Envisioning a Future for Hong Kong
A common project for the diaspora
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born….
— Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 1930
This is the second in a series of occasional essays on issues facing the Hong Kong diaspora. The first was “What the Hong Kong diaspora can learn from the Tibetan experience.”
As our starting point, a clear proposition: “one country, two systems” is dead.
This is an open secret that every freedom-loving HongKonger has known for a long time. But it’s worth stating unequivocally because the 1c2s principle is still invoked, by both the Chinese Communist Party and Western democracies, and because we HongKongers have ourselves not yet fully confronted the implications of its death.
The phrase, “one country, two systems”, is meant to describe the relationship between the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong during the fifty-year period after the 1997 handover. To put it simply, the CCP was supposed to lay off, allowing HK a “high degree of autonomy”, including the universal suffrage it promised.
The CCP has reneged on all of that. The final nail in the coffin was the so-called “national security law” imposed in 2020, just 23 years after the handover. It still claims to be preserving and safeguarding, indeed “perfecting” “one country, two systems” while undermining it at every turn.
The death of 1c2s is entirely down to the CCP’s broken promises and destruction of Hong Kong as we knew it — its decimation of civil society and independent media, its “harmonizing” of formerly independent public institutions like the broadcaster RTHK and the universities, its attacks on rule of law and co-optation of the judiciary to its political ends, its implementation of competitionless elections that entirely exclude the opposition, its imprisonment of hundreds of political prisoners, and its incessant attacks on fundamental human rights that were previously to a large extent respected, in particular, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association.
Besides being a disaster for Hong Kong people, CCP rule has been a catastrophic failure of governance. One would really have to try hard to screw things up as badly as the CCP has done. If it had fulfilled the terms of its agreements and promises — in particular, if it had allowed HKers to elect their own government as promised — , most HongKongers would have consented, albeit without enthusiasm, to CCP sovereignty. But as a result of its refusal to do so and the ensuing rebellions against its tyranny, the only way it can now ensure control is by imposing draconian measures. Demanding obedience, only deepening alienation and resistance, it is caught in the vicious circle of its totalitarian logic: the harder it cracks down, the more dependent it becomes on force to retain control.
Meanwhile, support for “one country, two systems” has been a cornerstone of Western policy on Hong Kong ever since the handover. While Western democracies criticize the CCP for damaging 1c2s, it remains their point of reference, and their criticism is often couched in terms of calling on the CCP to respect the architecture of 1c2s, the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law, both of which are now worth less than the paper they’re written on, something the CCP has at least acknowledged in the case of the Joint Declaration. To put it another way, no foreign governments have questioned the legitimacy of CCP sovereignty over HK now that 1c2 is dead.
There have been some commendable responses by Western countries to the CCP’s destruction of 1c2s — in particular, the United Kingdom’s BN(O) visa scheme providing eligible HongKongers with a pathway to immigration — , but Western policy on Hong Kong is largely driven by inertia (as is much of foreign policy).
Actually confronting the fact that 1c2s is dead would mean having to reformulate policy, with all of the disruptions and inconveniences that change brings: a showdown with the CCP, acknowledgment of the full extent of the crisis of Hong Kong. The very constitutional basis of its political existence has been shredded. The legitimacy of CCP sovereignty over HK has been thrown into doubt, and the right of the Hong Kong people to self-determination — the only right guaranteed in both of the treaties that serve as the cornerstone of international human rights law, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — must be recognized.
And that is why, even though 1c2s has been dead for some time, it is perhaps more accurate, following Gramsci, to say that it is dying. Arguably, something is not entirely dead until all relevant parties recognize it as such. And in the case of Hong Kong, while the “old is dying… the new cannot be born.” Indeed, much of the recent CCP crackdown on HK in recent years has had as its objective preventing the new from being born: a stronger sense of Hong Kong identity, new thinking about Hong Kong’s political future — it all had to be crushed.
The lag between the inception of the new reality and its recognition reminds a bit of the Israel-Palestine conflict. For decades, the official policy of Western democracies has been to support a “two-state solution”, and that is also what the Israeli government has officially been working towards, even while any prospect of a viable two-state solution disappeared years ago due to Israel’s incessant building of illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories for hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews. This is why even mainstream international human right organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have recently determined that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians constitutes apartheid, a crime against humanity. It takes a long time for the world to adjust to reality, especially when the powers that be don’t find it in their immediate interests to do so.
We HongKongers are somewhat complicit in this convenient conspiracy of rivals to refuse to recognize the true state of affairs in HK. When we appeal to the international community, we speak of our desire for “freedom and democracy”. We omit the details, and we rarely emphasize that the whole constitutional basis for the political status of HK has been torn up by the CCP. “Freedom and democracy” is fine as a pithy phrase to describe our objectives and to elicit support from free and democratic societies, but if we really crack open those eggs, what do we find?
What would freedom look like in HK? And democracy? Given the current situation, how might we expect to bring them about? What forms could they possibly take? Understandably, we do not elaborate on these matters when we speak to the world — too complicated, people would get lost in the details, etc — , but we hardly even talk about them amongst ourselves. Do we even know the answers to those questions? Or, to put it another way, do we have any kind of consensus about what the answers are? Have we become so accustomed to chanting slogans and repeating mantra-like phrases like “freedom and democracy” that we haven’t any particularly clear idea of what we mean by them? Do we still believe in the slogan, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”, and if so, what does that actually mean to us at this particular moment in HK’s history? How to liberate Hong Kong? And what would we want a liberated Hong Kong to look like?
Is not our responsibility in the diaspora — where we can speak and act freely, unlike at home — to help “give birth to the new”?
A lot of our ideas about “freedom and democracy” in HK are formulated as negatives: they have to do with, at a bare minimum, getting the CCP out of HK affairs, putting an end to its oppression, reinstating lost rights. That is all fine and well, but insufficient: whatever happens in HK, nothing is going back to the way it was before. What is our positive vision for Hong Kong? If and when we could “build back better”, how would we do it?
In this interregnum, when the old is dying and the new cannot (yet) be born, answering those questions and positively envisioning a future for Hong Kong is a worthy if not crucial project for the diaspora to take on.
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The two or three years after the Umbrella Movement in 2014 were ones of intellectual ferment as people searched for answers to the problem that was CCP governance. After it denied genuine universal suffrage to Hong Kong and emphasized that its August 31, 2014 decision allowing only fake suffrage (it would continue to control the selection of the Chief Executive) was final and immutable, it became clear to many there would never be true democracy under CCP sovereignty.
New thinking began to emerge. Localism and, related to it, Hong Kong nationalism were among the more dynamic strands of thought. In regard to Hong Kong’s political status, self-determination and independence were the ideas that gained most traction. Meanwhile, a substantial number of traditional pan-democrats continued to advocate for what they always had, genuine universal suffrage. They criticized self-determination and independence as “unrealistic” but were unable to explain how genuine universal suffrage under CCP rule was any less unrealistic than other options, especially when it had just been ruled out.
Once proponents of alternative political visions began to get elected to the Legislative Council in 2016, the CCP panicked and adopted various pretexts to kick them out and imprison them. That pretty much put an end to the development of these movements as well as to the public discourse around their ideas.
All of this happened between the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the anti-extradition protests of 2019. Both of those enormous popular outpourings of discontent were essentially rearguard actions: that is to say, they were initially motivated by the primary goal of preventing the worst from happening — fake suffrage in the first case, extradition to China in the latter — and only secondarily articulated positive goals, which in both cases happened to be genuine universal suffrage.
So, even as late as 2019, that is where we were at. For the sake of unity, those who had previously advocated self-determination and independence deferred to the sentiment of the moment, or the lowest common denominator — what virtually all protesters could agree on — and stopped talking about their preferred options. It made sense tactically: we were saying, “All we are asking for is what you promised,” and giving the regime one last chance to take up the offer. But even while we made that demand, few had any faith that the CCP would respond positively to it.
Instead, the CCP decided to impose its “final solution” once and for all. It had always intended to eventually incorporate HK fully into the PRC, rendering it no different from the rest of the empire except perhaps for some relatively artificial trappings (separate currency, etc), and now it decided it had to do just that much faster than it had originally been willing to wait, for fear that if it didn’t, HK could eventually spiral out of its control. Indeed, it had already lost the hearts and minds of the people; that is why its imposition could only occur by force.
And so, here we are: Hong Kong people now live in what is little more than an open-air prison. Hundreds are in actual prisons. And tens of thousands have escaped HK altogether, the seeds of a new diaspora.
*****
Recent exiles have spent much time and effort settling into new homes, dealing with the many practicalities and challenges that involves while also addressing the nearly constant emergencies resulting from the on-going crackdown in HK. Many have taken initiatives to set up new organizations and start new projects. We are in a period of figuring out exactly who we are and what we should be doing. Most of our work has been focused on very particular and often immediate matters — lobbying for particular legislation, mobilizing to protest particular events and issues. In this busy period, most of the focus has been on NOW.
That is understandable, but as a result, little time has been spent looking to the future, asking ourselves what kind of HK we would one day like to see and how to bring that about. Perhaps that is because a free, autonomous, democratic HK appears so distant at the moment that it seems futile to even begin to consider it. But now that so much about our home is not within our power to decide and probably won’t be for some time to come, this is actually an opportune moment to prepare for that very future, however distant it might seem. If we don’t, then we may unwittingly consign ourselves to passively waiting for the times to turn in our favor. And even if we were to just wait, shouldn’t we be thinking about what we should do when opportunity finally knocks?
Debates about the desired political status of HK and related issues were put on hold prior to 2019 and now, after that cataclysm, they haven’t resumed. Is it not time that they did? Do we not need to find means and opportunities to discuss and debate such matters?
I ask as someone with no particular axe to grind, no position to advance. In fact, I think of the project of envisioning a future for Hong Kong as open-ended and on-going, one that may set in motion a whole train of other initiatives and possibilities. We must embark with open minds and a high tolerance for disagreement, based on our awareness that we’re all in this together and that unity and solidarity are our greatest strengths.
What will we find out when we take the opportunity to explore? It’s not just a matter of debating the merits of independence versus self-determination versus something else. Discussing the desired political status of Hong Kong is important, but we should be thinking even more broadly than that — how do we envision a free HK? What would it look like? What would we like to see in it, what would we not like to see?
Don’t get me wrong: I have no illusions. The situation in HK is grim. At the moment, there are hardly any grounds for optimism. CCP rule of HK, though a disastrous governance failure, could continue for a very long time to come. Bad ideas and unworkable systems can perpetuate themselves indefinitely, especially if the ruler is rich and powerful. But while recognizing this, we should not allow ourselves to become conditioned to passively await a better time, or even worse, to unconsciously assume that there really will be no better time — “Why discuss the future when the present is so uncertain” — which can be a way of accepting as given that there really is no better future at all.
It is in light of the present situation, with no illusions, grounded in the current reality however bleak it may be, that we can set out to find a way forward. As the saying goes, “It is not that we see hope and therefore we persist but that through our persistence, hope emerges.”
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If the above questions about how we envision Hong Kong’s future seem too abstract, too broad, difficult to get a handle on, or distant from the current situation, then we may find more concrete approaches to them, as there are many angles from which to view the issue. For example:
What kind of socio-economic system do we envision? In the fight for real autonomy and genuine universal suffrage, this question has always taken a back seat, even though it is intertwined with those political issues and arguably one of the most important matters that anyone who desires freedom and democracy in HK faces.
Hong Kong is one of the most economically unequal developed societies in the world. It has a tiny elite which benefits enormously from current economic arrangements in HK and a vast underclass of about half of the population which lives in subsidized public housing because it can’t afford a place to live at market rates. A real servant-master dynamic exists: the servants are let out of their dormitories in order to serve their masters for meager wages and then are expected to quietly and humbly return to them. The public housing system subsidizes not only the servants paid those meager wages but also the masters who, as a result, are under no pressure to pay their servants a living wage. The political system in Hong Kong up to now has always been designed to ensure the exclusion of the vast majority of Hong Kong people from any real political power in order to preserve the advantages of the economic elite. (I am reminded of the unwitting honesty of former Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying who said at the height of the Umbrella Movement that the problem with introducing democracy in Hong Kong is that poor people would dominate elections.)
Can there be real democracy in HK under current economic arrangements? Conversely, would simply making the political system democratic lead to a fairer economy? Being outside of HK gives exiles a better opportunity to take a comparative approach to these questions. A look at countries like Chile and South Africa suggests that a transition to democracy does not automatically lead to fairer economic arrangements. Both countries made transitions to democracy decades ago but have continually struggled with entrenched and acute economic inequality, which in turn has impeded democratic development. In Chile, that lead to massive protests in 2019, the same year as Hong Kong’s, which in turn brought about a referendum on a new constitution and, eventually, the election of a former student leader now in his mid-thirties as prime minister, with the mandate to change that economic system, some thirty years after the inception of democracy. In South Africa, they’ve hardly begun; instead, the country is dominated by a party with kleptocratic tendencies that was once the party of the liberation struggle. Failure to address entrenched economic arrangements can endanger the transition to democracy. In Hong Kong, there is the additional fact that much of its economy is bound up with China’s, and this interwoven-ness would have to be addressed, or else China would still be able to significantly control HK through manipulation of its economy.
Would the ideal economic system in Hong Kong look something like the social democracy of a country like Norway? Norway and Hong Kong are different in many ways but also share certain similarities: relatively small and homogeneous populations, relatively well developed. Norway’s widely regarded as one of the most democratic and equal societies in the world. Why couldn’t Hong Kong, in theory, become the Norway of East Asia? Should it? The two places are very different in terms of their historic and cultural contexts, and societies that are closer to HK — South Korea, Taiwan —and have made democratic transitions in recent decades should also be studied. Likewise, HK’s economic links to China are not natural or inevitable but due to policy choices (for example, the development of the China-oriented tourism industry): how easily could HK reorient its economy away from China, towards East and Southeast Asia and the rest of the world?
Indeed, one of the things HK people in the diaspora should take the opportunity to do, with an eye toward envisioning the future of HK, is study relevant places and issues around the world that up to now we may have overlooked.
In particular, we should make efforts to improve relations with peoples involved in other freedom struggles, in Burma, Thailand, Belarus, Russia, Venezuela, Sudan, and, reaching further back, Egypt, Syria, Palestine and elsewhere. We tend to overlook them because of our assumption that, like us, they don’t have power so they can’t do much for us, when in fact they are our most natural allies and understand our situation better than most anyone else. Not only that; we can learn from them.
We might also examine an important similarity between HK and all of those other places: our freedom struggle has “stalled” or “failed” insofar as the dictator is still in power. In 2011, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan published a landmark study, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, comparing nonviolent and violent resistance movements over the course of the twentieth century. Among their optimistic findings were that nonviolent struggles were more likely to succeed than violent ones and a nonviolent freedom struggle with consistent participation of more than 3.5 percent of the population almost always succeeds. Why is it then that since that study, most nonviolent freedom struggles, no matter where in the world, have not accomplished their most immediate objectives? To what extent are the reasons, from one struggle to the next, similar and to what extent different? What lessons can be learned, especially with an eye toward applying them to the future? (While I don’t agree with some of these “10 lessons for Belarus from Venezuela”, I think making briefs like this is the sort of thing we should be doing for HK.)
We might also study what other diaspora groups have done to “win their country back”. What can be learned from those efforts? For example, the Belarusian opposition in exile has a kind of executive office of 18 people, a “coordination council”, an economic working group, a constitutional reform group, a human rights group, and a committee investigating crimes committed by the regime and its allies. All are focused to one degree or another on eventually making a transition to democracy and building a post-Lukashenko future for Belarus. It is true that most in the Belarusian opposition expect the dictator to fall — or die, leaving a power vacuum — within a relatively short period of time. By contrast, most HKers have no expectation that the CCP will relinquish its stranglehold on HK any time soon, but the Belarusian way of organizing and coordinating the work may be a potential model, perhaps a preferable option to a full-fledged government-in-exile (see below).
A related area of study as we envision a future for Hong Kong is transitional scenarios: How have other places made the transition from dictatorship to democracy? Which countries have been successful? Which have failed? What are some of the most common impediments? How can this knowledge inform our actions in the diaspora? Are there useful ways to prepare for transition even in the absence of the imminent prospect of political change?
Over the past year and a half, various groups in the diaspora have mooted ideas like a “government-in-exile”, a “shadow parliament”, or some other representative body. In 2021, the Hong Kong Charter was published, initiated by some of our more prominent exiles. At the time, it looked to me as if it might be the start of some further development, but nothing ensued. Indeed, none of these initiatives has really taken off. Why is that? Is it because there isn’t much enthusiasm for them? Or because there hasn’t been much discussion or debate about such ideas to get people thinking about them? I tend to think the latter is the case, but that begs the question, why hasn’t there been? Due to lack of interest? Or lack of fora for such a discussion? Or just that we’ve been so focused on staying afloat that we’ve hardly had the time or inclination to look up? Whatever the case may be, it seems important to more seriously consider the need for a representative body in the diaspora, or at least some kind of coordinating mechanisms like those of the Belarusian opposition mentioned above.
Indeed, related to that, we must find and create more opportunities for discussion and debate. There have been some promising sessions on Clubhouse. There have been online discussions. These are all to the good, and more can be done in online venues. But nothing quite replaces meeting in person. That has been difficult because the exodus from HK has occurred during the pandemic, but it’s still something we should try to bring about in the not-too-distant future when the public health situation allows. Perhaps it’s easier to do in the UK, the new de facto capital of the diaspora, because distances are shorter. Some have mooted the idea of a continent-wide conference of HK groups in North America in summer 2022 — a wonderful idea if it comes about. Such face-to-face meetings are excellent opportunities to discuss bigger issues that are hard to adequately address in online settings, especially among people who don’t know each other. Spin-offs may occur, like study groups on different topics such as those mentioned above and others, charged with reporting back to the larger community on their findings.
We may also consider whether there is a need for a new media organization in the diaspora, not only because independent media in HK has all but become extinct under the crackdown but also to further discussions on topics such as those mentioned here and help to set an agenda for the diaspora. With the closures of Stand News and Citizen News at the turn of the year following Apple Daily’s demise in the middle of 2021, there is a serious gap not only in independent news coverage but also in discussion and debate. There appear to be some plans afoot to address that gap. Hopefully they will come to fruition. In an ironic sense, the crackdown on independent media in Hong Kong can be seen as an opportunity for the diaspora to get started on what it should probably be doing anyway, starting it own independent media.
Ideally, the diaspora would have an online print-based publication (or publications) in both Cantonese and English that includes images and videos and is both outward-facing toward non-HKers, bringing the voices of HKers to a wider audience, and for communication between HKers. I imagine it would not exactly be a daily newspaper but something more along the lines of a weekly or monthly magazine like The Atlantic with news and views both from HK and the diaspora but from a somewhat broader perspective than a daily.
(A word about YouTube: I know there are quite a few popular YouTube channels both in the diaspora and among freedom-loving people in HK, and there is nothing wrong with that. But YouTube is a medium that doesn’t lend itself well to the kind of debate and discussion I have in mind, since the direction of its communication is primarily one way — from the channel owner to viewers. For getting your message out there, it’s good; for developing a culture of dialogue, not so good.)
Perhaps my belief in the power of the written word is old-fashioned, but I also think it would do a lot to promote HK identity and culture, areas that many others have identified as important to develop. Film and music are great, but it is my personal hope to see HongKongers emerge out of this dark period with a genuine Hong Kong literature. I dream of the day when every young HKer will be easily able to name five HK writers, five HK artists, just as every young Norwegian can name five Norwegian writers and artists, HK national identity anchored in cultural expression in a variety of different genres.
As is so often the case, in striving toward a particular end, envisioning the future of Hong Kong and working towards it, we are actually realizing that future in the here and now. One of the most important aspects of the project set out before us is to develop a democratic culture in the diaspora. We shouldn’t simply assume that will naturally occur. Hong Kong people have never had democracy, neither under UK colonialism nor under CCP colonialism. Hong Kong people who have lived most of their lives in HK have practically zero experience of living in a democratic society. Of course, we have fought for democracy and have democratic ideals and perhaps we understand the importance of democracy even more than people in the free societies in which we now live who have always had it and take it for granted. But that’s not the same as growing up in and living in a democratic society, learning and continually practicing democratic habits because they’re simply part of our environment. We can consider our project of envisioning the future of Hong Kong as a way of developing democratic culture and practices in the diaspora, which, in turn, is a way of preparing for the day when democracy does become a possibility in Hong Kong. Indeed, using this time when the situation is so grim in HK to develop democratic culture, practices and processes is just as important as envisioning the future of Hong Kong, perhaps even more so.
I hope the above may give some idea of what I have in mind when I speak of the importance of envisioning a future for Hong Kong as a common project of the diaspora. Unfortunately, it is a project that people in HK at this time cannot freely participate in, and that is a concern to be kept in mind, but it is not a reason to postpone it. Eventually, when the time comes, we will have to face the challenge of reintegrating the freedom struggle in HK with the work of the diaspora, but in the meantime, we must do what we can, and that especially includes doing the sorts of things that cannot be done in HK right now.
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“….the old is dying and the new cannot be born….” Gramsci wrote those words while in prison under the Fascist dictatorship in Italy. He had no reason to think his political ideals might one day be realized and yet he spent his eleven years in prison continually thinking and writing toward the future, a future that indeed he himself would never get to see. Prison destroyed his health and he died in 1937, with Mussolini still in power and the Nazis about to start a world war and commit genocide. Gramsci was a Marxist, a leader of the Communist Party of Italy, and aligned with the Soviet Union at a time when the Stalinist purges were well underway and the gulag burgeoning, not to mention the Soviet-perpetrated famine in Ukraine and other atrocities.
In short, Gramsci’s legacy is complicated. One thing we can learn from it is that it is a continual challenge in one’s struggle for justice, freedom and democracy to align oneself with genuinely democratic, rights-respecting and freedom-loving people, groups and governments. Yet another takeaway is we simply cannot know what the future may hold, but that is no reason to avoid the responsibility of working toward the future we wish to see. Some — perhaps many or even all — of us may never get to see a free HK. If and when it comes about, it very well might not look as we envisioned it.
The process is virtually as important as the outcome, indeed may heavily influence it or even become it. In the passage from which Gramsci’s oft-quoted maxim is extracted, he asserts there is a “crisis of authority”: the ideology of the ruling class is largely bankrupt but it hangs on to power primarily by exercising coercive force. In this “interregnum”, as he calls it, virtually anything is possible. Gramsci has no idea how things will play out but whatever the case, he expresses the conviction that there is the “possibility and necessity of creating a new culture” and that this, in turn, will contribute more than just about anything else to giving birth to the new.
He said that in 1930, but we live in a similarly precarious moment today: the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism hangs in the balance. Just which direction it tips will depend, to a large extent, on people like us, on the steps we decide to take, and the efforts to which we dedicate ourselves. We must be sure not to sleepwalk through history but remind ourselves that we are its protagonists and put that premise into practice by consciously finding common, widely agreed and consensual processes for setting an agenda for ourselves in the diaspora and plotting Hong Kong’s future.
