Big Lychee, Various Sectors

One in 10 Mainlanders, the online South China Morning Post was saying this morning, calls Hong Kong home. That would be some 130 million of them. Looking around Causeway Bay, some might say that sounds about right; the key word of course is ‘home’, which does not mean ‘source of tax-free junk and non-poisonous baby food’. The print edition, to my great disappointment, gets it right. Hong Kong has taken in 762,044 people from north of the border since the handover. This arises from a Legislative Council question asked by the Democratic Party’s Sin Chung-kai about the One-Way Permit system.

Two things jump out from the Security Bureau’s response. First, the government sees family-reunion immigration from the Mainland as ‘among the important sources of population growth in Hong Kong’. This raises a basic philosophical question: why do we need an ever-rising number of people? The government would usually blather on about the ageing population, but it can’t on this occasion because many of the family-reunion permits go to ‘overage children’, many of whom are middle-aged by now and thus adding to the dreaded demographic disaster we are constantly being told to expect. But to repeat: why, in a city that seems institutionally incapable of finding and allocating even a bare minimum of living space for existing residents, are we supposed to want a growing population?

Second, the official response says there are no ‘justifications or needs’ to (in effect) change the system whereby Mainland, not Hong Kong, authorities decide who gets the permit and when. Off the top of my head, I can think of three ‘justifications or needs’: suspicions that the Mainland authorities are corrupt in handling applications; suspicions that priority goes to Communist Party loyalists to bolster the local United Front presence and pro-Beijing voter base; we’re getting people with low skills who potentially burden the rest of society. And that’s just before breakfast.

On an infinitely more positive, indeed joyful, note: real-estate agency branches are at last starting to close, and the spotty, spiky-haired intermediaries who molest passers-by with developers’ glossy brochures are being rounded up, loaded onto cattle trucks and sent off to be recycled into something socially useful and biodegradable. The Standard, a friend of the property tycoons and the real-estate firms that do much of their dirty work, buys the story that agents’ headcounts are not falling. The collapse in transactions says otherwise.

Correction 1: Considering many property agents’ apparent extreme unsuitability for economically productive work, Mainlanders migrating to Hong Kong under the One-Way Permit scheme are probably boosting our overall human talent levels after all.

Correction 2: The waving of property developers’ glossy brochures no longer takes place. A developer is complying with new regulations on disclosure of information by producing 1,500-page, 10-kg, 11-cm-thick documents. My first reaction on seeing this story was ‘I bet those lousy bastards at Sun Hung Kai are doing this as part of a temper tantrum at no longer being legally allowed to cheat consumers over apartment size’. I swiftly slapped myself out of shame for thinking such a despicable thought.

But then… just a couple of paragraphs into the story, and already there are two people quoted as thinking along much the same lines. How could such wanton cynicism become so widespread?

The brochure that’s bigger than an IPO prospectus concerns a development called the Riva, out in sunny Yuen Long. Obviously, it’s still being built, so suckers thinking of buying can only go and see the ‘show flat’…

Ignore the grotesque chandelier, which is actually quite tasteful by developers’ standards. Note the sideboard, possibly intended to look like a wine bottle cabinet, by the window with the fake blue sky outside. Can it be any more than six inches deep? Note the chairs on either side of it, similarly almost too small to be of any real use. And then of course, the diminutive dining table at which eight people could not possibly have a meal together; even with Snow White sitting at the end, the seven dwarves wouldn’t have enough elbow room.

The idea, of course, is to make the area look bigger than it really is. And to think there’s a couple of cozy, 60-square-foot cells at Stanley Prison that just might possibly have Thomas and Raymond Kwok’s names on them…

Just when you thought they couldn’t find anything else wrong with this city… We all knew that our air is dirty; apparently, it’s also horribly bright. Highly qualified and expensively funded scientists at the University of Hong Kong have discovered that the Big Lychee has a lot more lighting on at night than you would get in places where no-one lives. How much better it would be, they imply, if we ate more carrots and learned to enjoy feeling our way around in the dark like the valiant North Koreans, or suicidal villagers in the far north of wintry Sweden.

Maybe the Happy Foot Massage place in an alleyway down the hill from me could dim its garish sign, which emits such stupendous candlepower that it is detected by NASA’s ‘Curiosity’ Rover on Mars. But we still wouldn’t be able to see the stars, what with all the useful illumination in our urban areas, like the street lamps and the friendly glow of the beer section in 7-Eleven refrigerators. Even if you switched it all off, you still wouldn’t see the Milky Way, for the same reason you can’t see the sky during daytime. Sorry Hong Kong U, but no Nobel Prize this time.

If anything, in this city of black boxes, we need to shed more light rather than less. We might even be able to detect and untangle the logic in pro-Beijing mouth-frother Lau Nai-keung’s latest rant in China Daily.

Something he says here seems to make a certain amount of sense, especially in the context of yesterday’s theoretical clash between Mainland conglomerates and Hong Kong tycoons. The problem is that it comes straight after some really loopy stuff. The reader has three choices: take all of Lau’s article seriously; take none of it seriously; or ignore the first half and accept the second. (This pre-supposes that we understand what he is saying, which is a bit of a stretch – but for the sake of argument, let’s press on.)

He starts by apparently linking US efforts to rearrange the balance of power in Asia with our local pro-democracy ‘Occupy Central’ movement, likening said movement to Al-Qaeda, and concluding that the US and China do in fact see eye to eye after all. He then does his usual pro-forma criticism of moderate pro-dems.

With all that off his chest, he moves on to an altogether more interesting subject: the split in the pro-Beijing camp.

The Love China, Love Hong Kong government in power is prevented by the Love China, Love Hong Kong government-in-waiting from delivering real changes to Hong Kong. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying promised to deliver on land and housing policies, but since his election he has not been able to implement major changes to a system that is suffocating our businesses and making lives miserable. 

The Love China, Love Hong Kong government-in-waiting, on the other hand, is getting impatient with all the waiting. A dinner gathering in Qianhai to be hosted at the end of this month by Wang Guangya, director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, is supposed to end the feud, but the outcome will ultimately depend on what is being served that night. From past experiences, these people have very good appetites. 

In short, what will Mainland officials offer the tycoon supporters of CE-hopeful Henry Tang in return for their cooperation with CY, assuming CY’s head is not on the menu? We might wonder why Beijing doesn’t just stomp the plutocrats into submission; the tiniest threat to their Mainland business interests would do the job. But that brings us back to ‘Occupy Central’. To people like Wang Guangya, Hong Kong’s opposition forces are running dogs of evil Western powers determined to destroy China; the Communist Party needs the tycoons on-side.

Lau goes on to criticize the whole of the “Love China, Love Hong Kong” milieu, in and out of power…

It is by no means clear whether anybody in the camp loves anything but their own self-interest. However, if you want to use the brand you have a duty to maintain its goodwill, as a brand is only as effective as it is consistent. At the end of the day, it’s a thin line between not loving your country and hating it. 

Is there anyone he doesn’t loathe? That he detests the pro-dems and the tycoons isn’t news, but he doesn’t even rule out the local administration – or even the Beijing officials who recently resurrected the zingy love-country-love-harbour catchphrase. Whether you accept 0%, 50% or 100% of his outpourings, you can’t deny the anguish. Everyone else on the more-or-less patriotic side is gearing up for soul-selling, principles-shredding compromise, leaving him the only true believer shining in the darkness.

Click to hear ‘I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight’ by Richard and Linda Thompson!

The South China Morning Post’s Jake van der Kamp warned last week against opening the Hong Kong telecoms market up to a fifth mobile network. In his view, consumers’ interests will be best served by allowing the existing four operators to renew their licences in 2016; that way, the four have a continued incentive to invest in their networks and compete hard on pricing for market share. If a fifth player wants to get in, it can pay the going rate for one of those licences. That’s how other countries do it. Because the 3G radio spectrum is full, the only way to issue a fifth licence is to take bandwidth away from the existing operators – and then one day your bills go up and you can’t get a signal on the MTR.

If this is so, why would the Hong Kong authorities issue a fifth licence? Because, the columnist says, powerful state-owned China Mobile wants a slice of the action here. (It currently has to lease capacity from the other four service providers to provide roaming service to the millions of Mainlanders passing through town on their binge-shopping trips.) In other words, this is Beijing leaning on the Hong Kong government in an area where the latter is supposed to have full autonomy.

There’s another way of looking at it. MarketWatch’s Craig Stephens sees this as an altogether more palatable-sounding ‘eviction of the tycoons’. Three of the mobile licences are held by the Hutchison, Sun Hung Kai and New World empires – all among the top four members of the property cartel – and the fourth is held by Hutchison owner Li Ka-shing’s son Richard. (Their domination of telecoms is something of an aberration; they obviously thought the sector would be a guaranteed cash cow, like their cartelized grips on retailing, housing, transport, electricity, construction materials, the air you breathe, etc. Instead, no doubt to their extreme discomfort, they have ended up having to compete. It is probably one of the few leading segments of the domestic economy where the consumer doesn’t get legally and systematically shafted.)

Seen this way, the issuing of a fifth licence could increase competition, lower prices for consumers and upgrade the network technology. And, as a nice thick helping of icing on the cake, a handful of our most overbearing and exploitative plutocrats get a long-overdue kick in the teeth. What could possibly be wrong with that?

In the background is something far bigger and potentially more sinister. As both the columnists indicate, this is about powerful Mainland state tentacles slithering into the local economy. Jake van der Kamp mentions the displacement a while ago of certain existing chains’ gas stations in Hong Kong by branches of state-run Petrochina and Sinopec. He has also written about the long-term prospects of China Light and Power’s electricity monopoly in Kowloon-NT falling into Beijing-connected hands now it has been pressured into an onerous long-term commitment to buy Mainland (indeed, Petrochina) gas supplies. (CLP was founded and is owned by Iraqi Jews rather than sons of the Celestial Kingdom, we may note.)

One of the conspiracy theories surrounding Communist loyalist Leung Chun-ying’s surprise appointment as Hong Kong’s Chief Executive last year concerns just this sort of economic ‘Mainlandization’. It’s Gotterdammerung for the property tycoons, as well-connected Mainland companies run by princelings and/or the state take over. Starting with the property sector – hence the arrest and forthcoming trial of Sung Hung Kai’s Kwok brothers on corruption charges and plans to build new towns near the border. History repeats itself: recall how old British hongs like Hutchison came into the clutches of Li Ka-shing and other local tycoons back in the 70s and 80s.

Do Mainland conglomerates have a big incentive to muscle into Hong Kong? On the one hand, if the Mainland and the Big Lychee were a unified economy, this city would account for one dollar of GDP for every 29 produced in the rest of the country. Not bad for 7 million out of 1.3 billion people, but hardly a huge gold mine. And overt bullying will only arouse international concerns and make life harder for corporate China as it tries to enter new markets in the rest of the world. On the other hand, it must be pretty crowded up there with Li Peng’s daughter, Zhu Rongji’s son, Wen Jiabao’s nephews and the rest all trying to grab their slice of the pie. And if you’re going to expand overseas, where better to start than an international city where you can help yourself to a niche with a phone call to Comrade CY?

To the extent that the conspiracy theorists are correct, there is nothing we can do about it. In theory, the Legislative Council will decide on the telecoms licence, and it will be interesting to see who votes which way in a tycoons vs Mainland fight (here’s the consultation paper, China Mobile’s case and Hutchison’s case). Ultimately, the Communist Party has tanks, and we don’t. So perhaps it’s best to look on the bright side either way. If Hong Kong resists Mainland incursion into commanding sectors of the local economy, that’s one up for ‘One Country, Two Systems’; if it doesn’t, we see our favourite tycoons crushed, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people – indeed, the devil in me wonders if it wouldn’t be worth it.

Boring Hong Kong newspapers lead today with the official confirmation of China’s new leadership, including the appointment of Li Keqiang as the new Premier – an event that was pretty much cast in stone years ago. Alongside the reports are lengthy discussions and analyses, all skirting around the fact that nobody has a clue about these people or what they think.

The more entertaining newspapers, on the other hand, cover gruesome murders. On average, Hong Kong has barely a couple of homicides a month, so when three gory cases come along on successive days, it’s quite something. Faster than you can say ‘clustering illusion’, the Standard’s tastefully blood-spattered ‘Mary Ma’ editorial demands to know what’s happening.

All three cases, totaling four slayings and a suicide, are domestic, which is not statistically improbable. In the first, discovered on Friday, a 29-year-old male plus a companion are accused of killing both his parents in dismemberment-of-bodies, heads-in-fridge fashion. Debts, a childhood of forced piano lessons and subsequent inability to get a girlfriend may figure in all this, along of course with spending too much time alone on the computer – which as we all know turns anyone into a violent criminal, present company excepted.

In the second, an 18-year-old, again with a companion, is accused in the killing of his father and injuring of his mother. Among potentially juicy ingredients here are creepy comics, freaking out at the crime scene reconstruction, and maybe even the fact that the mother is Filipino (marriages to Filipinos are fairly uncommon among Hong Kong Chinese men, who perhaps find it hard to handle the Southeast Asians’ incessant cheerfulness). Plus, no doubt, excessive computer use.

The third is rather up-market. The male victim was a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, racehorse owner and ‘fruit logistics’ magnate living in a luxury Tsimshatsui duplex that rented for HK$130,000 (now of course subject to a discount for possibly being haunted). The ex-wife stabbed him nearly a hundred times and, after a call to her German current-but-separated husband, threw herself from the 77th floor window. Two little kids survive. All very messy, in every sense.

Of the crimes, the third would probably be destined for the highest profile if it weren’t for the fact that with the perpetrator beyond the reach of the law there will be no trial. A movie maybe? On the surface, all three tragedies look like pretty classic examples of Hong Kong murders (and suicides for that matter), with the key element looking, essentially, like unacknowledged and untreated mental problems that fester and intensify before erupting. They won’t go down in history alongside the Braemar Hill killings (memorable for dashing the colonial-era assumption that Chinese didn’t kill white people) or the Nancy Kissel milkshake-and-carpet dysfunctional-luxury-lifestyle extravaganza. And obviously, none comes remotely close to the ultimate, archetypal Big Lychee homicide: the Hello Kitty murder.

We are all relieved that among those people who have not been unlawfully killed in recent days is BC Lo, vice-chairman of something called the HK Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions. His SCMP article on Saturday calling for ‘joined-up thinking’ on Hong Kong’s tourist influx proposes exciting new ways to attract even more visitors, especially once the Zhuhai bridge opens in a few years’ time. Among his profound and visionary proposals for cramming tens of millions of additional tourists into the city…

…the government can consider using Lantau as a holding area. As long as we develop the area properly, our guests will be happy to shop, wine and dine there before returning home or going into the city centre.

Lucky Lantau.

On the subject of food pretentiousness, here’s a recent South China Morning Post epic recipe for two boiled eggs…

I declare the weekend open.

Ceaselessly jabbering National People’s Congress deputy Rita Fan says, to no-one’s great surprise, that it was she who started the Great Hong Kong Preliminary Election Debate Controversy Scare of 2013. Essentially, her proposal was that 100 pro-Beijing loyalists would meet in a secret conclave and announce the Chinese Communist Party’s approved Chief Executive candidates via smoke signals from a chimney, and the city’s voters could then choose between them via universal suffrage. It was just something she blurted out. Just as most of us jerk our leg when a doctor taps our knee, Rita involuntarily yacks when a reporter puts a microphone before her. It’s surely not my fault, she basically pleads, if they take what I say seriously.

Mercifully, the two-week circus in the nation’s capital comes to an end tomorrow for another year.

Back home, the Economic Development Commission has its first meeting. A gushing government press release informs us that…

Members with immense experience and relevant professional knowledge have made insightful comments and entered into interactive and constructive dialogues [sic] with the Government on how to grasp the opportunities provided for under the National 12th Five-Year Plan and other plans, as well as how to promote further economic development and how to maintain Hong Kong’s long term competitiveness.

Fatuous Waffle ‘R’ Us. Chief Executive CY Leung set the body up a couple of months back. Members include a generous number of pro-establishment business figures from former-CE Donald Tsang’s time, which suggests a rift-healing effort to please Beijing.

However, there is a less symbolic side to it all, concerning a question that dates back to colonial times: should Hong Kong stick with its supposed non-interventionism or should it go for Singapore-style state planning? Today’s China Daily columnist is a typical proponent of the latter approach, saying the old approach has left our economy…

…too lopsided, relying too much on a few sectors, particularly real estate and finance…

The Chief Executive’s move to help develop other industries and diversify the economy is the right step for tackling the city’s deep-seated social problems. A diversified economy and thriving industries will help improve the city’s job-market structure, providing better employment opportunities and upward mobility to workers while giving rise to a stronger middle class.

Government’s direct investment in certain industries or projects is necessary, especially when they are still in nascent stages and fail to attract sufficient private investment, or when they are critical to the development of other industries…

The argument is that because there is so much profit to be made out of real estate, capital fails to flow into other industries. It is an analysis that confuses cause and effect. Capital fails to flow into other industries because it gets sucked up by the real-estate sector and its highly supportive associate, Government Land Monopoly Inc. Thanks to an artificial shortage of space, rents (landlord/developer/government earnings) are so high that only financial services and luxury brand retailers can generate enough profit to exist. The economy does not ‘rely’ too much on real estate; real estate is a parasite.

If government and developers sucked up less of the profit made by wealth-creating economic activities, a hundred commercial flowers could bloom. What would they be? They might be health care, or nanotechnology, or creative blah-blah, or some state-picked ‘pillar’ industry. Or they might be something else that hadn’t occurred to bureaucrats. Investors and entrepreneurs would put their resources into whatever they thought would bring the best returns. The key is: they would have an incentive to do so because they would no longer have to share so much of the returns with property tycoons and John Tsang.

Proponents of more government intervention in capital allocation, rather than less government control of land, must be doing one of two things. Either they are putting the cart before the horse, out of sheer simple-mindedness. Or they want to nurture certain industries without disrupting the property cartel-government racket – said industries just so happening to be ones they are involved in, and said nurturing to be accomplished with your and my money.

Many of the academics involved in this debate belong to the first group. They are so accustomed to the distortions of the land system they don’t notice them. Certain business figures, however, surely come in the second, rather more odious, category. The South China Morning Post quotes two members of the Economic Development Commission…

…The government is ready to plan for the next 10 to 20 years, Allan Zeman, chairman of Ocean Park, said. “The government used to have its hands off. Now, like Singapore, it is showing quite a strong leadership.”…

…Allen Ha, chairman of the Lantau Economic Development Alliance, called upon the government to … boost the city’s tourism capacity by supplying more land for hotels.

Pro-democrat politicians could demand: “Whose land is it anyway?” Instead, they loudly demand that EDC members make declarations of interests. Sheets of paper? Look all around – their interests are staring you in the face.

CPPCC chairman Yu Zhengsheng states that China will “more strictly follow the socialist path of political development with Chinese characteristics [and] not imitate Western political systems under any circumstances.” We have been hearing this from dozens of top officials, what – once a month on average? – for at least a couple of decades now. If they’re so sure about it, why do they need to keep saying it? My guess is that they know the current system is unsustainable, but, out of self-interest or genuine practical doubts, cannot accept the only known viable alternative. There is nothing left to do but rule out the alternative with frenzied vehemence and pray the Beijing Model ‘China Dream’ comes true. In fact, it is rising vehemence: note the “under any circumstances” added to the usual phrasing.

It is our friend Mr Yu, of course, who prompted the recent fuss about how any future Chief Executive of Hong Kong must be a patriot who loves the country and loves Hong Kong. More than a few rumours suggest that Beijing is petrified of the Civic Party’s Audrey Eu getting on the ballot. For what it’s worth, the Standard’s ‘Mary Ma’ column alludes to this. (Perhaps someone on the Mainland is still smarting from then-CE Donald Tsang’s awkward TV debate with the 5ft 10in barrister in 2010.)

Audrey will be a sprightly and fragrant 63 at the time of the 2017 election, with – one might venture to suggest – a trace more charisma than the Democratic Party’s Albert Ho. If Chinese officials really are that worried about her, she has an intriguing opportunity to engage in some effective realpolitik: essentially, do a deal for better governance in exchange for not trying to run in 2017.

One way would be to produce, sooner rather than later, a dynamite policy platform guaranteed to win strong public backing (all our favourites: land reform, a cap on tourists, proper health funding, a fairer school system, crush the Heung Yee Kuk, kick Disney out, free beer on Fridays, etc, etc). This would put Beijing in a spot. They might push their preferred man to promise to match her reformist proposals; they might offer her a minister-level job in exchange for backing their guy – who knows? Sadly, such a practical, results-oriented, getting-your-hands-dirty approach hardly seems likely from Audrey or any of our pro-democracy idealists. It’s so much more fun being a martyr for an abstract cause.

On a far more serious note, respected China-watcher Steve Tsang explains the black hair dye conundrum: the top leadership in Zhongnanhai sport identical heads of hair (and suits) to avoid standing out, which could mean being blamed for mistakes. Danwei’s Jeremey Goldkorn adds that the uniform look also reinforces the image of group responsibility as opposed to rule by an individual. It all makes sense: the idea of ruthless, Communist-trained engineers indulging in vanity-driven preening always seemed a bit jarring. So, logically, we can infer that anyone who does stand out is someone with no power or influence at all, but is present purely as a token. Thus…

Click to hear ‘Song for Audrey’ by Backseat Goodbye!

With a sort of not-sure-why-I’m-here look in his eyes, Former Hong Kong Chief Secretary and unsuccessful Chief Executive candidate Henry Tang is ‘elected’ to the Standing Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Ex-CE of Macau Edmund Ho advises us not to view the appointment as a consolation prize after Henry failed to get the Big Lychee’s top post, even though it was handed to him on a plate. In other words, yes, it is a consolation prize. And a pretty worthless one too. In the old days, the Queen would give you a knighthood and you could call yourself ‘Sir’. (Some people, like Hopewell Holdings boss Gordon Wu, still pretty much insist on it. Is this a tycoon’s version of waving a colonial flag?) Ho adds that Henry got the job because ‘he knows many people from various sectors’ – in case anyone was wondering how they too could qualify for this esteemed body.

Among other lucky new or continuing Hong Kong members of the CPPCC Standing Committee: Hospital Authority chairman Anthony Wu; Peter Lee Ka-kit, son of Henderson Land boss Lee Shau-kee; Sing Tao chairman Charles Ho; Victor Li, son of Cheung Kong/Hutchison boss Li Ka-shing; New World Development chairman Henry Cheng; and Wharf chairman Peter Woo.

That list includes representatives of all the top four members of the Hong Kong property cartel save Sun Hung Kai, whose owner-bosses are sadly busy facing corruption charges. It might seem strange that the people who are in many ways responsible for the Big Lychee’s most serious social, political and economic problems are given such honours. In fairness, it is government policy rather than the lucky developers who are the cause of Hong Kong’s property pyramid scheme and its attendant evils. The reason is that, apart from Cheng, all the people on the list supported Henry in his tragic and doomed bid for CE last year, and Beijing needs to give them all this rather vacuous consolation prize. Cheng is there to make it look as if this is not the case.

Most pitiful name in the line-up is surely Peter Lee. The podgy heir to Henderson Land recently slammed young Hongkongers for the ‘outrageous’ act of waving the colonial flag (a pronouncement that had me rummaging around in my cupboards to dig out my trusty old lion-and-dragon banner). It is single, Buddhist Peter who famously sired triplets via a surrogate mother. His younger brother Martin is by all accounts relatively switched-on. The bizarre thing is that someone in Beijing seems to imagine that all of us here in Hong Kong will somehow respect this bunch for their senior CPPCC status. (The CPPCC as a whole seems far from exclusive; it looks like they’ll take anybody.)

Back home, the big boss at Radio Television Hong Kong, Director of Broadcasting Roy Tang, denies accusations of political interference in editorial decisions, calling them ‘regrettable’. We increasingly see this word used in such circumstances. Rather than dismiss others’ charges as ‘incorrect’, ‘wrong’, ‘erroneous’ or plain ‘bullshit’, wounded innocent parties call them ‘regrettable’, which means something very different, and they do so in a sort of whiny, defensive tone. Most mysterious.

Another mystery is solved, however. Admittedly, the Standard and the South China Morning Post disagree about the number of dead pigs floating around in the river upstream from Shanghai. But who among us could seriously manage to work out whether it’s 2,800 or 3,300 of things all bloated, bobbing up and down and bumping into each other in the muddy waters? How did they get there? It suggests here that people are breeding too many pigs and, following a crackdown on trading in contaminated pork, there’s not enough land in the villages to bury the carcasses. So now we know. Simple, really.

And finally, courtesy of the SCMP, the Headline-You-Have-To-Read-Twice of The Day Award goes to…

An anonymous source ‘close to Beijing’ suggests that some sort of preliminary election will take place when Hong Kong chooses its Chief Executive by universal suffrage, presumably in 2017. Most of us don’t need to be told the Chinese Communist Party cannot allow a popular vote without a guarantee that all candidates accept its monopoly of power; the Basic Law refers to universal suffrage in the context of ‘nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee’. As with the current Chief Executive Election Committee, ‘broadly representative’ means rigged via the selection of members who appear to represent ‘various sectors’ but are mostly loyal, with a crucial number who are totally obedient.

But some people can’t bring themselves to accept or admit this. Pro-Beijing and United Front figures insist on maintaining a fiction about how the CCP is cool with democracy. Former Justice Secretary Elsie Leung claims that whatever system emerges will be free and fair, while non-stop chatterer National People’s Congress delegate Rita Fan blathers away about how the process will be the equivalent of, say, a party-based primary election in the West.

Similarly, pro-democrats cling to their own fantasy about the ability of a one-party state to give up complete ultimate control. Former Chief Secretary Anson Chan is probably right in saying that Hongkongers wouldn’t vote for someone hostile to Beijing, but that cuts no ice with a paranoid CCP that detects foreign subversion all around.

This is not the first time Beijing has managed expectations about democratic development in the Big Lychee. On this occasion, it will likely undermine potential popular support for some forthcoming pro-dem activities.

Last month, law professor Benny Tai proposed a carefully planned ‘Occupy Central’ sit-in for July 2014, drawing on the principles of civil disobedience. There would have been something eloquent and inspiring about 10,000 people peacefully and willingly putting their own liberty at risk for the cause of universal suffrage. Citing Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, participants could expect broad support in the community – especially if Chief Executive CY Leung hadn’t solved his trust and effectiveness problems. The local and national authorities would cringe under the international attention. The one-party state would not collapse, but as we have seen with Article 23 and National Education, Beijing can be induced to blink first. The exercise could at least prompt a much firmer commitment to a semi-democratic poll in 2017 and possibly even help produce a slightly more open system.

Now that’s probably not going to happen. The Democratic Party’s excitable lawmaker Albert Ho and other impetuous, hyperactive and self-indulgent pro-dems will want to push ahead with an ‘Occupy Central’ of their own this year. Unlike Benny Tai, they will not conceive and design it to produce a specific outcome. They will drag other demands, from ‘CY Leung stand down’ to ‘universal pension’ to ‘free Liu Xiaobo’ into the protest. They will leave the public bemused, if not irritated, at the traffic jams and extra policing costs.

Albert Ho is also thinking of standing down as an at-large democratically elected lawmaker in order to trigger a by-election that would serve as a de-facto referendum on democracy. Last time the Civic Party tried to pull this potentially effective but easily wasted stunt, the DP refused to go along. The pro-Beijing camp undermined it by refusing to run any candidates, and the result was an embarrassingly low turn-out and charges of wasting taxpayers’ money. Ho is also proclaiming how willing he is to be jailed and/or lose his right to practice law. He would be better off storing his ego wherever he keeps his charisma.

A rigged preliminary quasi-election poses an interesting possible challenge. What if, say, CY Leung wants to get on the ballot in 2017, and has a feeble 20% opinion poll rating, and another pro-Beijing figure like Tsang Yok-sing also declares an interest and similarly has only a 20% rating – and a pro-dem figure comes forward with 50% in the opinion polls? How does the process and subsequent Chief Executive have any integrity when the rigged Primary Election Committee ‘votes’ to put only Leung and Tsang on the ballot? Thanks to the pro-democrats, Beijing doesn’t have to worry about this problem.