Democracy is a risk too far for the communist party

Carrie Lam this week. Picture: AFP

Hong Kong democracy has ­always been partial and compromised but, in the old days at least, the government of China did its best to put on a good show.

Even with the support of a ­majority, there was no practical chance for the democratic opposition to hold a majority in the Legislative Council. But they could compete for and win seats, initiate debate and hold the pro-Beijing government to account.

Even if she was in effect chosen by the Chinese government, Carrie Lam, the territory’s chief executive, had to take into account popular sentiment channelled, in part, through the opposition.

Thursday’s announcement of “refinements” to Hong Kong’s electoral arrangements is just the latest of blows to the autonomy promised before the handover by Britain in 1997. The full details have not yet been published, but it is already clear what it signifies: the decisive rejection of political opposition.

Participation in politics is open only to patriots, possessors of a “love” defined by the Chinese Communist Party and policed by the state security apparatus.  “When we talk about patriotism, we are not talking about the abstraction of loving a cultural or historical China, but rather loving the currently existing People’s ­Republic of China,” said Song Ru’an of the Chinese foreign ministry this week.

In case anyone was in doubt, he added: “Patriots should respect the Chinese Communist Party.”

Lam went further: “After the principle of ‘patriots administering Hong Kong’ is fully implemented and loopholes of the existing electoral system are plugged, we will be able to resolve the problem of the LegCo making everything political.”

It could hardly be clearer: rules that allow political opponents to be elected are “loopholes”. And the politicians who are elected to Hong Kong’s representative political body are expressly forbidden from doing anything political.

The roots of all this lie, of course, in the massive democracy protests that took place in Hong Kong in the summer of 2019. But the decisive moment came with the local council elections in ­November that year.

As the Hong Kong police were crushing the protests, Hong Kong voters humiliated the government with an overwhelming vote for the opposition.

The local councillors have only petty, local powers, but that was not the point. The elections showed beyond doubt Lam’s lack of popular legitimacy, and the popular contempt for the pro-­Beijing parties. The lesson was clear and it has been taken to heart: democracy, even in its most diluted form, is a risk that the Communist Party of China cannot afford to take.

The Times