The National People’s Congress (NPC) has changed Hong Kong‘s electoral system in a single step, concocting a major retrogression in democracy is a foregone conclusion. The news shows that they will abolish the seats of District Council members in the Election Committee, the abolition of the Legislative Council seats in the Super District Council, the Legislative Council will be a large number of seats generated by the Election Committee, the Government will even set up a committee to review the election of each candidate at all levels whether patriotic. Such an election method is basically turning Hong Kong elections into Chinese elections for the National People’s Congress, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and village committees, and the whole process is already no different from the Chinese Communist Party appointments.
Many pro-establishment figures, and pan-democrats who are so conservative that they do not know if they are still considered pan-democrats, say that the anti-amendment protests in 2019 have angered Beijing, leading to the fact that even the semi-open elections are now playing out, and that the responsibility for the great democratic retrogression lies with the protesters in 2019. This argument is actually as rogue and upside down as blaming women for being responsible for sexual assault and rape because they dress too little to inspire sexual predators to behave bestially. More seriously, this argument is clearly factually incorrect. Reconstructing the chronology of Beijing’s introduction of the National Security Law, we know that the trigger for Beijing’s total destruction of Hong Kong’s only democracy and freedom was not the anti-SEC and anti-police brutality protests, but the big victory in the District Council at the end of 2019 and the real chance for the democratic camp to win the majority in the 2020 Legislative Council elections.
When the street protests were very intense that day, Beijing originally judged that this protest would bring a backlash of conservative forces in Hong Kong, just like the Umbrella Movement in 2014. With this backlash, the pro-establishment camp was able to win in the 2015 District Council elections and maintain a majority in the 2016 Legislative Council elections without any risk. So in 2019, even though many of the pro-establishment camp advocated postponing the election, Beijing ended up confidently letting the election take place as scheduled. The election results, however, came as a shock to Beijing.
The pro-democracy camp then launched the “35+” primary election, ready to ride the wave of the big District Council victory to expand the pro-democracy vote in the functional constituencies and seize the absolute majority of the Legislative Council. Many businessmen and professionals from the pro-establishment camp did not actively condemn the protesters in the anti-amendment and anti-police brutality campaigns, and supported the establishment of an independent investigation committee, which has aroused Beijing’s suspicion. These developments have caused Beijing to begin to fear losing control of the Legislative Council, and there may even be a situation where District Council and Legislative Council pro-democracy members and the pro-establishment elite secretly resent Beijing’s co-option of their own candidates, allowing Beijing to lose control of the CE election results.
These developments are what spurred Beijing to start turning on its public opinion machine in March and April last year to attack the pro-democracy camp for wanting to seize power and staging a color revolution through the election, and to let slip that it would be fully suppressed through the enactment of the National Security Law by the NPC Standing Committee. The rest is history. It is evident that it is not the protest movement but the possibility of the forces controlled by Beijing losing their parliamentary majority and control of the EC that promotes Beijing’s full outlawing of freedom alone.
The Chinese Communist Party is now calling the Hong Kong establishment a loyal waste, not of course for failing to prevent the protests, but for failing to mobilize the disgruntled “silent majority” to fight back after the protests had been going on for so long, and instead losing so badly in the elections. What Beijing does not know is that the silent majority, which supported Beijing’s efforts to maintain stability, no longer exists.
The current development confirms that the limited freedom and openness of the Chinese Communist Party to the people of Hong Kong in elections was always a sham, provided that the pro-establishment camp had a solid majority. When the majority of the pro-establishment camp is not stable, the limited freedom and open election will be cancelled. This is like when the Soviet Union gave the republics the right to self-determination and independence, provided that they would not exercise their right to self-determination and independence. When one of the constituent states exercised its right to secede from the Soviet Union, repression came.
Now the pro-democracy camp is expected to win the majority in the parliament and the election of the Chief Executive, forcing Beijing to tear the skin off and rule directly, so that Hong Kong people and the world can see the true face under the false “one country, two systems” cloth that has been used for years. The key question now is how Hong Kong’s civil society, the next wave of “loyalists” lined up to be replaced and liquidated, and the international community can counteract this totalitarian beast that has finally revealed its true nature and protect itself.
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