How the current situation in Hong Kong came about

Richard C. Bush, How Hong Kong Got to This Point, Lawfare, September 17, 2019.

An Imperfect, But Workable, Hybrid

To understand the current situation, it’s necessary to understand the political system that China designed for Hong Kong as it prepared to regain sovereignty over the territory 1997. This political system is embodied in the Hong Kong Basic Law. It’s worth keeping in mind a distinction between the protection of civil and political rights and the institutions that pick a society’s leaders. In liberal, electoral democracies, rights and elections work together and reinforce each other. But some, “hybrid” systems have one and not the other. Hong Kong is one of those systems.

In the China-U.K. Joint Declaration of 1984, which laid out the reversion plan for Hong Kong, and in the Basic Law that elaborated the plan, Beijing pledged that Hong Kong people would enjoy the rights contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The text of the International Covenant became a Hong Kong ordinance. Furthermore, Beijing pledged that the rule of law would apply in Hong Kong, in part to protect those rights, and that there would be an independent judiciary. The legal system was the common law system, not a Chinese-style, rule-by-the-Communist-Party system.

In short, when it came to civil and political rights, Hong Kong basically had a liberal order. This was a precious asset that cannot be over-emphasized. Even today, it should be valued by all citizens of Hong Kong, because they all benefit from its protection. [...]

On the issue of how Hong Kong leaders are elected, the set-up was more complicated and less satisfying for those who desired popular, democratic rule. After reversion, only some of the members of the Legislative Council were selected in popular elections; ultimately that share rose to half. The rest were selected in functional constituencies that reflected various economic and professional sectors (bankers, lawyers, real estate companies, manufacturers, educators, etc.). The majority of these constituencies were pro-Beijing and most of them were picked by a small number of voters. Moreover, the chief executive was picked by an election committee comprised mainly of pro-Beijing people. The upshot: Beijing had engineered how senior elective positions were filled to ensure that it maintained significant control and to block political forces it did not like from gaining power.

In part because of the design of this system, there has been a high concentration of economic and political power in Hong Kong. It has one of the highest Gini coefficients—measuring inequality—in the world (53.9). A relatively small number of families and companies control a lot of the wealth and a lot of the political power. Not surprisingly, the public had a high level of alienation against the establishment because of the unequal distribution of wealth and power. One way to rectify the situation was to get more democracy. [...]

Protests on the Rise

In the second decade after Hong Kong’s reversion to China, two important changes occurred. The first went relatively unnoticed at the time but proved to be consequential. That was that some people in the pan-Democratic, anti-government camp became unhappy with the rules concerning public assembly and began engaging in political action that was unpredictable, relatively disruptive, technically illegal, and sometimes violent. The number of such incidents grew steadily from the middle of the 2000s. It was mainly young people who conducted these new-style protests.

The second change was a decision by Beijing reforming the electoral procedures for the Chief Executive and Legislative Council. It was willing to allow all registered voters to vote for the chief executive, rather than the 800 members of the Election Committee, but there was a catch: It insisted that a clone of the election committee be the body that would nominate the candidates (not, for example, political parties). The nominating committee’s members were predominantly allies of Beijing and not representative of Hong Kong society as a whole. The conclusion that Hong Kong democrats drew was that control was still China’s priority and that any election result would still not reflect the will of the majority.

Things when downhill from there. Then:

The 2019 Extradition Law

But the most serious challenge to the rule of law was the extradition law, which, if passed, would have allowed China to request, with little or no justification, the transfer of individuals in Hong Kong to the mainland in order to subject them to the Chinese legal system. It remains unclear whether Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam was the author of this proposal, as she says, or whether Beijing put her up to it.

Whatever the case, it turned into a political disaster for the government, because Hong Kong people quickly mounted strong resistance to the draft law.

In conclusion, chill out:

The need for a “cooling-off period” in the protests and demonstrations—and for self-restraint—is urgent. China will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1. For that celebration to take place while protests continue would create great embarrassment for the Chinese leadership. That may be exactly what some in Hong Kong want, but the risks for Hong Kong of causing that loss of face are profound. China is not going away. It is Hong Kong’s sovereign. To live successfully with that sovereign and to restore a high degree of autonomy under current circumstances requires Hong Kong to pick its fights carefully.