Last week, student protestors in Hong Kong quickly escalated their demonstrations against last month’s announcement by China’s rubber-stamp National People’s Congress (NPC) that Hong Kong’s political future would be decided by Beijing alone. This is understood by the protestors to violate a vaguely-worded promise for the city’s 2017 election to be decided by “universal suffrage.” According to the NPC decision, universal suffrage would be allowed, but only two or three preapproved candidates who “love China and love Hong Kong” would be permitted to run. It would be easy to view the demonstrations as the embodiment of a decades-long struggle for democracy throughout China, and to an extent this is true, but the protests are guided primarily by local concerns and tensions that have been building since Hong Kong was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. 

Hong Kong reached its current form in 1898, when the British wrenched a 99 year lease from China’s moribund Qing dynasty, adding the new territories to their existing colony on Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula. When Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher agreed to return Hong Kong to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997 (when the 99 year lease ended), they provided for Hong Kong to maintain the system that had developed under the British, employing the concept of “one country, two systems.” To be sure, except for some eleventh-hour efforts by Hong Kong’s last colonial governor, the British never instituted democracy in Hong Kong, though they did permit freedoms of press and association. Except for some cosmetic changes, Hong Kong would maintain its place as a hyper-capitalist enclave on the doorstep of a gradually reforming mainland, and only foreign affairs would be determined by Beijing. 

Since the handover, politics in the “Special Administrative Region” have been conducted according to the Hong Kong Basic Law that was meant to enshrine “one country, two systems.” However, distrust of Beijing has run high among Hong Kong’s population (many of them refugees or the children of refugees from Mao’s China), and proposals to institute an “anti-subversion” law and “patriotic education” set off huge protests which caused the government to back down. Moreover, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre draws large crowds of demonstrators each  June 4, and smaller protests take place on July 1, the anniversary of the handover. The handover also set off an anxious exodus of people and assets from Hong Kong to Australia, Canada, Great Britain, the United States and elsewhere which peaked in the mid-1990s but has continued to the present.

More subtly, the influence of the mainland in Hong Kong has increased dramatically in the last decade and a half. As China’s economy has rapidly become the largest in Asia, the capital flows between the mainland and Hong Kong have drawn the business community close to Beijing. Property values and food prices have skyrocketed in tandem with inequality, resulting in a decreased standard of living for common people in Hong Kong. Most of the city’s major media outlets are now owned by companies that view Beijing favorably and support the government’s agenda of “stability and development”. Furthermore, despite a fairly strict visa system, millions of mainland Chinese have visited Hong Kong to travel, conduct business and settle since 1997. At the same time, Shanghai has developed port facilities, road and rail infrastructure and a tax-free free trade zone that could easily rival or surpass Hong Kong’s at a lower cost, with the added benefit of guaranteed political stability. To Hong Kong residents who jealously protect their city’s wealth, openness and Cantonese dialect (opposed to the Mandarin spoken by most mainlanders), the last 17 years have felt like a gradually escalating siege, and the animosity directed towards the mainland and mainlanders is palpable. 

The characteristic political conservatism of the business class and social elite which existed under British rule has not been dampened, as this class has benefitted the most since 1997. Under both the British and PRC, elderly Hong Kong people also have tended to favor social stability above all. But the adamancy of the protestors shows the youth, who form the core of the current demonstrations and who have only known “one country, two systems,” see things differently. Although their immediate motivations reflect an inchoate agenda and prejudiced rejection of all things mainland, the protestors are right to assume that without change, Hong Kong’s future looks bleak. 

As it has been since the early 1990s, Hong Kong today is a testing ground for political and economic reform in China, as well as any future reincorporation of Taiwan.  But contrary to the expectations of many, as economic reforms have progressed, the People’s Republic has become even more politically restrictive. Under the still-young administration of Xi Jinping, draconian sentences have been imposed on mainland activists and lawyers for the slightest public act of dissent. A compelling combination of carrots and sticks has seemingly convinced most Chinese that political reform can wait or perhaps is unnecessary altogether, at least so long as the economy continues to grow. With political reform looking unlikely anytime soon on the mainland and Xi Jinping not wanting to appear weak, Beijing is certain to insist that its decision on “universal suffrage” in Hong Kong be implemented. When faced with mass opposition in the past, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has cleverly offered negotiation and conciliation, split the small group of “core activists” off from less committed ones and instituted superficial reforms that ultimately leave the party with at least as much control as before. 

In this way, the recent demonstrations show that Hong Kong has become much more like mainland China than its residents would care to admit. A tightly connected business and political elite have used patronage networks and political pressure to institute consensus on policies that perpetuate their own concentration of wealth and power. Under such a system, a free press, the right to organize and even “universal suffrage” count for little if they cannot translate into real political change. Undoubtedly, offering democracy without choice has been the CCP’s plan for Hong Kong for some time. Instead of being a model for a genuinely democratic florescence in China, Hong Kong today is becoming a blueprint for how to provide democracy in name only. 

—Steven Pieragastini is a Ph.D. candidate in the History department.