Still Awaiting A Democratic Hong Kong.

Front Page of SCMP today

NEWS: China rules out universal suffrage for Hong Kong in 2007 and 2008

My very honest first response: Blah, Blah, No Direct Elections for Hong Kong, blah, Blah

Call me naive. For a long time I honestly, honestly thought China would keep its promises to us, that we would have 50 years of autonomy. That is until two weeks ago. I never thought they would come in the way they have. Dictate how we shall run our home. Two weeks later, what’s been said, I knew is what to be.

I used to get frustrated at people I met traveling or even my friends in the US who constantly asked, “How is Hong Kong now it’s changed over? Is it really different?” I would reply in a voice used to talk to a little kid, “No! It’s the same, really they didn’t just march in and take us over!”

Sometimes I would even be insulted that my friends made fun of how China now ran Hong Kong, and now I was a communist, and my country was this and that. I thought China would change, I said China was changing. I believed all the propaganda that this was a new China.

I was not scared when they changed the flags on July 1st 1997. I was happy. I thought it was good we were part of the motherland. Not because I was not afraid of China, I was, but I believed Hong Kong and the people here would hold it together. I secretly thought maybe we could be democratic. Maybe we could help mold an open China.

My aunt always maintained we would go backwards when the merge happened as China moved forward and somewhere along the lines we would be the same. I believed we could lead. I believed in Hong Kong.

Of all the people in my huge extended family, I was the most sticky to Hong Kong. Most of them immigrated, I was the one who didn’t understand why they left. I came back the most, and now I am practically the only one left here. Maybe if what we didn’t see then, which I see now, of all the people I was the most hopeful of China, the one who trusted them and the system. When others were suspicious and untrusting, I still believed. Subsequently I am the most let down at the moment.

All my life I saw Hong Kong as a separate entity to Britain, to China. I knew we should be independent. I knew if the choice was mine, that’s what I would choose. So when I started hearing other say we want democracy in July 1st 2003. When for the first time in my life I found I was not the only one who felt this. Who wished this, I felt free. My ideological secret was not as much of a fantasy as I had been lead to believe.

And maybe it’s still not. No direct elections for the legislature in 2008? There is 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028, 2032 etc. etc. We will continue to work towards this. And the truth is Totalitarian Regimes are innately unstable… and if the worse comes to the worse and the CCP never lets up, I should still outlive every single person who is currently sitting in the Great Hall of the People, who has a seat in the National People’s Congress. They will all have to die at some point. And a new generation of leaders will take power. Within them there may be a Gorbachev.

As much as I am angry, disappointed, and frightened about the future of this city and the constant encroachment of our rights. I am still Awaiting a Democratic Hong Kong.