If you asked me one year ago whether I would agree with the so called local-ism, I would laugh at the idea and say there is no point doing that. One year forward, I now believe that what I want is to be left alone by the Chinese government. Democratic or not, I do not feel that the fate of the 7 million people living in this city should be determined by the 1.3 billion neighbors across the border. As simple as that. For the CCP, there is no way they can accept a high level of autonomy in Hong Kong. They cannot allow Hong Kong to become a center of subversion, and place where activities against the CCPs interests can be taken place. One may ask, can we trade autonomy with an agreement that Hong Kong will prohibit such activities? Then to make the CCP feel assured, we need to have some way to vetting the CE candidates (come the nomination committee); some way to ensure the CE will not rebel (come the white paper); some way to prohibit the undesirable organizations and people (come the Article 23); and some way to ensure that people do understand the national/party interest (come the national education). Is it the autonomy that we want - or is it autonomy at all - if people are not free to express their sympathy towards the June 4 victims; if people cannot support the cause of Taiwan independence; if people cannot express thoughts on any issues that CCP deem too sensitive? What if China is democratized? In that case, I believe the national interest of China would be more closely align with the interest of local Hong Kong people, but do I want Hong Kong to be absorbed into a democratic China? Do I want the national interest to trump Hong Kongs interest? To me the answer is no. Considering these needs of the CCP (which are rather reasonable from their perspective), there is no way that a framework of self-autonomy can be accepted by both Beijing and Hong Kong.There would be no justification to have a SAR under a democratic China unless Hong Kong is seen as a separate nation. This means that if we want to be left alone, we should start building a self-determination movement, making sure the world knows that we do not want to be ruled by anyone else other than the 7 million residents here. And the starting point has to be asking the Hong Kong people - do you want to be your own master?
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 16:51:46 +0000
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