After Hong Kong’s defiant elections, will Beijing strike back?

The results of Hong Kong’s weekend elections for district councillors delivered a resounding slap in the face for the city’s Communist overlords in Beijing. But they are likely to elicit a hard-line response rather than any attempt at reconciliation.

On Sunday, a record 2.94 million people voted, a turnout of 71.2 per cent, also a record. Of the 452 seats contested, the pro-democratic parties captured 392 and the pro-establishment ones only 60. The pro-democratic parties took control of 17 of the 18 district councils. Of the popular vote, the pro-democracy camp took 60 per cent and the pro-government one 40 per cent.

It was an extraordinary reversal of the last election, in 2015, when the pro-government parties took 292 seats and control of all 18 councils. The vote was a referendum on six months of intense and often violent protests.

The unrest has highlighted the divide between Hong Kong – which reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 with promises that much of its British colonial institutions would remain intact – and authoritarian China. It began in June, with protests against an Extradition Bill that would have allowed people in Hong Kong accused of crimes to be taken to China to face justice there. The protestors made five demands – withdrawal of the Bill, universal suffrage, an independent inquiry into police violence, an amnesty for those arrested, and withdrawal of the designation of “rioters”. The government has conceded only one of these: the withdrawal of the Bill.

The atmosphere in the city on Sunday was intense and joyful, like that of a major event. The only universal suffrage election in Hong Kong, the district council vote was the first chance for its citizens to vote on the six months of protest.

The central government has been stunned by the result. Its many institutions in Hong Kong miserably failed to inform the leaders in Beijing of the state of public opinion.

“The officials only talked to each other and the business elite,” said a Western diplomat. “They did not talk to the general public nor believed in the press. In one day, 22 years of United Front work were lost. How is Beijing to regain the confidence and support of Hong Kong people?”

The United Front Work Department is the Communist Party’s powerful global intelligence and influence organisation, largely engaged in ensuring that any and all information about China anywhere in the world is favourable to the ruling Communist Party.

The Hong Kong elections results will see the central government dismiss the leaders of the Hong Kong & Macau Affairs and Central Government Liaison Offices as punishment for this failure, and replace them with new people. But nobody expects Beijing to agree to the four remaining demands – which were repeated by the democrats on Sunday after their victory.

Mainland media ran only brief reports on the vote. Indeed, the news agency Xinhua, the central government’s mouthpiece, did not report the results at all. Instead, it called for “law and order” to be preserved in Hong Kong and accused Western countries of instigating unrest.

Beijing does not want the germ of voting to spread across the border. It regards the protests as part of a foreign plot, instigated principally by the United States and Taiwan, to destabilise China. In fact, there is little evidence of this. Hong Kong people have led and organised the protests, including those that have turned violent.

At the end of October, the Fourth Plenum of the Communist Party Central Committee in Beijing issued a communiqué that set out its response to the protests. The central government will “control and rule” Hong Kong using “all the powers vested in [it] under the [Chinese] constitution and the Basic Law”, Hong Kong’s constitution. It will “build and improve a legal system and enforcement mechanism to defend national security” in both Hong Kong and Macau, which reverted to Beijing from Portuguese administration in 1999.

These objectives remain unchanged by the election. This means passage of a National Security Law, the so-called Article 23, “to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region (HK), and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies”.

Hong Kong’s government introduced this Bill in 2003 but was forced to withdraw it after 500,000 people protested. If the Hong Kong Legislative Council will not pass it, Beijing will use the National People’s Congress (NPC) on the mainland to enact the legislation and impose it.

The plenum’s decision also means that Beijing will play a more direct role in the selection of the Chief Executive and other top officials. It is furious with the incumbent, Carrie Lam, for her handling of the crisis and is likely to replace her in the coming months.

Beijing is also questioning the authority of Hong Kong’s courts, a bastion of respect and until now unquestioned in their assiduous application of the law. Lawyers and judges even joined the protests. Last week the Hong Kong High Court overturned a government ban on facemasks; it said that the ban was excessive and unconstitutional.

The next day, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the NPC said that Hong Kong courts had no power to rule on the constitutionality of the city’s laws. This caused alarm in Hong Kong, where the independence of the judiciary has been a pillar of society before and since the handover.

The pro-Beijing media has constantly criticised the Hong Kong courts for being too lenient to those arrested in the protests, especially by giving them bail. “What is most worrying is that our courts seem to be siding with the rioters,” wrote Tony Kwok, a council member of the Chinese Society of Hong Kong and Macau Studies in the official China Daily on October 22.  “Over 70 people out on police or court bail have been rearrested in riots, and yet most of them can continue to enjoy freedom on bail.”

The message Beijing takes from Sunday’s result is that it has given Hong Kong too much freedom and autonomy and that this is being exploited by its enemies, especially the United States. So the days of protest and confrontation on the streets of Hong Kong are far from over.