Progress cannot be made unless the Occupy Central movement engages with the political community.
Any real progress needs the active collaboration of both political society and civil society. While civil society is able to launch large-scale protests — as seen in the Occupy Central movement’s ability to draw large crowds when it began its civil disobedience campaign in September — it lacks the organisation to push for progressive political reform, a role which should be taken up by political society, which has the power to influence the Legislative Council.
The political compromise between Beijing and Hong Kong democrats in 2010, though not comprehensive, was a notable moment in the history of Hong Kong democratisation. While acknowledging that any electoral reform must be in accordance with the Basic Law, both sides agreed on the proposal that the franchise of the five new special interest Functional Constituency seats be expanded to include all voters who were not eligible to cast a ballot in any functional constituency — a move that would render these seats popularly elected in all but name.
Why has this kind of real bargaining in the form of incremental democratisation now given way to confrontational tactics and radicalisation? The decline of moderate democrats is the key.
The political compromise in 2010 led to internal strife in the pro-democracy camp. The ‘moderate democrats’ within the Democratic Party moved away from the ‘radical democrats’, who were anxious at the prospect of a long wait for full democracy and opted for more drastic action. In a move to separate themselves from the radicals, the moderate democrats established the Alliance for Universal Suffrage, now called the Alliance for True Democracy.
The story was not over. The results of the 2012 legislative council election reflect a noticeable change in Hong Kong’s democracy movement. The political landscape has changed significantly since the 2012 elections. The Democratic Party was blamed for having “sold out” the pro-democracy camp in 2010 and suffered a catastrophic defeat, losing the position of leader of pan-democrats for the first time. In terms of seats, it dropped from eight to six. The loss was reflected more accurately in vote shares, with a 7 per cent fall compared with the 2008 election. In contrast, radical democrats from the People’s Power Party, the League of Social Democrats and the Neo Democrats gained three more seats, bringing their total to five seats in the Legislative Council. The radical wing, in particular, collected more than 15 per cent of the vote in the direct elections, surpassing the Democratic Party’s share.
The fall of moderate democrats in the Legislative Council, along with protests that forced the authorities to back down on the issue of national education in 2012, emboldened the radical wing of the pro-democratic movement.
The fact that civil society activists want to distance themselves from moderate democrats is not a healthy sign. The political impasse is due less to lagging public support than to a lack of mutual trust between Beijing authorities and democratic forces in Hong Kong. The moderate democrats are unable to mediate between Beijing and civil society activists, and any radical attempts only make the distrust between Beijing and the democratic forces in Hong Kong worse and reform less likely.
The current protests are led by civil society groups, including Occupy Central leaders, the Hong Kong Federation of Students, and Scholarism, rather than by moderate democrats in the Legislative Council. Civil society groups and the moderate democrats now need to work together in hopes of winning maximal concessions from Beijing. Civil society cannot achieve substantial progress on its own. If civil society and moderate democrats find a way to work collaboratively, both sides will have a better chance of achieving real progress.
Steven Yet is a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is also an associate member at the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.