"Hong Kong Lesson One" Conclusion: On Systemic Corruption

Back in 2014, a week before the outbreak of the Occupy Movement, universities had just started to strike. Some students from mainland China said they wanted to go to the government headquarters to listen to speeches at the "Schools Are Not Strikes", but they were worried about their safety. I think they grew up in the mainland, and I believe they have never participated in mass movements. All they see on the news broadcast are edited scenes of foreign riots. Growing up under the words of maintaining stability, they will inevitably be wary of participating. At that time, I comforted them and said that the mass movement in Hong Kong was very peaceful. In 2003, 500,000 people took to the streets without knocking over a single trash can.

Unexpectedly, the peaceful consensus was broken during the occupation movement. A few days later, because of 79 tear gas bombs fired by the police, the largest occupation movement in Hong Kong's history broke out. What surprised me even more was that the myth of the independence and professionalism of civil servants was completely shattered in this occupation movement. During the "Night in Mong Kok", rioters brought sharp weapons to attack citizens and students who were peacefully gathering, but the police did not bring them to justice. Afterwards, the police lost the public's trust, and the conflict between the police and the people continued to escalate. Hong Kong's "peaceful, rational and non-violent" protest tradition was also shaken.

Over the years, I have taught Hong Kong society and politics at the university, and the biggest feeling is that things are becoming more and more contrary to common sense. Many things that were not considered to be discussed in the past and were irrelevant to Hong Kong society suddenly became important. For example, in the class on the judiciary system, the former mainly introduced the Hong Kong Right of Residence Act, that is, the court issues, and there was not much time for prosecution and the police. In recent years, first there was the Occupy Movement, then the "Causeway Bay Bookstore" incident, then the "co-location" controversy, and the most recent controversy over the revision of the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance and the atrocities committed by the police when they suppressed public assemblies...About Hong Kong The contents of judicial discussion have increased significantly, and the originally arranged classroom time has become seriously insufficient.

Another example is when talking about democratization, in the past, we talked about the shortcomings of Hong Kong elections, mainly focusing on the issue of unequal votes. As for the principles of "constancy, secrecy, and security" that are often mentioned in academic literature when talking about democratic elections, they have only been lightly mentioned before, saying that they are problems only in backward countries. In Hong Kong now, these three points have become real disputes.

These changes, of course, are not only felt in the classroom. In recent years, public opinion often refers to the saying that "rituals are collapsing and music is ruining", which means that many social systems that most Hong Kong people believed to be credible in the past are disintegrating and disappearing one by one. In the past, Hong Kong people thought that whether you supported or opposed the government, you would be treated fairly by the police in the face of violence. In the past, Hong Kong people thought that no matter how absurd or deviant your position was, as long as you found 100 signatures to support it and paid the 50,000 yuan election deposit, you could be elected as a member. These can no longer be taken for granted.

Hong Kong is sick. To treat a disease, one has to separate the symptoms and the cause of the disease. Some symptoms are annoying on the surface, but they are actually a kind reminder from the body, telling you that it is time to pay attention. Forcibly suppressing the symptoms and ignoring the cause of the disease will certainly not cure the disease, but will cause greater harm. Unfortunately, the symptoms are always easier to see than the cause. The chaos in parliament, the clashes in the streets, and the social rift they represent have become the main, if not the only, concern of many when talking about Hong Kong. Next, some people will prescribe all kinds of medicines, claiming that as long as those who protest in the parliament are driven out of the chamber and those who make trouble in the streets are put in jail, the society will be harmonious and Hong Kong can develop. These ideas, of course, are too simple and naive. It has been 22 years since the establishment of the SAR. These prescriptions have made Hong Kong sicker and sicker, but some people continue to sell them. It seems more like shirking responsibility.

Regarding the historical and institutional reasons behind various social phenomena in Hong Kong, I have already said a lot in the previous article, so I won’t repeat them here. Here I would like to make two conjectures as the conclusion of this writing project.

First, if institutional problems are always interlocking, by extension, is the collapse of the entire society itself interlocking?

Going back to the 1980s, Hong Kong at that time, like mainland China today, was proud of various urban constructions. Government promotional videos often see contemporary large-scale infrastructure projects such as subways, subsea tunnels, and the Eastern Corridor. But in recent years, infrastructure has become a pain in Hong Kong society. Not only have the projects of the MTR Shatin to Central Line and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge overruns one after another, but serious engineering supervision problems have also emerged, which has shocked the Hong Kong society, which was once superstitious about the supremacy of professionalism. Compared with democratic universal suffrage, professionalism should probably be called the core value that Hong Kong people are most proud of. When the scandals of cutting corners and quality fraud occur one after another, I am afraid that for many Hong Kong people, it may herald the "death of Hong Kong" more than various political disputes.

How did this regression begin? Professional ethics must be stabilized, which requires both external supervision and professional self-discipline. For professional self-discipline to take place, the first priority is to employ people on their merits. If the leaders of each profession are not capable or prestigious enough, or if they cannot be fair and equitable, professional self-discipline will get half the result with twice the effort. Since the establishment of the SAR, the ladder of social mobility has become more and more loyal rather than meritocracy. When appointments to every position, beginning with the chief executive, are based on obedience to superiors rather than personal ability, professional failure will occur sooner or later.

So why is loyalty first becoming more and more naked? Because the basis of the checks and balances of power has changed. Although there is no universal suffrage in Hong Kong, Hong Kong was in a dual power structure between China and Britain during the British Hong Kong era, and the British Hong Kong government was under pressure to maintain good governance in Hong Kong. The British left, China became stronger, and the dual power structure disappeared. If so, the logic of power becomes top-down, and whether government officials or social leaders worry about whether those with more power believe in their loyalty. At the same time, an autocratic regime must not accept any source of power independent of itself, and respected but disobedient civil leaders will naturally be replaced. If so, a wave of bad money driving out good money will be swept away, and those who are capable and principled will have to leave the upper class of society, and even leave Hong Kong.

Ordinary citizens may not care about various political controversies every day, but they will also be implicated in them. When the government loses its ability to govern, citizens have no choice but to meet their daily needs. If the government can’t take care of the elders and children well, it hires foreign helpers; if it doesn’t have enough higher education degrees, it goes to cram schools or goes abroad to study. Yet because only those with financial or social capital can solve problems on their own, societies become more unequal and more divided. And when everyone gets used to personalizing responsibilities, the pressure to solve problems institutionally will actually decrease. Citizens lose their expectations of the government, they will not participate in public affairs, and it will be difficult for opposition politics to grow. If you don't vote in elections, pro-government forces can monopolize the parliament, and the rules of the meeting are changed to make it more self-castrating; the parliament becomes more useless, so people are even more lazy to come out and vote. When the various social systems that originally supported Hong Kong have turned into farce, it is even more difficult to rebuild these systems in despair. The vicious circle is getting worse.

The above is what I call the systemic corruption of Hong Kong. It is systemic because what went wrong was not caused by a certain individual, group, political faction or force. It is the whole of Hong Kong that is sick together.

The second conjecture is about mainland China. I remember a classmate from mainland China once told me at the end of the semester that he felt sympathy for Hong Kong after taking my class. In fact, sympathy and sympathy should never be the focus. What I care about is whether the students have developed a good habit of answering questions through the discussion of Hong Kong issues. After all, many things are breaking out in Hong Kong today, probably just a few steps ahead of mainland China. The same problem may soon occur in mainland China in a way that is a hundred times more difficult, and I am very worried that Chinese society is not ready to answer these questions, or even provide space for exploration.

Things often happen in strikingly similar ways. The current rapid development of mainland China has allowed many people to live a better life than before, and it has also brought a sense of honor to many people to be Chinese. The same process happened in Hong Kong earlier than in mainland China, and it also brought a lot of honor to Hong Kong people. Hong Kong's experience is that rapid development can alleviate many problems, but it can also hide many problems. At the end of the rapid development, these problems will emerge one by one.

The economic achievements of mainland China in recent years have made many people feel confident. Self-confidence is very important, but too much self-confidence can deceive oneself. This is also the experience of Hong Kong. In today's China, there is a determinism that only focuses on economy, development, technology, and strength, thinking that they can solve all problems. But Hong Kong's experience shows that this is only a product of a specific time and space, and one day it will reach a bottleneck. When social mobility starts to slow down, when various problems can no longer be solved through development, we have to face some deeper problems: problems of values, problems of systems, and even the systemic corruption mentioned above.

Let us put aside the cloak of prosperity for a while, and ask calmly: Is there any problem of professional immorality in today's Chinese society? What kind of social harm has it brought about? Does the reason have anything to do with not being able to use only talents? Does the latter have anything to do with China's current political and social structure? When the people find that the government cannot solve their immediate problems, do they choose to unite and demand institutional reforms, or do they personalize their responsibilities and entrust their relationships to find a way out? If it is the latter, has it further deepened social inequality and powerlessness?

These questions have to be answered by someone who knows better than me. But before answering questions, I think that no matter in mainland China or in Hong Kong, there is a prerequisite: to leave room for answers. Answering questions requires space, because any power inherently dislikes being questioned, especially an authoritarian regime. Answering questions is a kind of dissent, because autocracies can only allow answers they approve of, and no other interpretations are allowed. In addition to autocratic censorship, we must also recognize our own limitations. Hong Kong people have experienced self-deception too many times and lost a lot of time because of it. The reality is that we are all individuals with limited experience. We should not easily confirm that there are simple and satisfactory answers to the more ambitious problems, especially the problems of the nation or various ideologies.

Constantly comparing the answers of others is a great way to maintain humility and guard the question space. I was lucky. Before I wrote the above 100,000 words, there were a lot of solid Hong Kong studies left by the predecessors for reference, so I didn't have to talk nonsense.

Relatively speaking, in mainland China in the past few years, the space for citing different opinions has become increasingly narrowed, and society has become one-sided. I am worried that in such an environment, everyone will become full of self-confidence, and China will easily go astray. I suspect that today, China is facing a reversal of the international situation, and the continuous reform and opening up has encountered huge resistance, which reflects that China has indeed gone astray in the past few years. The rapid deterioration of China-Hong Kong relations in recent years is just one of the many problems brought about by this crooked path.

What should become of the political relationship between China and Hong Kong? I don't have a good answer. But no matter what your hopes for the future of political relations between China and Hong Kong are, Hong Kong does not have the capital to expect China to become more conservative. I am not saying that Hong Kong people can take the initiative to do anything to change China. I even suspect that Hong Kong's continued survival is already a great contribution. Because the very existence of Hong Kong is precious to both mainland China and Taiwan.

I have heard a lot of criticism in mainland China claiming that Hong Kong people have no national vision. I actually quite agree with this point of view. Many young people who grew up in mainland China imagine that the whole of China is their stage for hard work, and ask where they should develop themselves. Young people in Hong Kong rarely have such an idea. But not having a national vision is not necessarily a bad thing.

In recent years, it has been popular in mainland China to say that "the country is playing a big game of chess." Many pro-China dignitaries in Hong Kong also like to point out that Hong Kong people do not have a sense of the overall situation, and do not know how to think about Hong Kong's position from the standpoint of the country. However, there is always a difference between a person and a chess piece. Chess pieces only need to perform tasks, and are ready to sacrifice at any time, and abandon the rook to protect the commander when necessary. Therefore, chess pieces cannot have thoughts. But people have thoughts, and they should have thoughts. Even if a person chooses to be a chess piece and pays for the collective interests, he must at least ask who the player is, why he is qualified, and whether I can participate in deciding how to move the next move. Hong Kong people like to ask these questions.

I accept that not many people are asking these questions in mainland China now. When the speed of development is fast and everyone seems to be benefiting from the development, few people will mind what the collective is actually. Anyway, as long as the pie grows, my own share should also grow, so why question whether I have the right to participate in the decision-making process, especially if such doubts will bring me trouble. Everyone will even start to defend this so-called collective, just like defending themselves, willingly speaking. As for whether an individual's contribution to the collective should never be subject to conditions, and who has the right to decide what is the real interest of the collective, there is no need to delve into it. But one day, when the speed of development is not so fast, everyone can no longer share the benefits, and when institutional inequality and injustice become unavoidable, some difficult value issues will become necessary to face.

And these, I suspect, are the role that this "no national vision" Hong Kong should play in China: to leave a little space for answering some uncomfortable questions. When all provinces, municipalities and municipalities across the country are trying to follow the same path, the significance of Hong Kong to China is to preserve a different possibility. As for whether this different possibility will be useful in the end, and whether it is suitable, who knows? But leaving a window is valuable in itself.

Finally, I would like to conclude with the words of Professor David Ke, a leading figure in Chinese studies. In addition to teaching social analysis in the School of Journalism and Communication, I also teach China-Hong Kong Relations at the China Studies Center of the Chinese University of Chinese Language and Culture, and Professor David Ke is our course director. I remember one year at the opening ceremony, there were many students from mainland China. Professor Ke said: "You are from mainland China, why do you still come to Hong Kong to study Chinese studies? I think there is a difference between us and our counterparts in mainland China: Hong Kong has a tradition of dissent. When you come to Hong Kong, you will only stay for a year. I don't expect you to change completely in one year, and it shouldn't happen. It will be terrible. But I hope we can teach you to ask matter of importance."

I think this is the significance of discussing many issues in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is unique, but Hong Kong is not alone. How should identity be understood? How should history be remembered? Does power have to obey? How should the system be changed? How can we resist in the face of systemic corruption? These questions are not only faced by Hong Kong people, nor are they only trying to answer them. I dare not be blindly optimistic about the future of Hong Kong. However, if the story of Hong Kong can inspire more people to ask questions, not rush to conclusions, find answers slowly, and allow different opinions to exist, it will be regarded as leaving a valuable mark on the world.

(The serialization of "Lesson 1 in Hong Kong" has been completed. I would like to thank the Matters team for their support and assistance.)