The arrest of 15 pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong shows Beijing is pressing ahead under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic, with it’s agenda to re-write the original terms of the Hong Kong handover.
Among those held are 81-year-old Martin Lee, a barrister and one of the founders of the Democratic Party and Jimmy Lai, an entrepreneur and supporter of the party, who owns a major Chinese language media group.
The roundup of activists by the government is over their role in the anti-government protests over the enactment of the Extradition Bill last year that brought Hong Kong to a stop and forced the government to withdraw the Bill in October 2019.
They have waited for an opportune moment since.
The Hong Kong protests were a mass movement that brought all sections of society out to the streets, in peaceful protest against undermining the terms of Hong Kong’s one-country-two-systems relationship with mainland China.
Martin Lee, is one of Hong Kong’s leading barristers and has never been arrested before. The Hong Kong government has said that there may be more arrests. Luo Huining, who heads the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO) that represents Beijing, has said it has the right to bypass local laws. This is contrary to the terms of the Basic Law, which governs Hong Kong.
The Agreement laid down in the Basic Law guaranteed that Beijing could not interfere with Hong Kong’s right to govern itself. Hong Kong people will govern Hong Kong, is what it lays down. China asserts that it has the ultimate authority which overrides Hong Kong’s autonomy.
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This is a serious challenge to the 1997 agreement and will no doubt further fuel the crisis. It is part of a series of attempts to pass laws in the name of national security, to restrict democratic debate. Hong Kong, unlike the rest of China, has a very active press and a democratic political culture that is under attack.
Masks
The legislature and the courts have recently also clashed over the use of masks.
Nothing illustrates the contradictions in Beijing’s attempts to tighten its grip over the city state than the question of masks. Beijing banned the use of masks last October but Hong Kong’s court said a ban on wearing face masks during demonstrations was unconstitutional. Now the Hong Kong court has ruled that masks cannot be worn in unlawful gatherings but the police cannot stop people from wearing masks in lawful gatherings and for health reasons.
Protesters in Hong Kong, in October. Photo: Reuters/Umit Bektas/File Photo
The Chinese approach of locking down the population, as it was done in Wuhan, has emerged as the favoured model worldwide, and the fight against the pandemic has been framed as a “war“. Governments across the globe are saying that the people must unite and sacrifice to overcome this enemy.
Questioning is being seen as spreading false rumours and undermining the national cause. The crisis provides an excuse to pass special laws to control free speech, increase surveillance, and restrict critical questioning. In fact, this is no war, the pandemic is a creation of the economic systems that are degrading the environment, creating ever widening inequalities and it can only be dealt with if there is systemic change.
The inequalities are clearly visible in who gets infected and who gets saved. Countries that have good health care systems for the people and are open about what has to be done are doing a far better job in tackling the disease.
Around China’s periphery, despite the close and dense contacts that they have with China, countries have been far more successful in dealing with this pandemic than China. Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan have not shut their countries down completely and have kept the number of deaths low.
South Korea
South Korea has, in the midst of all this, just conducted orderly elections. Voters were not deterred but wore masks and gloves and came out to vote in large numbers. The poll turnout of 62.2% was the highest to date. The Democratic Party led by Moon Jae-In has won a landslide victory, with the largest margin since democracy was established.
The party has won four successive national elections because it has built a centre-left programme that has garnered widespread support. It was expected to win but the landslide is a result of the handling of the virus.
South Korea with its intensive and quick testing has emerged as a global model. The South Korean government, like others, was surprised by the rapid spread of the virus between mid-January and mid-February, but once it saw the danger, it responded rapidly, creating a presidential task force to draw up a national plan.
The key element in this was to involve local and regional governments. This allowed for sharing of medical staff, hospital beds and other resources. Quick and rapid testing of nearly half a million people, sometimes multiple times proved effective in identifying and isolating those infected.
The government was able to win public support because these measures were based on complete transparency and sharing the information with the public. The people could trust the government and were kept informed. The country was not put under lockdown though schools were closed. Schools are now opening but there is a staggered and complicated schedule with online teaching for many classes.
Taiwan
The other striking contrast is Taiwan. Cross straits relations have been strained since the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party Tsai Ing-wen became president in 2016. It has a population about the same as Australia but has comparatively very few cases.
Despite its close relations with the mainland which led observers to believe it would be badly hit by COVID-19, it has only about 400 confirmed cases as opposed to 80,000 in China.
A staff wearing a face mask sits behind a plastic divider to protect himself from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at Chaotian Temple in Beigang, Yunlin, Taiwan on April 15, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Ann Wang
Taiwan acted rapidly by quickly closing its borders and banning flights from the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao. Its success is based on the lessons it learned from the 2003 SARS epidemic but also because it has a very good healthcare system with universal health coverage. But again, here as well, the government had a plan and was very transparent.
Doctors gave daily reports on the situation and kept the people informed, preventing rumours from shaping public opinion. The government took steps to look after the people who were quarantined by providing daily food supplies and a daily financial subsidy of $ 30, ensuring compliance.
Taiwan is not a member of WHO because China claims sovereignty over the island. So it’s access to information is limited and it cannot play an active role in global efforts but it has handled the crisis with care for its population and emerged as a model.
Back to China
In contrast, China, where the outbreak started, was slow off the mark. Despite having experienced earlier epidemics there was an attempt, now blamed on local officials, of suppressing information. Dr. Li Wenliang warned of the emergence of the virus in December but was admonished by the police. He died in February, contracting the infection from a patient. He became a symbol of the callousness of the government’s handling of the crisis.
A recent AP report quoted in Al Jazeera on April 15 says that in January the top leadership knew they were facing a pandemic but waited for a week before informing the public on January 20. In that period, mass banquets were held in Wuhan and millions began travelling for the annual lunar new year holidays leading to the massive spread of the virus.
Some of the problems may be bureaucratic delays and local officials not sending up disturbing reports but it underlines the fact that authoritarian control has built in inefficiencies.
And now the government’s revision of death toll figures by almost 50% has further muddied the waters. While the Chinese government may be right that it was a difficult time to gather accurate data, its attempts to control the narrative and project itself as in control of the situation has been cast in doubt. The Chinese government even tried for a while to suggest that the virus originated outside China.
In this situation it becomes easy to wonder what the real conditions are in other parts of China, such as in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous region, where reports by overseas groups suggest that a million Uighurs have been incarcerated in ‘vocational training ‘ camps to ‘supposedly de-radicalise’ them. The Chinese government has said that it has released all of them in December 2019 but the exiled Uighurs, who call it a cultural genocide are skeptical.
The experience of these east Asian countries underlines the fact that governments taking care of their populations and working with the people are able to handle the pandemic. The rhetoric of war and sacrifice is not an answer to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brij Tankha is Visiting Fellow, Institut d’études avancées, Nantes, France, and Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi.
