KIN CHEUNG/REUTERS

CULTURE CLASH: Hong Kong police scuffling with pro-democracy protesters last week

Hong Kong's Defiance
	China warns the city to forget democracy and get back to business. But many Hong Kongers aren't listening
	By Anthony Spaeth | Hong Kong

Posted Monday, June 7, 2004; 20:00 HKT
It's a weird wrinkle of politics that the most important annual commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre takes place in a park in the center of Hong Kong. No remembrances are allowed in Beijing, of course: the brave souls who attempt to unfurl a banner or shout a slogan in the square are quickly bustled away by security patrols. But thanks to the liberties of "one country, two systems," Hong Kong's residents can assemble every June 4 to mourn the students and workers who died in Tiananmen, and condemn the Communist government that mowed them down. Last Friday, some 80,000 people came together to watch a graphic video of the events in Beijing 15 years ago and to sing protest anthems in Cantonese and Mandarin. On the surface, the mood was solemn, with whole families reverently cupping their hands around votive candles in the summer breeze. But if you scratched the surface you immediately found worry and anger. "We want to use our voices to show we are taking control of our city," said Eddie Ho, a 30-year-old engineer. Commercial photographer Alfred Ko, 50, agreed: "We are desperate about the future of Hong Kong. People are here to say no."

In truth, the rallies in Hong Kong's Victoria Park have always been more about Hong Kong than what happened some 2,000 kilometers away in Beijing. The first gathering, which took place hours after the killings and drew 1 million people, was dominated by shock and by fear for the future: Britain was going to surrender Hong Kong to China just eight years later. (One of the most prominent placards at that rally read: TODAY CHINA, TOMORROW HONG KONG.) But in the succeeding years, even after the 1997 handover, the June 4 vigil became a relaxed, almost festive exercise of the rights Hong Kong still enjoyed, though always tinged with a nervous use-it-or-lose-it undercurrent.

Last Friday's was the most anxious June 4 since 1989 because Hong Kong and Beijing are locked in a tense new relationship. At the time of the handover, the bond between the two was, if not comradely, at least symbiotic. Beijing would maintain Hong Kong's freewheeling capitalist ways and grant the territory some autonomy (and reap international goodwill for doing so). In return, Hong Kongers would quietly go about the business of moneymaking to the exclusion of all other interests, especially political ones. That equation has changed because Hong Kong is not the place it used to be. While the territory's residents realize they still live in the luckiest part of China, with an upright judicial system, a largely unrestrained press and almost no corruption in officialdom, a growing number of Hong Kongers find that is no longer enough. Hong Kong now is unwilling merely to be China's docile economic prize. Instead, these days the territory is characterized by its discontent—with the lackluster performance of its Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, with the considerable power that local, self-serving tycoons wield, and with the territory's shrinking freedoms. "Sure I'm angry," concludes Stephen Wong, a 36-year-old IT worker. "Hope for democracy in Hong Kong is getting narrower and narrower."

	We are desperate about the future of Hong Kong. People are here to say no. —ALFRED KO,  commercial photographer

This sea change did not occur overnight. It has evolved over the past 15 months, which have been intensely difficult for Hong Kong. First came SARS, which turned one of the world's busiest cities into a skittish ghost town in which the simplest activity—such as going to school or touching an elevator button with an unprotected finger—was fraught with danger. A feeble economy got even weaker, unemployment rose to record highs, and Tung's bumbling government chose that moment to ram through stiff antisubversion legislation. Public outrage culminated in a mass rally on July 1 in which 500,000 of Hong Kong's supposedly apolitical inhabitants took part. That's 7% of the total population, and Hong Kong had never seen anything like it—or the developments that rapidly followed. The rally was a venting against Tung, his administration and his proposed security laws. But within weeks, a movement arose demanding that Hong Kong be given more democratic rights—specifically, to directly elect its Chief Executive (currently handpicked by a Beijing-appointed body) and all the seats in the territory's Legislative Council (Legco).

China's reaction was a stunned, months-long silence that many Hong Kongers considered ominous. They were right, for when Beijing finally roused, its anger was resolute and sustained. In April, mainland authorities announced that the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), its legislature, had "interpreted" the Basic Law, the closest thing Hong Kong has to a constitution, and decreed that any change in Hong Kong's electoral process would have to be initiated by the central government. That effectively slammed the door; then Beijing proceeded to nail it shut and brick it over. Three weeks later, China's leaders announced that direct elections would not happen in 2007 (for the Chief Executive) and 2008 (for Legco), the earliest the Basic Law says they can take place.

Beijing's actions were accompanied by a relentless campaign of contemptuous rhetoric by Communist Party functionaries. First, Hong Kong was instructed that only "patriots" would be allowed to run the territory. (A Hong Kong pro-Beijing newspaper printed the names of four pro-democracy legislators who purportedly failed to meet that description.) The democrats were denounced by Chinese officials as "clowns," "dreamers" and "traitors," and in May, Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the NPC's Standing Committee, sneered: "They are just like bananas: yellow outside but white inside." Last month, insult evolved into what may have been a more direct form of intimidation: three pro-democracy radio talk-show hosts abandoned their jobs, saying they had received veiled warnings from friends with high connections within mainland China. Allen Lee, a Hong Kong delegate to the NPC, said a middle-ranking Chinese functionary called him up at 10:30 p.m. and made disturbing references to the "virtuousness" of Lee's wife and to the beauty of Lee's daughter. The official has said he was merely being friendly and that he was misunderstood, but Lee quit both radio and the NPC the following day.

After years of considering itself China's favored offspring, Hong Kong now feels the harsh sting of stepchild treatment. "Beijing thinks: We've already given you so many freedoms, why is the situation not working, why are all these people complaining?" says Li Pang-kwong, director of the public-governance program at Hong Kong's Lingnan University. While China's leaders want the territory to flourish financially, they are out of step with Hong Kongers' mounting desire to have a say over everything in the city, from job creation to pollution to traffic congestion to the preservation of the harbor. But the surest way to get a responsive government, Hong Kongers are learning, is to have the power to vote for one, which Beijing will not countenance. Brushing off the call for direct elections, Chan Wing-kee, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the central government, tetchily reminded Hong Kong that it was "an economic city, not a political city." Says pro-democracy Legco member Lee Cheuk-yan: "Beijing has a two-pronged approach: giving Hong Kong economic autonomy but imposing direct political control. They're the boss. They insist one country is more important than two systems."

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	Shocked Jocks [May 25, 2004] Hong Kong's incendiary political climate claims another outspoken radio host Who's in Charge Of Hong Kong? [Apr. 09, 2004] To the dismay of democracy advocates, China is tightening its control over the territory Push and Shove [Mar. 09, 2004] It's not just Taiwan. China also has to deal with growing pressure for democracy in Hong Kong More Related Items | Search all issues of TIME Magazine