Fighting for democracy in Hong Kong
HONG KONG — Hong Kong's economy is in a dire state. Wage cuts are widespread, but resistance is stalled by rotten union leadership. Hong Kong's citizens are still denied the basic right to choose their own government; they vote for one-third of the seats in a toothless legislature. Police repression has increased.
LEUNG KWOK HUNG and FRANCIS LAU, political activists since the mid-1970s, were at the forefront of social protests after Beijing resumed control of Hong Kong in July 1997. They have also actively supported the democracy movement in China since the late '70s.
Leung and Lau were leaders of the Revolutionary Marxist League until its dissolution in the late 1980s. They have since been active members of April 5th Action which, named after the protests for democracy in Tiananmen Square on April 5, 1976, engages in solidarity with the democracy movement in China. Lau is also a coordinator of the progressive web site Hong Kong Voice of Democracy. They talked to Green Left Weekly's EVA CHENG.
Question: How bad is Hong Kong's economy and is there any workers' resistance?
Lau: The Asian economic crisis has hit Hong Kong hard. Last year's budget suffered a HK$40 billion deficit and the economy shrank by 5.8%, a far cry from its previous 5-6% growth. Property prices collapsed and retail sales dived by 30-50%.
Manufacturing jobs, already declining as most production moved to China, are scarcer today. Official unemployment has more than doubled to 6.2%, or more than 200,000 people. But it doesn't reflect the widespread problem of falling income — hitting piecework workers as well as regular employees.
When the government said cuts would fall on the public sector soon, instead of resisting, most unions expressed their "understanding" of the government's difficulties! Hong Kong Telecom's slashing of workers' conditions was resisted by big meetings of 2-3000, but the struggle still ground to a halt.
Many unions do not see defending workers' interest as their prime task. Many are sucked in by the ruling-class ideology that the bosses and workers are in the same boat. Some garment workers, in the face of a 20-30% pay cut, sought help from their unions but were turned away.
Hong Kong workers aren't convinced there's a reasonable prospect of resisting pay cuts. Keeping their job is usually their top concern.
The banking system is threatened by bad loans. Many home-owners saw their property value shrink way below their mortgage debt. The government spent HK$100 billion to prop up share prices, mainly bank and property stocks which accounted for half of the banks' loan collateral! They take great care of the big capitalists while urging the workers to tighten their belts.
Leung: Beijing has made Hong Kong's recession worse. The 1996-97 huge influx of mainland funds to shares and property strained Hong Kong's bubble economy, encouraging more hot money to rush in. When those markets collapsed, the entire economy was in danger.
Lau: There was a big rush of mainland enterprises selling shares in Hong Kong. Buyers were lured by the prospect of a cheap slice of lucrative Chinese assets, soon to be privatised.
The fever was dampened last year when new premier Zhu Rongji banned provincial and municipal bodies from raising funds in Hong Kong and later after Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corporation couldn't service its huge debt. More than HK$10 billion "evaporated" from GITIC's books and foreign banks failed to get their loans repaid ahead of other creditors.
Huge "missing" assets were also revealed in many other state enterprises or those controlled by the princelings.
Question: What's the state of the union movement?
Lau: It consists of three parts: the Federation of Trade Unions [FTU], controlled by Beijing; those controlled by the Kuomintang, which now have minimal influence; and some smallish independent trade unions, mostly funded by the churches.
Leung: Restricted by labour laws, the unions are usually organised on trade lines, leading to multiple unions in some bigger workplaces but none at all for most of the rest.
Toeing Beijing's line, the FTU actively engages in defusing or selling out workers' struggles. The public sector unions and their so-called independent counterparts do the same, but with a radical posture.
This latter group seems to be influenced by the AFL-CIO [the United States' peak union body], and fails to engage effectively even in bread and butter struggles. In reaction to a government proposal to issue a 10% rebate for tax paid last year to stimulate the economy, three such leaders, who are also legislative councillors, argued to cap the entitlements at HK$100,000. They were widely attacked and backed off.
They could have rejected the rebate and proposed to spend the HK$820 billion on those most in need.
Question: What's the state of civil rights?
Leung: The repression after the handover wasn't too serious, but the police often harassed protesters. Some notorious parts of the Public Security Ordinance, which the last governor, Chris Patten, removed in his final days, have now been restored. This includes the need for a permit for public gatherings and the banning of donations from overseas political organisations.
My application to register an organisation called Don't Forget June 4, which has the goal of ending one-party dictatorship, was rejected. But my application for another organisation — June 4 Committee — was granted. The two organisations are identical except the latter doesn't have that sensitive objective.
Five activists were arrested for protesting against the IMF in 1997. I was arrested for protesting the visit of Jiang Zemin [China's president], charged with "inappropriate behaviour".
They are now seeking to block protests by controlling their routes and locations, openly threatening the general population and very confidently use the state machine for suppression. The British colonialists did that as well — they could put you in jail for up to 10 years for "disrespecting" the British royal family — but they didn't pursue it as aggressively.
I'm most worried about proposed changes to Section 23 of the Basic Law [in effect Hong Kong's constitution], which will ban people from resisting the decisions of Beijing or local legislatures. Any violation will be considered subversion. If they are passed, the government can more blatantly crack down on opposition.
Two-thirds of legislative seats are elected from highly limited electorates, and are filled mainly by government puppets. No legislator can put forward any proposal that may affect the government's operation or its budget! It is more toothless than during colonial times.
The labour laws have also been tightened. The colonial government relaxed some provisions in its final days — giving workers the right of collective bargaining, banning discrimination against workers because of their union membership, and giving trade unions the right to liaise and receive donations from overseas organisations. All were rolled back.
They also introduced a law incriminating anyone for showing disrespect to the national flag.
My bid to resist two charges for protesting within the legislative chambers was defeated. I still have a case pending for sloganeering within the chambers against the government's bid to rescue the share market rather than the people.
I've lost two cases for protesting against the government's attack on workers' collective bargaining rights. I was also charged for trying to bring our protest closer to Jiang, beyond the 2-kilometre limit set by the police.
They are charging us under criminal laws with "inappropriate behaviour" or "disturbing public peace". But the Public Security Ordinance, inherited intact from the colonialists, can be a powerful weapon to attack any assembly involving three persons or more. There haven't been big, militant mobilisations yet to test those laws.
Question: What is you assessment of the "democracy camp"?
Leung: They are pseudo-democrats. Democratisation must involve changing the Basic Law, scheduled for review only in 2007, and breaking beyond the bounds set by Beijing. The next legislative election is due in 2000 and a central demand should be for all seats to be directly elected.
They should press for a referendum to change the Basic Law, through campaigning on the streets. Whatever the referendum's result, this process would foster the desperately needed formation of self-organising bodies of the people.
The elected "democrats" raised the demand for a complete direct election once or twice last year and have been silent on this subject since. They rarely challenge the government's executive power, confining their demands to the legislature. Rather than mobilising the people, they engage in rhetoric.
None of them have declared that they represent the interests of the workers or other lower segments of society. Martin Lee, head of the Democratic Party [DP], said his party represented all classes, making clear that if government policy goes against the capitalists' interests, they'll speak on their behalf!
Another group is Frontier. It's small, with just over 100 members and five legislators compared to the DP's 600 members and around 11 legislators, and raises high demands, like power to all the people, but has revealed no real class position and rarely engages in mobilisation. It campaigns mainly for free (economic) competition and the rule of law.
This is a bunch of beggars for the bourgeoisie's sympathy.