HONG KONG, 10 October 2003 — As Arnold Schwarzenegger was swept to power on a tide of discontent with California Governor Gray Davis on Wednesday, pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong could only watch in envy and frustration.
They have been fighting for six years to unseat the former British colony’s deeply unpopular leader Tung Chee-hwa and seemed agonizingly close to success when 500,000 people took to the streets in an anti-government march on July 1.
But on Wednesday evening, hours after California voters forced Davis out of office and cheered Schwarzenegger at a victory rally in Los Angeles, Hong Kong’s legislature voted down a motion calling on Beijing-appointed Tung, a 66-year-old former shipping tycoon, to resign.
“Why is it that they can vote their governor out of office in California but the people of Hong Kong have no power to get rid of Mr. Tung?” legislator Emily Lau, who moved the motion, asked afterward. The question was rhetorical. Even though the vote after Wednesday’s debate was 21 in favor of the motion to remove Tung compared with 31 against — four votes closer than a similar motion six months ago — the outcome was still inevitable.
Hong Kong was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 with a guarantee of political and economic freedoms being preserved. The legislature left behind by the British, however, is only partly directly elected, with most seats filled by pro-government representative groups. This means that if Tung’s administration ever faces a serious challenge, reinforcements can quickly be rallied to quell the unrest.
The march of July 1 — which in just a few days caused two ministerial resignations and forced the shelving of a hugely unpopular anti-subversion law — has proved a false dawn for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy forces.
Three months later, the momentum has been almost entirely lost and China’s leaders have rallied emphatically behind Tung. Senior officials have warned stability is the key to Hong Kong’s economic recovery and dismissed the protests as a sign of economic, rather than political, discontent.
Tung’s confidence has gradually returned to the extent where he no longer feels wearily obliged to make a show of listening more to the public — a practice he has never been comfortable with — and has retreated to his accustomed style of remote and paternalistic leadership.
Lau said Wednesday’s vote was the first chance for Hong Kong’s Legislative Council to react to the events of July 1. “Everybody knows, and Mr. Tung should know better than anyone else, that he is not capable of running Hong Kong. He should go and let us have a fresh start,” she said.
What the people who marched on July 1 wanted very much was for Tung to change the style and substance of his governance and to start straight away on the process of democratization and political reform. But in those two crucial areas he has done nothing. Even those who voted against the motion spoke against Tung. Legislator Abraham Razack said Tung was no heaven-sent leader and that his administration had serious flaws.
“The government has lacked a comprehensive social, economic and political vision of Hong Kong, of what Hong Kong should and can be,” he said. Razack cast his vote against Laus motion, however, pointing out that despite his faults, Tung still had the trust and support of Beijing.
That trust and support is the rock on which Tung’s governance is built. There was hope among his opponents after July 1 that Beijing would not permit a leader who was so widely unpopular to remain in office.
For days there was silence from Beijing as leaders pondered the events that had shaken the territory. Then, less than three weeks after the march, Tung was invited to the capital where China’s president and premier gave their full public backing to his leadership.
It was clear that China had decided that the implications of allowing people power to topple a leader were far more horrific and wide-reaching than the prospect of keeping an unpopular chief executive in office in its southernmost outpost.
Ironically, the outpouring of public displeasure on July 1 may have made Tung’s position more secure than ever and quashed the notion of anyone storming in to unseat him and lead Hong Kong to a bright new democratic dawn in a Hollywood movie-like fantasy.
