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HONG KONG – Chinese President Xi Jinping ventured out of mainland China for the first time since the start of the pandemic on Thursday to attend the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s transfer of British rule to China.
Xi and his spouse, Peng Liyuan, got off a train at Hong Kong’s West Kowloon station, the terminus of the high-speed line connecting mainland China with the territory. They were greeted on the platform by young adults and children waving Chinese and Hong Kong flags and singing “warmly welcome” in Mandarin Chinese, instead of the Cantonese traditionally used in the city.
For Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, who is expected to take a third term that breaks precedents later this year, the proceedings are an opportunity to consolidate personal power over the Chinese Communist Party. declaring that the nation has become stronger and more united. under his dominion.
But for many in Hong Kong, the midpoint of a 50-year period in which the city was guaranteed a “high degree of autonomy” under a mechanism known as “one country, two systems” is a time to mourn. erosion of freedoms and frustrated hopes for a more democratic future.
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“After the uprising and protests in 2019 and 2020, the Beijing government wants to show that everything is under control: the opposition and the rebel elements have been wiped out,” said Ho-fung Hung, a professor of economics. politics at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s a victory lap, and Xi Jinping will try to portray that he is the one who got the so-called ‘second comeback’ from Hong Kong.”
Crushing pro-democracy protests tore Beijing’s relationship with the city’s youth and many Western governments. But for the Chinese Communist Party, which values its political control and the territorial integrity of the nation more than anything else, breaking decades of inaction and setbacks to pass national security legislation for Hong Kong is an important achievement.
Chinese scholars have begun talking about Hong Kong’s “second return.” Zheng Yongnian, an influential political scientist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told state media that the first years of Chinese rule after 1997 were “sovereignty without the power to govern.” But Xi has changed that.
The national security law, Zheng said, was a good start, but only the beginning of the “reconstruction” that Hong Kong’s political system must undergo, as it “moves from radical democracy to a form of democracy.” more appropriate to the culture and class and social of Hong Kong “. structure. ”
The first on this agenda for the new chief executive John Lee, the head of policy who oversaw the crackdown on protests, will be to comply with Article 23 of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, which requires laws to be enacted to prohibit betrayal, secession, and sedition. and subversion. This legislation was filed in 2003 after mass protests.
But Xi’s ambitions go beyond police and legal reviews, to radical changes in education and society designed to generate support for the CCP government.
Acceptance of a future designed by Beijing may be more difficult among the generation born around the transfer, who expected more democratic freedoms and was introduced to local politics through protests against Beijing’s impositions.
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“When I was young, I didn’t know what universal suffrage was, but later, after experiencing the umbrella revolution, I changed my mind,” said Coco Au, 25, a graduate student in law, referring to the 2014 protests against the changes in Hong. Kong’s electoral system that allowed Beijing to pre-select political candidates.
Many born around 1997 feel betrayed. Jeff Yau, 25, grew up with the feeling that the delivery had been a happy event, but more recently he has come to fear for the future of the city. “I feel a little drowned out and I feel that Hong Kong is less open than Western countries,” he said.
Despite the cheerful tone of Chinese state media ahead of Friday’s ceremonies, there are indications that Xi remains uneasy about Beijing’s control of Hong Kong. Local media, citing anonymous government sources, have reported that Xi will not spend the night in the city and will instead cross the mainland border back to Shenzhen after a dinner with outgoing executive director Carrie Lam, and will return in Hong Kong on Friday morning for the appointment ceremony of Lee, the former police chief who will take his place.
Much of Hong Kong has been closed to ensure the visit runs smoothly. High barricades full of water run through the streets near the fairgrounds where the celebrations will be held. The Legislative Council canceled its weekly meeting so lawmakers could quarantine and comply with strict coronavirus restrictions for ceremonies. Police banned drones throughout Hong Kong during the visit.
At least 10 local and foreign media journalists they were banned from covering the proceedings, according to the South China Morning Post. The League of Social Democrats, a pro-democracy political organization, said Tuesday it would not protest on July 1 after the national security police summoned its volunteers. “The situation is very difficult, please understand,” the group said in a statement to fans.
For Hong Kong’s older generation, 1997 was also a deeply uncertain time. Claudia Tang, 59, left the city for Australia at the time hoping to emigrate, but later returned. He is now widely optimistic about the future of Hong Kong, despite Beijing’s dominance.
“I think national education is a good thing. A lot of young people don’t understand what ‘one country, two systems’ means,” he said.
This confusion may be in part because China’s explanations have changed over time. Gone are the concise promises of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping before 1997 that Hong Kong horses “will still run and dance dances” after delivery. Replacing them is Xi’s view, as stated on the 20th anniversary of the transfer, that “a country” forms the deep roots of an “advanced” system of government, first and foremost, to realize and maintain the national unity “.
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The creation of the “one country, two systems” formula that underpinned Hong Kong’s move in 1997 is considered one of the defining achievements of Deng’s leadership. Even today, Chinese state media regularly features videos of Deng waving his finger at then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher while declaring that Hong Kong’s sovereignty was not up for debate.
Many questions about the future of Hong Kong left unanswered by Deng have been answered emphatically by Xi, often imposing interpretations of the history of the Chinese Communist Party on the territory. Recently, Hong Kong officials reviewed high school textbooks to teach the party’s position that the territory was never a British colony; it was only dealt with illegally.
At an event on Monday, Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, argued that the UK could have done little during the pre-1997 period to avoid the recent crackdown on Hong Kong, “because the real story. Hong Kong today is about the selection of Xi Jinping as China’s leader. “
At the time, Patten added, the Hong Kong surrender was seen as a “canary by the mine shaft” to test whether the Chinese regime would be brutally interested or unreliable in international affairs, but now this has been answered. question. “The canary has been, to the extent they have been able to manage it, strangled,” he said.
Even in 1997, Ken Lam, 50, who works in logistics, guessed that greater repression would come, but he could not leave at that time and has resigned himself to the fate of the city. . “Now I have the ability to leave, but a part of me also wants to stay and watch how much worse it can get to be Hong Kong. After all, this place is where I grew up,” he said.
Shepherd reported from Taipei, Taiwan. Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report.