Twenty thousand march in protest, but Beijing will have the last say

HONG KONG – You’ve got to admire the Hong Kong pro-democracy militants. Their courage was well-reported in the leading newspapers yesterday morning. Since I can only quote the two English-language dailies, here’s what my former newspaper here, the South Morning Post, bannered: "Thousands in Basic Law Protest."

The other daily, business-oriented, The Standard, ran an even fiercer headline: "20,000 Marchers Vent Anger At NPC Ruling."

As reporter Michael Ng described what we saw in Hong Kong’s Central district last Sunday (we were on Des Voeux Road): "Thousands of angry people, from grandparents to toddlers, from people in wheelchairs to families arm-in-arm and at least one pregnant woman giving a ‘pre-natal lesson’ to her child in the womb, marched from Central to Western yesterday in a peaceful display of unhappiness at last week’s ruling by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) that Beijing had the first as well as the last say on when Hong Kong will get democracy."

Many of the brave Hong Kong marchers held mocking balloons caricaturing their Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa, who runs the Special Administrative Region (SAR), i.e. Hong Kong, in a manner – they complain – slavish to the central government in Beijing. Some marchers cried out, "One Country, Two Systems failing completely."

Of course, it is. When you’re living in a province of the People’s Republic of China, as Hong Kong is, they’d better believe Beijing has the last word.

This is why we Filipinos ought to appreciate the freedom to choose that we have, instead of corrupting, selling it out, or deriding it. Others don’t have that kind of choice. For all their skyscrapers, modern conveniences, smarts in business and finance, Hong Kong’s energetic and hopeful people don’t have it. When they returned to the womb of Mother China in 1997, from more than a century of British rule (also colonial), they were fated to follow China’s destiny. The Hong Kong people will get "democracy" when the mainland Chinese people acquire it – no sooner.

There would have been more than 20,000 marchers were it not vacation time, and most HK people were always on holiday – the Easter Weekend extending here until Monday. Last July, no less than half a million demonstrators had marched to protest a move to curtail their freedoms. Last Autumn’s district council elections even saw the defeat of the political parties which showed the most loyalty to Beijing, and the election of pro-democracy candidates.

But in the end, Beijing will dictate. That’s the long and short of it.

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The sight of last Sunday’s protest march in Hong Kong brings to mind my interview in 1988 of the late Chairman Deng Xiao-ping, who received this writer in the Fujian Room of the Great Hall of the People in the Chinese capital. Deng chainsmoked, and spat three times with remarkable accuracy into the spittoon at his left. (He must have liked me, because some people assured me later that if he didn’t like the person opposite him, he used to spit seven to ten times).

Chairman Deng, out of the blue, mused aloud: "I don’t understand it. Why doesn’t Taiwan accept the same formula I gave Hong Kong? I offered them a pledge: That they would remain as they are, capitalistic and with the same form of government for the next 50 years. You know, as I told Hong Kong: One Country, Two Systems. I promised the Hong Kong people they would remain capitalistic, untouched, for 50 years, even while we in China remain Communist."

I then said something very stupid and indiscreet. I quipped: "Mr. Chairman, I’m happy to know that you intend to live another 50 years!" As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I had blundered.

There were stunned silence among the group of Chinese officials and staffers in the room. Comrade Deng looked at me balefully for a moment, then he threw back his head and laughed – deciding I guess that I had made a joke. The Chinese in the room began to laugh heartily, too.

But it hadn’t been a joke. Deng, I thought, might have been completely sincere about keeping his pledge. (Although he was later blamed, unfairly I believe, for the Tien Anh Menh Square Massacre of pro-democracy students and workers.) For a leader’s promises can’t be kept after he is gone. After Chairman Deng smoked himself to death – it was a new situation altogether. Beijing’s power simply couldn’t abhor the vacuum.

When I got back to Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post, that week in 1988 had banner-headlined my article. Perhaps the Post ought to retrieve it from its files – if any – and send it to Beijing’s leaders as a reminder of Deng’s promise. However, as we know back home, promises are not always kept.