Summary conclusion
Eight weeks ago I wrote the Umbrella Movement would fold with only timing moot. I was wrong footed on how long it’s taken but at last, and inevitably, it’s happening. In this note I want to look at the reasons for the failure and then, perhaps more usefully, try and think over some of the consequences.
Surprising good for Hong Kong’s citizenry may be the end result. However, the root cause of frustration voiced, especially by society’s younger members, won’t go away. This demographic must either adjust to reality or, as many of their forebears had to, move on in search of better opportunities.
Let’s first look at how the movement failed.
How not to run a campaign of civil disobedience
Others planning campaigns can take five important lessons from the Hong Kong protests in terms of what not do.
Not-to-do #1. Don’t start your campaign with unrealistic, unreasonable or unrealizable goals. The Chief Executive was never going to step down nor was China ever going to compromise in a full frontal attack on it’s authority (what were you thinking?).
Not-to-do #2. Don’t start a campaign incoherently. Students initially took to the streets following the arrest of some of their own. The self righteous dog-piling in on this single act by all manner of political chancers produced nothing but incomprehensible noise.
Not-to-do #3. Don’t turn down an opportunity to begin a dialogue. Yours must be the open hand. You can harrumph out of meetings later but don’t go to them without something to bargain for or with; and preconditions are a very bad idea.
Not-to-do #4. Don’t lose popular support. The general public will put up with a bit of disruption if authorities in the process are being given the hot-foot. Don’t upset people’s lives though to the point where you become the problem that needs fixing.
Not-to-do #5. You must have an exit strategy. Strategic withdrawal is never a bad thing if it enables you to regroup and reengage. Leaving with a whimper demoralizes supporters and hands opponents a propaganda windfall.
This single most important point is having failed to effectively use the process of civil disobedience to achieve aims this tactic, or the threat of it, can’t in future be repeated. If it is, or threatened, authorities may simply shrug and say ‘..go ahead, see where it got you last time?’.
Where now though?
I said that good things for Hong Kong were likely to come out of the campaign despite its failure. These potential developments represent a significant change to the pre-campaign status quo and will have long lasting and beneficial effects.
First, the campaign has forced political agnostics to chose a side. If you live in Hong Kong you are now a blue or yellow ribbon. The yellows are the minority that have caused disruption, the blues are the majority that went on about their business. Blue ribbons may admire the principled nature of much yellow ribbon activity but have had the wisdom to accept what they know can’t be changed. How is this a good thing? A clearer mandate has evolved for true universal suffrage to be pursued via a gradualist agenda. The stooge-candidate process for 2017 elections won’t change; but a better deal after that will have to be offered. Even blue ribbons are likely now united with yellows on this point.
Secondly, the administration led by Chief Executive C. Y. Leung will probably undergo a full audit (if it isn’t ongoing already) and then, quietly of course, be overhauled; Beijing will demand it. Just as in 2003 a Hong Kong government with a tin-ear for grass-root dissent has let China Inc. down. Restraint by Beijing has been a notable feature of the recent campaign but if I were a pomaded princeling or rank and file cadre I’d be exasperated with Hong Kong’s ruling Noddys. Not only has the same thing happened, for many of the same reasons, twice now in Hong Kong the local political elite believe they’re not liable for consequences. Watch carefully over the next two years as I expect (and hope!) we’ll see significant changes of senior government personnel.
Finally, Xi Jin Ping’s China was starting to look a bit too muscular in terms of how it was addressing Xinjiang, Tibet and the neighbors. Their superficial absence as a player in the recent disturbance restores credibility to not only a claim of support for the one country two systems principle but also their oft stated position as a non-belligerent. A PR win, where they could have played petulant teenager but instead opted for caring parent, will not have gone unnoticed domestically and abroad. Their behavior in this matter has restored a mantle of confident authority whereas some of the recent behavior was beginning to make them look like a truculent pipsqueak. Laozi* (老子) would be proud.
[*The Father or Taoism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laozi and originator of perhaps my favorite Chinese aphorism ‘Wu Wei’ (无为) which roughly means the ability, by doing nothing, to achieve something. Er, I think?]
So what was, and still is, the problem? No, the real problem…
Most want to pussyfoot around this but I’ll come straight to the point; it’s China.
Whether it’s Mainlanders letting their offspring pee on our streets, or ladies in their third trimester visiting and, whoops, delivering babies in our hospitals, or the milk formula bandits or just that they’re smarter and/or richer than us the Genesis of the recent street protests is China. Or, more specifically, the intrusion of Mainlanders into the daily lives of a local population brought up to believe in both their own and Hong Kong exceptional-ism.
Here’s the rub though
China isn’t going away. In fact China, daily, gets bigger. Militarily, diplomatically, economically and politically China’s relative importance vis a vis Hong Kong’s is continuing to advance; and this won’t change.
To students then that have identified diminished opportunities, relative to a prior generation, I can only observe; yes, that’s right. To the charge that Hong Kong is becoming ‘just another provincial city in China’; yes, albeit a very important one, but again, correct. In response to the notion that something better than what’s on offer for 2017 was ever on the table I would refer the huffy to a definition of sovereignty (all right, here you go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty).
If I’m right (N.B. I’m not fully convinced I am BTW), and the problem is China, the message for the malcontents left in the shrinking tent enclosures is a grim one. There’s really only one course of action left unless they want to spend the rest of their lives in a permanent state of disaffection, marginalization and decreasing relevance. If you can’t live with-in China, you must make plans to live with-out it.
In conclusion
As this note is more about politics than market economics a word on my own is probably appropriate.
I don’t like labels and I don’t like taking sides. My politics are this; I believe the right course of action, be it political or economic is always the one that’ll produce the most contentment, for the largest amount of people, for the longest possible time. For that reason then I believe dialogue, cooperation, partnership and mutual respect between Hong Kong and mainland China is in the best long-term interests of the Hong Kong people. Kvetching, in this matter especially, is a strategy that can’t, doesn’t and won’t work; as we’ve now very clearly observed.