China BriefingIn Hong Kong, can you be a patriot and criticise the Communist Party? Definitely

Beijing’s moves to tighten its grip on the city have raised concerns over the rights and freedoms of the city’s 7.5 million residents, as promised by Deng Xiaoping

But as long as Hongkongers don’t cross certain red lines, they should be allowed to express their diverse opinions without fear of being labelled as unpatriotic or even worse

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Deng Xiaoping said after the handover, people in Hong Kong would be allowed to criticise the party and should be counted as patriots, so long as they loved the motherland and the city. Photo: Edmond So

Published: 9:30am, 20 Mar 2021Updated: 4:07pm, 20 Mar 2021

“Listening to the party and following the party is the most comprehensive consensus in Macau.” Those were the words of Zhang Zongzhen, a national member of the advisory Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, to reporters on the last day of the CPPCC’s annual session this month – in a reference to the ruling Communist Party of China.

That sentence naturally made the headlines of many state media reports the next day, because Zhang is not only a prominent Macau businessman but also a member of the Executive Council, the body of advisers to Macau’s chief executive.

But Zhang’s remarks should not come as a surprise to many. The former Portuguese colony, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1999, has always been favoured by Beijing over Hong Kong, its fellow special administrative region operating under the formula of “one country, two systems”.

Macau’s officials are always in lockstep with the mandarins in Beijing, not least because the city’s casinos – the backbone of its economy – mainly rely on the influx of Chinese gamblers. In recent years, the Chinese leaders, in meetings with Hong Kong officials, have often sung the praises of Macau’s growth and prosperity as well as its consistent efforts to improve its people’s living standards and seek further economic integration with the mainland.

Now Beijing is stepping up the pressure on Hong Kong to learn from Macau by “listening to the party and following the party”.

Beijing is stepping up the pressure on Hong Kong to learn from Macau by “listening to the party and following the party”. Photo: AFP

After the introduction of the national security law in June last year, Beijing is looking to further tighten its political grip over Hong Kong through plans unveiled this month to overhaul the city’s electoral system. These would ensure only patriots would be allowed to stand in future elections, and only “staunch patriots” would be allowed to “hold important positions, wield vital power, and shoulder major governance responsibilities” in Hong Kong’s power structure, including the executive, judiciary, legislative, and statutory bodies.