Let’s start with a fable and fairy tale.
At the river, the wolf wanted to eat a lamb, but was afraid of gossip from other animals nearby, so he felt he had to find an excuse. The wolf said to the lamb, “Hey, you’ve muddied the river by drinking water, so I can’t drink, so I’m going to eat you.” The lamb said, “How come? I am in the downstream and you are in the upstream, and besides, the river is for everyone, not for you alone.” The wolf had no more sense, so he said, “Anyway, you are not good, and some animals say that last year you said bad things about me and wanted to oppose me.” The lamb said, “Last year I wasn’t born yet, how can I say bad things about you?” The wolf pressed forward, and the lamb was afraid and tried to run away, and the wolf said, “If you didn’t say bad things about me, why were you afraid? Why do you still want to run away?” Then it bit the lamb, and the lamb struggled, and the wolf said to the animals nearby, “Look, he talks bad about me everywhere, and I came to reason with him, and he ended up kicking me with his legs and hitting me with his head, so I had to teach him a lesson, which was to eat him.”
The first half of this story is from the ancient Greek fable of Aesop, and the second half is made up by me.
The reason for telling such a story is that we want to talk about Hong Kong today.
In early March, the Hong Kong Department of Justice indicted 47 of them on charges of subversion of state power under the newly passed Hong Kong National Security Law.
Among those indicted were Lee Chu-ming, a retired senior barrister, founder of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, former member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council and member of the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee; Lai Chi-ying, owner of the liberal Hong Kong media Apple Daily; Lee Cheuk-yan, a prominent Hong Kong trade union organizer, former member of the Legislative Council and founder of the Hong Kong Labor Party; Tai Yiu-ting, a former law professor at the University of Hong Kong, and others, as well as the Umbrella Movement The young political activist who emerged from the Umbrella Movement, Wong Chi-fung. Wong Chi-fung is already in prison for another case, and this Time he was arrested again in prison.
According to some Hong Kong media, Hong Kong’s rebel figures have been largely wiped out.
This Monday, the 47 people charged went to court for the first time, and the court ruled that most of them should not be released on bail, while only four of them were finally released on bail. The reason is simple: national security is at stake, secrecy is needed, and there are fears that they will carry out their activities, so they are all being held.
Let me take the situation in Hong Kong since 2014 and sort it out so that we can have a clearer picture of what happened.
First of all, the Basic Law of Hong Kong stipulates that both the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, in the end, shall be elected by universal suffrage, which is called dual universal suffrage. But after 17 years, from 1997 to 2014, there has been no progress at all in this kind of universal suffrage. The Legislative Council is elected by semi-universal suffrage, while the Chief Executive is elected by a so-called Election Committee of 1,400 people. So the people of Hong Kong were dissatisfied with this and the pan-democrats proposed a timetable for political reform, asking Beijing to confirm when dual universal suffrage could be implemented in Hong Kong.
Subsequently, the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) passed a so-called political reform proposal, insisting that the CE candidates must be confirmed by a 1,200-member Election Committee before they can run for election. The pro-democracy camp proposed a citizen’s nomination proposal, which is a common provision for universal suffrage in all countries, that is, if 100,000 people sign a petition, that person can run for election, or the option of “electing someone else” is listed on the ballot paper. These, the NPC Standing Committee all vetoed. In other words, this kind of universal suffrage means that Beijing will put forward two candidates and then people will choose.
When the Umbrella Movement broke out in Hong Kong in 2014, the goal was to protest against the NPC’s so-called political reforms tailored to Hong Kong, and Beijing did not compromise, but removed Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.
In 2019, successor Chief Executive Carrie Lam introduced the “Send China Ordinance,” which allows for the deportation of any so-called criminal accused by mainland China to mainland China for trial and detention without going through the Hong Kong courts, which then ignited the “Anti-Send China” movement.
In November of that year, the pan-democratic camp won more than 80% of the seats in the Hong Kong District Council elections. Previously, the district councils were dominated by pro-communist groups, who had been working for years in the grassroots community, but this time they were defeated like a mountain. Beijing is extremely shocked by this.
On June 30, 2020, the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) passed the “Hong Kong National Security Law” as Annex II of the Basic Law, which incorporates national security-related legislation into the Basic Law. Hong Kong has a common law system, and the national security legislation is completely different. It provides for the establishment of a National Security Division in the Hong Kong police and a National Security Office in Hong Kong by the Central Government. If the relevant national security cases are under the direct jurisdiction of the State Security Office in Hong Kong, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Supreme People’s Court will designate procuratorial organs and courts to exercise procuratorial and judicial powers respectively. Officials of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council said that such cases “including the investigation, examination and prosecution, trial and execution of penalties in all aspects” are under the jurisdiction of the central government, the implementation of mainland laws. If the case is handled by the Hong Kong police’s National Security Division, the case will be tried by a special judge appointed by the Hong Kong government.
According to the original setup, Hong Kong will hold a new round of Legislative Council elections in September 2020. Although there are only half of the elected members, if the so-called functional constituency seats are added, it is possible that the pan-democratic camp in Hong Kong will get half of the 70 Hong Kong Legislative Council seats if careful arrangements are made for proper planning. In that case, there is no way for any unpopular policies of the HKSAR government to be passed.
Therefore, the democratic camp in Hong Kong held a pan-democratic primary election in July, hoping that the public would decide who would run for the relevant Legislative Council seats. This kind of primary election is somewhat similar to the party primaries of American political parties, and is not legally binding. On that day, 610,000 people voted in the primary election.
I believe that the result was no less shocking to Beijing than the District Council election. The Hong Kong government then announced that the Legislative Council election scheduled for September had been cancelled because of the “seriousness of the Epidemic“. In reality, of course, the epidemic in Hong Kong is not more serious. In order to avoid a vacuum in the Hong Kong Legislative Council, the original members will continue to serve for another year. Several pro-democracy lawmakers who opposed the cancellation of the Legislative Council election resigned in protest, but most of the pan-democratic lawmakers continued to be re-elected.
By November, Beijing bypassed the Hong Kong courts and the NPC itself announced the disqualification of the four opposition legislators who had been re-elected for one year. This approach bypassed Hong Kong’s Basic Law, under which the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) cannot legislate for Hong Kong, but can only go about interpreting the Basic Law.
Subsequently, the remaining 15 pan-democratic legislators, expressed their protest by resigning en masse. The Legislative Council in Hong Kong is entirely filled with pro-Beijing legislators.
The big arrest of the pan-democrats was even further carried out on January 6 this year.
Of course, things didn’t end there completely.
On March 5, the Chinese Communist Party‘s National People’s Congress (NPC) met, and the seventh item on its agenda was to consider a draft decision on improving Hong Kong’s electoral system. The CCP NPC, this time, wanted to make direct legislation for the political system of Hong Kong.
Wang Chen, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the NPC, introduced the background of the draft, saying that it is necessary to “improve” Hong Kong’s electoral system, including the election of the Chief Executive and the election of the Legislative Council, to ensure that “patriots rule Hong Kong. Analysts generally believe that the so-called “patriots rule Hong Kong” means that those who love the Chinese Communist Party rule Hong Kong.
He also said that how to “improve” it? Beijing will reconstruct the Election Committee of Hong Kong, improve its size, composition and method of election, not only continue to elect the Chief Executive by the Election Committee, that is, the Chief Executive, but also give the Election Committee to elect a “larger proportion” of the Legislative Council members.
In addition, the Election Committee will be given the new function of directly participating in the nomination of all candidates for the Legislative Council, and will be responsible for the vetting of qualifications.
In short, Hong Kong is deprived of the legislative power to designate local elections. In essence, Hong Kong is deprived of all legislative power, because in the future, according to the official Chinese Communist Party, a “large proportion” of Hong Kong’s legislators will be elected by the 1,200-member Election Committee, rather than through a one-person-one-vote election, or even a “one-person-one-vote” election. In other one-person-one-vote elections, the qualifications of candidates will be strictly examined and selected by the EC.
What kind of people will be elected by the Chinese Communist Party? It goes without saying that when Wang Yang delivered his CPPCC work report on Hong Kong and Macao, the phrase “one country, two systems” became “firmly supporting the principle of patriots ruling Hong Kong”, while “Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong” and “a high degree of autonomy” became “one country, two systems”. “, “a high degree of autonomy”, for the second consecutive year in the CPPCC report disappeared.
For his part, Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office Director Xia Baolong let slip that the number of seats in the Legislative Council would be increased from 70 to 90, and the original 1,200-member Election Committee would be increased to 1,500. But the most critical, he said all candidates must be “patriotic and love Hong Kong”. As for who is “patriotic and love Hong Kong”, of course, the Chinese Communist Party will have the final say, and they will set up a review committee to examine whether the candidates meet the criteria of “patriotic and love Hong Kong”.
What is “patriotism and love for Hong Kong”, as seen from the previous series of official assertions by the Chinese Communist Party, is actually a criterion, whether it is love for the Communist Party, so the Chinese Communist Party is tantamount to declaring that in the future, Hong Kong must be governed by people who love the Communist Party.
As things have developed to this point, we can conclude that the Pearl of the Orient, the largest free port in East Asia, the Hong Kong that ranked first in the world economic freedom index for many years, is officially dead. The future of Hong Kong, and Shenzhen and Shanghai, there is not much difference.
When I used to read Aesop’s fables, I was always curious about how the other animals would react when the old wolf started to eat the lamb. Everyone can use their own imagination.
On January 10, the foreign ministers of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia issued a joint statement condemning in unison the arrest of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and demanding that China respect the freedom of the people of Hong Kong. Note that on January 10, the U.S. Secretary of State, still Pompeo, said the U.S. would impose sanctions on the specific individuals who carried out the arrests, though he stepped down on January 20.
Secretary of State Blinken, who succeeded him, tweeted on March 2, “We condemn the detention and prosecution of pan-democratic candidates targeting the Hong Kong election and call for their immediate release.” He added, “Political participation and freedom of speech should not be criminalized, and the United States stands with the people of Hong Kong.” But the new Biden administration in the U.S., so far, has not taken any real steps.
The situation is similar in the UK and the EU. The European Union’s External Affairs Service (EEAS) issued a statement saying that the announcement by the Chinese (Communist) National People’s Congress that it would consider changes to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region electoral system would, if adopted, have a profoundly negative impact on Hong Kong’s democratic principles and elected representatives.EEAS further said that such changes would also run counter to Hong Kong’s past electoral reforms and run counter to the Basic Law’s commitment to promote the implementation of universal suffrage for the Chief Executive and Legislative Council elections by universal suffrage, saying that such a move by the Chinese Communist Party would violate its domestic and international obligations.
Can we continue the imagination of the story about the wolf eating the sheep?
When the wolf ate the sheep, most of the small animals scattered and fled. The fox who was nearby was thinking whether he could pick up some leftover bones later, while telling the other animals that wolves have been eating sheep since ancient times, so wolves and sheep are inseparable and other animals need not worry. The herd continued to gnaw their own grass without raising their heads, secretly happy that the sheep who grabbed the grass to eat had run away. The lion king was not happy, but he himself faced the challenge of other lions. The tiger shouted in the distance, saying that we do not hunt at the river, how the wolf broke the promise, but remembered that later the wolf is likely to take a piece of meat over, roared a few times and went to sleep.
This is just my blind imagination, it has nothing to do with Iso.
Hong Kong is dead, I really like this city, but she is dead, eaten by wolves. During the Great Famine, how many lives were saved when Hong Kong people mailed large quantities of Food to the mainland, and how many banned medicines were smuggled in? How much money was brought in for the reform and opening up? How many enterprises have been built? How many products from mainland China were brought to the international market? Hong Kong was the most important contributor to the economic growth of China’s reform and opening up, and was once vital to the Chinese economy. Now the Communist Party has killed her.
How many people think of the promise of 50 years of no change? Many people in Hong Kong used to think that “well water does not offend river water”, as Deng Xiaoping said, but now they are really alerted. For the past 20 years, Hong Kong people have been fighting a war, but very few of them have realized that their real enemy is not the Hong Kong government or the so-called pro-establishment camp, but the Chinese Communist Party. Conversely, as long as the one-party dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party exists, the neighboring regions and countries, will not have a good time. Therefore, it is very obvious what should be done to live a good Life.
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