The upcoming 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is set to map out the strategic blueprint for the “home stretch” toward the historic goal of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. At this life-changing juncture of Chinese history, it is of great significance for the people of Hong Kong to look back at the journey through the past 10 years in preparation for the last page of a momentous chapter in the Chinese civilization.
The last 10 years were more challenging than the first 15 years after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 1997. Here are my reasons for that assessment.
It is public knowledge that the HKSAR experienced its very first political challenge in the form of the so-called “anti-Article 23 legislation incident” in 2003, when the HKSAR government presented the draft national security bill for the Legislative Council to deliberate and approve according to Article 23 of the Basic Law of the HKSAR. It was widely expected to be “a routine exercise” of Hong Kong’s constitutional duty — until a mass protest march organized by the opposition camp on July 1 that year forced the HKSAR government to shelve the national security legislation indefinitely. The next “setback” came when the “0708 electoral reform plan”, designed to achieve universal suffrage in the chief executive election of 2007 and the Legislative Council election of 2008 in accordance with relevant provisions of the Basic Law, was blocked by opposition lawmakers by denying the required two-thirds majority approval in LegCo in 2005.
Over the past several years, Washington made its desire to contain China’s peaceful rise clearer than ever with escalating geopolitical machinations. It was a “long time coming” since a brief lull of hostility toward China during the “war on terror” declared by then-US President George W Bush following the Sept 11, 2001, attacks. Many believed the US was ready to “knock” China down when it bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, killing three Chinese journalists working there during 78 days of NATO airstrikes in 1999. That bloody incident was followed by a midair collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a US electronic spy plane over China’s territorial waters in the South China Sea in April 2001. In a shift of strategic focus, Washington chose to enlist China’s assistance in its “war on terror” instead of aggravating bilateral confrontation. However, as soon as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan established US occupation in the Muslim states, then-US president Barack Obama wasted little time in making a “Pivot to Asia” strategic about-face to target China openly yet again. That move led to something called “Asia-Pacific rebalancing” before Donald Trump launched in 2018, soon after his election, a trade war against China that became part of his legacy, and Joe Biden’s ongoing endeavors for an Indo-Pacific regional alliance consisting of America, Australia, Japan and India have given rise to the notion of an Asian version of NATO. The biggest gamble Washington has engaged in, in its China-thumping campaign, however, was its recent machinations to play the dangerous game of brinkmanship on the Taiwan question after repeatedly playing its “Hong Kong card”.
In hindsight, Hong Kong suffered two major political upheavals instigated and aided by the anti-China external forces during the illegal “Occupy Central” movement in 2014 and the “anti-extradition bill movement turned color revolution” of 2019, with numerous lesser disturbances in between, in the last 10 years. The challenge they posed was unprecedented, to say the least.
Admittedly, that adverse experience left some awful impression in many people’s memory, this author’s included, but I am more relieved than frazzled because Hong Kong survived both traumatic events thanks to the reassuring strategic command of the central authorities led by the CPC with President Xi Jinping at the core. What began as attempts to turn Hong Kong into a subversive base against the central government’s comprehensive jurisdiction over the HKSAR resulted in the enactment of the National Security Law for implementation in the city on June 30, 2020, which put an end to what was referred to as a “color revolution” immediately, followed by the overhaul of Hong Kong’s electoral system through local legislation to ensure “patriots administering Hong Kong”. Both measures have effectively put the practice of “one country, two systems” back on track.
The last decade saw some of Hong Kong’s old internal contradictions grow and erupt. President Xi told the HKSAR government in his speech marking the 25th anniversary of the HKSAR on July 1 to break the confines of the vested interests in Hong Kong, once again showing he is weary of Hong Kong’s structural contradictions and he has the solutions in mind. It is only a matter of time before Hong Kong’s socioeconomic development is also set back on the right track. And the 20th CPC National Congress in all likelihood is expected to set the stage.
The author is president of the Golden Mean Institute, a Hong Kong think tank.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.