JPRI Working Paper 106 (May 2005)
Civil War in China: The Final Phase
By Suzanne
Pepper
Two seemingly
unrelated events stood out amid the usual program
of speeches, talking points, and vote counts that filled China's
most recent congressional meetings in March 2005. Members of the
National People's Congress (NPC), all indirectly
elected, convene for a few days each year when appointed delegates
to an advisory body, known as the Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference (CPPCC), also hold their annual get-together. This early
spring ritual serves to legitimate and advertise decisions reached
elsewhere by China's Communist Party rulers who bristle at the "rubber stamp" epithet
their parliamentary routines invariably provoke.
But the predetermined formalities themselves signify better than
any derogatory label the predicament China's leaders
are trying to escape and the dangers for all
concerned if they fail.
The two events
that made international headlines this year
were a new law prohibiting secession and the unexpected resignation
of Tung Chee-hwa midway through his second term as Hong Kong's Chief
Executive. Tung became Hong Kong's first post-colonial leader after
Britain relinquished sovereignty in 1997. His political demise was
announced during the Beijing meetings and sealed by an appointment
to the face-saving ceremonial post of CPPCC vice-chairman. The Anti-Secession
Law is aimed at what Beijing regards as its renegade
island province of Taiwan, otherwise still formally known as the
Republic of China and the last reminder of a fractured past that
has not been reunified under Beijing's rule. Through this legal
maneuver, the Chinese government has given itself the authority
to use "non-peaceful means" should
Taiwan persist in its current drift toward permanent
separation.
As expected,
the Taiwan and Hong Kong agenda items proceeded
without disagreement or dissent. The new law
was passed on March 14th by an NPC vote of 2,896 with two abstentions
and no opposition. Tung Chee-hwa resigned on March 10th and was
elected to his new position two days later by a CPPCC vote of 2,065
to 21 with 20 abstentions. In fact, the smooth orchestration belied
Hong Kong's current political disarray and the dangerous game of
brinkmanship being played on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Also
obscured was the link between Hong Kong's dysfunctional post-1997
governance and Taiwan's ongoing political drama, seen by
all participants as the final phase of a conflict
between Chinese communism and its adversaries
that has continued in one form or another since the 1920s.
Viewed from
afar, China's 20th century civil war should be no cause for concern
in 2005. The last major battles were fought in 1949, the same year
Chiang Kai-shek and remnants of his Nationalist Party fled to Taiwan.
Only the Korean War and U.S. security guarantees saved them from
total defeat. Now Chiang's authoritarian regime is long gone and
the victorious communists have moved on as well. Once capitalism's
mortal enemy, their party now strives to master the secrets of capitalism's
success. Chinese leaders today should therefore have little difficulty
finding acceptable solutions for their remaining
differences.
In reality, the
two sides cannot even agree to negotiate an end to the state of
war that still exists between them, signifying a conflict that has
never ended but instead continues by other means. The
simulated war games are conducted now primarily on political playing
fields where minds and wills are being taxed to the limit. The
players may talk, travel, trade, invest, and
intermarry; but each exchange also creates new
opportunities for mutual exploitation set against the backdrop of
an arms race that has moved full circle.
After 1949, Nationalists
lived for decades on the promise of retaking
the mainland and American conservatives relished
the prospect of "unleashing
Chiang Kai-shek" toward that end. Today, Washington still runs
interference for his successors but the most American conservatives
can hope for is an independent Taiwan, or so it might seem at first
glance. Meanwhile, the island has reverted to full defensive mode
while mainland offensive capabilities grow and its armchair warriors
speculate confidently on the merits of an American-style "shock and
awe" campaign to force Taiwan's surrender before Washington can come
to the rescue. That Chinese leaders in Beijing
will probably never resort to any such final solution, yet
actively prepare for it and advertise their preparations,
is a measure of the predicament they perceive.
BEIJING'S CONUNDRUM
Since the death
of paramount revolutionary Mao Zedong in 1976, and especially since
1989-91 when communism collapsed in the Soviet heartland, China's
Communist Party has lost both its claim to historical infallibility
and its chief reason for existence. The Nationalists experienced
a similar identity crisis in the 1970s and 1980s, when they had to
confront the fallacy of their pretensions as rightful rulers of all
China. To fill their own void, mainland leaders have elevated
the pre-communist aspirations of a weak and war torn China, for restoration
of its once-proud status, to the level of a sacred trust. Their
legitimacy now derives solely from this mission
and its logic is proclaimed at every opportunity.
The conflation
of endangered political power with China's
manifest destiny explains the drive for reunification and intensifying
pressure on Taiwan to make the nation whole again. These imperatives
also explain why Beijing has spent the years
since 1997 trying to teach Hong Kong to sing that old revolutionary
anthem, "Without the
Communist Party, There Would Be No New China." Unfortunately,
Beijing's back-to-the-future formula is as out
of touch with the times as Chiang Kai-shek's old pretensions about
retaking the mainland, which he used to justify his grip on power
just as Beijing leaders do today. Hong Kong and Taiwan are not being
asked to reproduce the much-feared sequences of socialist development
that mainlanders experienced when they first
learned the song. But Beijing is nonetheless
discovering the flaw in its grand reunification design: converging
economic systems are only necessary, not sufficient.
At the heart
of the impasse lie two very different ways of political life. Yet Beijing cannot offer Taiwan ironclad guarantees that
reunification will not threaten its hard-won democratic gains and
without such guarantees, Taiwan's people will never agree to reunification. Even
with such guarantees, Taiwan may never acquiesce
because Beijing made similar promises to Hong
Kong and has proceeded to undermine them at every step.
Beijing's conundrum
is thus complete. To solve its problems
with Hong Kong and Taiwan, Beijing must acknowledge that politics
is the key and genuine democratic self-rule the only real solution. But
Beijing cannot adopt such a course without simultaneously acknowledging
the need for its own political reform and to do so risks a Soviet-style
devolution of Communist Party rule in China. The Anti-Secession
Law is part of Beijing's attempt to buy time and finesse a solution. So
too is the premature resignation of Hong Kong's
ill-fated chief executive who obeyed Beijing's
instructions to the letter, defied local democratic aspirations, and
consequently could not sustain the authority necessary to govern Hong
Kong's partially democratized system.
THE HONG KONG CONNECTION
These strains
are clearly written on the diverse faces of Beijing officialdom
as shown to the world at large and to compatriots back home. Since Hong Kong occupies a border zone in between, the
disconnect appears more striking there: between sophisticated decisions
that are rapidly transforming China into a global economic powerhouse,
and the clumsy fantasy-land logic that rules over domestic political
life. Such contrasts are hardly unique to China and myths are
the stuff of politics everywhere. But in trying to find solutions
for its current dilemma, Beijing is actually
heightening political distinctions by trying
to deny and contain what cannot be acknowledged and accommodated.
Nowhere was this
clash of political cultures displayed more clearly than in Hong
Kong during the recent sequence of crises leading up to Tung Chee-hwa's
resignation. And nowhere has Beijing demonstrated
greater skill in containment or contortions in denial. The
crises themselves were 20 years in the making, rooted in arrangements
negotiated by London and Beijing to ease local fears and achieve a
smooth transition from British back to Chinese sovereignty. At
the time, in 1997, Beijing could well believe
it had designed a workable mechanism for managing
ex-colonial Hong Kong and wooing back Taiwan as well.
The formula,
known as "one country, two systems," was actually conceived
for Taiwan soon after Deng Xiaoping established
himself as China's paramount leader in 1978. Taiwan was then still
ruled by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist successors and the formula
dovetailed nicely with Deng's agenda for post-Mao China. Taiwan
had prospered under its combination of capitalist economics and
repressive autocratic rule, anticipating a perfect convergence.
The two-systems idea would allow Taiwan to continue as it was until
mainland China's economy caught up while the
two political systems merged and evolved in tandem.
Alas, Beijing
ignored the old warning about trying to cross the same river twice. Taiwan initially spurned Deng's offer but its
promise was at least ready when Hong Kong's future suddenly became
a more urgent priority. Expiration of an old lease covering
most of the colony's 400 square miles provided
the 1997 deadline after Deng declared non-renewal
of the lease as another of his obligations to Chinese history. [1]
No Chinese government
had ever willingly accepted the 19th century
arrangements whereby Hong Kong passed from
Chinese into British hands. The
same also applied to all the other bits of territory,
treaty ports, and spheres-of-influence that dated back to a time
when the Age of Empire followed the Age of Discovery and Europeans
thought the world they had discovered was theirs for the asking.
China's drive to be rid of these old "humiliations," as they are
still routinely remembered, began long before communist victory,
and provided Deng with the ties he needed to
a cause that also pre-dated communism's failures.
In Taiwan, however,
the long-standing tension between Nationalist mainland rulers and
native-born Taiwanese yielded to rapid change during the two decades
following Chiang Kai-shek's death in 1975. Martial
law was revoked. Repression ceased. Dissidents were released
from jail. Other critics realized it was safe to return from
self-imposed exile in the U.S., Japan, or wherever, and preordained
formalities gave way to genuine competition at election time. By
1997, Taiwan had evolved into an exuberant young democracy. Many
interests therefore had to be accommodated and Nationalist rulers
could no longer sit down with their Beijing counterparts to cut a
deal as Deng Xiaoping had envisaged. Indeed, the Nationalists
had become reformers themselves. They were also about to lose
power, or at least be obliged to share it more
or less equally with Taiwanese who harbored in
their midst advocates not just of democratic reform but of the variable
century-old movement for independence as well.
The demand for
Taiwanese independence was first raised in
the late 19th century when a fast-learning Japan decided to emulate
the West in all things, including colonial conquest, and did not
stop until it had swallowed up all the West's Asian possessions,
between 1941 and 1945. Taiwan was the first of Japan's acquisitions,
seized in 1895 from the old Chinese empire, which was by then too
weak to defend itself even against an upstart neighbor. Local Chinese
officials did what they could by way of resistance
and declared a short-lived independent Republic
of Taiwan. Different versions of this aim with
different motivations have since waxed and waned.
Unlike their
performance elsewhere, however, Japanese rule in Taiwan between
1895 and 1945 was relatively enlightened, in marked contrast to
their Nationalist successors. Unreformed mainlanders had
already worn out their welcome by 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek's demoralized
government took up residence. Contemporary divisions between
ruling mainlanders and ruled Taiwanese date from this period , defined
by the latter's demands for independence and reform. Taiwanese thus
acquired a distinct political identity, separate from both Communist
and Nationalist variants of mainland rule. The not-yet-forgotten
memories of Japanese brutality on the mainland
and relative beneficence in Taiwan add further
to the division between mainlanders and Taiwanese.
Then, despite
these swift-flowing currents, Beijing tried to cross the river again. Heedless of Taiwan's political transformation,
to say nothing of the 1989-91 communist collapse in Europe and its
own hard-line effort to stave off a similar fate, Beijing pressed
its suit ever more ardently as preparations for Hong Kong's return
were finalized. These included a constitution, known as the
Basic Law, drafted expressly for the new Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region (SAR) in recognition of its separate status. A similar
document was drawn up for the 400-year-old Portuguese colony of Macau,
prior to its return in 1999. Since both constitutions were
based on identical one-country, two-systems principles, these now
came in for more careful scrutiny. After a few years, the results
were also clear in practice and the new Taiwan
did not much like what it saw.
BASIC LAW RULE
Responding to
Hong Kong's 2003-04 upsurge of discontent,
Beijing rejected demands for a wholly elected local government.
The blunt denial came with an equally brusque reminder that the
people of Hong Kong already enjoyed "unprecedented democratic rights." [2]
And so they do, which begs the question Beijing refuses to confront.
Taiwan currently enjoys even more, including freedom from mainland
interference, genuine self-government, and democratic elections
throughout, none of which has materialized under Hong Kong's two-systems
arrangement despite multiple promises and reassurances indicating
otherwise. Yet Beijing has continued to champion "two systems" as
the basis of its reunification proposals for Taiwan, even as both
the Nationalists and their Taiwanese opponents
continue to reject the offer.
By mainland standards,
Hong Kong's rights and freedoms are indeed
generous. The
Basic Law spells them out and they have (with
some erosion around the edges) been honored in full: freedom of
speech, press, assembly, religion, and private property; torture
is prohibited and so is arbitrary arrest; homes are inviolable and
the right to raise a family is guaranteed; the judiciary remains
independent. The list reflects all the most feared elements of mainland
rule and Hong Kong has so far been spared them all.
Beijing thus
kept to the letter of its promises to the British
when both were struggling to prepare an anti-communist community
for life under communist rule. According to the relevant passage
in their 1984 agreement, "the current social and economic systems in
Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will the lifestyle." [3] But
the one indeterminate element, noticeable by its absence, was the
single most important: government itself, which is now tied root and
branch to its Beijing parent. The ties, written into the Basic
Law, are also enforced with the same determination
that was initially used to make Chinese sovereignty
an offer Hong Kong could not refuse, and is now being marshaled to
force acceptance on Taiwan as well. [4]
Government was,
of course, British Hong Kong's Achilles heel.
From start to finish, virtually no decade passed without someone
raising the issue of electoral representation, which even in the
mid-19 th century was making its way through the institutions of
colonial governance. Addressing his London superiors
in 1856, Governor John Bowring wrote that he saw "no reason whatever why the representative
principle, conceded in some form or other to almost every colony
under the Crown, should be denied to Hong Kong." [5] Bowring's proposal
was nevertheless rejected, as were all others for over a century.
Direct election by universal suffrage for a few Legislative Council
seats was not introduced until 1991.
Hong Kong's archaic
Crown Colony form of government remained essentially unchanged throughout,
led by an appointed British governor who appointed
both his Executive Council or cabinet of advisors and a Legislative
Council, which provided the necessary consent. A loyal expatriate-led
civil service bureaucracy enforced and administered.
The British themselves
called it "benevolent autocracy," benevolence
signifying the personal and economic freedoms
safeguarded by this most anachronistic of 20th
century political systems. The process whereby it stayed that way
was dubbed "administrative
absorption of politics," a tribute to British skill in co-opting local "men
of wealth" while preempting the emergence of any genuine opposition
through measures both benevolent and otherwise.
[6] The result was known as government
by "consultation
and consensus," said
to derive from the Chinese preference for social
harmony over Western-style competitive politics.
Explanations
proved somewhat awkward when members of Parliament
asked questions in London, but answers were always based on two
contradictory themes: apathy and danger. In his 1965 memoirs, former
governor Alexander Grantham summarized the post-1949
variant of these themes to explain why he had resisted political
reform during his 1947-57 tenure. Due to its unique historical circumstances,
he wrote, Hong Kong could never aspire to independence
like other colonies because all Chinese had always maintained it
was part of China. Chinese were also "politically apathetic," preferring
to "leave the business of government to the professionals." Finally,
he and his local advisors feared the Communist-Nationalist
conflict could not be kept at bay if Hong Kong
allowed popular participation in government.
[7]
Such were the
truths and half-truths of Hong Kong's colonial
inheritance and Beijing set about incorporating them all. "Two systems" meant
Hong Kong could remain as it was, which meant
all the rights and freedoms, plus a simulated version of autocratic
colonial rule. London's lynchpin role would be taken over by Beijing,
power would be concentrated locally in the hands
of a chief executive, and an updated version
of Hong Kong's enduring myths soon emerged to rationalize the whole.
As for the myths,
the most pernicious, given its long after life, was the claim that
electoral reform and independence were automatically linked as Grantham
implied. In fact, the two were not
synchronized in British colonial history and there had never been
any movement for independence in Hong Kong. On the contrary,
the one concerted reform effort, initiated by British officials themselves,
was actually undertaken with the aim of keeping Hong Kong British. The
plan emerged toward the end of World War II, in response to Nationalist
and American pressure for Hong Kong's post-war return to China. London's
idea was to give Hong Kong residents a greater role in running the
colony and thereby win their support for Britain's continued sovereignty
over it. [8] Communist victory ended all such pressures
and it was the remnants of this plan, announced in 1946, that Governor
Grantham laid to rest in the early 1950s. Concerning the myths
of apathy and obedience, post-Mao leaders had
already discovered the utility of conservative
Confucian values to help fill the political void at home and were
delighted to find them still apparently prevailing in conservative
colonial Hong Kong as well.
Mainland suspicions
consequently began to grow when the British, suddenly concerned
about how their own history might judge their Hong Kong stewardship,
hastily dusted off the most recent (late 1960s) package of aborted
reform proposals. A
new territory-wide system of District Boards
was introduced and some seats were elected by universal suffrage
in 1982, just as Beijing was making its 1997 intentions known to
the city and three years after the British learned for sure that
Hong Kong's status was going to change.
The first ever
indirect election for a few Legislative Council (or Legco, in local
shorthand) seats was held in 1985, and Chinese suspicions deepened. The
aim of this new initiative was clearly stated: "to
develop progressively a system of government the authority for which
is firmly rooted in Hong Kong" and accountable to its people. [9]
Candidates with
the most straightforward democratic platforms
generated the greatest public interest and none more so than lawyer
Martin Lee. His maiden speech in 1985 marked the onset of a tense
adversarial relationship between Beijing and Hong Kong's growing
democratic community that has yet to soften 20 years later. Lee
declared Hong Kong people themselves to be the best guarantee against
Chinese interference. Hence direct elections were the only means
of achieving "an effective and
highly autonomous government to keep our system separate from the
rest of China." [10]
Beijing theoreticians
immediately took up the challenge. In
their version, London, having failed to extend the lease or an administrative
presence after 1997, was trying to compensate with a scheme to root
government in the people. This was the equivalent of popular
sovereignty, which was tantamount to independence, as the British
themselves had so often said when rejecting past political reform
petitions. Suspicions hardened into certitudes after 1989,
when Chinese students filled Beijing's Tiananmen Square in protest
and all of Hong Kong responded in kind. Local democrats marched
at the head of Hong Kong's largest ever political demonstrations,
at least one million strong, chanting new more audacious slogans that
they have refused to abandon: democracy in China itself, they
say, is Hong Kong's only true safeguard.
Official mainland
responses have since alternated between arguing
that popular sovereignty is tantamount to independence and charges
of subversive intent, the latter to remind democrats that calling
for the overthrow of one-party rule would merit jail terms or worse
in any other mainland jurisdiction. Meanwhile, the Basic Law
was promulgated in 1990, while communist regimes
were collapsing everywhere else, and Beijing was determined to hold
the line. With the help of Hong Kong's "men of wealth," Beijing
produced the most conservative design that its 1984 promises would
allow. Virtually all Hong Kong's Chinese tycoons switched allegiance,
once satisfied their economic interests would be protected,
and served as mainstays on the many Beijing-appointed
committees used to build a new government.
As a result,
no Chief Executive and no member of his Executive
Council can be appointed over Beijing's objection and as a matter
of practice, none contradicts Beijing's will in word or deed. Shipping
magnate Tung Chee-hwa was tapped as Beijing's choice and a Beijing-appointed
Selection Committee endorsed the appointment
in a "mainland-style" vote. Oblivious
to the new "Hong Kong-style" expectations, Tung remained as loyal
and obedient to Beijing as Beijing hoped Hong
Kong would be to him. His first speeches focused on the old hierarchical
Confucian values of duty and obligation to elders and superiors. Not
for us, we're Chinese, he said of the West's obsession with
individual rights and freedoms, which he recalled
disapprovingly from his years in America during
the profligate 1960s.
The community,
being Chinese, applauded politely and carried
on with its mixed border-zone ways as promised by the Basic Law.
Confucian homilies thus provided scant cover for an administration
that stumbled from one crisis to the next, with a leader who treated
public political discourse as a form of penance best avoided. Yet
despite widespread local complaints, Beijing endorsed him for a
second term in 2002 because , said national leaders, they were quite
content with his performance. And
well they might be because he had carried out
his assigned tasks to the letter, including
a long list of decisions by a Beijing-appointed
Preparatory Committee that tried to undo as many of Britain's 11th
-hour reforms as possible and more. [11]
By the end of
Tung Chee-hwa's first term, Hong Kong's wholly-elected District
Boards had been rechristened District Councils and reinforced with
enough appointed members to ensure conservative majorities. Two
wholly elected municipal housekeeping councils had been abolished
and the Legislative Council was being run in strict accordance with
Basic Law rules. Legislators may not introduce bills that relate
to public expenditure, government structure,
or its operation, and the Chief Executive's written
consent is necessary for all bills relating to government policy.
Additionally,
no more than half the 60-seat council can be directly elected and
proportional representation is mandated for these contests. Hence
democratically inclined candidates, who have garnered at least 60%
of the popular vote in all Legco elections since 1991, can never occupy
more than about one-third of the seats. In the most recent 2004 election,
democrats captured a record total of 25. If all else fails,
a dual voting mechanism for legislative initiatives
gives indirectly elected conservatives veto power
over directly elected democrats.
Tung Chee-hwa
never ceased lamenting the difficulty of pushing his bills through
this divided legislature and democrats never ceased lamenting their
inability to block even one. But conditions
for changing these arrangements and amending the Basic Law are also
so strict as to render them difficult to meet and impossible to achieve
without the central government's approval. Indeed, that approval
can be invoked on all matters deemed by the center to concern its
relationship with Hong Kong. Still not satisfied, Beijing authorized
the creation, in 2000, of a Central Liaison Office
headed by ranking mainland officials in seeming
violation of the spirit if not the actual letter of the Basic Law
(Article 22).
This new office
succeeds the multi-purpose New China News Agency
that had served since 1949 as Beijing's local representative and
leader of Hong Kong's "pro-China" community, as well as cover for
its still-unacknowledged branch of the Communist Party. [12]
In a city dominated by anti-communist mainland émigrés, this minority took
defiant pride in calling itself "leftist" and "patriotic" as a mark
of distinction from everyone else. Contributing
further to the sense of grievance and solidarity was the Hong Kong
government's peculiar method of containment. As a result, mainland-owned
banks, businesses, and publications, patriotic schools, and the largest
trade union federation grew into established fixtures of local society,
but their leaders were otherwise shunned. The colonial establishment
included no leftists and their influence was checked by
all the less benign methods at a colonial ruler's
disposal, leaving a residue of resentment that
has yet to fade.
The News Agency
staff performed a yeoman's service before 1997, by mobilizing this
alienated community, placating business elites, scouting for other
sympathetic talents, and coaxing erstwhile enemies to cooperate
on the various founding committees of the new SAR government. But
what was accepted as necessary during the pre-1997 transition has
now been institutionalized in the new liaison office. Its staff
works tirelessly to mobilize and coordinate local partisans on Beijing's
behalf for every election and political debate. Their solidarity
is unwavering and despite internal differences,
they never break ranks on the issues that matter
to Beijing, making it difficult now to see where one system ends and
the other begins.
WHAT PRICE PATRIOTISM?
That avowedly
pro-communist politicians, conventional conservatives, and liberal
democrats can contest elections and sit peacefully in the same council
chambers must be counted a unique achievement in the history of
China's civil war politics. That the much-repeated
pre-1997 promises about local autonomy are being compromised in so
many ways lies at the heart of Taiwan's determination to avoid a similar
fate. In Hong Kong, the tense standoff over political boundaries
reached a crisis point in 2003-04, when Beijing's
insistence on new national security legislation
put Tung Chee-hwa to his greatest test and showed the two-systems
experiment at its worst.
Beijing's decision
to include Article 23 in the final draft of the Basic Law was made
soon after the Tiananmen upheaval in 1989,
when Hong Kong activists began calling for a democratic mainland
government. Article
23 obliges Hong Kong to enact legislation against treason, secession,
sedition, subversion, theft of state secrets, and foreign organizations
that threaten China's security. Novice that he was, Tung Chee-hwa
vowed to enact the legislation during his first
year in office. Pro-Beijing politicians took
credit for persuad ing him otherwise but seem only to have conveyed
the need for caution without explaining why.
A consultation
draft was published in September 2002, soon
after Tung's second term began and even if mainland legal drafters
were not directly involved, their Hong Kong counterparts made it
seem so. The official "nothing to fear" mantra appeared meaningless
given the range of proscriptions and gaping loopholes left open
in pursuit of national stability and state security.
[13]
Treason was to
include instigating foreigners to invade any
Chinese territory, an unstated reference to American defense of
Taiwan. Failure to report an offense of treason was to be criminalized
along with aiding, abetting, counseling, and conspiring (chap. 2).
Subversion was even more dangerous, being defined as any attempt
to overthrow the central government or "disestablish the basic system of the state," as
defined in the Chinese constitution, by force or other "unlawful means" (chap.
5). Secession meant secession. Sedition meant incitement
to commit all the above and included a range of routine Hong Kong
activities like possessing "seditious publications" without a "reasonable
excuse" such as academic research or news reporting (chap. 4). Theft
of state secrets was equally problematic in its
definition (chap. 6).
These crimes
were also introduced without any explanation of whether mainland
classified-information categories would apply. Hong
Kong's resistance would turn on this point more
than any other because all kinds of information
from disease outbreaks to economic data, as well as military and
political affairs, are systematically expunged from mainland academic
and news publications by censors applying the same catchall norms
of stability and security that Hong Kong was being asked to embrace.
Political novice
that he still was, Tung Chee-hwa left promotion
to the one person among his principal officials least qualified
for the task. Perhaps the Secretary for Security's most revealing
comment came in an unrelated aside when she boasted
to a reporter that she had learned to "drink like a man," the better
to mix with her mainland public security colleagues. [14]
Then, like some petty-minded holdover from Hong Kong's past now
trying to please her new mainland mentors, Regina Ip pouted and
sneered her way through months of controversy while Tung looked
on and the patriotic community applauded her "leadership." They
even formed a friends-of-Regina lobby to promote her candidacy as
his successor. She insisted that most people either supported the
legislation or could not care less, while loyalists closed
ranks to blame democratic opponents for dereliction
of patriotic duty and misleading a gullible public.
In the end, 500,000
people rose up and saved themselves by staging Hong Kong's largest
angriest protest march since 1989. Tung was unmoved but the July
1, 2003 demonstration convinced his conservative pro-business allies
to withdraw their support for his bill, which remains on indefinite
hold. As for the catalyst, fate could not have intervened in
a more dramatic fashion. SARS originated just across the border
in Guangdong province during the winter of 2002-03.
Health authorities in Guangdong maintained their
silence, as required by law, until the deadly new virus began spreading
worldwide via transit passengers from Hong Kong.
The disease needed
a name and the international health community called it Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome, after its Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region point-of-transmission where the new namesake unwittingly
added insult to injury. Schools closed and all
social life came to a virtual halt, as did the Article 23 debate,
but Tung Chee-hwa would not delay his legislative timetable. By
the time the all clear sounded in late June,
just days before the planned protest march, 300
SARS deaths had been recorded in Hong Kong alone.
Meanwhile, a
relevant provision on theft of state secrets
had been revised and readied for passage into law. The offense was
to be defined as illegal access to and unlawful disclosure of "information related
to Hong Kong affairs within the responsibility of the Central Authorities." [15] This
provision would have made illegal the acquisition
and disclosure of information such as that initially
withheld by mainland authorities from Hong Kong's Director of Health
when she tried in vain to confirm early reports of the disease.
Democrats rushed
to exploit the upsurge of public anger with more urgent arguments
for a government accountable to the people of Hong Kong. Specific new demands were raised for full democracy or
a wholly elected government by 2007-08, the earliest dates allowed
under Basic Law guidelines for changing the existing arrangements. Even
though opinion polls showed great majorities
in agreement, these were the demands that Beijing
summarily rejected in April 2004, with the reminder that Hong Kong
already had enough democratic freedoms. This direct intervention was
justified on grounds that instability threatened, thereby making the
issue a central government concern, despite the Basic Law's mandate
for local consultation on political reform and a specific note that
Legco reform was a local Hong Kong matter.
The political
drama provoked by Article 23 had several more
episodes yet to run but Beijing's verdict capped an important criticism-study
campaign, reminiscent in style if not content of revolutionary days
gone by. The aim was to teach a slow-learning Hong Kong what Beijing
meant by "two systems" and to discredit all who would argue
otherwise. Dubbed Basic Law "guardians," the main teachers
were elderly mainland law professors who had
helped with drafting the law in the 1980s, and
were now assigned to explain its true intent.
The guardians
and Beijing officials spoke repeatedly, in
loud angry voices, elaborating on the key two-systems promissory
slogans: "high
degree of autonomy" and "Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong," to answer
the questions "how high" and "which people." The message
was clear: autonomy assumes that Beijing must
take precedence over Hong Kong whenever Beijing deems necessary, and
the Hong Kong people in charge must be patriotic. The old Hong Kong
myth linking elections by definition to independence
was added for good measure.
Professor Xiao
Weiyun arrived from Beijing in January 2004
and set the tone. Basic Law drafters had actually
been thinking of the mid-21 st century for wholly elected Hong Kong
government, he said, not 2007. He also emphasized that it was for
the central government to decide because, "in one country with two systems, one country is
prior and fundamental." Only a strong China could have forced
Hong Kong's return and only a strong China could
keep it.[16]
As to who should
rule, how can anyone who opposes Article 23
legislation to safeguard national security be called patriotic,
Beijing officials asked. Of course they cannot, chorused local pro-Beijing
partisans , and had not Deng Xiaoping himself said that patriots
should rule Hong Kong? The conclusion was easy and local patriots
had in any case been proclaiming it for years. "Traitor," screamed
the placards and hecklers who greeted Martin Lee when he returned
from one of his lobbying trips to Washington. Like father, like son, scoffed
Vice-Minister of Commerce An Min, in Beijing.
Martin Lee's father had been a Nationalist general
and opposed the Communist Party before fleeing to Hong Kong in 1949.
[17]
The Basic Law
must be understood in its entirety, explained the guardians who
returned for more seminars in March. Spirit, essence, and
legislative intent were more important than words, they declared. Patriotism
and executive leadership were the essence even
if not mentioned in so many words and universal
suffrage, which was, must not be mistaken for true democracy. [18]
Patriotism was
in any case the fulcrum on which all else turned
and in Beijing's eyes, patriotism's logic was irreducible. If democrats
continued to protest, they were unpatriotic and
since they did, so they must be. If they won a majority in Legco,
they would overthrow executive-led government, demand universal
suffrage, and use democracy as a cover for independence just like
President Chen Shui-bian was doing in Taiwan. Such was the real
meaning, hidden within Hong Kong's new marching slogan, "return power to the people." Beijing
had already taken back power from the British
in the name of all the Chinese people. Returning that power to the
people of Hong Kong, through a wholly elected government, would
therefore be tantamount to independence and a
denial of Chinese sovereignty.
COMPOUNDING THE PREDICAMENT
Having backed
itself into this corner, only Beijing can find a way out. If patriotism's irreducible logic were not being used
in the service of endangered legitimacy, and if Beijing's predicament
were not so real, those concerned could rest easy in the assumption
that a peaceful solution will eventually emerge. In fact, all the
principal players do still assume this, which is why they continue
to exploit the space between danger signs. But they also hope
no one miscalculates because if anyone does,
the 1989 Tiananmen Square precedent for subduing
unruly unarmed civilians is still fresh in the public's memory.
Beijing's new
Anti-Secession Law is only the most recent
of the danger signals, although it actually represents a step back
from the brink, as first articulated in 2000. Two white papers were
issued that year, one specifically on Taiwan and the other on defense.
Both toughened Beijing's long-standing refusal to renounce the use
of force should Taiwan continue to procrastinate "indefinitely." [19]
The 2005 law says the same thing but is more circumspect. It threatens
to use "non-peaceful means" to preempt Taiwan's independence, rather
than to enforce reunification arbitrarily.
Still, everyone
is playing a risky game. As with Hong Kong,
the current phase of escalating tension began soon after the collapse
of communism elsewhere, when Beijing circled the wagons and determined
to defy the odds. In this life and death struggle, national
leaders cast economic growth as their only friend and political reform
as a mortal enemy. Taiwan did not need to wait until 1997 to see how
Hong Kong's two-systems model actually worked because the Basic Law,
promulgated in 1990, spelled out the fundamentals for all to see. The
response began with a series of subtle maneuvers initiated by the
Nationalist Party's first native-born Taiwanese leader, Lee Teng-hui. He
succeeded Chiang Kai-shek's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, as head of both
party and government upon the younger Chiang's death in 1988. Lee
won Taiwan's first ever presidential election
in 1996 and retired in 2000.
Before the early
1990s, both sides of the Taiwan Strait could at least agree that
they were part of one China awaiting reunification. But
from that time, Lee's Nationalist government moved in progressively
less subtle ways to establish a separate space and identity for Taiwan
that does not assume either prior unity or future reunification. Beijing
countered, beginning with then President Jiang Zemin's January 1995
speech outlining an eight-point plan for reunification. [20] Beijing
also began marking time. After Hong Kong in 1997 and Macau
in 1999, Taiwan would be the next order of business.
Using the same
logic applied to Hong Kong, the official habit of referring to Taiwan's
democratization as just another independence ploy also dates from
the mid-1990s. Officials adapted other
new Hong Kong tactics and tried their best to influence Taiwan election
results with variations on the patriot theme. In Taiwan's case,
the formula included much saber rattling with military exercises timed
to remind voters of the impending threat. Similarly, a flurry
of news releases preceding Taiwan's first presidential election in
March 1996 declared that to vote for a president was by definition
to vote for independence, regardless of the candidate. The
February 2000 Taiwan white paper was issued just
a month before the second presidential election
and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji himself contributed a speech warning
Taiwan voters not to do something they would later regret because
Chinese soldiers were willing to die for the cause of national reunification.
Beijing's frustration
grew as Taiwan ignored both carrots and sticks. All
the candidates mocked Premier Zhu's warning and
the voters did exactly what he had tried to
prevent by electing Chen Shui-bian. Chen was the candidate of the
pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party and he made history
by breaking the Nationalists' 70-year hold on power -- providing
yet another reason for Beijing to fear electoral politics.
Like Hong Kong's
democrats, the new president spoke of democracy
not just as a source of pride but of protection as well. He
also went further by suggesting that the people
of Taiwan should themselves be allowed to decide on reunification,
through a referendum or some other means. Hence Chinese leaders
rail at Taiwanese democracy as a cover for independence, whereas
Taiwan's drift toward "independence" is
actually a protective cover for democracy. But in Beijing's
eyes, reunification is a non-negotiable sacred trust and not for the
people to decide, which is why even the mere mention of "referendum" sets
off an instantaneous barrage of protest.
Left to themselves
over time, however, Taiwan voters would undoubtedly be able to do
more than anyone else to help Beijing deconstruct its fears since
no serious public opinion poll has ever produced more than a minority
for independence. Of course, most people reject
the idea of reunification as well. Majorities always favor
the status quo and will presumably continue to
do so for an uncertain period of indefinite duration,
unless something happens or can be made to happen, which is where
the game of wits and nerves begins.
For Beijing,
sometime and maybe are not good enough, and
only a credible threat of force will end the
drift. For Taiwan, only a self-governing political system can protect
against Hong Kong's fate. Threats from Beijing only confirm Taiwan's
demand for protection, leaving "pro-unification" and "pro-independence" politicians
to dance around carefully worded variations of
the same response. Meanwhile from the sidelines,
old Lee Teng-hui plays the role of all-party whip, calling Beijing's
military buildup a bluff and urging Taiwan, in effect, not to concede
too much too soon. But in Beijing hard liners are naturally playing
the same game. Force deployed, they retort, is the only credible
use for a threat proclaimed.
In fact, the hardliners on both sides know exactly what they are
doing and Lien Chan's dramatic trip to Beijing in late April 2005
illustrated the positive potential of their brinkmanship game. Lien
is the current Nationalist Party chairman and has unsuccessfully contested
two presidential elections against Chen Shui-bian. Lien's historic
journey home, the first for any Nationalist leader since 1949, may
have seemed like an act of treachery to Chen and a gesture of submission
to Beijing, so soon after passage of its Anti-Secession Law. But the
gesture also essentially called Beijing's bluff and Lien said nothing
about reunification. On the contrary, he championed a peaceful status
quo and Beijing had no choice but accept what in 2000 it proclaimed
a provocation for war. Further in return for Lien's renunciation of
independence, Beijing even had to listen while he lectured, circumspectly,
on the wisdom of political reform. As a result, his Nationalists may
well win back the presidency in 2008 because Beijing will presumably
remain on its best behavior until then so as not to prejudice their
chances of victory -- whereupon Beijing will still be left with an
independent-minded Taiwan determined to avoid Hong Kong's stifling
political fate.
The two sides
have thus played each other to a draw for now,
but the game is far from over and there is third party involvement
with the United States still responsible for Taiwan's defense. Unfortunately,
the current American administration does not "do nuance," because
China's dilemma was difficult enough to grasp
for a president who did.
During its final
years in office, the Clinton administration
scoured the world in search of conflicts to solve by way of compensation
for his tattered legacy at home. Eager aides hit upon Taiwan reunification
and recommended Hong Kong's seemingly perfect "two systems" as a
model solution. Taiwan naturally balked at the gratuitous effort
that just as naturally encouraged Beijing and
heightened tensions ahead of Taiwan's 2000 presidential election.
Now the Bush administration is working to similar effect on
a far more dangerous scale by drawing Japan into
the potential tinderbox of cross-strait relations.
Back when it
first assumed the Taiwan obligation, Washington was motivated by
anti-communist instinct and anti-communist containment. Now
both motives have been absorbed into the Bush
administration's grandiose global scheme for
preemptive defense, ensuring that decisions made in its name will
be even more indifferent to the consequences for political life
on the ground. In this case, of course, the president should have
no trouble recognizing the consequences since Bush espouses the
same absolutist patriotic certitudes as Beijing, whose leaders only
aspire to project power regionally as Washington does on a global
scale.
Given the Bush
administration's pretensions, however, what's good for America is
good for the world. Washington therefore remains
unconcerned about its provocative role in tapping Japan as a key Asian
partner in the new grand strategy. This has meant not just
upgrading Tokyo's military and diplomatic status,
but using Japan as a counterweight against China's
growing power, regardless of the bitter memories Japan's 20 th century
adventures in China evoke.
Most recently,
in February 2005, a pact between Tokyo and Washington took the relationship
a step further by making the defense of Taiwan,
against China, a common security objective. Beijing's new Anti-Secession
Law may have provided the incentive for this long-contemplated move
but its impact spread like wildfire all the same. By March
an internet petition opposing Japan's admission to the exclusive club
of permanent United Nations Security Council members had registered
29 million Chinese signatures. By mid-April, China had erupted
in the largest series of street demonstrations
since an American plane bombed the Chinese embassy
in Yugoslavia six years earlier.
Actually, if
it were just a matter of ending the final phase
of China's civil war, a firm "no war, no independence" no nonsense
pledge from Washington would be enough to see the job done. Enforcing
the pledge, instead of just reciting it on special occasions, would
give the participants time to work through their political differences
and Beijing could concentrate on economics without
having to plan for the military conquest of Taiwan. But ending the
Chinese civil war is the least of Washington's concerns.
For those making
U.S. foreign policy today, Taiwan is a small issue -- like
gay marriage in domestic politics -- to be exploited
in pursuit of larger ends. For American conservatives, Taiwan
represents the final phase of their own global war against communism. Such
a prize is surely worth fighting for, especially if someone else can
be induced to help out with the fighting, and inflamed political passions
on the streets of China might be just the spark needed to light a
larger conflagration. Should it delay China's impact on the
global competition for markets and resources, so much the better in
this scenario. Preventing the emergence of rival power centers
is an essential premise of Washington's new defense strategy and military
alliances are being designed to cope with disruptive contingencies
wherever they occur. Someone else can worry about the dismay
being bred among first generation voters in Taiwan
and Hong Kong at so cynical a manipulation of
the great American ideals they thought they were emulating.
Suzanne
Pepper is a Hong Kong-based American writer.
She is the author of Civil War in China: The Political Struggle,
1945-59 (University of California Press, 1978; 2nd ed. Rowan
and Littlefield, 1999); Radicalism and Education Reform in 20th-Century
China (Cambridge University Press, 1996); and a forthcoming
book on Hong Kong's political history. Email: pepper@cuhk.edu.hk
ENDNOTES
1. Peter
Wesley-Smith, Unequal
Treaty, 1898-1997: China,
Great Britain, and Hong Kong's New Territories (Hong Kong:
Oxford University Press, rev. ed. 1998). [Return
to Text]
2. Text, National
People's Congress Standing Committee, "Decision
on Issues Concerning Methods for Selecting Hong
Kong's Chief Executive and Forming Legco," Beijing, April 26, 2004
(news.xinhuanet.com). [Return to
Text]
3.Sino-British
Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong
Kong (Hong Kong:
Xinhua News Agency, September 1984), p. 3. [Return
to Text]
4. The most detailed
English-language accounts of Hong Kong's confrontation
with its 1997 fate are: Mark Roberti, The
Fall of Hong Kong: China's Triumph and Britain's
Betrayal (New
York: John Wiley, rev. ed. 1996); Robert Cottrell, The
End of Hong Kong: The Secret Diplomacy of Imperial
Retreat (London:
John Murray, 1993). [Return to Text]
5. Governor Bowring,
dispatch 49, March 26, 1856 (source: CO 129/55),
in, Steve Tsang, ed., Government and Politics: A
Documentary History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong University Press,
1995), p. 62. [Return to Text]
6. Ambrose Yeo-chi
King, "Administrative
Absorption of Politics in Hong Kong," Asian Survey, May
1975, pp. 422-39. [Return to Text]
7. Alexander
Grantham, Via Ports: From Hong
Kong to Hong Kong (Hong Kong University Press, 1965), pp. 111-12,
195. [Return to Text]
8. Steve
Yui-Sang Tsang, Democracy Shelved: Great
Britain, China, and Attempts at Constitutional
Reform in Hong Kong, 1945-1952 (Hong Kong: Oxford University
Press, 1988), pp. 12-31. [Return
to Text]
9.Green
Paper: The Further Development of Representative
Government in Hong Kong , July 1984, p. 4. [Return
to Text]
10. Legislative
Council, Hong Kong Hansard, Nov.
27, 1985, pp. 146-49. [Return to Text]
11. Yuan
Qiushi, ed., Xianggang guodu shiqi zhongyao
wenjian huibian (A Compilation of Important Documents on Hong
Kong's Transition Period), (Hong Kong: Sanlian,
1997), pp. 266-317. [Return to Text]
12. The
most informative account of the agency's work,
in Chinese only, was written by one of its
directors after his defection to the U.S.: Xu Jiatun Xianggang
huiyilu (Xu
Jiatun's Hong Kong Memoirs), (Taibei: Lianhobao,
1993), 2 vols. [Return to Text]
13. Security
Bureau, Proposals to Implement Article
23 of the Basic Law: Consultation Document, September
2002. [Return to Text]
14. South
China Morning Post, Hong Kong, March
12, 2003. [Return to Text]
15. Security
Bureau, Implementation of Article 23 of
the Basic Law, National Security (Legislative
Provisions) Bill, Explanatory Notes, February 2003, p. 8. [Return
to Text]
16. South
China Morning Post, Jan. 17, 2004; Ming
Pao Daily News and Ta Kung Pao , both Hong Kong,
both Jan. 17 and Jan. 20, 2004. [Return to Text]
17. South
China Morning Post, Ming Pao Daily News,
Ta Kung Pao, all March
8, 2004. [Return to Text]
18. South
China Morning Post, Ming Pao Daily News,
Ta Kung Pao, all March
16, 2004. [Return to Text]
19. Texts, "The
One-China Principle and the Taiwan Issue," and "China's
National Defense in 2000," in, China Daily , Feb. 22, 2000
and Oct. 17, 2000, respectively. [Return to Text]
20. Renmin
ribao (hai wai ban) , (People's Daily,
overseas edition), Beijing, Jan. 31, 1995. [Return to
Text]
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