Hong Kong’s Legislative Council today rejected Beijing’s plan to bring universal suffrage to the territory. The proposal, had it been passed, would have allowed for Hong Kong’s chief executive to be elected by popular vote — but only candidates approved by Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing nominating committee would have been allowed to stand for election. This veneer of democracy was not enough to satisfy Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers or the thousands of Hong Kongers that, to protest the proposed reforms, occupied some of the city’s main thoroughfares for nearly three months last autumn.
Although last year’s occupiers largely adopted maximalist demands — democracy, full stop — there was likely room for compromise. Meaningful reform of the nominating committee, for example, might have proved to be a short- or medium-term solution that Beijing, the Hong Kong government, and pro-democracy protesters could have lived with.
But compromise with the people of Hong Kong was apparently never in the cards for Beijing. Xi Jinping & Co. wanted there to be no doubt in Hong Kong where authority ultimately lay, nor did they want to set any sort of precedent for responding to calls for democracy on the mainland. And just as Comrade Xi dug his heels in during the “Umbrella Movement” — so-called because peaceful protesters used umbrellas to defend themselves from police tear gas in the early days of the demonstrations — he’s likely to dig his heels in now.
With freedom already in peril in Hong Kong, there’s now a risk that Beijing further extends its increasingly visible and always suffocating hand into the territory’s affairs. The city’s pro-democracy camp will continue its decades-long effort to ensure Hong Kongers control their own destiny within the “one country, two systems” arrangement with the mainland. But Beijing’s refusal to countenance any sort of truly meaningful reform will leave more Hong Kongers disillusioned with that arrangement.
Given that more and more Hong Kong residents do not even identify as Chinese, and given that Beijing has made plain that options for democratic reform are limited at best, growing numbers of Hong Kongers, especially from younger cohorts, may be attracted to the (until now) fringe pro-independence movement.
Should that movement even hint at becoming more mainstream, Beijing will look to quash it. The resulting limitations on civil liberties in Hong Kong will cause even greater discord between the city residents and the Chinese capital. Unfortunately, Xi may be more than happy to strip Hong Kong of the future its people aspire to.
from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1dMNgHO
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment