Three Rights Make a Left

Labels are meant to make life simpler. We use them to make sense of the welter of the world around us, and we use them to make sense of who we think we are. But in the dizzy world of Hong Kong politics, labels often end up just creating more confusion. The Liberal Party is anything but liberal in most eyes. The term “left” has long been synonymous with pro-establishment loyalists in a way that puzzles many outside observers. And the term “democrat” has become a designer label co-opted by just about everybody. So what do these terms really mean here?

Some answers to these questions can be found in the Liberal Party’s current rebranding exercise. After suffering a humiliating defeat in last September’s Legislative Council election, the party, reportedly under the guidance of new party member and strategist Michael Tien Puk-sun, is now trying to overhaul its existing image—that of a party dedicated to tycoons, monopolies and privileged interests.

Old supporters say the party didn’t always lean this way. Founder Allen Lee for one says he had a very different party in mind when he coined its name. “When I established the party, I intended for it to occupy a center-right position, supporting small government and free market principles, but also accepting government intervention when necessary. It wasn’t meant to be a party for tycoons or rich people, but simply one that supported the best conditions for small and middle level enterprises to flourish.”

Thus the word “liberal” was never selected in the same vein in which it’s often now used in, say, the United States—as a term associated with proponents of causes such as freedom of choice, same-sex marriage and welfare, and demonized by Bible-thumping moralists and Fox News. Rather, it was chosen in reference to classical liberalism, a school of thought that emphasizes individualism and economic liberty and dates back to Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smith and David Hume.

Lee sees a return to this original philosophy as the only hope for the party, and believes Michael Tien may be trying to steer it back in this direction. In line with such a turn were statements by party Vice-Chairman Vincent Fang Kang during a PR stint. He declared that he (a big businessman himself) and his cohorts “are no longer a party representing solely big business, but the improvement of the economy as a whole.”

Of course, how classical liberalism ever ends up playing out in reality has been subject to plenty of debate across the Western world. But what’s clear is that its advocates are traditionally staunch supporters of democracy, believing that political and economic freedom crucially go hand in hand. And Lee emphasizes that such support for democracy was a crucial component of the Liberal Party’s original platform. “When I left the party in 1998 I was angry that they had abandoned their original demand for universal suffrage in Hong Kong by 2007,” he says.

This brings us to the wider use of the term “liberal” in Hong Kong, to refer simply to vocal supporters of direct democracy. “I understand ‘liberals’ here to be anyone who supports universal suffrage as soon as possible, and I believe that’s how most Hong Kong people understand the term,” says legislator and member of the Civic Party Alan Leong. Under this broader interpretation, “liberals” include people whose overall ideologies may well be at odds with traditional free marketers, from welfare proponents in the Democratic Party to the radical, grassroots-championing League of Social Democrats. Such groups are now deemed to have more legitimate claim to the title than the Liberal Party itself. Incidentally, their views also overlap extensively with those of people in the West now grouped under the more popular, contemporary uses of the word “liberal.”