How Deep Is Your Love

Beijing dropped a bomb on Hong Kong when a senior official spelled out the requirement that the next Chief Executive, supposedly elected directly by the people of Hong Kong in 2017, must “love China, love Hong Kong.” This came as no surprise for professional China-watchers. The “Double Loves” requirement is not discriminatory against anyone, but designed to filter out a rather long list of undesirables, such as Civic Party leader Audrey Eu, from winning a landslide victory. The “Double Loves” mechanism also guarantees that the greasy Long Hair won’t have a ghost of a chance of being sworn into the top job, wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt on inauguration day, shouting for the end of the communist dictatorship before throwing a banana in the face of President Xi. Short of such a filter, policemen in the inauguration hall might be faced with the confusing option of having to handcuff a chief executive and bundle him away on his first day, leaving a grim-faced President of the State of China hurried away under the escort of a few PLA soldiers.

 

The “Double Loves policy” doesn’t matter; what matters is how long the list could be. The term “Love China” is more disturbingly abstract and evasive than a Picasso cubist painting, with the positions of the nose and the eyes shifting into all manner of impossible angles.

 

For example, Henry Tang ceased to be “loving” China for a short period after he embarrassed Beijing last March by uttering the state secret that CY Leung had suggested the use of tear-gas against demonstrators at an Exco meeting. Pro-Beijing mouthpiece newspapers gave him harsh lectures in turn, bashing him for deviating from the family tradition of his patriotic parents.

 

Or one could smell an air of doubt from Beijing over how much CY Leung loves China when the belligerent Global Times published a hostile editorial condemning the two-can milk powder sales policy in Hong Kong.

 

Even Tsang Yok-sing, a founder of the pro-Beijing DAB and the respected chairman of the legislative council, was prevented mysteriously from entering the chief executive elections last year with a shady threat that a scandal might mysteriously surface soon afterwards. In Beijing’s point of view, if Tsang insisted to put his name forward and bravely kick off a real contest even among a small body of 1,200 electors, he would no longer be deemed a China and Hong Kong lover, although he is widely believed to be a loyal communist party member.

 

To borrow from the Bee Gees’ timeless lyric: “How deep is your love, I really need to learn, cause we’re living in a world of fools.”