As Hong Kong’s protests rage on, Xi Jinping’s meeting with Carrie Lam and China’s fourth plenum promise more interference
- Chinese leaders’ expression of confidence in Lam means that it is unlikely that the PLA or Chinese police will soon be seen on Hong Kong streets
- The attention paid to Hong Kong during the fourth plenum and news that central government officials will come to the city to explain the meeting’s communique should arouse concern
First, while President Xi Jinping and Vice-Premier Han Zheng expressed full confidence in Lam and acknowledged the work she and her team had done to resolve the crisis in Hong Kong, no one here really shares that view.
And why should we? Since the spring, we have watched as Lam’s extradition bill exploded from a “single spark” into a “prairie fire”, even as rational Hongkongers begged her to reconsider. We watched her ignore public opinion polls released in early June that showed just how unpopular the bill was.
Then, after declaring that she would never give in to violence, she did precisely that on June 15 when she put the bill’s reading on hold, teaching the protesters that violence pays.
Little surprise that a public opinion poll at the end of October showed that her popularity rating had plunged to only 20.2 points.
And what of the “governance team” around her? Should we, like our leaders in Beijing, have confidence in their abilities to manage this crisis? Hardly.
One must wonder if no one on the Executive Council gave guidance because they had not done their homework and read the draft bill before the meeting.
Or were they just afraid to tell her their opinions? Or she just ignored them? In any case, is this the kind of government team we should trust?
Hong Kong’s relationship with China after protests is what really matters
But the editorial also warned that Beijing “cannot be expected to indefinitely stand by someone who cannot defuse a crisis of their own making” and that “the clock is ticking down to her duty visit next month”, by which time she will need to have gotten Hong Kong “moving again”.
So, despite the vote of confidence, she has been warned that Beijing’s patience has limits and that she had better use the time afforded her to resolve this crisis quickly.
Just to make sure that she knows what they are, Lam has reported that “the central government will arrange for some officials to come and explain it [the communique issued after the fourth plenum] to Hong Kong officials, including myself”.
Xi has also very wisely called on Lam to expand her dialogue to a wider array of social “sectors” in Hong Kong.
Since late summer, many Hongkongers have called on Lam to mirror French President Emmanuel Macron’s strategy of going out into the community to defuse months of angry protests over a fuel tax which turned into a massive anti-government movement.
Like France, Hong Kong needs a grand debate
Hongkongers have also called on her to send out members of her governance team.
Now that she has been “directed” to reach out to society, we should see a bevy of meetings between herself, members of her governance team, and citizens around the city.
But did she really need Xi’s blessing to expand the scale of meetings between the government and society?
One would have thought that the decision to employ such a strategy would fall within the purview of the chief executive’s “high degree of autonomy”. The fact that she needed either his approval or his encouragement says legions about her lack of imagination.
On a positive note, Xi appeared to meet a demand of the protesters when he did not label the movement as “riots”, instead referring to the protests as “chaos” and “disturbances”, which in the Hong Kong legal system could mean lesser sentences for those who have been arrested.
However, we heard nothing about an independent commission of inquiry, or about a new governance team, replete with politicians who really have the confidence of both sides of the confrontation.
In fact, we are about to experience more interference during the pending visit by central government officials when they come to Hong Kong to explain the fourth plenum’s message to Hong Kong.
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Thus, only by introducing legislation on these two issues, laws that were rejected by society in much milder times – 2003 and 2012 – and moving Hong Kong closer to “one country” and away from “two systems”, will Beijing’s confidence in Lam be consolidated, even as our confidence in her leadership slides even further.
David Zweig is Professor Emeritus at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and director of Translational China Consulting Limited