When
the British left 20 years ago, Hong Kong was seen as a rare blend of East and
West that China might seek to emulate. Now, increasingly, it’s a cautionary
tale.
By Keith Bradsher
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A
ferry from the financial district to Lantau, the largest of Hong Kong’s outlying islands.
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There was anxiety about how such a place
could survive in authoritarian China. But even after Beijing began encroaching
on this former British colony’s freedoms, its reputation as one of the
best-managed cities in Asia endured.
The trains ran on time. Crime and taxes were
low. The skyline dazzled with ever taller buildings.
Those are still true. Yet as the 20th
anniversary of the handover approaches on Saturday, that perception of Hong
Kong as something special — a vibrant crossroads of East and West that China
might want to emulate — is fading fast.
Never-ending disputes between the city’s
Beijing-backed leadership and the pro-democracy opposition have crippled the
government’s ability to make difficult decisions and complete important
construction projects.
Caught between rival modes of rule —
Beijing’s dictates and the demands of local residents — the authorities have
allowed problems to fester, including an affordable housing crisis, a troubled
education system and a delayed high-speed rail line.
Many say the fight over Hong Kong’s political
future has paralyzed it, and perhaps doomed it to decline. As a result, the
city is increasingly held up not as a model of China’s future but as a
cautionary tale — for Beijing and its allies, of the perils of democracy, and
for the opposition, of the perils of authoritarianism.
“More and more, there is a sense of
futility,” said Anson Chan, the second-highest official in the Hong Kong
government in the years before and after the handover to Chinese rule. She
blames Beijing’s interference for the city’s woes. “We have this enormous giant
at our doorstep,” she said, “and the rest of the world does not seem to
question whatever the enormous giant does.”
Others spread the blame more broadly. They
point to the opposition’s reluctance to compromise and policies that weaken
political parties, including multiseat legislative districts that allow radical
candidates to win with a minority of votes.
“This kind of a political atmosphere will
disrupt many of the initiatives that may come along,” said Anna Wu, a member of
the territory’s executive council, or cabinet.
A high-speed rail station planned for Hong
Kong is a half-finished shell — years after every other major city in China has
been linked by bullet trains.
Hong Kong ranks only after New York and
London as a center of global finance, but it has no world-class museums. After
15 years of delays, construction of a cultural district intended to rival
Lincoln Center has started, but funding from the legislature could be disrupted
in the coming days.
Widespread complaints about test-obsessed
schools leaving students ill-equipped to compete against those in mainland
China have not led to education reform. Nor has the government found a way to
address simmering public anger over skyrocketing rents and housing prices.
Hong Kong was once known for the speed and
efficiency with which it built huge planned communities with ample public
housing every several years. But it has not managed to do so since Britain
returned it to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997.
Hong Kong is still a gem in many ways, a
place that is hard not to love, and for its 7.4 million residents, hard to
leave.
Narrow ribbons of oceanfront skyscrapers are
backed by wooded hillsides protected as country parks. Just 10 minutes uphill
from the majestic Victoria Harbor and financial district are breathtaking views
of the South China Sea. Steel and concrete fade into sylvan trails that wind
past lakes and waterfalls, all of it not too far from the city’s cavernous and
efficient airport, part of a renowned transport network of subways, buses,
trams and ferries.
But the airport was built by the British
before they left. So were the institutions that really distinguish the city:
the independent courts, the widely respected civil service, the freewheeling
press.
Those were preserved under the “one country,
two systems” formula that promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy when
Britain returned it to China. But they have been weakened as the Communist
Party increasingly meddles in the city’s affairs, intimidating and even
abducting people seen as challenging its interests.
The Umbrella Movement demanding free
elections that seized control of downtown streets for 11 weeks in late 2014 is
just a distant memory. But sullen resentment of mainland China has spread as
Hong Kong’s democratic evolution has stalled.
This spring, a new chief executive for the
territory, Carrie Lam, was selected by a committee of about 1,200 residents —
mostly allies of Beijing following its instructions.
Her predecessors tiptoed around tough issues,
wary of both offending the Chinese leadership and provoking the public. At the
same time, critics say, limited public accountability has allowed incompetence
and even graft to spread among officials. The top two government officials from
a previous administration have been tried on corruption charges.
Beijing’s allies have a majority in the
legislature because half the 70 seats are selected by interest groups mostly
loyal to the mainland government. But the other half is elected, and lawmakers
who favor greater democracy have won a majority of those seats. The result is
gridlock.
There has also been a generational shift in
the pro-democracy camp. Voters have replaced older, more pragmatic politicians
with younger candidates more stridently opposed to the Communist authorities
and willing to engage in all-out resistance. Late last year, Beijing intervened
to prevent the seating of two pro-independence politicians who had altered
their oath of office to protest Chinese rule.
The legislature’s rules allow any three
members to stall action for months with filibusters. In the past two years,
various groups in the pro-democracy camp have repeatedly used that tool as
leverage, causing a backlog of legislation that has delayed even projects that
are not contentious, like a cleanup plan for the harbor.
Both sides agree that the city will become
ungovernable without some kind of political change. But they cannot agree on
what to do.
The democrats want a clear road map to
universal suffrage — which Beijing promised in 2007 “may be implemented” in
2017 — starting with direct elections for the chief executive. Only when the
government is accountable to the public will it have a mandate to tackle the
challenges facing the city, they say.
But supporters of Beijing say the problem is
too much democracy, not too little.
Shiu Sin-por, the departing head of the local
government’s agenda-setting Central Policy Unit, said pro-Beijing lawmakers
must break with tradition and get tough on filibusters.
He also wants to eliminate civil service protections
for many senior officials and put them on renewable, short-term contracts —
which would make them more accountable to Beijing.
“You have a lot of deadbeats and layabouts
who drag it out until they retire,” he said. “Would elections change this? No.”
Mr. Shiu, a longtime power broker with close
ties to the Beijing government, warned that if Hong Kong remained politically
paralyzed, it could slip from the ranks of the world’s great cities and end up
like Monaco, a tax haven for the wealthy with few industries beyond financial
services and retail.
In an interview, Mrs. Lam, who will be sworn
in on Saturday, acknowledged “a certain degree of truth” in the argument that
the lack of a political overhaul was making it more difficult to address issues
like housing, education and infrastructure.
But she added, “If we were to have universal
suffrage tomorrow, would all these problems disappear? I don’t think so.”
In many ways, Hong Kong as a city has fared
better than its people. Since the handover, more than one million mainland
Chinese have moved here, contributing their energy and talents to the
territory’s economic development. But the newcomers’ success has sometimes come
at the expense of those with deeper roots.
The big international companies and banks now
aggressively recruit mainland Chinese instead of local residents, who speak
Cantonese instead of the Mandarin used on the mainland and who often lack the
connections to win deals and thrive there.
The language issue is a challenge for Hong
Kong’s education system, which tries to teach three of them — English, as well
as Mandarin and Cantonese. This produces many graduates with weaker English and
Mandarin than those from the mainland’s top schools.
But efforts to address the problem get caught
in the city’s fractious politics, with suspicions that Beijing wants to
undermine local identity or limit the West’s influence.
At the same time, the government has resisted
proposals to ease the culture of high-pressure testing, a source of much public
dissatisfaction. Instead, it tried to introduce “patriotic” material into the
curriculum, appeasing Beijing while angering parents and students.
The influx of mainland Chinese has also
contributed to a historic run-up in housing prices, making Hong Kong one of the
world’s most expensive places to live. A single parking space recently sold for
$664,000.
Soaring prices and rents have squeezed
middle-class families and younger residents in particular, fueling resentment
against the mainland Chinese who have poured money into the market. Government
measures to limit speculation have not deterred those investors, many of whom
are looking for a safe way to get their money out of the mainland.
The underlying problem is limited supply.
Land disputes have nearly halted plans to build big residential areas in the
rural sections of northern Hong Kong.
Under a policy dating from the colonial era,
families in traditional villages there are awarded long-term grants of land,
producing suburban sprawl and making it difficult to put together a large
parcel for development. The government could force families to sell but is
worried about setting off protests, in part because the leaders of those
communities have generally supported Beijing.
Plans to build elsewhere have also stalled.
Efforts to rezone the fringes of country parks for apartment buildings have
been blocked by environmentalists, while the government has been leery of the
cost of controversial proposals by developers to subsidize land reclamation and
build thousands of acres of artificial islands.
“There’s land in Hong Kong, but what we lack
is developable land,” said Anthony Cheung, the transport and housing secretary,
noting that everyone wanted more housing but no one wanted it built next door.
“We still need to seek local community support.”
Gaining such support is difficult, though,
given deep distrust of the government. Lawsuits by neighborhoods and
environmental groups have delayed a range of infrastructure projects that
require much less land than housing developments.
The planned high-speed rail line, for
example, is being built underground the entire 16 miles to the border partly
because of the political challenge of obtaining land. That has driven up the
project’s cost many times over. Even the tunneling effort required the removal
of a village of scarcely 100 people, though, and democracy activists joined
them in protests that slowed the initiative.
The proposed deployment of Chinese
immigration officers at the downtown rail station under construction is also
contentious. Critics are objecting to an expanded mainland security presence in
the heart of the city. They point to several recent cases in which Chinese
officers appeared to abduct people — booksellers peddling salacious tales about
mainland officials, or a tycoon with rare insight into the finances of the
Communist Party elite — and whisk them to the mainland without legal authority.
“It will be used as an excuse to create a
serious loophole to allow mainland officers to implement mainland laws in Hong
Kong’s territory,” said Eddie Chu, a pro-democracy member of the legislature.
As the political wrangling in Hong Kong is
drawn out, some people are leaving. One popular destination is Taiwan, a
flourishing Chinese democracy with more affordable real estate and news outlets
that have not been cowed by Beijing as many of those in Hong Kong have.
Pat Yeung, 43, an entrepreneur, said she
moved to Taiwan this summer after a friend emigrated to get her children out of
the high-pressure schools, and after she met another couple who relocated
seeking cheaper housing.
In Hong Kong, with its relentless business
competition and darkening political climate, Ms. Yeung said, “the pressure is
too, too much.”
Three years ago, Beijing presented Hong Kong
with a proposal to allow residents to elect the chief executive, but only from
a slate of candidates approved by a nomination committee under its control. The
pro-democracy forces rejected the offer, holding out for free elections without
such a limit, and Beijing’s refusal to budge prompted the Umbrella Movement
protests.
It was a pivotal moment for Hong Kong, with
all sides letting a chance at compromise slip by and digging in for what has
been a prolonged stalemate.
The pro-democracy camp’s biggest mistake may
have been believing that President Xi Jinping, who at the time had been in
office for almost two years, intended to guide China toward a more pluralistic
future.
Martin Lee, the founding chairman of the
Democratic Party, said that he harbored such hopes because he had met Mr. Xi’s
father, a senior Communist leader considered more open-minded than most of
Mao’s generals.
Others noted Mr. Xi’s record as a leader in
the eastern provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang, where he adopted a moderate tone
while trying to attract Hong Kong investors, said Joseph Cheng, another
longtime democracy advocate.
Zhang Dejiang, a member of the powerful
Politburo Standing Committee, took the lead on policy toward Hong Kong, and
some wondered at the time if his hard-line stance reflected Mr. Xi’s views.
But there is little doubt now that Mr. Xi
calls the shots. After nearly five years in power, he has proved to be a
committed authoritarian who considers political liberalization a threat.
There seems little hope that Beijing will
make Hong Kong an offer better than the one it put forward three years ago.
Jasper Tsang, the recently retired president of the legislature and a longtime
ally of Beijing, said the attitudes of the Chinese leadership toward the city
had hardened.
“People are telling me there won’t be a
second chance,” he said.
Last month, Mr. Zhang visited Macau, the
former Portuguese colony that is now a Chinese gambling hub, and praised it in
terms that suggested he saw it as a model for Hong Kong.
People here were stunned because Macau has a
reputation for obsequious obedience to Beijing as well as chronic corruption,
organized crime, and limited tolerance for labor unions and other independent
organizations.
The worry now is that Mr. Xi may share that
vision of Hong Kong’s future. “If the idea came from him,” Mr. Lee said, “we
are finished.”
Photographs By Lam Yik Fei
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