Opinion | Amid the gloom over ‘one country, two systems’, a new party offers hope for Hong Kong politics

Name: Why Carrie Lam’s Lantau land reclamation plan is so controversial
Uploaded: 2020-12-13T22:45:16.000Z
Duration: 2 min 43 s
Description: Why Carrie Lam’s Lantau land reclamation plan is so controversial

The Bauhinia Party is seeking a better deal with Beijing: an extension of the city’s freedoms by 50 years. Can it succeed where the traditional pro-establishment camp has failed?

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The Kowloon skyline is reflected in windows of the Legislative Council Complex. A newly founded political party is calling for “one country, two systems” to be extended for 50 years. Photo: Felix Wong

Alice Wu

Published: 6:45am, 14 Dec 2020Updated: 6:51am, 14 Dec 2020

Just as the pan-democrats exit stage right, entering stage left is a brand new political party. Galloping into Hong Kong’s political arena now may sound as crazy as starting a business in the middle of a global health and economic crisis, but that’s exactly what the Bauhinia Party is doing.

At a time when it is easier to jump on the “‘one country, two systems’ is dead” bandwagon – a bandwagon that has been getting more crowded with the passage of the national security law in summer and then the disqualification of pan-democratic lawmakers in November – this new party is calling for the extension of one country, two systems by 50 years.

At this point, with so little known about the party, there is no way of telling whether defying the odds is part of the party’s ethos or a marketing gimmick. But it certainly knows how to make an entrance.

The element of surprise is definitely helping to raise the level of intrigue, especially in these rather depressing times. The stories of politicians who are bowing out and former legislators who are going into self-exile – including the latest drama over the former lawmaker who jumped bail and fled Hong Kong, with the help of a Danish politician who faked a climate change conference as a ruse – are all being woven into a fatalistic narrative of Hong Kong politics.

With the pan-democratic camp’s departure from the Legislative Council, the remaining two opposition lawmakers, Cheng Chung-tai of the localist party Civic Passion and Pierre Chan for the medical sector, are lonelier and their fight more hopeless. They are powerless to prevent a predetermined agenda like the Lantau Tomorrow Vision.

02:43

Why Carrie Lam’s Lantau land reclamation plan is so controversial

And so it is against this backdrop that the Bauhinia Party has swooped in. At least two pro-establishment lawmakers – Christopher Cheung Wah-fung of the financial sector and Aron Kwok Wai-keung of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions – have said they learned of the new party only from media reports. And that’s pretty incredible, especially when the new party’s founders are top finance executives.

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.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} The Bauhinia Party is seeking a better deal with Beijing: an extension of the city’s freedoms by 50 years. Can it succeed where the traditional pro-establishment camp has failed?

The Bauhinia Party is seeking a better deal with Beijing: an extension of the city’s freedoms by 50 years. Can it succeed where the traditional pro-establishment camp has failed?