished considerably.
Thus we arrive at Hong Kong’s muddled “
revolution of our times” – part social pressure (on the government, to preserve Hong Kong’s autonomy as enshrined in the
Basic Law), part peaceful non-cooperation (now largely eclipsed as
violence escalates), and part tiresome real-life video game (on the verge of going horribly wrong).
Depending on whose views are canvassed, the term has varying connotations, from extreme localism to freedom from a meddlesome and less-than-benign China. The result is a vague aspiration for five (largely unattainable)
demands and no rest in sight for a
fatigued city that has lost patience with wanton
MTR vandalism and arson.
What started out as an orderly civil disobedience movement has lost its moorings and purpose. Hong Kong’s version of street pressure has not followed the path of
moral giants like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, whose ability to endure police excesses, incarceration and all manner of indignity without recourse to violence, enabled them to change the course of history.
The violence and
vandalism at subsequent outings has invited a
harsher official response and growing social ostracism. More recent
attacks on random individuals suspected of being
agent provocateurs or China sympathisers are downright thuggish and can have no part in civilised society.
Whether one or
two million marched is irrelevant. This is simply statistical legerdemain that proves little. What is pertinent is why a great many people marched (in trying conditions) and continue to do so, often in contravention of the law.
Electoral reform is long
overdue. The
functional constituencies – very much beholden to the state for licences, tax breaks, favourable regulations and so on – play a mischievous role in stymieing democrats in the Legislative Council. While it is claimed they ensure balanced participation in politics, functional constituencies are essentially pliant vote banks for the government.
Several companies and associations have a dotted line up to the same owner, concentrating power in the hands of a few tycoons who do not always serve the best interests of the city. It was the all-powerful property barons who in 1997 famously skewered the first chief executive Tung Chee-hwa’s
bold plan for 85,000 housing units a year – a fatal blunder in retrospect.
There is a strong case to be made for abolishing functional constituencies and excising their pernicious influence. At the very least, they could be modestly democratised by expanding the “one association, one vote” concept to broad-based voting within each association or company to bring thousands more into the process.
In the longer term, the principle of universal suffrage for the election of the chief executive is already
enshrined in Article 45 of the Basic Law.
Broad
dialogue on multiple fronts is necessary for the Hong Kong government to reach directly and deeply into society to tap into the pulse. Anyone who can play a useful role must be dragooned into this conversation.
And, any subsequent independent inquiry must apply itself to identifying the structural weaknesses of “
one country, two systems” and local governance that have given rise to mass rage. It cannot be distracted by apportioning blame.
Often touted as a
neat solution, the paternal Singapore model is not one suited to Hong Kong’s feisty spirit or the freewheeling entrepreneurs at the core of its dynamism. Yet, some curtailment of civil liberties and freedom of speech is inevitable if Beijing is prodded into a crackdown, as some protesters would like to see.
Images of the People’s Liberation Army storming the streets to wage pitched battles with “heroic” blackshirts excites youthful imagination as much as it roils the stomachs of those managing the city’s
plummeting economy.
But inviting a hostile military into Hong Kong expressly to “hurt” China with punitive trade tariffs and sanctions that may follow, is a
nuclear option with no winners.
Protesters must realise, and quickly, that escalating violence is not the insurance they once thought it was. Their battle is largely won and it is time to withdraw with dignity.
They would do well to ponder how their “free Hong Kong” fervour has already eroded citizens’ freedom to commute, travel, go about their daily business, secure a livelihood and enjoy weekends without fear of arson and violence.
If Hong Kong sinks, it will take all with it. This would not be a noble Pyrrhic victory. Just folly.
Vijay Verghese is a Hong Kong-based columnist and editor of the online magazines AsianConversations.com and SmartTravelAsia.com
