The democracy movement in Hong Kong

Abstract

The student demonstrations in Beijing after the death of Hu Yaobang, former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, on 15 April 1989 and the subsequent developments leading to the brutal military crackdown on Beijing students on 3-4 June this year have highlighted in the strongest possible way the importance of democracy and freedom in China and Hong Kong. Since 1984 Hong Kong people have become increasingly aware that their future depends on developments in China. But it is only over the past three months that they have established strong links with their compatriots in China, while intensely following the tragic events there. There has emerged the conviction that if freedom, human rights and democracy cannot be guaranteed in China they cannot be well protected in Hong Kong after 1997. When over one million Hong Kong people marched for democracy and freedom in China on 21 May 1989, 90 per cent were marching for the first time in their lives. They were motivated by anger and shock at what was happening in China, as well as despair and insecurity about the territory's future. A vast majority of them marched again on the two following Sundays. During the negotiations of 1982-4 over the future of Hong Kong between Britain and China, the Chinese leadership promised the Hong Kong community 'gangren zhigang'-self-administration. The Hong Kong government, in its turn, pledged in its Green Paper of July 1984 on the future development of representative government in Hong Kong 'to develop progressively a system of government the authority for which is firmly rooted in Hong Kong, which is able to represent authoritatively the views of the people of Hong Kong and which is more directly accountable to the people of Hong Kong.'1 The positions of the Chinese and British governments were a boost to the morale of the advocates of democracy in Hong Kong. Even ordinary citizens without much interest in politics saw the establishment of a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a high degree of autonomy and democracy, as stipulated in the Joint Declaration that resulted from the negotiations in December 1984, as a natural development for the territory,2 given that the British colonial role was to terminate in 1997 and that none of the parties concerned wanted the future SAR to be administered directly by Beijing. A government with a high degree of autonomy and democracy would, it was hoped, be an important guarantee of the 50-year period of maintenance of the status quo in Hong Kong stipulated in the Declaration.