Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution. Photo by Pasu Au Yeung via Flickr

Of all the places in the world associated with political instability and popular revolution, Hong Kong probably comes quite far down on the list. Until recently, the city had developed a reputation as ‘apolitical’ and heavily materialistic. Behind the imposing skyscrapers lining Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong has become a seething cauldron of anger directed against the gradual erosion of its autonomy and staggering levels of income inequality.

In just over a decade, Hong Kong politics has become increasingly polarised, with young people feeling alienated from Mainland China and the values of the Communist Party. Pro-business moderates are finding themselves marginalised by hardline neo-Communists who fervently believe in an ‘ever-closer union’ between Hong Kong and the Mainland. The city’s insular politics have long been divided into two main camps known as the ‘pan-Democrats’ and the ‘pro-Establishment’, both of which are broad coalitions incorporating a range of political parties from across the conventional left-right spectrum. Ever since the Governorship of Lord Patten in the late 1990s, the primary debate in local politics has been that of universal suffrage and the degree of influence that Peking ought to have over Hong Kong’s internal affairs. Technically speaking, the city is a ‘Special Administrative Region’ of China enjoying full autonomy over all aspects of its affairs except for foreign policy and external defence. In reality, both the legislature and executive are controlled by the Communist Party in defiance of popular opinion, since a consistent majority of 60% of the population have supported the pan-Democrats in every election since the late 1980s – an appropriate parallel would be to imagine David Cameron granting Scotland total autonomy but reserving the right to appoint 55% of all Members of Scottish Parliament as well as the entire Scottish Executive.

Yet, truly worrying is how C.Y. Leung’s administration is using the protests as an excuse to move the city closer towards a police state. Apart from using tear gas against domestic protestors for the first time since the riots of 1967, during which pro-Communist terrorists (some of whom are now prominent members of the government) launched a bombing campaign against the colonial government and local moderates, extrajudicial beatings and unconstitutional strip searches have been systematically carried out by the police over the past few days. The last remaining pan-Democrat newspaper was physically blockaded earlier this week, damaging its commercial viability, especially as leading firms (including British banks such as HSBC and Standard Chartered) have already been pressured into pulling their advertisements. Pan-Democratic lawmakers have been arrested for bringing equipment back to their offices purely on suspicion of ‘abetting illegal behaviour’, while student leaders were kept in solitary detention without just cause. Instead of responding to the legitimate grievances of peaceful protestors, the government has resorted to bribing Hong Kong’s powerful triads and persuading them to attack protest encampments in full view of the local and international media. The apparent frontrunner to succeed C.Y. Leung is a former Security Minister notorious for her hardline approach towards protestors and avid peddling of conspiracy theories.

The room for consensus is shrinking by the day as China seeks to evade its legal obligations towards the people of Hong Kong, who have been repeatedly promised genuine universal suffrage. In recent weeks, a handful of moderates have called for protestors to return home in exchange for beginning negotiations with the government, which were abruptly cancelled a few days ago. Put bluntly, Hong Kong’s youth have had enough of a deeply corrupt status quo whereby a handful of pro-Chinese businessmen reap monopoly profits through vast conglomerates permeating every aspect of daily life in the absence of meaningful competition laws. – the city currently sits atop the Economist’s crony-capitalism index, ahead of Russia, Ukraine and Mexico. Indeed, Chief Executive C.Y. Leung openly declared his opposition to universal suffrage on the grounds that it would grant excessive power to the bottom 50% of the population, for which he has been compared to Mitt Romney by Paul Krugman.  It is to their immense credit that the protesters thus far have remained essentially peaceful and have carefully calibrated the demonstrations in such a way as to maintain pressure on the government without actually disrupting the daily routines of most citizens. With only three (normally congested) tunnels and two underground lines connecting the two main parts of the city, it would have been all too easy for students to totally shut down all business and trade if they really wanted to do so.

However, the Chinese government is in no mood for any sort of compromise, and negotiations will achieve, at best, cosmetic concessions. The student protestors and their supporters across Hong Kong should maintain their resolve and reject any proposal that will restrict electoral choice. Universal suffrage and regular elections are meaningless in the absence of genuine competition – President Putin was ‘democratically’ elected, but hardly anyone considers his Russia to be a truly democratic country. Ever since 1997, Hong Kong has lived under an abnormally tolerant authoritarian regime, but for all its glamour and civic liberties, it remains at its core a dictatorship, its leaders lacking any kind of popular legitimacy. With the legislature powerless and marginalised by the current series of events, the students on the street represent the city’s last and perhaps best hope. The moderate opposition has tried to negotiate with China for the best part of 30 years, and all it has to show for its efforts is a continuous erosion of the city’s civic liberties and autonomy.

When Britain handed back Hong Kong to Peking in 1997, it did so based on the belief that it had constructed a system of legally binding guarantees that would ensure the city’s freedom for at least 50 years. Instead, the Chinese Communist regime has systematically broken these promises to the point that an overwhelming majority of Hong Kong’s people are now demanding their rights. With 60% of the city’s population rejecting Peking’s proposal, the only way forward for the protestors and their allies in the legislature is to ride this wave of popular anger and veto any proposal that fails to comply with international electoral standards. By ensuring that any future government in Hong Kong will lack popular legitimacy and reminding the international community of this fact, the youth who continue to bravely resist an increasingly violent police are able to cause China a considerable degree of embarrassment. Already, there are growing signs of popular dissent in China’s teeming cities as workers protest against a unaccountable government and staggering levels of income inequality. Hong Kong might once again be able to play its historical role as the incubator of revolutionary ideas for the rest of the country. As long as the protestors are able to keep up the  momentum, time and history is ultimately on their side. Accepting a deeply flawed compromise will only strengthen the Chinese leadership and consign Hong Kong to political, social and economic oblivion.

George Osborne Budget Stunt – Parliament Square London – IF Campaign

It has been a busy summer of developments in the protracted debate over Britain’s continued commitment to overseas aid. The Queen’s speech notably omitted any mention of David Cameron’s long standing pledge to make a 0.7% of GDP contribution to international aid a legal requirement, leading to fears from some that the policy was set to be scrapped. The “Enough Food IF” campaign was then launched by a number of high profile charities and NGOs, seeking to put pressure on the coalition government to commit to its promise. Boosted by participation from a multitude of celebrities, the campaign included a large rally at Hyde Park, a somewhat bizarre stunt in which hundreds of supporters dressed as George Osborne in Westminster prior to the budget, and a meeting with the Prime Minister at Downing Street. To the satisfaction of the campaigners, Osborne’s budget outlined a continued increase in spending on overseas aid (from £10.5 billion next year, to £11.1 billion in 2015), bringing the UK’s contribution in line with the 0.7% commitment and making Britain the third largest net donor behind only the United States and Germany. If this wasn’t enough, UKIP’s controversial yet irrepressible Godfrey Bloom (of subsequent “sluts” fame) also hit the headlines proclaiming the idiocy of continued payments of “billions of pounds a month” to “Bongo-Bongo Land”.

Whilst Bloom was understandably rebuked for the manner of his protestations, a look at the comment sections of articles on the websites of Britain’s major newspapers suggests that a quite substantial proportion of the population share elements of his worries. In a time of much publicised economic belt-tightening from the coalition government (or the “age of austerity” as it has come to be known) criticism of Cameron’s long held stance has mounted. The arguments against Britain’s sizeable aid contributions are quite familiar. In addition to worries regarding the prioritisation of domestic need in the current economic climate (some of which refer to the maxim “charity begins at home”), secondary arguments are made regarding the poor distribution of development aid, both with regards which countries receive it, and how exactly it is deployed within said countries.

There is, of course, a case offered in support of the sizeable aid commitments made by the British government. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York last year, David Cameron spoke of the pressing need to deliver on the promises of the Millennium Development goals, speaking briefly of the instrumental benefits of aid to domestic issues in Britain, but focusing predominantly on what he dubbed a ‘moral obligation… to tackle poverty’.

To simplify, the debate seems to be between a group on one side who stress the importance of prioritising domestic issues over charity for those abroad, and those on the other who feel an overriding moral obligation necessitates aid regardless of the domestic picture. Both stances hold an element of plausibility but my contention is that without a conceptual understanding of the relationship we believe exists between the domestic and the global in the modern world, and a critical assessment of any potential moral obligations owed to those in need, these debates remains rather inconclusive. Practical modern politics requires a foray into the domain of political theory to provide any real answers.

Thankfully, literature in this field is plentiful. On the topic of moral responsibilities for those who are more affluent to those in dire need, we might refer to Peter Singer’s influential 1972 paper ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ in which it is argued that the base requirement to prevent moral “bads” (of which suffering is one) necessitates action, so long as nothing of comparable moral importance is sacrificed in this prevention. Simple in its construction but radical in its implications, Singer’s thesis challenges the status quo idea of aid and donations being thought of as charity. Instead of being thanked for their generosity, individuals and states giving contributions to attempts to prevent moral “bads” are instead acknowledged as fulfilling their obligations by diverting funds from less morally worthy activities at home to those of utmost importance abroad. Some have objected that the requirements of Singer’s morality are too demanding, entailing that individuals prioritising the needs of their family, for example, come to be subjected to a moral critique. However, Singer’s retort is that regardless of our intuitive feelings or the prescriptions of conventional morality on such matters (many of which are fuelled by the intrinsic pull of our own self interest) the physical or emotional proximity of an agent to an individual in need is morally arbitrary. Such factors might impact on whether we currently act to help, but this is a different question to whether, strictly speaking, we should.

Political theorists belonging to the “Cosmopolitan” school of thought further Singer’s claim. These theorists advocate a worldview in which the scope of distributive justice is not determined by the membership of nation-states. This contrasts with the work of scholars who uphold the significance of the nation-state to issues of justice in political theory such as David Miller, and the Realist school of thought in international relations. Cosmopolitan arguments come in a variety of forms. Charles Beitz argues for the presence of a social structure in globalised modern society that is not dissimilar to the social structure in domestic national polities, which he feels would allow for the principles of distributive justice to extend to members of other states. Thomas Pogge, additionally, claims that affluent states are partially responsible for the plight of impoverished nations, due to their tacit acceptance of despotic leaders and the international community’s allowance of those leaders to seize resources and laden their country with debt. For Pogge, this responsibility for widespread poverty entails a duty to help eradicate it.

These theorists provide a rich conceptual foundation for building analysis on the topic of foreign aid. In particular, the narrative of certain global justice theorists offer a means of locating the illusive concept of a moral responsibility or obligation, which is often invoked by those championing Britain’s current levels of contribution, coinciding with the Prime Minister’s desire to make the 0.7% commitment a legal requirement. Headlines will continue to be made on the issue of aid, but in order for there to be clarity an important question needs to be answered. Is foreign aid an option or an obligation? Politicians so often bound by the dictates of pragmatism and populism need to engage with the insights of their cousins in the world of political theory if we are to truly arrive at an informed conclusion.

Kishan Koria is a 3^rd year PPE undergraduate at Christ Church.

Protesters in Hong Kong take to the streets. Photo by LingHK via flickr.

According to Samuel Huntington in his book The Third Wave, political negotiations will succeed only when “guarantees that neither side will lose everything become the basis of agreement”. For Hong Kong, it is precisely this prospect of “losing everything” that has been the cause of much public worry recently. That both sides have long been at loggerheads underscores the cul-de-sac quality of what is fundamentally an ideological clash: Whereas Hong Kongers’ anti-establishment views is tolerated by a feeble government, any such attempt by their Mainland counterparts would more often than not entail prosecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), justified under the brand of “subversion of state power”.

In the Hong Kong of 2013, cries for the materialisation of a democratic agenda remain as vocal as ever, with the July 1 Protest proving a prime.  Notwithstanding the arrival of typhoon Rumbia, 450,000 people braved the inclement weather to march in protest of a variety of dissatisfactions, such as exorbitant property prices jacked up in part by mainlander home buyers, the indefinite responses to calls for universal suffrage, the implementation of propagandistic education packaged under the ironic misnomer ‘Liberal Studies’, and the Chief Executive’s alleged right-leaning credentials.

As the city metamorphosed into a hub of discontent, anti-Beijing groups raised a long-standing question: will the capital ever accommodate the city’s democratic demands within its dictatorial framework? This question unearths a case of irreconcilable differences wherein divorce cannot be a way out, given the geographical circumstance and historical lineage binding the two sides, thus leaving compromise as the only solution. In the words of Bao-hui Zhang, a professor from LingnanUniversity, “negotiated democratisation is the only viable strategy for Hong Kong’s political breakthrough.”

Beijing: Contradictory Signals

Ironically, Beijing has itself to blame for sowing the seeds of Hong Kong’s oppositional currents. Prior to the Handover, the CPC pacified Hong Kongers’ ‘transitional anxiety’ by making liberal promises to reassure locals that their freedoms would remain unchanged under 50 years of autonomous rule. Most controversial is Article 45 of the Basic Law, which stipulates that “the ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage…[through] a gradual and orderly progress”. Rife with definitional ambiguity, this clause has proven a key source of tension between the Central Government Law Committee and Hong Kong’s pro-democracy forces. Upon the appointment of Qiao Xiao-yang as the Committee Chairman, the National People’s Congress’ initial guarantee of a ‘popularly elected’ Chief Executive suddenly came with strings attached, expressed as highly implicative preconditions positing  that whoever is elected must “love the country” and not “confront the Central Government”. These are indeed ominous words from the viewpoint of Hong Kongers, and their proliferation in recent CCP announcements makes this an ever greater cause for concern.

A close examination, however, reveals that the CCP has in fact always been adamant on maintaining an authoritarian mode of governance, bar none – not even for a ‘special administrative region’. In 1996, Beijing supplanted the democratically elected, incumbent Legislative Council with a provisional dummy, wherein members were ‘elected’ by an electoral college formed entirely by the CCP. Such an act, despite all the mollycoddling rhetoric, speaks volumes about Beijing’s bottom line when it comes to dealing with Hong Kong. Interestingly, this fact is often absent in local media discourse. This example of tacit censorship bodes ill for Hong Kong’s press freedoms, as the vested business interests of media moguls inevitably tip them towards adopting a pro-establishment stance so as to tap the vast financial opportunities in the Mainland, resulting in a growing infiltration of CCP-tinted viewpoints into local media content and a decrease in press transparency.

Hong Kong: Constrained but not Chained  

In order to turn the tables in its favour, the city must come to terms with the structural problems inherent in its politics. According to Joseph Cheng, a professor of politics at the City University in Hong Kong, the post-1997 electoral systems have been “designed to ensure pro-government forces a Legislative Council majority”, obviously attested to by the example of the finance industry gaining “one bank one vote” as opposed to “one member one vote” in functional constituency elections. Yet the pan-democracy camp must also be held to account for their incompetence. One example is the Democratic Party, whose lack of political guile and constructive stratagem has resulted in it going from the party with the largest Legislative Council majority in 2000 to that with the smallest in 2012.

This unfolding of events has led more disillusioned citizens to take to the streets themselves as a last resort. Nevertheless, public pressure as collective resistance is likely to yield minimal tangible returns, at most functioning as an impetus for the government to launch negotiations with Beijing. What will make or break the success of these negotiations, is the leverage that Hong Kong has in this political ‘transaction’.

This implies treating the idea ‘negotiated democratisation’ not as compromise, but as a business venture. The question to ask is not when Beijing will consent to grant Hong Kong what it wants, but what the Chinese government will stand to gain as a result of Hong Kong becoming more democratic. Given Beijing’s top priority of balancing rising economic prowess with national stability, the local government should highlight how allowing greater political transparency in Hong Kong will both boost foreign investor confidence and help China gain ‘image capital’ – a win-win situation that plays directly into Beijing’s concerns. Protests alone are no longer good enough.

It seems the pan-democratic subjects are starting to grasp the imperative of compromise, as both the Democratic and Civic Party have jettisoned the hard-line disposition that previously characterised their stance. Instead, they have opted for a moderate way of communication, softening insistence on rigid conditions regarding a precise timetable, all the while holding fast to the principle that the attainment of universal suffrage must nevertheless remain the city’s ultimate goal. Hong Kongers can only hope that such moderation efforts will bring about some concrete breakthrough in the future.