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In the eyes of many elite observers, the pro-democracy protesters occupying streets and plazas in Hong Kong’s business and political core are hopelessly naive. Though the city is mostly self-governing, Beijing has power over its political development, and the mainland’s ruling Communist Party is unlikely to accede to popular demands for unfettered democracy. Changing course amid the dramatic popular protests of recent days could encourage subversive ideas among Chinese citizens elsewhere. Rather than encouraging change, disorder in Hong Kong could confirm Beijing’s worst fears about loosening up.

But Hong Kong residents — a majority of whom want authentic democracy, polls show — need not lose hope and quietly acquiesce to Beijing.…  Seguir leyendo »

Hong Kong, an aspirational society to emulate

Why is Hong Kong succeeding while New York City is receding? They are both world-class cities with about the same per-capita income and great natural harbors. New York is about 15 percent larger in population, while Hong Kong is about one-third larger in area (but unbuildable because of the steep terrain). Both have large immigrant populations who are seeking better lives.

In my column last week, I explained how much of Hong Kong’s success was a result of it having the freest economy in the world, with low levels of government spending, low tax rates, a minimum of government regulation and the rule of law.…  Seguir leyendo »

Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong demand that their legislators reject the election framework put forward by Beijing. Credit Alex Ogle/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

On Sunday the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress issued restrictive guidelines for the election of Hong Kong’s next chief executive in 2017. Shorn of its technical details, the proposal in effect gives Beijing the means to control who could run for the top office in Hong Kong: Voters would get to cast a ballot, but only for one of just a handful of candidates pre-selected by the Chinese government.

“By endorsing this framework,” Cheung Man-kwong, a veteran politician of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, told the media, “China has in truth and in substance reneged on her promise to give Hong Kong universal suffrage.”…  Seguir leyendo »

Seventeen years after the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, the political future of the territory hangs in the balance. The city can continue down a path that will lead to a fully democratic political system, or Beijing can thwart its democratic development and eventually run Hong Kong like just another Chinese city.

All signs indicate that Beijing plans to tighten its grip. As increasingly restive Hong Kongers protest this summer against Beijing’s interference, the international community, particularly Britain, the former colonial power, has a moral and legal obligation to support their will for democracy and autonomy. London should demand that Beijing live up to its agreements and back off.…  Seguir leyendo »

Pieces of paper have a poor reputation among political realists, and history is littered with the torn-up fragments of solemn treaties. Seventeen years after a tearful Chris Patten, the last colonial governor of Hong Kong, sailed away on the royal yacht Britannia in July 1997, two pieces of paper are in contention, and they're sparking an increasingly bitter confrontation over the right of Hong Kong's people to choose their own government.

More than 700,000 people voted for that right last week in an unofficial referendum organised by Occupy Central, a pro-democracy movement founded in 2013. And on 1 July tens of thousands took to the streets in Hong Kong's largest pro-democracy rally in more than a decade.…  Seguir leyendo »

Since Hong Kong was handed over by the British to China in 1997, the territory’s seven million residents have been free to govern themselves with relatively little interference from Beijing. That freedom is now under threat, frustration with Beijing is mounting, and the possibility of violence is growing.

Although Beijing’s hand can be felt in many areas, its increasing meddling in local politics is most troubling. The central government had promised Hong Kongers they could directly elect their leader in 2017, but it has yet to approve a process for nominating candidates. Beijing appears to want candidates screened by a Beijing-friendly nomination committee, thus dashing hopes for real electoral choice.…  Seguir leyendo »

For the nearly 17 years since Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China in 1997, we Hong Kongers have been dreaming of the genuine democracy that was promised by Beijing. But today our autonomy and the rule of law it buttresses are under threat from the mainland central government.

Infringement on the freedom of the Hong Kong press has been the most recent example of Beijing’s meddling in our affairs. But even more pernicious is an ongoing campaign by the mainland leadership and its local allies to deny Hong Kongers the right to a democratic future, a right that was guaranteed to us in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and in our mini-constitution, the Basic Law, which was promulgated in 1990.…  Seguir leyendo »

Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, a 23-year-old Indonesian maid, returned to her home province of Java from Hong Kong last month hardly able to walk. Cuts and burns covered most of her body. Her employer in Hong Kong allegedly beat her and locked her up for weeks.

Each year hundreds of thousands of young Indonesian women like Ms. Erwiana fan out across Asia and the Middle East to live in the homes of local people and serve as their domestic helpers — cooking, cleaning and caring for children and the elderly. Most send a portion of their salary home to their families every month, fueling an Indonesian economy that relies on remittances.…  Seguir leyendo »

This month, for the third time in a row, the Asians kicked American butt — academically, that is. On reading, science and math, students in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore earned the top scores on the international PISA test. U.S. students scored below or near the worldwide average, prompting suggestions that American education as a whole is failing. As a Hong Kong educator, I’m confident that the last thing the United States needs to copy is Chinese education.

Here in this city of 2 million parents , there are 2 million school principals, all ordering after-school academic courses like appetizers in a restaurant.…  Seguir leyendo »

Hong Kong, so often trapped under the shadow of a rising China, was suddenly thrown into the spotlight when Edward J. Snowden sought refuge from the U.S. government in our city. The speculation over the 30-year-old whistleblower’s fate, and Beijing’s role in the matter, stirred curiosity over how this territory of seven million has fared in the 16 years since it was returned to China by Britain.

Curious outsiders will have their answer on Monday. While the city’s pro-Beijing elite are celebrating the anniversary of the handover, thousands of people will take to the streets to protest their frustrations with the government, and its eroding autonomy from the mainland.…  Seguir leyendo »

Edward J. Snowden, the 29-year-old government contractor who blew the whistle on the American government’s vast data-collection efforts, was last seen checking out of a boutique hotel here on Monday. The previous day, he released a video defending his decision to leak sensitive secrets and explaining that he’d sought refuge in Hong Kong because it “has a strong tradition of free speech” and “a long tradition of protesting in the streets.”

This news stunned many local residents, especially those of us who advocate for human rights. Since 1997, when the British government returned Hong Kong to China after getting assurances that this former colony’s traditions of rule of law and individual freedom would be respected, the political, legal and human rights landscape here has become ever less conducive to the protection of civil liberties.…  Seguir leyendo »

The other day I went into a family-run noodle shop and when I paid, I handed over a colonial-era one-dollar coin with the British queen’s head. I instantly felt a pang of regret.

“Sorry, could I swap it? I want to save the one with the queen’s head,” I explained, popping another dollar coin with a Bauhinia flower into the money pot and retrieving my old coin. The owner frowned and gave me a funny look.

I was puzzled by my own action. It’s not like I loved living under the colonial government. I vividly remember the sense of humiliation we endured: as a child in the 1970s, I remember kids from the nearby British school habitually jumping the public bus line.…  Seguir leyendo »

My three-year-old daughter came home one day late last year, proudly waving a paper Chinese national flag that she had made at her kindergarten. The five yellow stars were neatly colored-in amid a sea of red on a piece of paper stuck onto a drinking straw.

“Look, mom, it’s got to have five stars!” she said excitedly. Then she paused.

“Mom, will you take me to see the flag-raising ceremony in Beijing?” she said with her little eyes twinkling expectedly. Then she started humming the Chinese national anthem.

I was taken aback. I murmured: “Yes darling, one day, when you’re older.”…  Seguir leyendo »

For weeks now, Hong Kong has been captivated by the boisterous, no-holds-barred campaign for its next leader, and to an outsider it may even appear to be a normal, democratic contest.

The two main candidates’ positions have been publicly dissected and they’ve thrashed each other in highly viewed televised debates. The city’s press has done a good job of digging up dirt on the candidates, fueling public interest (or at least mockery) in the campaign that culminates Sunday.

But here is where the comparison to normal elections ends. Fifteen years after Hong Kong and its seven million citizens were handed by the British over to the Chinese, the chief executive — a fitting title for the leader of so wealthy and business-oriented a city — is still chosen by 1,200 electors (for various reasons, only 1,193 people on the committee are eligible to vote in this election).…  Seguir leyendo »

Beyond the intricate Chinese pictograms captured in iridescent neon and the incense spirals that smolder in the Man Mo Taoist Temple on Hollywood Road, Hong Kong’s most exotic gift to a visiting American is a reminder of how economic dynamism looks. Unemployment is just 3.2 percent (versus 8.6 percent in the United States) and it shows. Around the clock, Hong Kong People (as they call themselves) buy, sell, produce and deliver. Workers rush hand trucks in every direction, laden with raw materials, finished goods and sometimes just Styrofoam boxes. Along narrow alleyways and steep outdoor stairways that double as streets, small one-man operations market bespoke shirts, custom suits, electronics, printing services, lumber and antiques.…  Seguir leyendo »

It is a fascinating time to be half Chinese and half English.

For most of my 40 years, the Chinese have been the colonial subjects, the aspiring immigrants and the overzealous Communists while the British have been the colonialists, the winners of wars and a World Cup and a member of the G-8. The imbalance reflected the difficulties of reconciling the two cultures in oneself.

Suddenly China is the second largest economy, living in Shanghai is cool and, as Vogue China says, Beijing is hot. Suddenly there is more of a balance between the importance and relevance of the Chinese and Western cultures.…  Seguir leyendo »

It’s Sunday, and as usual the downtown parks and sidewalks are full of women, lounging on flattened cardboard boxes, massaging one another, painting toe nails, playing cards, chatting and napping. Hawkers wend through the rows and rows of women, peddling everything from discounted telephone calling cards to the word of God.

I share a bag of flavored peanuts with Susi Widyamti and Rita Wulandari, two women from Indonesia in their 20s, as they talk about how they miss their families, and how they’re overworked. But like many of the other women out here, they also betray a sense of pride in the financial support they provide for their distant families, and in the independence that they do not have back home.…  Seguir leyendo »

The west's admiration for China's rush for wealth is becoming like the left's interwar praise for ­Stalin's Soviet Union. It is a triumph of materialism over ­humanity. If there is one place on earth I have long wanted to visit, it is old Kashgar, fulcrum of the silk road, Peter Fleming's "oasis of civilisation" hovering between the Pamir mountains and the Taklamakan desert. It was used for the Afghan movie The Kite Runner, Nato having rendered the real location, Kabul, too dangerous for filming. Now the old city is to be systematically demolished. The steamroller of destruction that is China's rush for wealth is claiming yet another casualty for world culture.…  Seguir leyendo »

Several years ago, Samuel Finer, a distinguished professor of politics at Oxford, wrote a three-volume history of government. He set out to describe every form that has ever been. There was one short chapter on societies that were liberal but not democratic. The only example he could think of was Hong Kong.When I left Hong Kong 10 years ago, we were in the throes of introducing democracy. We were late in doing so. But what we set out to do was to give the citizens what they had been promised in the agreement on the city's handover to China, known as the Joint Declaration.…  Seguir leyendo »

On May 31, President Bush met for 35 minutes in the private living quarters of the White House with Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Hong Kong, in an event that was not announced and did not appear on his official schedule. Their meeting did not please the State Department, elements of the Catholic hierarchy and certainly not the Chinese government. But it signifies what George W. Bush is really about.

In Hong Kong, Zen enjoys more freedom to speak out than do his fellow bishops in China proper, and he has become known as the spiritual voice of China's beleaguered democracy movement.…  Seguir leyendo »