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Letter to the Readers The city of Hong Kong made the front page of almost all the world’s papers a day after September 28, 2014, as police in riot gear blasted 87 tear gas canisters at unarmed protesters gathering outside the city’s government headquarters, prefacing the 79-day Umbrella Movement. The movement stemmed from a newspaper article written by Hong Kong University law professor, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, in 2013 about using civil disobedience, namely Occupy Central, to press the Hong Kong government to implement universal suffrage. As Tai conceived it, the process would comprise rounds of public deliberations, referendums and, eventually, Occupy Central if Beijing fails to give Hong Kong full democracy. His proposal was followed by a series of critical events, most notably a class boycott by secondary school and university students which intensified at the government headquarters on September 26. It came after a white paper published by Beijing on August 31 described an electoral reform package that the public said was “sham universal suffrage”.
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Several student leaders, such as Joshua Wong Chi-fung and Alex Chow Yong-kang, were arrested during the September 26 clash. The arrests eventually gave rise to the Umbrella Movement as more people joined in the demonstration in support of the arrested students. A survey conducted by civic group, the Civic Council Hong Kong, in November 2014 showed that 77 per cent of the participants in the movement were people aged 18 to 39. The post-Umbrella period of Hong Kong became the debating ground for the idea of Hong Kong independence. Some younger people have advocated seeking a complete separation from China as fears increasingly prevail that Beijing is tightening its control over the semi-autonomous city. A schism developed within the city’s opposition bloc because of the pro-independence sentiments as a result. Five years later, a city-wide discussion of the Umbrella Movement has now been reignited as the verdict on charges against nine key leaders of the movement was handed down in April. The city’s democracy supporters are also enduring a sense of powerlessness, feeling the room for political progress in the city has become all but sparse. The number of participants in the symbolic July 1 annual marches plummeted from 510,000 in 2014 to 50,000 in 2018, according to organiser Civil Human Rights Front. In the first article, several younger pro-democracy politicians have been interviewed to study the sense of disenchantment aroused among their generation in the wake of the Umbrella Movement. Some of them have opted out of the political organisations they co-founded. In the second article, one of the nine defendants, 25-year-old Tommy Cheung Sau-yin, is going to share with us his struggles when trying to build a bridge within the city’s opposition bloc. Finally, we have pro-democracy veteran, Martin Lee Chu-ming, discussing what he thinks about Hong Kong independence, which has become a hot potato across the city, and how Hong Kong people, as well as Beijing, should deal with “one country, two systems” down the road.
Sincerely, Ezra Cheung Tsun-to
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Departures a Divisions Pervade HK’ Pro-democr Movement a Post-protest 6
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’s racy amid t Cynicism 7
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38-year-old software engineer reached what some may call the ceiling of electoral participation in Hong Kong’s political system in 2017, when he was among 1,200 voters with the right to cast a ballot in the city’s closed chief executive election. Less than two years later, that same software engineer stepped away from politics, citing disenchantment with his party and the wider opposition bloc. His story is reflective of a sense of hopelessness pervading political circles in Hong Kong since the 2014 Umbrella Movement. Former Civic Party member, Jackal Chan Yu-ming, describes himself as a part-time politician who rose to prominence in the midst of the 79-day Umbrella Movement, a rise that was best illustrated by his election to the party’s executive committee in late 2014. “I wouldn’t have won had I just relied on my original popularity inside the party,” he says, attributing 90 per cent of his success to his efforts during the movement.
Jackal Chan says he won the most votes in the Civic Party executive commi t tee e lection he ld in December 2014 as a result of the Umbrella Movement.
Jackal Chan Yu-ming
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Then party leader, Alan Leong Kah-kit, said Chan’s victory in the exco election represented a party-wide reflection on their position in the face of the rise of localism, a political idea advocating a greater degree of autonomy from the mainland, during the movement. Capitalising on the momentum gained during the movement, the pro-democracy camp won a record-breaking 325 seats in the 2017 CE electoral college. Yet, the camp differed in how they should use their ballots. Chan was among those who supported casting blank votes to protest against the small-circle nature of the election and Beijing’s inflated influence in the electoral process. That move went against the mainstream opinion, which opted for throwing the entire pro-democracy camp’s support behind what they termed “the lesser of the two evils”: former financial chief John Tsang Chun-wah. Tsang was the most popular candidate among Hong Kong people at the time.
Chan says he felt disappointed about the “populism” that spawned within the camp during the election since they chose a member of the establishment in a “rigged” election even though Tsang never promised to give Hong Kong full democracy.
New political faces emerged, despite faring poorly in surveys conducted before the vote, such as Lau Siu-lai and Yau Wai-ching. The results recarved the power dynamics in the pro-democracy camp, as well as in the city’s legislature.
Chan eventually left the Civic Party in January 2019 after seven years.
But five years after tens of thousands occupied Hong Kong’s major thoroughfares during the Umbrella Movement, the battle cry for democratic reform in the city has petered out as disenchantment seeps in.
A Loss of Halo The Umbrella Movement stimulated the formation of new groups within Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp to explore new political ideas and raise awareness of democratic development within the wider society. The district council election in 2015 and the legislative council election in 2016 saw historically high turnouts. 47 and 58 per cent of the electorate voted in the respective elections.
In December 2018, Owan Li, 26, quit Synergy Kowloon, a pro-democracy community group he co-founded in September 2017, because of what he terms a “disparity in expectations”. He saw the group as a continuation of his political participation in the post-Umbrella age by challenging the dominance of proBeijing groups at the community level. “We would help hire some activists if they couldn’t find a job,” says Li.
Owan Li is also a student representative of the PolyU council, chief management committee at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Owan Li
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However, Li says he was upset by the disqualification of several lawmakers after the 2016 election and shifted from feeling “unconfident” about the city’s political system to “outright hopeless”.
Li believes the high dissatisfaction rate was due to the disqualification saga and regards the incident as an indicator of the demise of Hong Kong people’s political freedoms and the curtailment of the city’s judicial independence.
The morale of the opposition bloc suffered a setback after six pro-democracy and proindependence lawmakers elected in 2016 were unseated by the court after a reinterpretation by Beijing of the Basic Law article concerning oath-taking.
“I can’t see prospects in terms of development and sustainability,” he says regarding doing politics in Hong Kong.
A year-end review published in late December 2016 by the University of Hong Kong’s public opinion programme found that 52 per cent of the 1,009 respondents were dissatisfied with how the city had developed that year, whereas those feeling satisfied constituted 23 per cent. The review also showed dissatisfaction was strongest in 2016 among people aged between 18 and 29. Compared to the previous year, the net satisfaction declined further from -26 per cent to -29 per cent, a new low since 2002.
In recent years, community groups such as Li’s have been facing difficulties due to a lack of experience in community work. One particular group, Sai Yau Office, based in the residential district of Sai Wan, disbanded in 2017, after the founders failed in the 2015 district council election. Independent community worker, Oscar Lai Man-lok, 24, says he also had to contend with “practical issues” that he had not imagined before he established a political party himself. Lai left Demosistō, the party he co-founded, in May 2018. He says he was not sure whether the party was being run properly even at the time he left.
Oscar Lai suggests stakeholders in the Umbrella Movement form a platform to restore mutual trust in the post-Umbrella age.
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Oscar Lai Man-lok
Founded in April 2016, Demosistō is a pro-democracy party comprising former members from the student pressure group, Scholarism, and some from the student union representative organisation, Hong Kong Federation of Students. Both Scholarism and HKFS played an instrumental role during the 2014 Umbrella Movement. As a co-founder, Lai says he wanted to bring changes to the opposition bloc by founding an alliance that would consist of academics and artists, just like Taiwan’s New Power Party, which emerged after the Sunflower Movement in 2014. However, that plan did not succeed because of disagreements over which candidates would run in which constituency in the 2016 legislative election. Lai argues that it was hard for Demosistō to find a place for the party to fit in the wider pro-democracy spectrum. He says he felt insulted when he was pressured to withdraw from contesting the election and instead support fellow candidate, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, who was thought to have a lower chance of winning the election according to polls conducted beforehand. “The cooperation [between Scholarism and HKFS] wasn’t entirely based on mutual understanding,” Lai adds, speaking as a former spokesman for Scholarism. Lai also describes the transition from his initial high hopes to the realisation of his “mismatched” expectations as a process of “losing the halo”.
A Question of Reconciliation Critics attribute the negative vibes circulating in post-Umbrella Hong Kong to Beijing’s refusal to budge on electoral democracy despite such a large-scale social movement as the Umbrella Movement. Hong Kong City University political science professor, Ray Yep Kin-man, estimates the number of demonstrators at several hundred thousand over the 79-day period. He also argues that the movement has intensified the conflict within the opposition bloc because some have started to think that participating in elections is redundant, while others even consider such participation would further reinforce the legitimacy of the authoritarian regime. “Since the disenchantment started to prevail after 2014, people began to rethink whether the strategies used in the past [to achieve democracy] would work,” says Yep. “The stronger the radical sentiments, the greater the fragmentation.” But he adds that the fundamental issue leading to such fragmentation is differing perceptions towards China. He sees the issue as the biggest watershed in Hong Kong politics. “All things considered, the most important questions facing Hong Kong people are how we deal with China as a regime and how we can position ourselves,” says Yep. After the Umbrella Movement ended in mid-December 2014, the Justice and Peace Commission, led by the Hong Kong Catholic diocese, started holding public seminars and forums to discuss how to rebuild social unity in the post-Umbrella age.
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Pro-democracy political veteran and former Democratic Party chairwoman, Emily Lau Wai-hing, has also been advocating a thorough review of the movement. “I don’t believe that was the last movement,” says Lau. “There must be others in the future.” “Some people aren’t willing to talk through it,” she adds. “Reviewing the movement is the first step.” Addressing the sense of disenchantment among Hong Kong’s younger generation, Lau admits that the pro-democracy camp, especially her party, should do more to cooperate with them. “There should not only be talks inside the pro-democracy camp, but also with the proBeijing camp, the Hong Kong government as well as Beijing,” she says. “For all conflicts, we all ought to seek consensus through dialogues, debates and compromises.”
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Emily Lau Wai-hing
A former lawmaker for 25 years, Lau remembers the “eight-party coalition” that all parties in the legislative council could utilise to discuss and press the government to put forward economic and social policies. Controlling 44 seats out of 60, the coalition was said to have achieved relative harmony within the legislature between 2001 and 2003. However, the coalition disbanded in 2003. Lau recalls some of her fellow councillors told her that Beijing did not like the idea of such a coalition because it would violate the philosophy of an executive-led government.
Describing dealing with Beijing as sleeping with a tiger, retired prodemocracy lawmaker, Emily Lau, says besides fighting for democracy, Hong Kong people must safeguard their freedoms from disappearing, such as the rule of law and personal security.
In Hong Kong’s political system, the chief executive is constitutionally designated as being accountable to both Beijing and Hong Kong.
Yet, Owan Li says he will leave politics for good and do something else he thinks is more conducive to the city’s future.
Using this example, Lau points to Beijing and the Hong Kong government as the main culprits behind the fragmentation in society, as it is in their interest to reduce the level of consensus among Hong Kong people.
“Going into politics in Hong Kong is an immature and naïve move for me,” says Li. “Being a columnist or a scholar would be better for Hong Kong’s future than being a politician.”
Although both Jackal Chan and Oscar Lai say they feel disappointed with party politics, they also say they have not yet lost faith in the people.
“I still believe Hong Kong people will push the pro-democracy camp to reform,” says Oscar Lai. “We just need to wait for good timing.”
“Party politics is a waste of my time,” says Chan. “I feel like there is a more suitable position for me outside.”
Number of participants in recent July 1 marches
Source: Civil Human Rights Front and Hong Kong Police13
‘Fence rider’ on Running for Offi Reconciliation and His ‘Worst Decision 14
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young Hong Kong man will never forget the bitter chill he experienced on January 15, 2018. Local journalists had already prepared their notebooks and cameras, with pens in hand. As a backdrop, sky-blue pull-up banners reading “Power for Democracy�, the name of the political group holding the press conference, had been put on display for the photocall. The host, meanwhile, was shaking hands with guests and celebrating what he claimed was an unprecedented success the group had achieved. All six candidates were supposed to have gathered at this lecture room at a university branch campus, where the result of an election held the day before would be announced shortly. But one was still missing. The result in question was for the Hong Kong pro-democracy camp’s primary for the legislative by-election to be held in midMarch. In fact, this was the first time the pro-democracy camp had attempted to tackle inter-party competition by a primary election rather than simply through partisan endorsements. About 22,300 people from two geographical constituencies, the New Territories East and Kowloon West, had voted. Rushing into the room, the candidate who came late managed to arrive at the venue just in time to take the empty spot at the photocall. With his dishevelled hair, saggy trousers and overstuffed shoulder bag, he looked more like a half-asleep university student dashing into an early morning class after it started.
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young man’s name is Tommy Cheung Sau-yin, 25. For seven years, he’s been known as one of the spokespersons for Scholarism, a disbanded local student pressure group, as well as the president of the students’ union at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. As a student activist turned politician, Cheung is definitely not a unique case in Hong Kong’s political culture; indeed, one might even refer to him as normal.
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Cheung was among the student activists who transitioned into full-time politics after the Umbrella Movement in 2014. Former lawmaker, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, 25, started his political career as one of the student leaders during the movement. He founded Demosistō with 22-year-old Joshua Wong Chi-fung in 2016 and fronted the party as the founding chairman. Cheung, however, took a behind-the-scenes role as a columnist and a political consultant as he studied for a degree in government and public administration at CUHK. What makes him stand out from other young politicians might be his public exam results. In 2012, he was among the highest scorers in liberal studies, a paper described as “deadly” back then as it was a new compulsory subject under the secondary education reform. No one knew how exam sitters would be graded. Cheung’s performance had somewhat broken down a stereotype that views rebels – in other words, social activists – as a gang of under-educated cynics. He therefore became
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Tommy Cheung Sau-yin
a liberal studies tutor, often publishing commentaries on the subject of public exams. But perhaps the most eye-catching quality of his that comes to mind is his claim of being a bus zealot, capable of memorising all the bus routes in Hong Kong, including route numbers and destinations. Some people have even suggested he check for a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome for such an unusual hobby. He’s neither particularly charismatic nor winsome. In spite of that peculiar interest in buses, he’s an ordinary boy by and large. Yet, for all his ordinariness, at 23 years of age at the time, he might have become the youngest legislator ever elected in Hong Kong if he had won the by-election. And later that day, having written a Facebook status about seeing through the snobbery and fickleness in human nature, he hosted a show on a local Cantonese online broadcaster. If one were to revisit that particular episode,
one would hear him hold back sobs and sighs almost throughout the show. “I haven’t got any plan for my political career,” said he, in a sniffling tone. “But if I’ve left other people with a negative impression or if other people think I’m not trustworthy because of this election, that is going to be the greatest loss of my life.” “I used to think that if I treated someone well, I’d be treated well in turn. But that’s not the case,” he told his co-host. Dead air lasted a few seconds. Unable to utter another word, he stopped to wipe his tears with his fingers, and later with a piece of crumpled soggy tissue paper he took out from his coat pocket. “The most intolerable thing is my friends stabbing me in the back.” In the months following that on-air outburst, he carried on rallying for Gary Fan Kwok-wai, the winner of the primary. Loyal to the agreed rules of the game, he set up stalls on the streets and tried to appeal to Hong Kong people to cast their votes in the by-election. “I’m just doing what I think I have to do,” he said. But on the other hand, he was conscious of the need to present to the public the solidarity that had been almost shattered because of the primary within the loosely formed pro-democracy camp. “Please support candidate No. 6: Gary Fan,” he chanted. Eventually, Fan won the by-election by bagging almost 31,000 more votes than his pro-Beijing arch-rival, Bill Tang Ka-piu.
Representing the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tommy Cheung is one of the student leaders during the 2014 Umbrella Movement.
Our
interview has been scheduled for the afternoon of March 31 at a café in the commercial area of Wan Chai. Despite this tumultuous period in his life, some things do not change, including his habitual tardiness. Cheung arrives more than an hour late. I’m able to spot him from afar because of his long-untreated pigeon-toed posture, which makes him walk in a rather cumbersome manner. He tries to appease me by helping me settle the bill, which works. And during a brief chat before the interview, I come to realise how tightly packed his daily itinerary is, due to the need for him to put all his affairs, however minute and unimportant, in order before his sentencing. In the meantime, he’s constantly on his phone just like all young people nowadays. In March 2017, he received a call from the police informing him that he was prosecuted for the conspiracy to incite other people to cause a public nuisance during the Umbrella Movement as well as inciting others to incite. He was one of the nine defendants who were charged at the time, including the Occupy Central founding trio, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, Chan Kin-man and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming. The pronouncement of the verdict has been scheduled for April 9 after four weeks of trial late last year. And he expects three to nine months in jail. After I’ve made clear the purpose of the interview, he shows his reluctance towards revisiting the topic but adds that he’ll still discuss it with me. Although I’ve known him since the Anti-National Education Movement launched by Scholarism in 2012, I hadn’t spoken with him until early 2017 when he decided to take part in the 2018 by-election.
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“It’s no use [reviewing the by-election],” he says, without even trying to hide his despair. “The lessons learned were too much.” And throughout the whole interview, he keeps going back to the point that opting to participate in the election might be the worst decision he’s made in his entire life so far.
In October, Leung and Yau were expelled from the seats they had initially won by popular vote following a reinterpretation of the Basic Law Article 104 by Beijing. The pair used a derogatory term to describe China and displayed a flag reading “Hong Kong is NOT China” while being sworn in.
The primary wasn’t his first attempt at elections. In late 2016, he and six of his friends campaigned for membership in the higher education subsector at the 2017 chief executive electoral college election. But the electoral officer wasn’t convinced of his eligibility to represent the sector and therefore disqualified him from running in the election.
Leung was regarded as a replacement of Edward Leung Tin-kei, ex-spokesman for localist group, Hong Kong Indigenous, who had been barred from taking part in the 2016 legislative election due to his pro-independence advocacy.
He also helped fellow democrat, Au Nok-hin, run for the wholesale and retail functional constituency in the legislature in mid-2016. Although Au didn’t succeed, he said in a radio programme that Cheung had visited each voter in the sector one by one with him and showed him support like no one else had. Yet, Cheung hadn’t thought his turn would come so early.
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was December 2016, Cheung recalls, when a dinner at a Thai restaurant in the residential district of Kowloon City changed the direction of his political career for ever. It was a few days before the CE electoral college polling day. The pro-democracy camp had started to argue over the strategies and stance they should take during the CE election. However, the localist legislators-elect, Sixtus ‘Baggio’ Leung Chung-hang andYau Wai-ching of Youngspiration, had just been ousted from the legislative council.
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The localist camp needed a solution to reclaim the duo’s lost seats. However, the substitutes had to be acceptable to the pro-democracy camp because the forthcoming by-election would be contested according to the simple majority rule. Secondly, it was essential the candidates representing both camps would be politically clean and moderate enough to avoid disqualification. With the aim of facilitating the uneasy partnership between both camps, Cheung remembers the moment that one of the localist camp leaders, Ray Wong Toi-yeung of Hong Kong Indigenous, turned to him and asked him whether he would run for Baggio Leung’s seat in the New Territories East geographical constituency. “I hadn’t expected Ray would ask me to play that game,” Cheung says. He adds that he was shocked and took what Wong had said with a grain of salt. For one thing, Cheung says he was afraid of losing and hesitant about taking on such a huge responsibility. For another, he was concerned that by agreeing to help regain the seat, he would cause offence to some of his friends in the respective camps and thus place himself in the firing line. He’d always opted for diplomacy and sought to avoid triggering hostility against himself.
He says he didn’t agree to take up the challenge until Wong approached him a second time two weeks later. On that occasion, Wong promised him that he would secure support within Hong Kong Indigenous. Afterwards, Wong made frequent contact with Cheung to converse about campaign strategies and orientation, including a critical meeting with the entire election team in mid-April 2017. But the discussion was put on the back burner because the by-election wasn’t the main focus in political circles at the time. Both Wong and Cheung intentionally avoided public exposure together. Whenever reporters asked Cheung about his plans for running for the seat, he would only say he was “actively considering” the option. The issue was left to simmer until one morning in September 2017, ten months after the conversation at the Thai restaurant. Cheung, together with Wong and Baggio Leung, approached Joseph Cheng Yu-shek of Power for Democracy, a pro-democracy mediation platform for all member parties and organisations to discuss electoral coordination, in the urban neighbourhood of Tai Koo. During the meeting, both Leung and Wong gave their endorsements to Cheung and identified him as a pro-democracy politician accepted by the localist camp. Cheng also agreed that because the pair had endorsed Cheung, there would be no need for Power for Democracy to hold a primary. “We should give priority to those chosen by the disqualified [lawmakers],” Cheng told the trio. “Organising an election is costly. It’s difficult for us to gather enough resources these days.”
in order to double-check whether Cheung had secured the localists’ support. And about a week later in a coordination conference held at a hotel in Tai Koo, Cheng passed on the message about these endorsements to all those attending. These included others who were eager to run in the by-election, such as democrats Gary Fan Kwok-wai and Andrew Cheng Kar-foo. In other words, it was an official declaration that Cheung was the chosen representative of the disqualified localist camp. Chiu reaffirmed that it wasn’t necessary to have a primary election if those attending the conference could come up with a representative for each geographical constituency. Feeling energised, Cheung felt that the two camps’ anointment would not be far away from his reach and started to look for a place to serve as campaign headquarters in the neighbourhood of Tai Wai Village in New Territories East. Considering himself to be “the highest common factor” between both camps, he was ambitious and fervid about winning the by-election as he started setting up the election campaign. After that conference, he began to visit the pro-democracy district councillors throughout New Territories East one by one to exchange thoughts about the neighbourhood to which each individual councillor belonged and, more importantly, to seek their support. Generally, Cheung received positive feedback from them.
Another meeting was in the making. Andrew Chiu Ka-yin, convenor of Power for Democracy, met Leung and Yau in Tai Koo
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Everything seemed to start fairly smoothly. But hard questions were soon being asked and circulated within the pro-democracy camp. What if this person did not manage to unify the pro-democracy camp? Would there be any plan B if plan A was disqualified? According to some local newspapers, a few of the conference attendees weren’t satisfied with the agreement and insisted on holding a primary election even when the disqualified lawmaker had appointed a person to represent them. As more conferences proceeded, the discussion gradually shifted from whether or not to have a primary to how the primary should be held. Cheung was faced with two options: continue with the primary election negotiations or abandon the discussions altogether and unilaterally launch a by-election campaign, which quite a lot of people suggested he do. Yet, he was aware that by going for the second option, he would be defying the democrats. And the pro-democracy camp’s primary seemed to be something he couldn’t circumvent as he wanted to be a middleman between the two camps.
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For Cheung, this was his first time bargaining with politicians, not on behalf of someone else but for himself. He had much to learn. On the other side of him were politicians far more experienced than he was. The catch-22 situation he’d envisioned also turned into reality as some politicians and activists started to question whether he had really obtained endorsements from the localist camp. But due to the shadow of disqualification always hovering over him, both Power for Democracy and Cheung agreed it would be suicidal for him to say so publicly.
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A rumour was stirred within the localist camp that Tommy Cheung was a sham localist from the pro-democracy camp. Rather than the reconciliatory role he’d originally wished to play, Cheung began to be depicted as a scheming fence rider who wanted to take advantage of both camps. In the political circles, he was nicknamed “ABCDE”. Metaphorically speaking, it meant that Cheung would say something to appeal to person A, then draw an entirely different version of the story to please person B, C and so on, in order to gain an upper hand in procuring support. And Cheung was bothered by that label. During the day, Cheung paid visits from one party to another and from one district councillor to another. Driving his white Toyota from the northernmost part of the New Territories to the southernmost Hong Kong Island, he had to have the fuel tank in his car refilled almost every day. At night, he and his election team would need to come up with measures to handle attacks from the internet about his credibility, which distracted them from putting their efforts into the real public. It was a stressful time for the entire team, especially for Cheung, who had been suffering from depression since 2013. Opportunism and disloyalty are absolute no-nos in Hong Kong’s political arena. Accusations of being an opportunist is a sign of the onset of the demise of an election campaign. He says he became easily irritated because of the pressure and so exhausted that he could fall asleep nearly everywhere. He was worried that the campaign would leave him with a negative image. On the other hand, he was still keen on proving that he could help bridge the gap between the pro-democracy camp and the localist camp by winning the primary, despite his haemorrhaging credibility.
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Cheung was soon fighting two fires. Having been charged for instigating riot, Wong failed to report to the police and return his travel documents to the court after a judge-approved trip to Europe in mid-November 2017. As Wong had dropped completely out of contact, Cheung had no one to vouch for his status as the chosen representative of the localist camp in the by-election. That was a blow to Cheung’s reputation inside the political circles because he could no longer claim he was backed by the localist camp. According to several insiders from the camp, Baggio Leung shifted his ground after Wong’s flight, moving from endorsing Cheung to merely acknowledging Wong endorsing him. One night in mid-December 2017, about a month before the primary election poll, Cheung and his assistant met up at a cha chaan teng café in the commercial district of Causeway Bay. The air was dense. And other people’s chinwags contrasted with the grim and hushed atmosphere between the two. It was an emotional and candid conversation. “I don’t care about winning or losing,” his assistant told him, “and rescuing your credibility is the most important issue.” Cheung agreed. His assistant was weeping during the conversation while Cheung himself was trying very hard to hold back his tears. He gave his assistant a hug before they parted. But then, there was a gamble for him to agonise over: continue to stomach those attacks, which might worsen the situation, or tell everyone about the localist camp’s endorsement, which would make him susceptible to disqualification. The criticisms had set him off. He opted for the latter, though unwillingly.
He held several press conferences about the whys and wherefores of his participation in the by-election, without holding back. He cried several times after those conferences. His own conscience rebuked him. And he was afraid of hurting those who might be involved. However, everything he did to try to stop the fire from spreading resulted in the opposite effect. The wildfire didn’t subside: instead, fuel was added to the fire every time he tried to address the accusations. As more and more people joined the online frenzy, passing the popcorn, truths became lies.
of the election team members says to me in hindsight. “The team thought the localist camp’s endorsement would turn out to be his ace in the hole, but that card was blank actually.” Although Cheung was desperate, both his election team and he himself silently knew that any more explanations and efforts invested would be futile. Wong had absconded. No one could prove him right. He had no more cards to play.
“Have those press conferences made a difference? How many people would believe it? How could we prove so?” one
Tommy Cheung (left) says he treats Chan Kin-man (right), CUHK sociology professor, like his father. They both are among the nine defendants prosecuted for conspiring to cause a public nuisance during the Umbrella Movement. Chan has been sentenced to 16 months in prison.
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It
was the day of redemption on January 15, 2018. The result had been set. The day before, the polling day, Cheung had taken on a tour on a double-decker bus from the morning to the evening throughout the New Territories East as his final campaign promotion. The bus zealot says that day was by far the happiest in his life because his dream of having a bus tour came true. Cheung arrived just in time for the result and the photocall. He was dull, sleepy and listless as he came in. No one knew the real reason why he was late. I ask him why. And he says he woke up late that day. “Gary Fan Kwok-wai of Neo Democrats: 8,089 votes,” said Chiu, the Power for Democracy convenor, after the photocall. “Steven Kwok Wing-kin of Labour Party: 3,058 votes…” “Non-partisan Tommy Cheung Sau-yin: 2,460 votes.” Cheung received the lowest number of votes among the three candidates in the New Territories East. He didn’t expect that result, as he’d thought he would come in second place. And he transcribed the loss by offering a smile of empowerment in front of the cameras and urging democracy supporters to vote for Fan in the by-election. Some critics said they appreciated the efforts Cheung had made during the primary. But he couldn’t care less. He had been overwhelmed by his tiredness. He had previously been quite slim, but since the election campaign started, he started to get bigger.
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“Frankly, I don’t give a damn,” Cheung says to me suddenly, which brings me back down to earth. “Reconciliation? Impossible… When there are resources left unoccupied, allies will become enemies.” “Every politician has his own agenda. Is it worthwhile devoting myself to politics?” he asks me. And he adds that he doesn’t want to blame anyone for the loss. Some localists now say on social media that they regret they didn’t do him justice when Cheung was accused of being a fake localist. But Cheung, now describing himself as an entrepreneur importing Taiwanese fruits and their derivative products to Hong Kong, has already decided to stay away from politics. “At least in the short term,” he adds. He’s also planned to study international relations or China studies in the UK after leaving jail. “Many things bring me more happiness than going into politics,” he says, referring to his trading business. Yet, he hasn’t forgotten about the demonstration against the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance amendment bill, which is to be held after the interview just a block away from the café, and reminds me it’s time to move on.
Heading to the anti-extradition assembly at Southorn Playground, I ask him how he feels about the verdict on April 9. “I’m prepared [to go to jail],” he replies. “To me, it’s a relief.” But despite being one of the key student leaders during the Umbrella Movement, he chooses to stand on the pavement during the protest on this occasion instead of going into the crowds. Some protesters come to him to shake hands with him and cheer him up every now and then. “I won’t stand in the front line anymore,” he sighs, looking at the crowds with a sense of dépaysement. He used to say he wanted to become the person who builds bridges, but not the one who crosses the bridge. But now, there is no going back. There are bridges he didn’t know he crossed until he’d crossed. “I’ve seen through a lot and become more seasoned after that election,” he says.
Cheung’s sentence, along with those of seven other Umbrella Movement activists, was handed down on April 24. Having appealed for public support on the eve of the sentencing, Cheung was ordered to carry out 200 hours of community service. He is appealing the convictions after a collective decision was made by all nine defendants. 27
HK Veteran Democrat
Recalls Independence Dialogue 28
with Beijing
before 1997 Handover 29
Hong
Kong’s independence-minded youth continue to criticise the pro-democracy camp for a litany of failures in their decades-long efforts fighting for the city’s unique status. But pro-democracy heavyweight, Martin Lee Chu-ming, recalls that he debated the merits of Hong Kong becoming independent with the mainland authorities as early as 1982, decades before the modern independence debate was engendered. This debate may have crossed Lee’s mind 32 years later when he met a weeping university student on the streets of Hong Kong three days after the 2014 Umbrella Movement began.
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Martin Lee Chu-ming
80-year-old Lee recalls the student asking him why he had supported the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the 1984 treaty stipulating that China would take control over the British colony of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, including the perpetually ceded Kowloon Peninsula and Hong Kong Island. “If the British government would not agree and you wanted us to go for independence, do you expect us to win?” he asked her. “We don’t have tanks. We don’t even have a gun.” “And even if we could beat the British army somehow, the Chinese troops would come in.” Lee says the student nodded her head when asked whether Hong Kong should go for independence, but later shook her head because she knew neither Britain nor China would grant absolute autonomy to the city.
Lee started his public life as a politician when Britain and China began to negotiate over Hong Kong’s future in the early 1980s. He joined the Basic Law drafting committee in 1985, but left the committee following the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Chinese state media and Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing activists have long chastised him for being a “counter-revolutionary collaborator” due to his years lobbying the United States on Hong Kong’s democratic development. Lee served as the founding chairman of the city’s flagship pro-democracy party, the Democratic Party, and supporters have called him the “father of Hong Kong’s democratic movement”. Yet, he has been seen by local independence supporters in recent years, not as a father figure, but as an ineffective traditionalist who failed to achieve any progress in the city’s democratisation after almost four decades of efforts. The senior counsel says, however, he talked about the possibility of Hong Kong becoming an independent state after the expiry of the 99-year New Territories lease in 1997, when he visited Beijing in 1982 in his capacity as chairman of the bar.
Describing Hong Kong’s relationship with the mainland as a seesaw, Martin Lee says the heavyweight central government must lean towards the centre and accommodate Hong Kong in order to reach equilibrium in the “one country, two systems” model.
“You cannot expect Hong Kong to have prosperity and stability and at the same time take Hong Kong back,” Lee remembers telling Li Hou, deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau affairs office at the time. “If you look at a beautiful rose blooming in your neighbour’s garden and you pluck it and you put it in a beautiful vase in your house, what will happen to the rose a few days afterwards?” he questioned Li. He adds that Li was “very angry” and asked him why Hong Kong people were short of self-confidence when Singapore had proven itself to be a successful Chinese community. “Singapore is an independent state. If you give independence to Hong Kong, I’m sure you don’t need such a good statesman as Lee Kuan Yew to run it,” he remembers saying. “Even Martin Lee can do it for you.” Lee says he realised at that time that Hong Kong independence was no longer an option. But he also interpreted the conversation as a sign of Beijing’s determination to experiment with the “one country, two systems” policy in the city. Hong Kong governor, Murray MacLehose, paid his first official visit to Beijing in 1979, suggesting Britain continue to administer the whole of Hong Kong after 1997 while returning the region’s sovereignty to China. Lee claims his 1982 delegation also put forward the same plan in their meeting with Li. British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, discussed with Deng Xiaoping, then leader of the Chinese Communist Party, this idea during her visit to Beijing two weeks after Lee’s. But the suggestion was rebuffed by Deng.
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“Do you know back in 1972 when China was first admitted to the United Nations, the British government agreed with China to remove Hong Kong as a colony?” he asks. “That means the British government did not want Hong Kong to be treated formally as a British colony.” Removing Hong Kong and Macau, a former Portugal exclave, from the UN’s list of non-self-governing territories was one of the first things China did after obtaining a seat at the UN general assembly. Then Chinese UN representative, Huang Hua, wrote to the UN decolonisation committee in March 1972 to request that both regions be excluded from the official list of colonies. The resolution was passed in November that year.
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“What could it mean? It could only mean that Hong Kong would at some stage be returned to China,” Lee says. “Otherwise, the British government would follow the rest of the world to give independence to her colony (Hong Kong).” Instead of becoming independent, Hong Kong came to be regarded as the “engine” to drive China forward. Lee also believes “one country, two systems” was Deng’s “grandiose” plan for Chinese unification, as part of what Lee has described as a “Great China Dream”. “Hong Kong must keep our core values as we know them for 50 years. No change,” says Lee. “At the end of that period, China would have caught up with Hong Kong.”
“The 1.3 billion people [of China], or by that time 1.5 or 1.6 billion people, would have enjoyed our freedoms and our core values.” The “one country, two systems” concept was originally proposed by Deng in the 1980s in order to solve the territorial dispute over Taiwan and accomplish cross-strait unification. But the idea has backfired in recent years. Over 80 per cent of Taiwanese people are opposed to “one country, two systems”, according to survey results published by Taiwan’s Cross-Strait Policy Association in January this year.
Protests against any form of unification with China have become prevalent across the island while Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, has openly reiterated that Taiwan will not accept the idea of “one country, two systems”. However, instead of the “Great China Dream” coming true, there are growing concerns that liberties in Hong Kong are being muzzled as Beijing’s tolerance for dissent diminishes. Disagreements continue to rage over the future of the city’s opposition politics.
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Localists slam the pro-democracy camp, including Lee, for being complacent and falling victim to a brand of Chinese nationalism that emphasises a strong unified China. In turn, democrats grill the localist camp for demonising mainland immigrants and acting in collusion with the CCP to impede the development of the city’s democratic movement. “You cannot agree that there could be complete unanimity between the pan-democrats because we are loose,” says Lee. “If you want a revolution, you can still start a revolution now but I advise you against it.”
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“Why would people put the blame on us, who accepted the joint declaration? At that time, there was no genuine choice,” Lee asks the localists. “Don’t put the blame on your predecessors and say: ‘you guys should have done it.’” But he adds that localists “must convert other people in Hong Kong” if they think independence is the right course for the city’s future. “I can see that attitude. I can understand the feeling of being helpless,” Lee comments. “If they’re wrong, [it] doesn’t matter. I was wrong too. Don’t be afraid to be wrong.”
However, the internal strife has not only taken place in the most radical wing of the pro-democracy spectrum. Some pacifists have also left the camp to seek a third way, striking a balance between both wings of politics. Some opted out of the political parties they had co-founded because they believed those parties had deviated from their founding values. They have established new political groups and think tanks composed of moderate democrats, while others have joined the government. But Lee questions whether such groups can be considered a third way, adding that he will not follow them if so.
Former transport and housing secretary and founding vice-chairman of the DP, Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, advised the party in an interview with local media outlet HK01 to “jettison old ideologies and search for a new route” by fostering a new governance philosophy. He also suggested the pro-democracy camp discard black-and-white thinking when dealing with subject matters concerning the central government. “Are we 100 per cent opposed to the Chinese regime?” Lee says in response. “When I was a legislator, 95 per cent of our votes were with the government. [Cheung] himself was a democrat. That was the way he voted too.”
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He also says he doubts whether such propositions are tenable under the conditions prevailing in the city’s legislature nowadays because the democrats have become the minority, unable to veto almost any bill.
In the second by-election held in November, pro-Beijing candidate, Rebecca Chan Hoi-yan, bagged 900 more votes than the two senior democrats, Lee Cheuk-yan and Frederick Fung Kin-kee, combined.
“From what the democrats are now doing, they’re now [attempting] to filibuster,” Lee asks. “Would you have acted differently?”
Some analysts, as well as Martin Lee, have ascribed both failures to the “disenchantment” among young voters after the Umbrella Movement.
With tensions between the government and the pro-democracy camp intensifying in recent years, critics fear the city’s legislature will lose its capacity to keep the government in check. Hong Kong Education University political scientist, Brian Fong Chi-hang, described the situation in his journal paper published in late 2014 as an “executive-legislative disconnection”. The political divide within the pro-democracy camp also resulted in declining enthusiasm to vote in both legislative by-elections last year.
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Claiming they wanted a structural reform within the camp, some young voters tried to persuade others to either not vote or cast blank votes in legislative elections.
Believing that only people’s will can bring down an evil law, pro-democracy veteran, Martin Lee, joins the match against the new extradition bill in late April.
Lee, though, regards such a tactic as “the most stupid thing and the most terrible thing”. Insisting that the popularity of the prodemocracy camp is still greater than that of its pro-Beijing counterpart, he believes nothing the camp can do will resolve such a sense of negativity and resuscitate the motivation among young people. “If they are disenchanted, how can we help them cease to be disenchanted?” he asks. “What can we do? Agree with them? Then, we all will get arrested. And they will then complain [about] why we don’t go for independence.”
Although more than two decades have passed since the 1997 handover, democracy has still failed to materialise. But Lee says he has not decided to surrender despite the opportunities to achieve democracy appearing more elusive than ever. “Am I pessimistic?” he asks himself. “The answer has to be ‘yes’.” “My motto is: so long as I don’t give up, I have not failed. But the moment I give up, that’s the end.”
Confidence in “One Country, Two Systems”
“Net Value” refers to the “confident” rate minus the “not confident” rate.
Source: HKUPOP
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