tim's experiment

One of the irritating habits of Marxist ideologues, which I remember from my distant days as a student politician, was their insistence that they knew what you wanted and why better than you did. You might suppose that you were calling for some particular reform. This was a delusion; “objectively” you were supporting the oppression of the workers by suggesting that their plight could be alleviated by something short of revolution. You might suppose that you were opposing the Vietnam War, which was a big issue in those days, but actually you were a “bourgeois pacifist” who had fallen short of the correct position, which was “principled solidarity with the Viet Cong.”

In its mainland version this syndrome frequently extends to insisting that your real intentions were different from the stated ones, coupled with a refusal to explain what those intentions were, because you already really know that. This is a difficult argument to deal with, particularly on the mainland itself, where it is usually followed by a lengthy prison sentence.

Now if we look carefully at Occupy Central, or the umbrella movement, whatever you want to call it, some things are clear to most observers. The immediate objection of the protesters is to the arrangements for the next C.E. election, which are basically that instead of fixing the vote our imperial rulers will fix the nomination. This is not an improvement on the existing arrangements and not what we were led to expect. Behind this immediate cause is disgust with a society arranged for the benefit of a few rich families and run by a curious alliance between them and the Stalinist regime in Beijing. Among the distressing results of this is the increasing poverty of most Hong Kong families and the distressing prospect facing local 20-year-old men that by the time they can afford a home their girlfriends will be too old to have babies. It is indisputably a rather disorganised movement so there is room for dispute about how much particular parts of this picture motivate particular participants. But for those of us who have no interest in either changing the electoral arrangements or disputing the hegemony of the Real Estate Developers Association there is a simpler solution. The umbrella people must be aiming for something else.

The crude version of this, designed for the Robert Chow Supporters Club, was that the whole thing was a result of devious foreigners funneling money to local subversives. For a while we were offered a smoking gun in the shape of some Washington foundation — apparently enjoying the blessing and possibly the money of the US government —   which had been supporting the local democrats. Then it turned out that the same foundation had been supporting the DAB. So the foreign plot story has subsided.

The replacement was wheeled out on the back page of Sunday’s Post by Regina Ip. This is the thoughtful, well-spoken, up-market, Harvard-educated version of the latest conspiracy theory, which is that what the students “really” want is independence from China. Ms Ip has a rather different view of the whole matter from most of us. Occupy Central has, in her recollection, erupted in a “ferocious manner” (all those nasty injuries caused by protesters throwing themselves onto police clubs) causing “damage to the economy, cleavages in family and society and a body blow to Hong Kong’s reputation as a safe and law-abiding city”.  Well the cleavages are a matter for argument, the body blow is disputable, and the damage to the economy is imaginary. But let that pass. “Among former senior officials,” we are told, “a view has emerged that Occupy was inevitable.” And this is because the protest was “not really about democracy”.

Evidence? “In the past year, in several editions of Undergrad, the official publication of the University of Hong Kong Students’ union, contributors have advocated ‘self-determination’ by members of the ‘Hong Kong race'”. At this point my mind reels. Are all these “former senior officials” regular readers of Undergrad? As someone who used to supervise a student newspaper which was a course requirement, I also wonder how many times this official publication comes out. Last issue was last May, according to the website. The one before that was the previous May. So there haven’t been “several editions”. And that’s it, on the strength of this flimsy observation (can it not be, one wonders, that Undergrad occasionally prints pieces which are not approved student union policy?) Ms Ip leaps straight to the conclusion that “the Occupy demonstrators are effectively saying no to China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong.” Further bilge follows, to the effect that an ungrateful child is spurning a loving parent … the usual stuff.

But we should not put up with this. The Joint Declaration promised “a high degree of autonomy”. Clearly it was at that time recognised on all sides that autonomy was not an on-off switch. One might have a high degree of autonomy or a low degree of autonomy or various degrees in between. Given this, it is entirely to be expected and accepted that there will be disagreements over whether the degree of autonomy currently being conceded is high enough. Accusing people who want more autonomy of wanting complete independence is just a way of giving a dog a bad name before hanging it. One might as well accuse Ms Ip of wanting complete subservience to the will of Chinese officials. A charge for which this particular article provides a good deal of supporting evidence.

Observers of this scene may feel that Hong Kongers, or at least those who manage to get their views into the South China Morning Post, are making heavy weather of a rather simple situation. China is no longer an impoverished nasty police state. It is now a moderately rich nasty police state. But it is still a nasty police state, so of course people who have any choice want as little to do with it as possible. There is no such thing as a “Hong Kong race”. Nor is there an indulgent motherland on which political decisions are made by benevolent Confucian sages.  People identify with institutions which work for them. The question raised by Occupy is whether the Hong Kong government is in that category. Every time Ms Ip takes up her pen she manages to suggest that the answer is no.