A senior Chinese Communist Party official has publicly declared that Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems”, with Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy as its basic symbol, is over, and that “those who love the country and love Hong Kong rule Hong Kong, and those who oppose China and disrupt Hong Kong are out” has become the new legal norm and will become the new system for governing Hong Kong.
Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, delivered a video address at the 30th anniversary forum of the Basic Law on Tuesday (Nov. 17), introducing for the first time to the outside world Beijing’s planned transformation goal of “one country, two systems.
Zhang hopes that Hong Kong people will realize that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is the guarantee of Hong Kong’s capitalist system.
All along, whether the Chinese Communist Party is encroaching on the freedom of the people of Hong Kong through undisclosed actions or launching a public backlash against the Hong Kong pro-democracy camp through the National Security Law, the Communist Party has always stated in public that Beijing is doing so to better uphold the “one country, two systems” principle in Hong Kong.
Recently, the mass resignation of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy legislators has caused an uproar in Hong Kong, outside of Hong Kong, and internationally, with people criticizing the CCP for violating the Sino-British Joint Declaration and destroying the “one country, two systems”. Zhang Xiaoming ridiculed this public opinion as “noise”, and proudly said, “Let this noise” become the “background music” for the introduction of a new governance model in Hong Kong.
Zhang also said that the Hong Kong government has done a lot of work to improve the oath-taking system for civil servants, the national education system, and the eligibility system for Legislative Council members, and the next step of reform is to focus on the judicial system. However, he did not specifically propose specific measures for judicial reform.
An independent judicial system is considered an important cornerstone of Hong Kong’s prosperity as a financial center of the world and an important bridge between the mainland, where there is no independent judiciary, and the Western world. Many people in Hong Kong believe that the complete rule of law is the last barrier that makes Hong Kong what it is, and that if that barrier collapses, Hong Kong will no longer be Hong Kong.
Last week, all pro-democracy members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council resigned in protest of Beijing’s direct involvement in the disqualification of four pro-democracy lawmakers. Critics say Beijing’s action violated the Hong Kong Legislative Council’s legal procedures for disqualifying members and was a gross violation of the rule of law in Hong Kong.
Observers say that, judging from Zhang’s remarks, the Chinese Communist Party is planning not only to remove all pro-democracy legislators and silence opposition voices, but also to bring Hong Kong under the complete leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, to educate Hong Kong schools about mainland-style patriotism, and to turn Hong Kong’s judiciary into a party-led one.
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