Speech of Mr CY Leung,

Former Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, Vice-Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference

( Mar 02, 2021)

A few days ago, in my video talk “Why is democracy an issue in Hong Kong”, I set out the fundamental parameters of democracy in Hong Kong, one of which is the fact that Hong Kong did not become an independent country at the end of British rule. It became a special administrative region (SAR) of China, with a high degree of autonomy authorised by the Chinese government. 

Today I would like to build on my last talk and raise another question, “How does Hong Kong as a local democracy fit into the Chinese national context?”

I raise this question because again, Hong Kong is not a country. The nature of Hong Kong’s democracy is local democracy. And local democracies anywhere in the world do not and cannot give local governments the high degree of autonomous power that the Hong Kong SAR enjoys. The extra powers of autonomy come NOT from the local Hong Kong people, but from Beijing, and in formulating its basic policies regarding Hong Kong, Beijing has to listen also to the views of the 1.4 billion people on the mainland of China. 

You might ask, “really?” In 1988 when I was Secretary General of the Basic Law Consultative Committee, I was in charge of the huge consultation exercise in Hong Kong on the first Basic Law draft. At the same time, I was helping the Shanghai government on the first land sale. On one of my many visits to Shanghai during that period, I ran into a Shanghai government official who was in charge of trade and commerce. I asked him “what’s keeping you busy these days?” His reply took me by surprise. He said, “I’m reading your Basic Law draft”. I asked, “what has the Basic Law draft got to do with you.” He said, “Beijing has sent a team to Shanghai to consult us on the Hong Kong Basic Law draft”. I was a little excited and said, “oh, really, what do you think?” His reply has struck me to this day. He said, “Lucky you, come 1997, unlike Shanghai and many other cities on the mainland, Hong Kong doesn’t need to contribute anything to the Central government coffers. You can also save the hundreds of millions of dollars that you are now paying every year to the British for having the British garrison in Hong Kong. After 1997, he said, the People’s Liberation Army will be free of charge.”

That was 33 years ago and my friend was a government official. Fast forward to the present and go to the level of say, taxi drivers on the mainland. Many of my Hong Kong friends who live on the mainland have this feedback: mainland taxi drivers believe that Hong Kong has been ungrateful; we are biting the hand that feeds us; we want our cake and eat it; and the so-called democrats who collude with foreign governments should be locked up forever; and the rioters in 2019 who trashed the national flag in Hong Kong are treasonous, and more recently they said, “enough is enough”, in Chinese is “一忍再忍，忍無可忍”.

The so-called democrats in Hong Kong have been repeating this line: “power comes from the people”. OK, what about this one — local people can only give limited power to a local government. This should apply also to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong the extra autonomous power that we enjoy actually comes from Beijing. And Beijing has to account to all the 1.4 billion people of the whole of China. Ignoring the sentiments of the Mainland people is self-deception on the part of Hong Kong, and totally counter-productive for Hong Kong. I repeat, we are not another Singapore. In Hong Kong, by pushing on the democracy envelope too far, and by attempting to chip away the authority of Beijing, in for example appointing the Chief Executive, many of the so-called democrats have become, in practice, separatists. 

I often wonder, if the people on the Mainland had a crystal ball when they were consulted on the Basic Law draft and saw the so-called democrats calling on the US government to sanction China, would they have agreed to give Hong Kong the special treatments that we have today under the Basic Law?

Thank you. 

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