Why the Hong Kong district council election results are a win for Chinese people everywhere

What Beijing has failed to grasp is that the West doesn’t need to interfere in Hong Kong for its cultural influence to be felt. While Hong Kong’s importance to China may have waned, it will always have a special place in the world

Chi Wang

Published: 3:00am, 2 Dec 2019

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Hong Kong has long held a special place in my heart, and in the hearts of millions of other Chinese and Chinese-Americans. I spent the formative years of my youth in Hong Kong in the 1930s and 1940s. After moving to the United States in 1949, Hong Kong became the only point of contact between my adopted home and the country of my birth, as relations between the US and the People’s Republic of China did not thaw before then US president Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972.

I returned to Hong Kong in the late 1960s to help establish the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It was then that I received an invitation to return to mainland China.

In June 1972, just months after Nixon’s trip, I travelled from Hong Kong to the mainland, where I helped establish subsequent book, cultural and people-to-people exchanges between China and the US.

It was fortuitous that such a venture began in Hong Kong. The city and its people have always occupied a special place between East and West, between China and the world.

The Hong Kong of today is hardly recognisable as the one I remember from my youth. I have watched the protests unfolding over the last six months and, like many, have been struck by the youth of the protesters involved.

I do not blame them for their dissatisfaction with the status quo in Hong Kong, as Beijing has steadily sought to exert its authority over the city and export authoritarianism in defiance of the “one country, two systems” framework. Who are these young protesters to look up to, as their government fails to take heed of their concerns, and as the most powerful in the city remain motivated by greed and self-interest?

What reasons do the young people have to look optimistically towards their future in Hong Kong, as they watch the leadership in Beijing stripping away their rights while simultaneously paving the way for Chinese President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely?

In defence of Hongkongers’ right to scold the chief executive

Hong Kong’s district council elections have been interpreted by the Western media as a de facto referendum on Beijing and Xi.

The election results were bundled with other explosive stories unfolding in the past few weeks – the leaks of documents on the crackdown in Xinjiang, the defection of a supposed intelligence operative to Australia, and the still unresolved trade war with the United States – and understood as indicative of the dire situation facing Xi and his government.

Further adding to the headache of Beijing was the passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act in the US Congress. Beijing criticised this bill – and the criticism coming from Western media in the wake of Hong Kong’s elections – as evidence of Western interference in China’s domestic affairs.

Leaders in Beijing have maligned the West for supposedly interfering in the unrest in Hong Kong. What they have thus far failed to grasp is that the West does not need to interfere for its influence to be felt. Hong Kong may be part of China, but it has also belonged to the world – including the West – for over a century.

While Hong Kong’s importance to China as a financial centre may be waning as mainland cities like Shenzhen continue to prosper, its importance to the world and the significance of its unique history will not be as easily diminished. Conversely, the influence of Western ideals and culture is more pervasive – and arguably more powerful – than any material support Beijing may contend is being provided by Western intelligence agencies.

Hongkongers show they are not afraid to stand up to Beijing’s heavy hand

The young protesters who have so tormented Beijing grew up on a diet that includes Western pop culture, which champions heroes who stand up against tyranny.

Those who occupied the airport in August sang Do You Hear the People Sing? , a song from Les Miserables, the musical based on the Victor Hugo novel which describes the unrest leading up to to an unsuccessful revolt against the French crown in 1832. The song, which includes the lyrics “Do you hear the people sing/singing the song of angry men/it is the music of a people/who will not be slaves again”, was also adopted as an anthem of the “umbrella movement” in 2014, and has been blocked in China.

The Hong Kong protesters have also mimicked the tactics of the Velvet Revolution and the Baltic Way, historical events they would not have been free to study had they been educated on the mainland. They are not a group who will stand aside and watch as their freedoms are stripped from them.

A protester in Hong Kong wears a Guy Fawkes mask popularised by the Hollywood film V for Vendetta while attending a rally in Central on October 14 to urge the US to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. Photo: AFP

The election results reinforce this message. Rather than supporting Beijing-backed candidates, the people of Hong Kong turned out in record numbers to vote for pro-democracy candidates. They have demonstrated clearly that Hong Kong is still not mainland China.

The massive turnout for the election, together with the overwhelming support for pro-democracy candidates, is good news for Hong Kong, for Chinese-Americans and indeed, for Chinese everywhere. It is evident that there are Chinese people who value democracy and freedom and who will not stand aside and watch as their rights disappear.

Hongkongers show they are not afraid to stand up to Beijing’s heavy hand

While the actions of a relatively small group of protesters denouncing Xi could perhaps be easy for Beijing to dismiss, nearly 3 million voters in Hong Kong are not. They have made it abundantly clear they will not quietly acquiesce to the twilight of their established freedoms.

Although I have not called Hong Kong home for many years, I still feel compelled to offer my thoughts on recent events. Throughout the cold war and after, despite the cooling and warming and cooling again of the US-China relationship, Hong Kong has stood as an emblem of the unbreakable ties of trade and culture between China and the West.

I do not believe those days are over, so long as the people of Hong Kong continue to demonstrate their commitment to the values that have long defined it.

Chi Wang, a former head of the Chinese section of the US Library of Congress, is president of the US-China Policy Foundation

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