Top Chinese official revealed plans to overhaul Hong Kong’s electoral system

The director of China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office outlined Beijing’s plan to guarantee that only patriots will be able to run Hong Kong. Experts think the speech implies China’s intention to change Hong Kong’s political system through a top-down approach.

On Monday, Xia Bao-long, the director of China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, gave a speech that highlighted the importance of ensuring Hong Kong’s democratic development doesn’t deviate from the principle of “letting patriots run Hong Kong.” He said the most important and urgent task now is to “strengthen the relevant mechanisms,” and these efforts need to be led by the central government.

“The most vital and pressing task to enforce rules by patriots is to improve the relevant systems, particularly the relevant electoral system,” Xia said in the speech. “Being patriotic means loving the People’s Republic of China.”

He also said authorities must close loopholes that allow “anti-China troublemakers” into politics. “Improving the relevant electoral system must be led by the central government,” he added.

Xia laid out the criteria for what makes a “real patriot,” including love for the People’s Republic of China, its constitution, and the Communist Party of China. He said members of the judiciary should also be patriots, which could be viewed as a warning to those who worry that Hong Kong’s judicial independence might come under pressure from Beijing.

Ivan Choy, the senior lecturer at the department of government and public administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the main message from Xia’s speech is that Beijing will initiate electoral reform in Hong Kong and the reform will likely be carried out by the National People’s Congress.

“Beijing will exclude political forces regarded as non-patriotic through electoral reform,” Choy said. “They will be excluded from participating in elections and public institutions.”

Even though Xia emphasized in the speech that “One Country Two Systems” is still the foundation of how China manages Hong Kong, Choy thinks that Beijing definitely puts a lot more emphasis on the “one country” than the “two systems.”

As for what kind of people will be deemed as “non-patriots,” Choy thinks politicians who have clear anti-CCP or pro-Hong Kong independence stances or those who are accused of colluding with foreign power could be easily considered as “non-patriots.”

“As details of the electoral reform and how Beijing will execute the reform still haven’t been laid out, it’s not very clear how many people in the pro-democracy camp might be impacted by the electoral reform,” Choy explained. “Beijing only tried to lay out the principles and direction of the electoral reform.”

Previously, China’s state-run media Xinhua News Agency published several interviews with pro-Beijing scholars on the topic of “patriots rule Hong Kong,” which triggered widespread suspicion that the Chinese government might have plans to overhaul Hong Kong’s electoral system.

Experts: Beijing wants to gain full control over Hong Kong

Apart from the revelation of Beijing’s plan to launch electoral reform in Hong Kong, last week, nine prominent pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong appeared in court for the trial of the protest on August 18, 2019. While two of them pleaded guilty to charges against them, seven of them didn’t plead guilty to charges of participating and organizing illegal assembly.

Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai was one of the defendants in the case. He has been detained since December 2020 for charges of colluding with fraud. Apart from appearing in court for the trial, Hong Kong police also pressed new charges under the national security law against him. They claimed that Lai tried to help one of the 12 Hong Kong youths detained in Shenzhen to flee to Taiwan. He was re-arrested in his jail cell on February 16.

The deputy of Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute Chung Kim-wah said the series of legal actions against prominent pro-democracy figures reflect Beijing’s intention to take full control over Hong Kong. “The Chinese government is willing to sacrifice One Country, Two Systems and they don’t care about the promises they made before Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997,” he said. “They want to use all kinds of legal actions to increase their control over Hong Kong, and they want to damage Hong Kong’s civil society.”

Chung said over the last year, the Hong Kong government has used different kinds of legal actions to arrest influential individuals in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. “On the one hand, they want to wipe out the pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong, and on the other hand, they also want to create a chilling effect in society,” he said. “These methods are not what we will usually see in a society that claims to uphold rule of law. This is political persecution.”

Since 2021, at least three prominent pro-democracy figures, including Joshua Wong, Tam Tak-chi and Jimmy Lai, have been re-arrested while they were already in detention. Kenneth Chan, the Associate Professor at the Department of Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, said the Hong Kong government wants to keep these prominent pro-democracy figures out of the public’s sight for as long as they can while creating fear in society.

“The whole point is to make sure these activists will be kept out of the public’s sight and to show the rest of the society that the government is not going to be gentle on the ‘troublemakers,’” Chan said. “ I think this is only going to raise the level of anxiety and uncertainty and undermine Hong Kong people’s trust in both the government and the judicial system.”

Chung Kim-wah said since the National Security Law came into effect, it has become harder for Hong Kong people to express their dissatisfaction against the government publicly. Several opinion polls published over the last few months showed that Hong Kong people’s perceptions of Beijing and the Hong Kong government have become more and more negative.

“I think Hong Kong’s civil society is still using some passive ways to resist the government’s encroachment, and it will not be easy for Beijing to completely destroy Hong Kong’s civil society in a short period of time,” Chung said. “I think the adversity facing Hong Kong will last for a long time, and whether the situation will change or not depends on many factors.”

Chan from Hong Kong Baptist University said opinion polls show that there is still a strong layer of dissent in Hong Kong’s society. “While civil society groups have scaled down their operations due to restrictions related to the coronavirus outbreak, I think the civil society organizations and activists will still remain connected,” he said. “I think everyone is reading the situation and adapting to the new environment. I don’t think anyone that I’ve come to know in Hong Kong would just simply quit. This is really a precarious situation as far as Beijing and Hong Kong authorities’ concern.”

This article was first published in Mandarin on DW’s Chinese website.