By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 15, 2003; Page A01
HONG KONG -- Six years after China celebrated the return of Hong Kong to the motherland, a barbed-wire fence still snakes along portions of the river that separates this city from the rest of the country, and immigration officers remain posted on both sides of the border.
Occasionally, the officers manage to stop someone like Cheung Yu-chong, 59, a member of the Falun Gong spiritual movement who was caught carrying anti-government videos to the mainland last year. Cheung was sentenced to three years in prison, according to the group, which is banned everywhere in China except Hong Kong.
But for every Hong Kong resident like Cheung who is detained, many others involved in activities the Chinese government finds troubling -- labor organizers, Catholic priests, AIDS activists, journalists -- make it across the border without a hitch. If anything, human rights groups here say, Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule has made it easier for its residents to influence people and events on the mainland.
For China's ruling Communist Party, that is a big problem. The recent mass street demonstrations here demanding democratic elections and the withdrawal of a stringent internal security bill have put China's leaders on the defensive, forcing a retreat in their efforts to reshape this former British colony and encouraging those who hope Hong Kong's liberal traditions might instead reshape China.
With the rigid Chinese political system straining to contain rising discontent and keep pace with rapid economic change, China's leaders are worried that activists will use Hong Kong as a base to undermine the party's monopoly on power.
They are also worried that the protests could spread to the rest of the country, according to people in Hong Kong and Beijing who have been consulted by government officials about the crisis.
"What they fear is a double effect," said Shi Yinhong, an international relations scholar at People's University in Beijing. "If the central government backs down, Hong Kong will be a base for subversive activities. At the same time, the Chinese public will conclude the Communist Party is not infallible, and that so-called people power can have an impact."
Until two weeks ago, the Chinese government did not consider Hong Kong a problem. Under its "one country, two systems" policy, China promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, but local politicians and businessmen appeared to be more interested in pleasing Beijing than standing up for civil liberties.
Self-censorship in the media was on the rise, and the unique blend of economic and political freedom that made the city special appeared in jeopardy.
A security bill proposed by the city's Beijing-backed chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, which critics said would gut civil liberties, was expected to complete Hong Kong's makeover into just another Chinese city.
Instead, it galvanized the democratic opposition and triggered the largest demonstrations in China since the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square. About 500,000 people participated in the march on July 1, the anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China, forcing the city's government to soften and then postpone the anti-subversion bill.
This is the second time in the four months since China's new leaders, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, took office that Hong Kong has played a key role in a crisis that challenges the legitimacy of the country's authoritarian system.
After the SARS virus spread from the southern province of Guangdong to Hong Kong, the city's links to the rest of the world and its free press made it difficult if not impossible for the Chinese government to continue hiding the epidemic. Eventually, Beijing was forced to admit that the government had covered up the extent of the disease.
"Hong Kong is a small community of 7 million at the edge of the Chinese empire, but because it behaves differently, it is a catalyst for change," said Christine Loh, a former Hong Kong legislator who runs a group that promotes civil society here. "This is not to say Hong Kong will cause a revolution in China or push things very quickly, but the bigger system clearly has not overwhelmed the smaller one.
"Instead, we're seeing two different ideas about what society should be like, and when you talk about a tussle of ideas, size doesn't matter much. We all know ideas can start small and go a long way, and the Hong Kong idea, while dominant in only a small part of China, represents the dominant idea in the global community."
Complications for Policy
The Hong Kong protests also complicate China's efforts at achieving its chief foreign policy goal, persuading Taiwan to return to Chinese rule. China has offered the self-governing island a "one country, two systems" framework similar to Hong Kong's, but politicians in Taiwan who favor independence have already seized on the protests to argue that the arrangement does not work.
Searching for a way out, Beijing has dispatched a team of officials to Hong Kong to gather ideas from various sectors of society about how to respond to the demonstrations. Local sources said the Communist Party was conducting its most extensive review of the city's political system since the 1997 handover, and the officials have met even with members of the pro-democracy opposition.
Chinese officials were caught off guard by the huge turnout for the protests, according to sources here and in Beijing. On the morning of the July 1 demonstrations, Tung told Wen, who was visiting Hong Kong, that he expected only 30,000 to 50,000 people to participate, according to Allen Lee, a member of China's legislature from Hong Kong.
"The central government has concluded that its institutions in Hong Kong are far from effective. They couldn't successfully mobilize the pro-China forces and maintain the loyalty of the centrists," said one person in Beijing who has been consulted by the government. "At the same time, they underestimated the political strength and skill of the hostile forces, the democrats."
At least some of the officials sent to Hong Kong have discussed a plan to ease Tung out of office within six months, allow his chief secretary to manage the city on an interim basis and then possibly call a limited election to choose his successor. But there is also deep reluctance within the central government, particularly among allies of former president Jiang Zemin, to make any further concessions to the democracy activists, the sources said.
Many officials here and in Beijing contend the protests attracted large crowds primarily because Hong Kong's economy is in a slump. Unemployment is at a record high of 8.3 percent, and property values have declined by two-thirds since 1997. After the economy rebounds, the argument goes, public enthusiasm for elections and civil liberties will subside.
The problem, said Zhang Zhirong, an expert on Hong Kong at Beijing University, is that the city's economy is difficult to fix. For decades, Hong Kong thrived simply by serving as the world's middleman to the Chinese market. But now most foreign companies can invest directly in China, and Hong Kong is struggling to find a new business niche.
Influence on the Mainland
Others fear that concessions to democracy advocates in Hong Kong would lead eventually to instability that could affect the mainland both economically and politically.
Wary of frightening Beijing, activists here have been careful to point out that they are demanding democratic reforms only for Hong Kong and not for the rest of China. The chief executive and most members of the city legislature are chosen by small pro-Beijing groups, but China agreed during the handover to consider unspecified political reforms after 2007.
"They shouldn't get alarmed," said Yeung Sum, chairman of the Democracy Party. "I would hate to see people compare this with the students in 1989. . . . It's nothing related to the central government."
But Hong Kong exerts a quiet influence on the mainland. More than 100 million people watch Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite Television, which was the only Chinese station to report the July 1 demonstrations, though it was only a one-minute segment heavy with interviews with government officials. More than 250,000 people pass through the Lo Wu border crossing every day, and nearly 7 million Chinese tourists visited Hong Kong last year.
In addition, some groups in Hong Kong take funds into China to support dissidents. Many others try to make a difference by supporting people and organizations not under the complete control of the Communist government.
Promoting Rights in China
Hong Kong labor organizers help workers monitor conditions in factories across the border, while environmental and AIDS activists travel into the countryside to collaborate with their mainland counterparts. Protestant congregations in Hong Kong supply Bibles, teaching materials and money to both underground and official churches on the mainland, and at least a dozen Christian radio programs recorded in Hong Kong are broadcast into the country.
The Catholic Church in Hong Kong serves as the primary intermediary between the Vatican and its bishops in China, about 40 of whom operate underground. The church routinely sends priests, nuns and others into China to carry messages and materials back and forth and sometimes to teach in underground seminaries.
"Hong Kong people protested" against the internal security bill "not just to protect themselves, but also because it would have limited activities that push forward democratic change in China," said Han Dongfang, an exiled labor activist in Hong Kong who broadcasts a radio show into the mainland on U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia.
But Han and other activists said it was unlikely the demonstrations in Hong Kong would spark similar protests across the mainland.
Participants in the July 1 Hong Kong demonstrations were primarily college-educated members of the middle class, and were united in their grievances. In a survey conducted by Hong Kong University, more than 90 percent of those polled opposed the anti-subversion bill and expressed disappointment with the Hong Kong government, while 80 percent called on Tung to step down.
By contrast, an urban middle class is only beginning to emerge in China, and while discontent with the party is widespread, Chinese society is more fragmented, with impoverished farmers making different demands of the government than laid-off workers, for example.
Han said people in China are angrier and more frustrated with the government than people in Hong Kong, but they are unable to stage large-scale demonstrations because the media cannot report protests and the police are quick to arrest organizers.
"The environment created by the state is the key difference," Han said. "In China, there is a lot of fear. . . . In Hong Kong, it's completely different."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the orginal publisher.