Appunti - International Relations of East Asia

How do we get this message, how do you see this high degree of autonomy and freedom in Hong Kong?

Up to few years ago, if you went to Hong Kong in the first week on June, it was still China, so you were physically in China, but Hong Kong was the only piece of the Chinese territory in which celebrations in memory of what happened in 1989 in Tiananmen Square where held, and Chinese authorities could not stop them. According to the formula, if I am granting you some kind of autonomy, you can do whatever you want. Hong Kong was the only territory in China were books against Mao Zedong could be published and read without any fear. Millions of people protesting and demonstrating against Beijing's government for what it did in Tiananmen, and this kind of protests were pretty much recurrent. Something else that we need to highlight is that this sentiment of anticommunism in Hong Kong started to grow, and this was pretty much kind of a divisive factor, creating frictions between those who

Lived in Hong Kong and those who lived in the PRC. Hong Kongers do not like to be considered as Chinese, according to them they have a different identity and there is a graphic here that basically explains you to what extent they do not want to be identified with those living in the mainland. Of course, they are pretty much reciprocated, because the mainlanders call Hong Kongers "dogs" because mainlanders accuse them of having bowed in front of the British in the past.

An important date is April 4, 1990. This is the moment of the ratification of the Basic Law, the mini constitution that I was mentioning previously, meaning principles that should regulate Hong Kong from the political point of view, and of course the mini constitution took effect on the same day of the handover, so July 1, 1997, and established that Hong Kong became the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), this is the formula they use, directly under the Chinese central government.

This guy is Chris

Patten (slide 8), the last British governor of Hong Kong before 1997. Before leaving, he did something that China did not like that was against Chinese principles, against every possible political formula that China was willing to introduce in Hong Kong. He was the last and only one implementing political reforms in Hong Kong aimed at granting universal suffrage. If you read the Basic Law, the document which was ratified by Chinese and the Hong Kongers, what it tells you is that, in the future, universal suffrage will be granted to the inhabitants of Hong Kong. So what they are now doing is eventually against the Basic Law. Chris Patten was the only political figure who, before the handover, reformed the political spectrum of Hong Kong granting universal suffrage to the inhabitants of Hong Kong. The Chinese did not like it at all, of course they could do nothing before 1997, but what they did was announcing that all reforms introduced by Chris Patten would be completely erased once the

handover took place, and this is what they did. This is Tung Chee-hwa (slide 9). There is the handover, power to China, Hong Kong becomes a territory of the PRC, and the first thing that needed to be done was choosing the man who had to rule over Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. He was born in China, so he was not originally from Hong Kong, and he was pro China. He was a very good friend and obedient to Beijing. One of the first things he did was revoking, cancelling, all the reforms that had been implemented by Chris Patten, so non-universal suffrage, so we are going to rule over Hong Kong in a different political way. In fact, in May 1998, there is a reaction by the inhabitants of Hong Kong who were not convinced of the fact that they had to be ruled by someone who was chosen by the PRC. That is what we are talking about at the moment. All the problems affecting this relationship between Hong Kongers and PRC are pretty much recurrent, they are always the same. The pro-democracy movement and

those who form it, were absolutely not happy about the fact that somebody that paid obedience to China ruled over Hong Kong and not happy about the destiny that Hong Kong was going to have under the rule of China. What happened was that in the first elections in mid 1998, they voted, the pro-democracy movement succeeded, but because of the reforms that were introduced by China erasing those introduced by Chris Patten, they did not have enough seats in the parliament, so they were under-represented.

Repetition of what he already said for a student: I told you that Chris Patten introduced some reforms that changed the system and granted universal suffrage for inhabitants in Hong Kong, but those reforms were eventually abolished by China, and the Chinese introduced some reforms that regulated the political life of Hong Kong. Once these Chinese reforms were introduced, even though pro-democracy candidates succeeded in the elections, they were not allowed, according to the new reforms introduced by China.

are special interests groups, industry and labour bodies, chambers of commerce, large corporations, rural, fishing and church bodies, so institutional representatives.

Why am I stressing the importance of this body? We have two arrows, one goes to the Elections Committee and the other one to the Legislative branch, both of them are very important and we are going to understand what happens in the legislative branch in a minute, but I am stressing the importance of this because if you read those who actually pertain to this body, the first thing that you should notice is that they represent the élite of Hong Kong. When we talk about the élite of Hong Kong you should have already understood that when it comes to the political system of Hong Kong you do have a split between the élite and the people. The people is protesting against what the authorities do, but this body is important because here we have the people in Hong Kong who have direct relations with China and who are

Il ramo legislativo, almeno in teoria, dovrebbe essere formato da persone elette per metà dall'élite e per metà dal popolo. Funziona così? Probabilmente no, ma perché? (Quando parliamo del Consiglio legislativo, gli abitanti di Hong Kong lo chiamano LegCo) Ci sono 70 membri, il mandato dura 4 anni, il punto è che i membri vengono eletti su due basi diverse: le circoscrizioni geografiche e le circoscrizioni funzionali. Quando parliamo delle circoscrizioni geografiche, Hong Kong è composta da 5 diverse circoscrizioni geografiche, e sono queste che vengono elette dal popolo, poi abbiamo le circoscrizioni funzionali, quindi l'élite. Cosa fa il Parlamento? Esattamente quello che fanno gli altri parlamenti in ogni angolo del mondo, non ci sono differenze. Il punto qui è che nel 2020 avrebbero dovuto votare per il rinnovo del ramo legislativo, ma in realtà il Capo Esecutivo, la signora Carrie Lam, ha deciso che le elezioni dovevano essere

postponed because of the COVID-19. This sounded a bit strange because, for example, in South Korea people vote, so more than 30 million people went to the poles in the mid of the pandemic, in April 2020. So we could not really understand why it was postponed for the COVID-19. But the explanation is that each country has its own regulations and considerations when it comes to managing the pandemic, and the decision to postpone the event was made in accordance with those regulations and considerations.