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Opinion | Has China forgotten how order was restored to Hong Kong after the 2003 Article 23 national security protests?
- Instead of hardline tactics and threats of military intervention, Hu Jintao’s administration defused the crisis by collecting public opinion from Hong Kong directly, holding local leaders accountable and increasing economic reassurances
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Proponents of the so-called China model heap praise on the central government. They assert that China’s remarkable economic rise is because of the Communist Party’s system of meritocracy, adaptability and legitimacy with the people.
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Whatever the merits of such arguments, it is obvious that such features are the opposite of what Beijing’s appointees in Hong Kong have managed to achieve, in the aftermath of their disastrously misguided extradition bill efforts.
Meritocracy has failed — no government official has resigned. Adaptability has been weakened by the absence of political reform and reassurance. And political legitimacy with the public has been crippled because of the widespread belief that the government is a wrecker (rather than defender) of Hong Kong’s autonomy (as seen by the attempt to introduce the extradition bill, refusal to independently investigate police violence, and threat of using emergency powers).
But all may not be lost for proponents of the China model as they attempt to apply their ideas to Hong Kong. This is especially if they look at the Hu Jintao administration’s response to the (also massive) Article 23 protests in 2003, a reaction different from Beijing’s reaction to the extradition bill crisis. The net effect of this different reaction was that, after the 2003 demonstrations, Hong Kong rapidly returned to stability.
Mass demonstrations came to an end. Violence became relatively non-existent. Life returned to normal. And favourable local opinion of the central government’s handling of “one country, two systems” surged to nearly 60 per cent, its highest since the 1997 handover.
After the failure to pass Article 23 legislation, Beijing set up a committee to formulate its policies for Hong Kong (led by Jiang Zemin’s protégé Zeng Qinghong) as a first step. Zeng’s committee bypassed central government agencies responsible for collecting intelligence on Hong Kong, and instead directly consulted local elites and dispatched researchers from Beijing to ascertain public opinion.
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