China plans to ramp up efforts to integrate Hong Kong with the mainland by strengthening patriotic education and retooling the city’s political and economic system, amid continuing protests against Beijing’s growing influence in the former British colony.
In a Friday briefing elaborating on policies issued by the Communist Party elite, a senior official said Beijing plans to refine its mechanisms for governing Hong Kong, such as by revamping how the city’s leader and other top officials are appointed and removed, as well as upgrading its safeguards for national security.
Beijing will also support Hong Kong’s efforts to “strengthen law-enforcement capabilities” and inculcate in its youth a stronger sense of national identity and patriotism, as well as a deeper understanding of Chinese history and culture, said Shen Chunyao, a senior official at China’s parliament who oversees legislative work related to Hong Kong.
The party’s governing Central Committee approved these directives on Thursday at the end of a closed-door conclave headed by President Xi Jinping, who received a resounding endorsement of his leadership from the party elite despite recent setbacks spanning a slowing domestic economy, trade tensions with the U.S. and violent protests in Hong Kong.
The city has been consumed by antigovernment unrest over the summer, which has broadly targeted Beijing’s perceived encroachment into Hong Kong’s self-governance, including efforts to stifle anti-Communist Party dissent.
Mr. Shen said Beijing continues to uphold Hong Kong’s partial autonomy, which allows residents to enjoy greater political freedoms than in mainland China. He didn’t elaborate on how or when its new directives on the city would be implemented.
But the phrasing he used raises the specter of a revival of policy proposals that have in the past sparked some of Hong Kong’s worst political crises, and would likely trigger more unrest and undermine efforts to restore stability in the city, some China politics watchers say.
The Xi administration “is just re-doubling its efforts to implement more strenuously a policy that caused the problems in Hong Kong in the first place,” said Steve Tsang, director of the School of Oriental and African Studies China Institute in London.
Patriotic education and national-security overhauls have proved to be the most stubborn of issues that Beijing has failed to force through in Hong Kong since regaining sovereignty over the city in 1997.
In 2003, Hong Kong’s government abandoned a bid to introduce antisubversion legislation after facing mass protests. Officials also set aside proposals to bring “moral and national education” into Hong Kong schools, which would have included lessons on Chinese history and other courses aimed at strengthening students’ sense of national identity, after school-aged protesters led demonstrations in 2012 to oppose what they called “brainwashing” by China.
Public anger boiled over again in 2014, when Beijing proposed to let Hong Kong citizens elect their leader from candidates effectively screened by the central government—triggering protests that morphed to a 79-day street occupation in downtown Hong Kong, aimed at securing full universal suffrage. Beijing’s proposal was later voted down in Hong Kong’s legislature, and the selection of the city’s chief executive remains a decision left to a roughly 1,200-strong committee stacked with pro-Beijing members.
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Beijing “does not acknowledge its attempt to force Hong Kong to be integrated more into the People’s Republic is fundamentally responsible for radicalizing young people in Hong Kong,” Mr. Tsang said. Rather, Mr. Xi and his advisers appear to believe that the key to a stable Hong Kong lies in greater control, he said.
In recent months, Beijing has brought in top law-enforcement officials to help manage the crisis, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Senior members of the party’s Central Politics and Law Commission have been spending time in neighboring Guangdong province, using it as a forward base for monitoring developments in the former British colony and reporting back to the leadership in Beijing, the person said.
A sign of this arrangement appeared in September, when Public-Security Minister Zhao Kezhi accompanied President Xi for a meeting with Macau’s chief executive-elect Ho Iat Seng —the first time a public-security minister was named as attending such a meeting under the Xi administration. Observers say it indicates Mr. Zhao has been given a role in Hong Kong and Macau policy-making.
“The Hong Kong protests have escalated into a matter of national security,” said Ip Kwok-him, a nonofficial member of Hong Kong’s Executive Council and a deputy to China’s national legislature. “So it’s not surprising that the public-security ministry would get involved.”
At the Communist Party’s four-day conclave this week, its top 370 or so officials also committed to broader measures to alleviate socioeconomic problems in Hong Kong that have underpinned the recent unrest.
Mr. Shen, the legislative official, said Beijing would focus on boosting Hong Kong’s economic fortunes by aligning it more closely with China’s national development plans, including the so-called Greater Bay Area project aimed at integrating Hong Kong and Macau with key industrial hubs in Guangdong.
This, Mr. Shen said, would help “improve public sentiment, and redouble efforts to resolve the deep-seated problems affecting social stability and long-term development.”
—Wenxin Fan in Hong Kong contributed to this article.
Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com and Philip Wen at philip.wen@wsj.com
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-pushes-to-integrate-hong-kong-through-patriotic-education-security-overhauls-11572617038
2019-11-01 15:03:00Z
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