 John Lee, pro-Beijing hardliner and the new chief executive of Hong Kong, and this is on Global Connections here with Michael Davis. Welcome to the show, Michael. Michael has been around the world in various places. He's still, even in these difficult times, gets around the world, including a lot of time in Hawaii, and he can look back on his 30 years in Hong Kong, and he can make some sense of it where most of us cannot. I cannot. Sorry. But Michael, let me ask you the last question first here. You know, 30 years in Hong Kong, and now you've seen so sadly what has happened to Hong Kong since the umbrella movement, question, you know, how has that 30 years affected your way of thinking about diplomacy and government and society and civil society in the world? What, you know, special gifts has it given you? Well, I think it's made me aware, probably more than anything else, that you can't, that old dogs don't change, that Beijing basically tried to be inventive, and its early promises to Hong Kong, Deng Xiaoping was an innovator and wanted to put forward ideas, but the Chinese Communist Party basically seemed, I guess, in its DNA really doesn't have it in it to allow for the space that they promised Hong Kong. And that's unfortunate, but I don't blame it all on them. I think in terms of what I learned about process in Hong Kong is that the elites in Hong Kong that were rewarded by the regime from day one, the whole political system was rigged to ensure their power, and the idea was that eventually that would be relaxed and the opposition and others could have a greater role. But the thing is, is over those years when Hong Kong people were nervous about the direction things were going, these elites never really represented Hong Kong. I think that's kind of the source of today's problems. I kind of, maybe I'm naive, but I think that if they had found their voice, I don't think anyone expected them to be against Beijing or fighting Beijing, creating tension with Beijing, but if they had found their voice and helped Beijing officials to understand what was the concerns of Hong Kong people, I think there might have been a chance to try to make this one country, two systems model work. But they simply were too, I think, too greedy. They wanted to be appointed to this and that. And so the way you get appointed in China is you go along with the regime and you do whatever the regime wants you to do as much as the regime wants you to do it. And I think these Hong Kong officials, and we're seeing them in action now, today's topic, the new leader in Hong Kong, is a guy who central aims to please Beijing. And I think that this was seen by many of them as their avenue to advancement and advantages that they wanted. So they never did represent Hong Kong. And so they wanted to. John Lee was a policeman. Right. He was on the right wing of things and always favored Beijing and law enforcement and all that. And he was involved in the movement against the umbrella movement, right? He was trying to bring Beijing's law and order view to Hong Kong. And he's a good pick for Beijing, isn't he? Yeah, well, that's exactly right. So what happens is that they don't represent Hong Kong's views. They are using their connections with Beijing to their advantage. And the people of Hong Kong protest. Now, they wanted to blame all this crackdown on these protesters. That as they put it, any society would not tolerate these protests, blah, blah, blah. Therefore, we're going to crack down on them and arrest all of them. But in fact, I blame it on them that they basically failed to carry out what they needed to do in order to have an autonomous city, kind of a territory in China that they needed to represent that territory. Not in a way that's going to get them in trouble, but at least to have a voice. And they never had it. And so Beijing basically fell back on its own tactics. And that's repression. And that's what we're seeing right now. Well, does they have a legitimate concern that Hong Kong and the protests in Hong Kong or the pull at the resistance in Hong Kong would have been an exemplar for other communities, other cities in mainland China to take a whack at the PRC? You know, that's the thing. I don't think it ever came to that. There was a kind of idea that, you know, in China, the regime relaxed a lot of its economic policies from the hard line period of communism. So it's basically a market economy. And the result has been China's economic growth has been pretty dramatic. And I think a lot of people in China have been pleased with that development and that change. And at the same time, they've been able to travel. They travel to Japan. They travel to Hawaii. And they see democratic societies. And I think they more or less took Hong Kong as one of those. So I don't think it was an envy of Hong Kong. I really never heard that, that they, you know, that Hong Kong being allowed to have this open society and it was a very open society would somehow spread across the border into the mainland. I don't think so. But I think when Beijing carried out its policies in such a ham-fisted way and, you know, more and more interference and eventually heavy repression, then the protest against that, that's the kind of thing that could spread. So in a way, Beijing's, the danger of Beijing perceived national security as it now tries to protect, is largely caused by these policies that in effect turned Hong Kong into a kind of, you know, protest environment that they now then crack down on. And I think if they had carried out their commitments to Hong Kong, there was a decent chance that could have worked. It worked for a number of years and it could have. But I see the failure in these, especially in the Hong Kong establishment figures. Well, is it all over now? I mean, somehow, Zhongli is emblematic of a new and more heavyweight oppression by Beijing and Hong Kong and somehow it's an inflection point. It's turned a corner or Beijing has turned a corner on it and you can't go home again. Am I right? Beijing is not going to let Hong Kong return to any level of open society. Am I right? Yeah, I think certainly that's what we got now. The thing is, is we don't, there's a lot we don't know. We don't know what's going to go on in the future in Beijing itself. You know, what kind of leadership will emerge after Xi Jinping? We don't know, you know, what kinds of problems China will face going forward right now. It has a very tense relationship with much of the developed world, which it really depends on economically. So if economic conditions prove unfavorable going forward, will that stimulate some kind of change of attitude or change of leadership? So there's a lot of unknowns. I mean, we didn't know when the Soviet Union was going to collapse either. So there are a lot of things that we, you know, when we look at it today, it looks pretty grim and it looks like they're willing to do whatever it takes to silence everybody in all opposition in Hong Kong. Virtually the all opposition of any influences in jail or in exile. Let's break that down. I know your friend Jimmy Lai, who was a big publisher of a newspaper, popular newspaper, he's in jail on the mainland now, right? So and that would be warning to Hong Kong in Hong Kong. OK, and he would that that would be warning to anybody who wanted to speak out in a free press. So it sounds like, you know, they've done they've taken steps to make a free press pretty unattractive and dangerous. And then, of course, I'm just trying to break this down to various components. You can tell me what the other components are. The Hong Kong University, where you taught for decades. And, you know, you were in touch with the students there, the students who were involved in the movement and all that. I doubt very much whether Hong Kong University is anything like what it was. Yeah, this is what's going on right now. And Apple Daily Jimmy Lai's newspaper was the most popular paper for sort of on the side, politically, of the pandemocrats in Hong Kong. So very widely read newspaper, long under pressure from Beijing where they would lock its reporters from covering stories and they would gang up against the paper and not let mainland known companies or mainland companies that want to be to please the mainland would not give advertising to this newspaper. So there was a lot of, you know, sort of treacherous path it had to follow. But it was still successful because it was so widely read. And they closed that down. They really went after it. They raided the office with over 200 policemen. They arrested the publisher, Mr. Jimmy Lai, who owned the newspaper. He's a very wealthy man. They arrested his editor, you know, chief guys in his newspaper. They forced the newspaper to close down going after its bank accounts and freezing them and doing all these things. And when after that, they went after an online newspaper called Stand News again, with the same approach and it was forced to close down another online newspaper called Citizens News essentially chose to close down because it felt that it would be next. And yet there's still some there are some more of these online. In fact, some of the former reporters of Apple Daily newspaper have formed their own online sort of newspapers. So that, you know, while the the the crackdown is so comprehensive, as you say, it touches universities. It touches unions. It touches civil society organizations. There was just a hearing this week in the U.S. Congress on the sort of death of civil society in Hong Kong. Over 60 organizations that were more or less free of the government have all shut down under pressure. Some of the leading ones, their their top people have been arrested. One of them was the Alliance in support of the patriotic democratic movement in China, which quietly held a candlelight vigil every year to commemorate as a memorial, commemorate the June 4th crackdown in 1989. They did this every year since the 1990 government. They would get permission and they would carry out it all peaceful. Their leaders were all arrested, several of them with friends of mine actually are in jail and they're being charged under national security law with collusion with foreign forces and the national security law that was passed by Beijing can can result in a sense of life in prison for the kinds of crimes they're charged with. And so we're talking about some of the leading figures in Hong Kong society. People highly respected, not the kind of guys, you know, who are billionaires and and are known because of that, that people who were grassroots members of society over many years always like my friend, Lechuk Yan, was the labor leader of a whole Alliance of Labor Union. They're shut down as well. The teachers union of the 100,000 members shut down as well. So in universities, they have to teach national security now. Some of my colleagues have been are in jail, arrested under 47 politicians, including one of my colleagues in Hong Kong. You were arrested for holding an electoral primary, which was said to be a kind of incitement to subversion that their intention was to win the election. Why does this remind me of some of the things that Putin has done in order to suppress any expression of thought in Russia? And I guess, you know, you can say that with the tools available to autocrats these days and the way they can shape the database of their constituents, shape public thinking that you can do this not only in Hong Kong, but elsewhere. You can suppress any kind of democratic freedom of speech, open civil society with with with with not that much effort. You and I have been talking about this for a few years now. And and, you know, in a sense, it was all kind of predictable. They were never going to let Hong Kong get away with with an open society. And it does teach us that in the land of autocracy, all this is possible. It would not be a big surprise in other autocratic governments to see newspapers closed down. It has happened. And to see their leaders in jail for an indeterminate time on trumped up charges, think of Maria Raysha. Think of Maria Raysha in the Philippines. Yeah. Well, what you see going on is interesting because in the Soviet period, the effort was to build communist parties around the world and institute communism in countries aligned with the Soviet Union. But China is mostly dealing with countries that have a kind of semblance of an open society, but have a kind of perhaps like populist leaders, sort of in the middle societies, where they actually have institutions that are supposed to be independent like courts and so on. And they pretend or a hope or claim the rule of law. And what you see in the is in Hong Kong case, it's like a model for what China's version. We know there's a big debate in the world between the kind of authoritarian model that China promotes and liberal democracies that others promote. Well, what China does is it doesn't convert these countries that it aligns with into quote unquote communist countries, but rather does what or encouraged is what it's doing in Hong Kong, which is the hollowing out of liberal institution. So you have courts that are supposed to perform a role that's independent and maybe in that society, either in their colonial period or post-colonial period, tried to maintain independent courts and so on. And then what you see and what you're seeing in Hong Kong are pressure on the courts. Now, one of the things in the national security law is that national security cases can only be heard by judges that are designated by the chief executive. So the judge basically Beijing doesn't trust judges and certainly doesn't trust independent courts. So he wants courts that are part of the administration, in effect, the fist that Beijing has the hand that holds out and they make the fist to carry out Beijing's design. And this is hollowing it out. And if judges don't rule the way they want, there's pro-Beijing newspapers, Beijing owned newspapers, Daogongbao, One Way that will attack the judge, will attack an academic that says or does something they don't like. I mean, I once got an entire front page of the Daogongbao. And it was a badge of courage, the badge of an award of some kind. Yeah. And what they do is they follow you. I mean, in that case, there are all kinds of pictures of me having dinner with other pandemocrats and so on. And we saw no cameraman. Somewhere in the bushes or someone, there's cameras going on. And what we've seen lately is when someone leaves Hong Kong, because some people who are feel they're at risk, may just go to the airport and try to leave. You see cameras following them that that are broadcast and are published. And so you wonder who's holding the camera. And so recently, the former chairman of the bar was invited in for tea with the police. So they didn't call it tea. They call that tea on the mainland, but they basically invited him to talk to the police. And when he left the police station, he went straight to the airport. Now he's in London. But so it's one of the things I wanted to ask you about. And that is so we have civil society, including, you know, journalists and people who read newspapers. We have we have the universities. We have teachers who really can't teach what they want, who have to do the party line. We have a whole generation of people who are in the streets protesting, who can no longer do that. So the question is, who's left? Who's left to like what's going on in Hong Kong? Is there any? Is there one good person in Hong Kong who likes what's going on? Who is he or she? But, you know, there's basically there's a kind of united front tactic so that you get people to go along with what you're doing. And Beijing has done a very good job. Most of these officials now, the new administration is full of officials to fill those jobs. And they're all basically what they said now. They have to be patriots. And being patriots doesn't mean what it means in the United States that you're sort of a member of the country, a good citizen, but it means being loyal to the Communist Party. And so that's kind of what's going on. Now, U.S. government and its recent hearing, there was a paper issued where they targeted by they identified prosecutors who were going along with Beijing and going after people for the various reasons and so on. So there's an attempt to try to target these individuals and sort of impose a cost, but at least you do with sanctions. And it's not clear whether that really changes behavior. We don't know. But in any case, that's sort of the contest that's going on. Beijing then had a law that it was going to impose on Hong Kong. It has on the mainland already, which was an anti-sanctions law to target back people who impose sanctions on them. So this is the contest that's going on. Beijing finds its loyal supporters and they will do whatever Beijing wants them to do. Now, in the old days, Beijing didn't really have such direct control as it does today. It certainly interfered a lot, but it now has this National Security Office in Hong Kong that pretty much directs all of this. So this is what's going on. And people like John Lee, the new chief executive, are proclaiming that they're going to pass a new local national security law as well under Article 23 of the Basic Law and that they're going to make sure that the same provisions that apply in the Beijing's imposed national security law apply under this law. So it's getting worse. Yeah, most of the people arrested under the national security law are denied bail because the national security law creates a presumption against bail. Some of them have been in jail for a year and a half and probably would be two years in jail before they ever go to trial. So it's and this is a tactic of many authoritarian regimes that you don't try the people that you're picking up and arresting and putting in jail. You just put them in jail and you see, I mean, I read Storys this week about that happening under LCC in Egypt that a lot of people are in jail that were in the opposition. So so this is all of this is going on. And there's no end in sight right now. Like I said, I think a lot of people in exile are pushing back. Hong Kong, their organizations are very active overseas, especially the US and the UK and exiled the diaspora. So we just don't know what they can accomplish. But they're certainly trying to improve immigration options for Hong Kongers who do want to leave. So that that's one policy that is on the table. So on John, on John Lee, you know, I wasn't clear on how he was elected. I assume it was a manipulated election. If it wasn't election at all, how did that work? I mean, they keep on, you know, putting people in there who have who were not not elected by popular vote. Somehow, magically, Beijing makes it happen. How does that work? Well, in the past, there was all the chief execs that were chosen by the election committee, they still are. And the election committee Beijing made sure that its makeup was like 80 percent pro Beijing people. And but 20 percent could be from the opposition through various labor unions and so on. Well, after the national security law was passed, there were no longer going to take chances. They want to make sure only patriots could hold office in Hong Kong. So they imposed another law on Hong Kong and they stuck this into the basic law annex, which is an election. They called an election reform. To ensure only patriots could hold office. And the reform essentially made it so that the election committee now would be 100 percent in the pro Beijing camp. And then they they had it. The various sectors of people that would choose the election committee. They even increased the numbers. They want to make it look more democratic. They think if you make the body that chooses have more members, then it's more democratic. So then they went 1200 to 1500 members and they were all pro Beijing and they're so called patriots. And then they decided to have the election. But they thought, well, in the past, they would kind of encourage more than one candidate to run. This time around, they didn't bother with John Lee. He was the only candidate. And so Beijing anointed him ahead of time. And they always did that in the past. They would signal who they wanted through the local office from Beijing office, which was called the liaison office. This time around, they didn't bother to have two candidates. They had one John Lee and then everybody voted for him. And he got a high voter, you know, he could say I was elected by 99 percent of the voters, but the voters that could vote for him were 1500 people in this patriotic election committee. Now, it doesn't stop there in the old days. Are you saying that he got a lot of votes or just a handful of votes? I mean, if I was there, if you were there, we wouldn't have voted for the guy. We would know the story. We'd never vote for him. We'd soon as stand home. Yeah, but now he's voted for by only members of the election committee. And there's so there's never is a popular vote. No popular vote. They've never been for chief executive. Just the election committee and the election committee itself is was chosen by only a few thousand people that Beijing chose to choose the election committee. And so so then the election committee is just a Beijing shock. And then its members in the past would be presented with two candidates. Now they only had one. And so they all voted for the guy the election committee member. But then it didn't stop there in the past. The election committee had nothing to do with choosing the legislative council. Legislative council was chosen 50 percent by direct geographical votes from like we do in the US and 50 percent from so-called functionals constituencies. And these would be like lawyers, doctors, you know, accountants, whatever. Various business sectors. And it was always designed to ensure that most of the functional seats would wind up in the pro-Beijing camp because the functional makeup of the functional sectors was very favorable to Beijing. But now this time around that well they dispense with all of that. They they actually increased the number of legislators in the Hong Kong Legislative Council from 70 to 90. And then they provided that 40 of the legislators would be chosen by this election committee that they redesigned. So the same people that chose the chief executive, 40 of the legislators be chosen by them. The functional seats would still remain and they reduced the direct election seats from 35 to 20. And those 20, then they set up a vetting committee that every person who declared they wanted to run for any of these offices has to be vetted by this committee, which required that a police investigation by the National Security Police decide if they could run. So basically by the time that happened and then the election committee had to approve all the candidates that ran or direct office or for any other office and the result. And then when it's all over, they all have to square a loyalty of so that if they are any way in violation of it, they could be arrested or whatever. So the result was that the new Legislative Council in Hong Kong is one hundred percent in the Beijing camp. The chief executive is in that camp. And now the chief executive, like the former one, is so happy saying now we have a legislature that really functions well and makes good decisions because there's no opposition in the legislation. So this is it not only is it's an obvious authoritarian model of control, but I think what's interesting is how it demonstrates Beijing's complete distrust of Hong Kong society and of electoral process. So now only designated judges hear these cases and they don't just hear national security cases now. They've started bringing all these sedition cases under the old colonial tradition law that hadn't been used in decades. And the courts then rule these national security judges rule. Only national security judges can hear those cases as well. So you have three branches of government. Hong Kong people used to get some satisfaction from the legislature because they elected half its members. They used to trust the courts and the rule of law. And the chief executive, of course, was always representing Beijing. Now it's worse. None of that is the case. Where does this all wind up? So you have a termination of civil liberties and freedom of expression. You have people who might disagree with that, but who have no channel to express themselves as citizens, as electorate. And there's nothing they can do if they don't like it too bad for them. So, you know, over time, this has got to have an effect on the way the average citizen thinks of government, thinks of Beijing. And for that matter, John Lee, the average citizen must be walking around with smoke coming out of his ears. This is nothing he can do, not a thing. Where does this all take us? Well, what they're trying to do to solve the problem you, the smoking year problem you're talking about is that they're also now engaging in patriotic education in the school. So they're going to try to create a whole new. They did this after 1989 in the mainland when the protest in Tenant Month Square occurred. The next year, college students had to go through PLA military training before they began their first class. And so they created a whole generation of supporters, eventually. So now they're trying to apply a similar model in Hong Kong. The idea of liberal education has gone out the door and now it's national education and to learn about China. So when the new chief executive took office, one announcement that was very prominent and featured in the news was and I say the news, even the public broadcaster you modeled on the BBC has now become the mouthpiece for the government. They issued new guidelines for that public broadcaster RTHK, which I for years, I'm actually I was paid by them as to do what I'm doing here now comment on public affairs. But now, of course, I haven't been called back recently, even though I still have an actual contract that out there somewhere. But this is what they do. So they're controlling information and they're reeducating the youth in the hope that they can create a generation that won't make problems for them. Will that be successful? That, you know, that's what Putin is doing right now. Broke the broken in Russia. And that's what Hitler did. Autocrats do that. Will Beijing be successful in creating a new generation, a new thought generation in Hong Kong? And for that matter, in China. It's hard to say. It seemed like they did reasonably well in China after 1989 that they use these methods of emphasizing national education. And they set up hotlines in Hong Kong, too, where students can rat on their teachers if the teachers say anything that's not consistent with Beijing's views. So they they they've done that. I mean, the kinds of things I teach might my courses, which I last taught in Hong Kong in the fall of 2020. I guess the entire course will be a lever. But but the the the kinds of open, critical discussion. Now, the new administration, I was starting to say they made these announcements about national security and that they're going to apply that it creates this new national security law. The second thing that was very prominently focused on is the education secretary for education is saying that we're going to improve the national education of students. So what does that mean? And and presumably that means even more stringent standards for teachers. And now she then immediately after she made this announcement immediately said, and we're not going to brainwash the student. Of course, anybody who follows authoritarian politics knows when an authoritarian leader immediately announces what they're not going to do. That's exactly what they're going to do. They're trying to head off the criticism that they're they're engaging in brainwashing. So this, yeah, Michael, this this new educational package, this new curriculum, let me call it a curriculum. Does it include external affairs? Does it include the foreign policy? Does it include foreign relations? Like, for example, the perception of the United States? Well, it will certainly I don't think typically undergrad primary students or secondary students get a lot of that anyhow. And so whether they will trot out the fallacies of America, I'm sure they do that. And my guess is they will do that. They're creating new books on liberal education, liberal studies, they call it. So I don't I don't know the content of that yet. But presumably they will highlight why and they said this already in their announcements that why the mainland system works so well and why it's important for China, the kind of system they have. And presumably one would expect to do that. They will highlight all the problems we see in open society, you know, of political polarization and all these things. I mean, we don't do a very good job of presenting ourselves to the world sometimes. And so there's lots of fuel and ammunition they can use to highlight or claim their system is superior and that youngsters should should appreciate that superior. Indeed. So you were there. You thought there and you've been writing books about Hong Kong. Your family has been writing books about Hong Kong. Yeah. And then, you know, you're part of a think tank and various other schools outside in India, for example, talking about among other things, Hong Kong. So my question is, with all the shutdown going on, with all the suppression of information, how can you and you are obviously well informed about the day to day life in Hong Kong without being there? How do you follow it? What sources of information? How can you reach in and and get the gestalt of what's going on? Well, this is one of the curses and perhaps the only good side of all of this is that when you try to claim under one country, two systems, that you're running an open society still, that one country, two systems is a success that the basic law still applies. That means you're locating yourself not fully over where China is at with the great firewall around the country to block out all outside information that, in fact, outside information still comes in. People can can read the New York Times. They can read the Washington Post. They can have news feeds of CNN and all of this. So it is still there's a quasi openness. And and if they close all of that, then they risk completely discrediting their claim that all they're doing is cracking down on a few bad apples. And and and teaching people about their country and encouraging patriotism. All good things, you know, all of mom and apple pie. So that that that's the message they're trying to convey, which means that they're kind of a intermediate society that's positive open. And so I can get information. I get it every day. There are papers in Hong Kong that really work hard. One paper in English, which is online and it's free. It's called the Hong Kong Free Press. So you can Google it and you'll find it and you can read their stories. The editor chief, I know well that the reporters are dedicated and they keep pointing out the very things we're talking about. Oh, that's incredible. So they can do it in Chinese for people that are trying to follow this locally that there are, like I said, some of the papers were shut down, but others reporters have set up their blogs and webpages in online mini-medias to report. And they're all navigating around the red line. If they're in, it's a very obscure line. They don't know where exactly it is. But so, so, you know, while civil society is in dire states, there's still this sort of passion in Hong Kong for freedom and for information and honesty that means that there is a lot of information available, and especially for people who have lived in the society for a long time, and we know how to interpret the information. Well, it seems clear that we have to continue. And I know you will continue to follow the story, not only on civil society, but in business there and who is left to do business after all the ex-patriots have left. And I think on a larger plane, though, we have to see what an autocratic government does. We have to see the tricks they use, the mechanisms, the propaganda, the messaging they use to try to change the way things work and bring everyone into line. It's a kind of laboratory, I think, for what happens in China, but what happens in other autocracies around the world. And we know that things are moving right, autocracies somehow are more popular now, and every autocrat will be watching. And so we should watch. We should watch to see what they do, how they do it, and maybe to resist it, if not only in Hong Kong, but elsewhere. Don't you think? Absolutely. And I think that's the real thing here. And a lot of Hong Kong activists I know in exile are not just focused on Hong Kong. They realize that what they're dealing with, that in some ways Hong Kong is just one of the front lines in the struggle between open societies and quite specifically liberal constitutional system, liberal institutions, democracy, and authoritarianism and hollowed out versions of those things. So while one could, as we started our conversation, be very frustrated, that seems hopeless to try to change that situation, we can't really afford to ignore it. And it has such wider implications. And ultimately, the end of this debate globally between these competing models is somewhere down the road. And we of course want to see the right result. Yeah. Thank you, Michael. Michael Davis, our regular contributor in Hong Kong and Asia. I really appreciate your insights. We'll check back with you for more. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jay. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.