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Hong Kong’s sharp shift to the left
SEPTEMBER’S ELECTIONS to Hong Kong’s
pseudo-parliament, the legislative council (Legco), were hugely
important for the future of the territory and, in the longer term, also
for mainland China. The results have been described as ‘stunning’,
‘unexpected’, and ‘surprising’.
The International Herald Tribune (8 September) spoke
of "a sharp leftward shift" in which "pro-business candidates lost out".
The League of Social Democrats (LSD), a left-leaning electoral alliance
formed just two years ago, defied most predictions to finish with 10% of
the vote. Its election slogan, ‘No struggle, no change’, marked it out
from the grey mass of parties. The Standard noted: "The success of the
radical League of Social Democrats in Sunday’s election should set alarm
bells ringing in the government".
And it is not just Hong Kong’s unelected
bureaucrat-government, led by the hapless Donald Tsang, that has cause
for alarm. Tsang’s paymasters in Beijing will also have been shaken by
these elections coming just two weeks after the most expensive Olympic
games in history. The organisation of the Beijing Olympics won plaudits
from the world’s capitalist press – the general verdict being that
hosting the landmark event had strengthened China’s rulers. The voters
of Hong Kong, and an eruption of angry street protests in three mainland
provinces, contradict this assessment.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dispatched
China’s 51 Olympic gold medalists to Hong Kong just days before polling
day, to spread some patriotic ‘feelgood’ and lift Tsang’s sagging
popularity. This was the latest move by Beijing to woo the middle-class
and defuse mass pressure for the swifter implementation of universal
suffrage. Last year, Beijing designated 2017 for direct elections for
chief executive (prime minister). For the Legco, free elections would
apply "not earlier than 2020". At the same time, the central government
has pumped funds into the territory to boost economic growth, which was
6.1% last year and 6.8% in 2006. Despite this, Beijing’s political
representatives in Hong Kong failed to make the headway they had
confidently predicted, while the most clearly identified
anti-establishment candidates did spectacularly well. This reflects the
fact that most working people have not benefited from the booming
economy.
An editorial in the South China Morning Post
expressed the shock and disbelief among Hong Kong’s political and
business elite: "The biggest winners are the independent mavericks and
veteran provocateurs". On a more serious level, this mouthpiece of the
capitalist class noted: "In general, candidates who tackled livelihood
issues and appealed to the working class did well, those perceived to
favour business interests did not". (9 September)
Not only the pro-Beijing camp was wrong-footed by
the election results, but also the ‘moderate’ sections of the
pan-democratic camp. Pan-democratic parties like the Civic Party have
stressed negotiations with Beijing in recent years and, in practice,
acquiesced to a slower tempo of democratic change. Augustine Tan noted
in a posting on Asia Times Online: "The rise of the radicals was
probably the most ironic result of Sunday’s poll. It had been widely
believed, even by the leaders of the pro-democracy camp, that
pro-Beijing candidates would sweep the board, the Democratic Party would
be reduced to a minor role, the Civic Party would assume leadership of
the anti-Beijing forces, and the enigmatic ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung
and his newly-formed League of Social Democrats would be history. The
new reality: slight numerical improvement for the pro-Beijing sector,
slight losses for the Democratic and Civic parties but big gains for the
League of Social Democrats (LSD). Previously they had two seats, now
they have three, and all three were won with handsome majorities".
Long Hair has a track record of opposition to Hong
Kong’s capitalist establishment and the authoritarian rule of the CCP.
In July, he was refused entry to mainland China on a humanitarian visit
to the Sichuan earthquake zone, even as the travel ban on other
pan-democrats was lifted. During the Olympic games, Long Hair was
ejected from the equestrian arena (in Hong Kong) for holding a banner
and shouting: ‘End one-party rule’. He has supported causes like the
right of self-determination for Tibet, which were far from popular in
the atmosphere of heightened nationalism prevailing earlier this year.
In addition to Long Hair, its most well-known figure, the LSD saw Albert
Chan Wai-yip re-elected to the Legco, while the group’s chairman, Wong
Yuk-man, a well-known radio presenter, nicknamed ‘Mad Dog’ by a hostile
media, was elected for the first time.
The LSD only fielded five candidates in this its
debut Legco election campaign. The five received a combined vote of
152,800, from a total of 1.52 million. Only half the 60 Legco seats are
elected by voters, under what the South China Morning Post describes as
a "a system of mutant democracy" that was designed by representatives of
British capitalism (the outgoing colonial power) in conjunction with
Beijing. The other half of the Legco is made up of so-called ‘functional
constituencies’, small circle contests between representatives mostly of
privileged business and professional groups like bankers, property
developers and lawyers. In the elected half, the pan-democratic camp
took 60% of the vote, while the pro-Beijing camp remained on 40%. Long
Hair did especially well, receiving 44,700 votes, the second highest
vote for any candidate. In the same constituency (New Territories East),
the leader of the Liberals, part of the pro-Beijing camp and the most
outspoken pro-capitalist party, lost his seat.
Hong Kong is widely seen as a citadel of capitalism,
with record-low corporate taxes and a laissez faire economic tradition.
But the popular image of Hong Kong as an affluent metropolis is
misleading. Huge social problems abound beneath the city’s glittering
skyline. One in four of Hong Kong’s children live in poverty. This is
the other side of the ‘small government, big market’ doctrine that Tsang
and co pride themselves on. Even some capitalist journals recognised
that this year’s election centred on decisive issues such as inflation,
jobs, a minimum wage, education and housing.
The vast majority of Hong Kong’s workforce is
trapped in low-paid jobs in the service sector, as almost all
manufacturing has been outsourced to mainland China. Inflation, running
at over 6%, has squeezed pay packets hard. Rents, among the highest in
the world, are a huge burden for working-class families. Average monthly
wages actually fell by 4.5% in the second quarter of 2008, from
HK$11,000 to HK$10,500 (US$1,350).This shows how the economy is driven
by low-paid McJobs, involving long working hours. The average working
week for shop assistants, a major occupation among young people, is 51
hours. As reported on
www.chinaworker.info, there have been a number of small but
successful strikes this year, reflecting mounting anger over low pay and
rising prices. The public sector, too, has seen protests, most recently
over a programme to close one in ten secondary schools over the next
five years.
These factors were reflected in the elections.
Voters went out to punish those groups and parties that stand closest to
the corporate, pro-Beijing establishment. All parties to differing
degrees gave verbal support to a minimum wage, but working-class voters
clearly placed greater trust in the LSD to fight for this.
The election also shone a spotlight on which social
classes and forces stand for democratisation in Hong Kong and which are
against. Contrary to a popular myth, it is not the ‘business community’
that is pushing for universal suffrage in Hong Kong or China. The
pressure comes instead from below, from the most oppressed layers in
society: the working class and the poor.
While the Legco has little real power, these
elections pose a major problem for China’s rulers. Constant manoeuvres
and foot-dragging over universal suffrage by the central government
have, in conjunction with the effects of neo-liberal, pro-rich policies,
undermined the Tsang administration just as they undermined his
predecessor, Tung Chee-hwa, who was forced to resign in 2005. Now,
Beijing will be even less enamoured with the prospect of elections on
the basis of universal suffrage and the possibility of ‘anti-business’
politicians winning a majority in Hong Kong in the future.
But more stalling, or an attempt by Beijing to
re-impose the absolutism of the British era, risks triggering a social
explosion with implications for the whole of China, especially Hong
Kong’s neighbouring province of Guangdong. The central government’s
strategy is part of a complex chess game for maintaining control of
China, including unruly regions like Tibet and Xinjiang, and even
coaxing Taiwan in the future into a closer formal relationship modelled
on Hong Kong’s autonomous status. At all costs, however, the CCP wants
to avoid releasing the ‘virus’ of democratic demands from Hong Kong into
the 1.3 billion-headed mainland.
As Augustine Tan points out, support for the pro-CCP
camp in Hong Kong comes especially from the capitalist class and the
privileged: "Beijing chalked up significant middle-class support... More
telling are the pro-Beijing camp’s gains in the functional
constituencies, which represent business and professional groups". (Asia
Times Online, 12 September) In equal measure, these social layers are
horrified by the electoral gains of the LSD. Tan notes that "the
professionals – lawyers, doctors, accountants – are finding China ever
more attractive and the radicalism represented by ‘Long Hair’ and ‘Mad
Dog’ repulsive".
These elections show the huge need and also the
potential for a mass working-class party offering an alternative to
neo-liberalism, authoritarianism and capitalism. This is a feature of
the entire world situation, where the complete pro-capitalist
degeneration of one-time mass workers’ parties – social democrats and
Stalinists – has created a gaping political vacuum on the left. These
election results show that Hong Kong, and mainland China too, are very
much part of this international process.
The LSD is a very recent formation, launched as an
electoral alliance – not yet a party – in 2006. It is a politically
heterogeneous formation comprising a wide variety of positions from
anti-capitalists to admirers of Scandinavian-style social democracy
(something that workers in Scandinavia can testify no longer exists and
long ago capitulated to neo-liberalism). The LSD comprises those like
Long Hair and his group, the April 5th Action Committee, that has been
influenced by Trotskyist ideas. It also includes Wong Yuk-man, LSD
chairman, who is an evangelical Christian with reported links to the
Kuomintang (the nationalist party that ruled China 1927-49, its main
base of support in southern China). There will now be attempts by the
political establishment and the bourgeois leaders of the pan-democratic
camp to woo some sections of the LSD into the ‘political mainstream’ and
away from any emphasis on protests and struggle. This is a danger that
confronts all new left formations elected into capitalist parliaments
and can only be countered by building a mass membership and putting down
strong roots in working-class communities.
The issue of socialism and how to build support for
socialist ideas is quite complex in Hong Kong and China as a whole,
where this word often (falsely) conjures up associations with the CCP
and authoritarianism. This is particularly ironic given the solid
support for the CCP from Hong Kong’s capitalists and parties like the
Liberals. Given the overarching importance of democratic demands and the
stalled struggle for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, popular propaganda
for socialist policies and democratic rights are inextricably linked. It
is therefore necessary to use the term ‘democratic socialist’ to stress
this fundamental distinction from Stalinist or ex-Stalinist political
formations. In the Chinese context, however, even this term leads to
confusion and is virtually indistinguishable from ‘social democrat’, a
term that is increasingly discredited among the most conscious layers of
workers and youth in Europe, but not yet in Asia.
The spectacular success of the LSD in these
elections has undoubtedly raised its authority among important sections
of workers and youth. This also means that the idea of a new
working-class party has been placed on the agenda. In order to attract
fresh forces and develop a genuine mass membership, any new left-wing
political formation must orientate towards struggle, rather than putting
all its focus on electioneering. It must also be completely democratic,
allowing freedom of left tendencies, and seek to use its impressive
electoral gains as a platform from which it can popularise democratic
socialist policies as the only real alternative to Hong Kong’s thinly
disguised authoritarian capitalism.
Vincent Kolo
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