Power is not Defined by What We Have

Chan Ka Wai1

The Context

After the hand-over of Hong Kong by the British to the Chinese in 1997, the Hong Kong government has been criticized for its alleged incompetence to deal with many issues. These include the continuous economic recession following the Asian financial crisis in 1998, high unemployment rate, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), bird flu diseases, etc. The government has also been criticized as biased to a handful of business tycoons and unable to uphold the rule of law. A number of cases can illustrate this. The Secretary of Justice ended the prosecution of a press tycoon for so-called public interest, saying that a sentence would lead to bankruptcy for the press and loss of jobs for many workers. The government was criticized that it was really because the tycoon had a good personal relationship with the Chief Executive. In early 2003, the then Secretary of Finance was accused of being dishonest when he bought a new car just before announcing an increase in custom duty of motor vehicles. Although he paid double of the tax to a charitable body after the issue was revealed, he was asked to step down, but the Chief Executive defended him. These and many other issues have caused public discontent with the government and the Chief Executive.

The government has held sufficient votes to pass policies in the law-making body until the legislation of Article 23 of the Basic Law (BR 23) came out. According to Article 23 of the Basic Law, which is a mini-constitution of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, there should be legislature against treason, subversion and sedition in HK. But in the proposed documents of BR 23, the HK government used loose legal terms, which would restrain many kinds of civil liberties. It aroused serious criticism especially from the Bar Society. Beyond expectation, more than 60,000 people joined the demonstration against the proposed legislation in December 2002. Many people, including business and professionals, demanded the government to issue the White Paper, instead of the Blue Paper, to list out the full legal articles for the consultation thinking that "the evil is in the details". The government insisted on issuing the Blue Paper to start the engine for the legislation and set a deadline on July 9, 2003, the last meeting date of the Legislative Council in 2002-2003.

On July 1, 2003, more than half a million people from different backgrounds joined the demonstration against BR 23. The whole territory, the HK government and the Chinese government were shocked. Still, the HK government insisted on finishing the legislation of BR 23 with minor amendment by the deadline. When, several days later, the Liberal party, one of the pro-government parties, declared it would not support the finishing of the legislation by the deadline, and that it could and should be postponed, the government had no choice but to withdraw the bill. Two notorious secretaries resigned soon after, the Secretary of Security, who was responsible for the promotion of the Bill of the BR 23, and the Secretary of Finance. To please the people and stop the economic recession, the HK government asked for favorable policies from the Chinese government for HK to speed up its economic development. The policies worked and the economy has gradually improved although high unemployment has not yet been solved. The Chief Executive thought that HK is an economic city, not a political city; that the people are very pragmatic and only concerned about money; therefore, the government would get back the support of HK people and July 1 issue would gradually be forgotten. But this is not true.

November 23, 2003 was the date of elections of District Councils, consultative bodies in the government system. These being not the major decision-making body, the normal voting rate is relatively low. Before the date of voting, however, there was a huge increase of 300,000 new voters (one-tenth of the total number of voters in HK), and 120,000 of them were young voters. In the campaigns for the elections, BR 23 was a dominant issue. Finally, the democrats won many seats than they had expected, many of them very young, without service records in their communities, but were viewed as alternative to the pro-government groups.

Now most HK people are demanding for a universal suffrage of the Chief Executive in 2007 and full democracy of the Legislative Council in 2008. The Chinese government no longer restricted itself and mobilized different channels to attack the HK democrats and promote that HK must be ruled by people who love the country and love HK. To love the country means to love the People's Republic of China under the leading of the Communist Party. After the July 1 demonstration and the November District Council elections, the player for the HK people was no longer the HK government but the Chinese government, which is more powerful and more experienced in the political arena. Since the big failure in the District Council elections, pro-government parties began to change their positions not to fully endorse government policies. Without the support of pro-government parties, rejection of bills did happen several times. Thus, the HK government has been put aside. Now both HK people and the Chinese government have come up to the stage. It is not clear what will happen in the near future. In terms of power, however, HK people are definitely in a weaker position, but it seems that it is not clear who is really powerful in the real political life.

An Analogy of Parent-Children Relation

Raymond Fung, former Secretary of Evangelism of the World Council of Churches, said that the current political situation in HK looks like what happened between young Hippies and their parents in 1960s. Parents of young Hippies were so angry about their children's rebellious and deviant acts, but they could not stop them. In terms of power, the youngsters were weak; they were financially dependent on their parents. Their parents could penalize their children by not giving them pocket money for a while. Because of the parent-children relationship, parents could not suppress their children always. The analogy is interesting that in terms of power, young Hippies were very weak, but their parents could not stop them and more and more youngsters joined them. Finally they won and their parents and society were forced to accept them.

It is interesting to take the relations between young Hippies and their parents as an analogy for the recent incidents in HK. Following Raymond Fung’s thinking means that since the Chinese government has promised "One Country, Two Systems", HK people can keep on the democratic movement; and although they will face suppression, in the long run, HK people will win. I do not know if Raymond Fund is too optimistic or even too naïve about the political struggle with the Chinese government, but the analogy points to some interesting phenomena in the territory in the last two years. It seems that there is a reversal of power from the powerful to the weak.

Who holds the Power?

In terms of economic power and national per capita income, HK people are supposed to be more powerful than the people in the Mainland. Billions of dollars from Hong Kong are invested in China. More than 10 million workers in China are directly or indirectly working for Hong Kong investors. It is almost three times more than the total labour force in HK. But recently HK government asked for favorable policies from the Chinese government to speed up HK's economic development. One of the policies is to release the hurdle of individual tourists of Mainland Chinese to HK. Economically, Hong Kong cannot survive without China. Mainland Chinese are no longer weak economically. Those who were powerful before have now become weak.

In the political arena, HK people may seem weak in comparison with the HK government, which is supported by the Chinese government. However, in the July 1, 2003 demonstration and November 2003 District Council elections, the HK government became weak and a more powerful player has come on stage. It seemed that during the last two years, those who were in a powerful position suddenly became weak and those who were in a weak position became strong. Real political and economic lives tell us that nobody is really powerless and will always be in a weak position. A time comes when the weak will become powerful. More importantly, being powerful is not defined by what one has or how much one has. The common definition of power in terms of possession of economic privileges and political power often does not work in real political life. Power is not totally dependent upon economic and political power, but also on timing, strategic position, and support of the common people.

The idea that the powerful becomes weak, and vice versa, has biblical support. In the Magnificat, didn't Mary wish for an upside-down picture of power? The powerful would come down and the powerless would reign. In theological language, it can be considered "the power of the powerless" or "people's power". So it is possible for the weak to become powerful, and vice versa, in real life. In a way, there is a cycle in the political arena and it gives hope and encouragement for the weak to know that nobody is really powerless and that they can become powerful one day. The question is whether we can catch the time and facilitate the occurrence.

It is the same with the powerless who have become the powerful; they will one day become powerless again. I deliberately use little theological language because it might be too fast to make a simple theological conclusion on this complicated political life. Moreover, there might be a misconception in some theological discourses that the powerless seems to be always right and God is always on their side. But what will happen after the weak becomes the powerful? It seems that we only celebrate their "upward mobility". Will they become the powerless again? This is not discussed in many theological discussions.

In real economic and political life in HK in the last two years, it has been possible for the weak to become powerful; and for them to become weak again. Such a change of power relations does not mean that the weak are right and the powerful are wrong. Such a classification is somehow too simplistic to describe real political life. In the real economic and political arena, the weak can become the powerful. As a labour activist, this is already good news for me.

The notion that the weak will become powerful but will become weak again sounds like the Deuteronomic judgment in the history of Israel in the Book of Judges. But the Deuteronomic School made an ethical association between of Israel's up and down positions. I would rather just describe the phenomena and leave theologians with their theological articulations. If I need to make a theological conclusion, I would rather say that history is always open to God's intervention with human efforts. This is our hope.

NOTES:

1 Chan Ka-wai is a theologically trained activist working with church-related organization dealing with labour rights and is a district councillor in Hong Kong.