The protests in Hong Kong has been ongoing for more than a week and it has always been my considered opinion that in the end the protesters will gain nothing out of this. Whatever they demanded is not in the authority of the Hong Kong government to give, but that of Beijing’s central government. If this persists, whatever in this article may well come true, and I certainly have no complaints about that even though I am skeptical. After all, the pragmatic leaders of China certainly wouldn’t like the idea of an outflow of investments into Singapore and I suspect that the Shanghai Free Trade Zone is probably part of their contigency plan. That’s not mentioning, everybody wants to be China’s bitch these days.

Furthermore, the position of some of those making the demands has left no room for Beijing to negotiate, while they accused Beijing of having closed the door to negotiation completely. Some of them believes that negotiating with China would be “bargaining with the tiger for its skin” (与虎谋皮). I wondered how their current course of action will actually make the tiger just give them its skin. On the other hand, some believed that the Chinese government is completely evil. While vilifying the Chinese government may give them the moral high ground and thus enforce the notion of the nobility of their cause, the question on how they are going to achieve their objectives remains. Simply put, whether they stand chance to succeed or not is moot when they have denied themselves any chance to achieve their objectives right from the start by considering China their enemy, when it should not be so. On top of which, it is not beyond Beijing to sit back and give this a cold treatment. After all, it is an “evil government” that basically treats human lives as nothing more but mere digits. Nevertheless, I felt China’s central government in Beijing has only itself to blame for this lack of trust.

Anyway, from an utterly selfish point of view, I don’t really give a damn how long the protesters wants to drag this if it ends up benefiting Singapore. I don’t really give a hoot about the grades and the learning of those students either because I fully believe people should live with the consequences of their choices and decisions. Some may believe that the economy will not be affected, but with a lot of paper wealth evaporating from the stock market itself and tourists avoiding Hong Kong as a destination, sooner or later there will be some effect on the chap on Main Street. In fact, Hong Kong’s economic share in the Chinese economy has fallen from 25% in 1990 to a mere 3% today. None of these political struggles will help add value to Hong Kong to improve its competitiveness. If Hong Kong still has any importance left to China today, it is political. The “One Country, Two Systems” model must succeed, in order to provide China its bargaining chip in any future negotiations with Taiwan for reunification. Should China believe that the model has failed, it will view it as a setback to its plans to reunification and I shudder to imagine China’s response. In other words, the success of the “One Country, Two Systems” model will be Hong Kong’s “talisman of protection” (护身符). China will continue to maintain a pretty much hands off approach as long as everything goes “according to plan”.

The jury is out on whether China has reneged on its ‘promises’ to give Hong Kong democracy. In my opinion, China may have kept to the letter of law but not the spirit of it. To put it into an analogy, if I promising to give you a treat and then proceed give you only a bowl of rice without the associating dishes and thus consider my obligation completed, you have all the right to protest. Whether I give a flying damn and give you the dishes you expected is another matter entirely.

But it is not as simple as the analogy. I agree it is utterly meaningless for the kind of universal suffrage whereby Hong Kong is only allowed to vote for candidates that were pre-determined. That, would be of no different from the elections opf North Korea, or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It is however, within China’s right to demand that the Chief Executive be someone they can trust, such that they can hold him responsible for any actions which would in anyway violate Beijing’s interests. It thus appeared that the people of Hong Kong and the Chinse government are at an impasse, but do they not have a middle ground?

Before I get to that, let me back-track a bit. Why do the people of Hong Kong call it a ‘fake’ universal suffrage and likened it to the elections held in countries like North Korea? The main dispute lies in the 1200 member “nomination committee” (modelled on the existing election committee which elects the Chief Executive), which the people of the Hong Kong do not consisder to really represent them. The composition of the Election committee is detailed here in this article.

As an example of why the Hong Kong people complains about this committee. Take a look at the “Agriculture and Fisheries” subsector which has 60 members, a good 5% of the seats in this committee. It is said that not only does this subsector not take up an equivalent proportion in Hong Kong’s ecomony, the manner in which the members are elected is hardly democratic. Whether that is true I have not verified, but Hong Kong is highly urbanized so there may be some truth behind it. Above which, the people of Hong Kong felt that all the members representing these subsectors are more interested in serving the agenda of the rich (if not China itself), and has partly blamed it for the many social issues currenly plaguing Hong Kong. It is thus understandable how the people feels about any Chief Executive candidate approved by this committee in 2017.

So, where is the middle ground? The middle ground would be to broaden the representativeness of the nominating committee. Sadly, Beijing has closed the door to that which is why the people are now on the streets.

To end, I want to point out that the Chief Executive has a very limited set of powers granted to him by the Basic Law and the power to enact and amend laws is with the Legislative Council (or LegCo for short). What would be more important would be to ensure that the people retained the full rights to elect anyone to this council, whereby all its members will be elected by universal suffrage in 2020. LegCo can then serve as a check on the powers of the Chief Executive himself as specified in the Basic Law.

Thus, it is also my opinion that these students (and a lot of these protesters) are really misguided, if not used by some people with ulterior motives and agenda. There is without a doubt that someone is financing the tents, and the supply of free food and water to those who are still occupying Mongkok and Admiralty in Hong Kong. Perhaps the students believed that all those stuff are donated by a supportive public, but it would be wise to ask who is collecting all those donations and who is organising the logistics to bring these things to the areas now occupied by the protesters.