Absurd politicalization
Updated: 2013-05-29 06:52
By Thomas Chan(HK Edition)
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Politicalization of almost every discourse on policy issues in Hong Kong has become too absurd for anyone with a little political sense or historical understanding of the real world.
On whether the housing problem for the young generation would be resolved, some young party functionary of the so-called pan-democratic camp could naively and with great certainty and confidence iterate in the media that with "one person, one vote" for the Chief Executive (CE) election it would surely be eradicated. It is just like faith in a good king, a philosopher-king or a god-king, that everything will turn good and problems be removed if, and only if, he/she is in power. The same housing problem for the young has never been overcome even in the most democratic countries in the world with universal suffrage adopted much earlier than the US, the so-called benchmark country for democracy.
The problem is not just housing but more seriously extensive youth unemployment that destroys financial, physical and even psychological health of the long-term unemployed. Popular voting is important as an institutional tool to achieve democracy, but is not the end itself, or the heal-all medicine for any social and political ills.
In Hong Kong, after a decade of asset bubbles and 16 years of long economic stagnation since 1997, people may indeed be desperate and disillusioned, not knowing what has caused the difficulties and what to do next, but to put blind faith in popular voting, and popular voting alone, will not help the people and society get out of the present trap.
Vestige of coloniality
In the post-colonial era, coloniality is not just a legacy, but inherited as the guiding principle for every policy and political discourse. The ideology of the free market or laissez-faire has been adopted in full force without the necessary public constraints for economic order and social and political stability practiced by the colonial government in the past. Instead, it served the interests of the business oligarchies, which emerged during the transitional period to the handover, not those of ordinary folks and small businessmen. The result is the estranging of new and small businesses by inhibitingly high land rents and visible and invisible market barriers set up by the oligarchies.
Hong Kong is a free market mostly for financial (including of course all kinds of assets with properties as the most important ones) investments and speculations. However, there are the 'invisible hands' of multinational financial houses and funds, which operate not according to free and fair market principles but mostly outside the formal institutions and regulations by public authorities in Hong Kong and overseas.
A conventional counterforce for manipulation by business oligarchies is a free press and a free, independent and critical/alternative intellectual community and culture. Notwithstanding formal restrictions against convergence of media interests, financial capital prevails and we have witnessed the widespread influence of business interests in media reporting and commentaries.
Our local academia is geared towards the publication of articles in British and US journals at the expense of local issues and topics for research and investigation as the latter seldom receives attention in Anglo-Saxon academic circles. There are of course some public intellectuals in Hong Kong claiming to represent the local interests against any wider societal and national interests. But with the withdrawal of academia from local discourses and practices, the commercialized media and the few public intellectuals who are also partisan, affiliated to or allied with local political parties, seem to dominate the ideological sphere. In fact, the latter is often dependent on the former as the media controls access to wider communities of readers and audience. The excessive politicalization of local policy discourse may start from here.
Political power struggle
One of the political reasons for the politicalization as against the economization of the colonial era may be a result of the political change in the handover. During the colonial era the political field (which is broader than government or governance) was firmly in the hands of the British. The regime did not need or wish to change the political status quo and in the face of any possible challenges that might have political implications, it simply countered with economic arguments and rationale, downgrading them as economic issues to be resolved by economic means.
In the post-colonial era, the ideology of laissez-faire was enshrined in the Basic Law and heavily safeguarded by the technocracy inherited from the colonial order, while the administration is possibly from outside the inherited colonial regime. As the CE has the executive powers in an executive-led governance system (intentionally similar to the powers of the colonial governor), in theory he could mobilize resources in the public sector to challenge and alter the inherited economic order. If the CE does not buy the ideology of laissez-faire that guarantees the business oligarchies, a fundamental conflict will emerge between the political and the economic fields. The business oligarchies refuse change to the economic order they dominate, and to do so as an offensive defense it will be much better for them to politicize every issue that may upset the existing interests and pattern of resources distribution and redistribution, and confine resolutions only in the political realm by questioning the legitimacy and capability of the post-colonial government and governance structure.
When the post-colonial government was friendly to business oligarchies, such as that of Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, and had little interest in initiating any policy to change the existing economic order, pressures on government were less and compromises easily reached. In another case when an outsider, Antony Leung Kam-chung, then financial secretary, had the possibility of succeeding Tung Chee-hwa as CE, political attacks first at Leung and later at Tung and his close associates were strong.
The contest between Henry Tang Ying-yen and Leung Chun-ying was intense and bitter and even after Leung was elected, the process of politicalization has been accelerated with the aim of not only toppling Leung so that a more pro-business CE and administration would replace his, but also as preparation for the popular election of the CE in 2017. Politicalization merely serves the purposes of the conquest of political power in the post-colonial government, so that the politics and the economy correspond and reinforce each other under a unified new regime built upon the British colonial order. Once successful, politicalization might revert to economization like that of the colonial era. Economization functions as the shield for the vested interests just as politicalization disguises the power struggles for domination.
Dictatorial democracy
In the case of Hong Kong, there is no rich, complex and often controversial concept of democracy, but only one of its procedural realization - universal suffrage for the election of the CE, and to a lesser extent, the Legislative Council (LegCo), and worse still, only in a twisted interpretation, which ridiculously demands universal suffrage also for the candidate-nomination process. The evolution from the focus on a broad and vague concept of democracy to more concrete demands for political designs for immediate implementation shows the desperation of those behind the call for urgent political change in Hong Kong. For them the political designs they propose are not for discussion or negotiation; they represent for them and allegedly for Hong Kong people the ultimate truth of politics, and in turn the magic touch for dream realization, or the key to every unresolved problem. In other words, they naturalize the political designs and implementation timetable for Hong Kong society. They are not to be disputed, but to be accepted without compromise; others are either with us or against us, and to be against us is to be against democracy and the general interests of Hong Kong society.
If one looks at the history of democracy, it has always been broad and flexible enough to accept changes, compromises and innovations. There is never a simple standard blueprint of democracy. Local conditions and their interaction with external and even global factors shape the actual content of democratic institutions. The British is different from the US and the Anglo-Saxon is different from the Germanic or Central European and the Nordic. Over time, the institutions have also changed, and so the written constitution of the US has its many amendments, not to mention the different interpretations at different times of the unwritten constitution of the British. The variation and heterogeneity in concrete and procedural implementation of the democratic institutions are even greater.
Unfortunately, the so-called mainstream media and intellectual discussion of democracy in Hong Kong has intentionally or unintentionally denied the historical reality of the evolution of democracy. There is pervasive repression of the historicity of democracy even in university programs and school teaching. Politicalization is undertaken actively in many quarters of Hong Kong led by the mainstream media and political discussion and facilitated by the partisan stance of many teachers to impose a false understanding of democracy on local society, especially among the young and inadequately educated.
Attempts at political conformity are being made through online violence, which aggressively silences alternatives, and by regular demonstrations and protests in a constant mobilization of support through media broadcasting. Conformity to the immutability of their twisted concept of democracy is induced through repetition, with people lulled into a sense of hypnosis by its repeated rhythms of reiteration in the media. The media is no longer neutral at least because of the lengthy coverage of demonstrations, protests and the reiteration of the magic touch of "one person, one vote" in many of its talk shows, columns and news analyses to present a one-sided discourse.
Democratic discourse closed
The discourse on democracy for Hong Kong is actually closed. The media coverage allows no elaboration, interaction, reflexive thinking and meaningful discussion that draws on historical experiences and political imagination. It forms a kind of social closure that blocks any political innovation and alternatives and any conscious return to the reality of Hong Kong society, which is alive and evolving in many milieus beyond and including the political field and is also plagued by many problems that are urgently in need of remedy and resolution.
The current politicalization of almost every discourse on policy and even social issues in Hong Kong is a disguised struggle for political power and regime transformation. As a form of mobilization, for the organizational and financial resources it involves and the political motivation and values it represents, it cannot come naturally but must be engineered. The popular elections of the CE and LegCo scheduled respectively in 2017 and 2020 will be the battlefield for ever intensifying politicalization buildup in the intervening years. Now is only the beginning.
The author is the head of the China Business Center at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
(HK Edition 05/29/2013 page1)