Beijing’s tightening grip on Hong Kong

According
to a Hong Kong-based Western diplomat, Tung’s dismissal was disturbing
to the extent that factional intrigue in Beijing had become a principal
determinant of who should be running the SAR.

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=10973

By Willy Lam for The Jamestown Foundation (18/03/05)

The saga of Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa’s fall from
grace has highlighted Beijing’s tightening grip over the Special
Administrative Region (SAR), as well as the dicey future of the "one
country, two systems" model. While Tung indicated last Thursday that he
had submitted his resignation to Beijing earlier that day because of
failing health, news about his impending departure had already been
splashed across the Hong Kong papers on 2 March. In fact, Chinese
sources in Beijing said the leadership under President Hu Jintao and
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had made the decision about sacking the
unpopular SAR chief in late January. Steps were taken to induct the
67-year-old former shipping magnate into the mainland’s top advisory
body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) as
one of its 20-odd vice-chairmen. And not long after Tung was endorsed
as a CPPCC vice-chairman last Saturday, Beijing announced it had
accepted his resignation. Given that a CPPCC vice-chairmanship is
deemed an honorary, post-retirement job for ageing senior cadres,
Tung’s dismissal was a well-planned maneuver to demonstrate the Hu-Wen
team’s more assertive – and in many ways, more Machiavellian –
leadership style.

Unhappy with Tung’s performance

It is no secret that the Hu-Wen administration was unhappy with
Tung’s performance since he assumed the post of SAR chief in July 1997.
On 1 July 2003, more than half a million Hong Kong residents took to
the streets to demand Tung’s dismissal due to reasons including rising
unemployment, Tung’s poor handling of the SARS epidemic, and his
ham-fisted efforts to introduce the draconian "Article 23" national
security legislation. (The bill against sedition, secession and the
leakage of state secrets was shelved in early July to pacify an angry
public.) It is true that the economy started to improve last year
thanks partly to a plethora of favorable policies that Beijing had
adopted to re-energize the SAR economy. However, Hu last December made
his displeasure at the bumbling Tung known when he publicly called upon
the Hong Kong leader to be better at "finding out deficiencies" in his
administration. Despite this, Tung might have been able to hang on
until the end of his term in June 2007 if his patron, ex-president
Jiang Zemin had not retired from the post of Central Military
Commission (CMC) chairman last September. Almost immediately after
becoming commander-in-chief, Hu masterminded a large-scale reshuffling
of provincial party secretaries and governors to speed up rejuvenation
– and to promote several fast-rising members of his own Communist Youth
League faction. "Hu is killing two birds with one stone with his
sacking of Tung, a Shanghai native who sometimes talked to Jiang in
Shanghaiese," said a Chinese source close to Beijing’s Hong Kong
policy-making establishment. "Firstly, he has sent out the message that
Beijing cannot tolerate two more years of the maladministration of the
prized SAR under lame-duck Tung. Secondly, the removal of the Jiang
appointee will accentuate the Hu-Wen leadership’s determination to
flush out more affiliates of the much-maligned Jiang Zemin or Shanghai
Faction."

Tung’s poor track record

Given Tung’s poor track record, few Hong Kong residents were sorry
to see him go. Moreover, his replacement, Acting Chief Executive Donald
Tsang, is a relatively popular career civil servant who was knighted by
the British before the 1997 handover of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to
Beijing. And Beijing’s spin-masters have been playing up the fact that
President Hu’s "resolute" decision regarding leadership changes in Hong
Kong would better enable the SAR to turn a new leaf. However, there is
little doubt that the entire "dump Tung" episode signals a further
erosion of Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy – and of the vitality of
the one country, two systems model. As pro-democracy legislator and
labor activist Lee Cheuk-yan pointed out: "Hong Kong people played no
role in the selection of Tung as chief executive, and we have been
totally left in the dark concerning his dismissal as well as the
selection of his successor." Lee Wing-tat, the Chairman of the
Democratic Party, noted that "a great blow has been dealt the ‘one
country, two systems’ principle if everything is being orchestrated in
Beijing" concerning leadership changes in the SAR. Pro-democracy
legislators have called on Tung to appear before the Legislative
Council, Hong Kong’s parliament, to give a "full explanation" of the
circumstances of his departure.

Factional intrigue

According to a Hong Kong-based Western diplomat, Tung’s dismissal
was disturbing to the extent that factional intrigue in Beijing had
become a principal determinant of who should be running the SAR. It is
understood that the Hu-Wen team had largely circumvented the "normal
channels" – the Coordinating Leadership Group on Hong Kong Affairs
(CLGHKA) and the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office – when implementing
their decision about Tung. The CLGHKA, supposedly the Communist Party’s
foremost policy-setting organ on Hong Kong, is led by Jiang’s alter
ego, Vice-President Zeng Qinghong. "The Hong Kong policy apparatus is
still largely run by Shanghai Faction affiliates," the diplomat said.
"And many cadres in Beijing and Hong Kong involved with SAR policy
didn’t know about Tung’s fate until the rumors had gathered in Hong
Kong." Factional dynamics has also figured prominently in the Hu-Wen
team’s selection of Tsang as Tung’s successor. While immediately after
the 1997 handover, Beijing had considered Tsang with suspicion because
of his London links, the British-trained administrator has in the past
few years bent over backwards to please the Communist Party leadership.
For example, Tsang played a sizeable role in at least indirectly
shooting down the possibility of universal-suffrage polls to pick the
chief executive in 2007. Equally significantly, Tsang has little ties
with Shanghai Faction stalwarts such as Vice-President Zeng. At the
same time, the political fortune of Financial Secretary Henry Tang,
another aspirant for the chief executive’s post, has plummeted. Tang’s
father, a Shanghai industrialist who moved to Hong Kong in the late
1940s, had close relations with ex-president Jiang. And it is believed
that President Hu does not want another Shanghai Faction holdover to
run Hong Kong.

The successor controversy

Another controversy related to Tung’s resignation – whether his
successor will have a two- or five-year term – also illustrates
Beijing’s hands-on approach to Hong Kong affairs. In accordance with a
clause in the Basic Law (Hong Kong’s mini-constitution) dealing with
the resignation of the chief executive, Tsang will be Acting Chief
Executive until an 800-member, Beijing-appointed electoral college
chooses the next Hong Kong supremo on 10 July. Basic Law has clearly
stipulated that whoever is favored by the electoral college will have a
five-year term. However, Chinese cadres and legal scholars had pointed
out repeatedly – well before Tung’s formal submission of his
resignation earlier this month – that according to Chinese political
culture and practice, whoever replaces Tung will only serve out the
rest of his term, meaning two years. These scholars noted that the
five-year tenure only applied to a chief executive beginning an
entirely new term of office. They added that Tung’s replacement would
be regarded in the Chinese tradition as akin to a stand-in for an
incapacitated chief executive. This stance was affirmed by the State
Councillor in charge of Hong Kong, Tang Jiaxuan, earlier this month.
Irrespective of the outcome of this controversy, Beijing’s high-profile
intervention in Hong Kong politics presages even wider departures from
the norms of "one country, two systems", which was put forward by late
leader Deng Xiaoping to reassure Hong Kong during Beijing’s
negotiations with the British in the 1980s. This is despite the fact
that at least superficially, the Communist party leadership has reason
to be satisfied with recent developments in the SAR. Anti-Tung and
anti-Beijing sentiments have gone down in the wake of the 8 percent
growth in the economy last year. Moreover, after Beijing emphatically
ruled out faster democratization of the SAR last year, more Hong Kong
residents have become resigned to the inevitable – and pro-democracy
politicians have been able to attract at most several thousand people
to join rallies that clamor for general elections.

Obsessed with Hong Kong

It is evident, however, that the Hu-Wen leadership is still obsessed
with the possibility that Hong Kong may become a "base of subversion"
that "hostile anti-Chinese elements abroad" could use to destabilize
the mainland. Sources close to the Hu camp said while ex-president
Jiang almost never called a Hong Kong-related Politburo meeting, the
Hu-led Politburo Standing Committee had discussed Hong Kong issues at
least a few times since the 1 July 2003 anti-Tung protests. Moreover,
the sources said, a number of Hu advisers wanted Tung’s successor,
Tsang, to further prove his loyalty to Beijing by rekindling efforts to
re-enact the hated Article 23 national security law. And given the fact
that as in the case of Tung, Tsang is beholden to Beijing for his
meteoric rise to the top, the Harvard-trained administrator may feel
obliged to live up to the expectations of the SAR’s new Beijing bosses.

Willy Wo-Lap Lam is a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation as well as a Hong Kong-based journalist and analyst.

This article originally appeared in China Brief, published by The Jamestown Foundation in Washington, DC., at (www.Jamestown.org).
The Jamestown Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan organization
supported by tax-deductible contributions from corporations,
foundations, and individuals.