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Struggle for control underlies Xi Jinping’s visit to Hong Kong

HONG KONG — Nearly three years ago, when thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators seized major roads in central Hong Kong for more than two months, they mocked President Xi Jinping and demanded that he allow a free vote for the city’s leader.

China and Kong Hong national flags are displayed outside a shopping center in Hong Kong Wednesday, June 28, 2017 to mark the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong handover to China. Photo: AP

China and Kong Hong national flags are displayed outside a shopping center in Hong Kong Wednesday, June 28, 2017 to mark the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong handover to China. Photo: AP

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HONG KONG — Nearly three years ago, when thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators seized major roads in central Hong Kong for more than two months, they mocked President Xi Jinping and demanded that he allow a free vote for the city’s leader.

Mr Xi never set foot in Hong Kong or addressed the protesters, but the local government, widely understood to have his blessing, offered no compromise, deployed the riot police to clear the streets and arrested the leaders of the rallies.

On Thursday (June 29), when Mr Xi arrives in the city for the first time as China’s leader, he is unlikely to mention the 2014 upheaval that challenged his young administration, but it will lie behind his message of Beijing’s firm control.

He will take “a kind of carrot and stick approach,” said Mr Willy Lam, a political commentator who teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “But more emphasis will be put on the harder line. The change of attitudes is more than just the personal thing of Xi Jinping. This reflects the entire paradigm shift between Hong Kong and China.”

Mr Xi’s three-day visit to Hong Kong to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its return from Britain is sure to include reassurances that Beijing still formally respects the “one country, two systems” framework negotiated by China and Britain. Under the pact, China agreed to give the city limited autonomy and its own judicial system for 50 years after the British left in 1997.

But Mr Xi, whose government has pressed the limits of that agreement, is likely to accompany such reassurances with warnings, veiled or symbolic, to convey that he will not brook challenges to Beijing’s authority.

“They’re trying to make Hong Kong people get used to the demonstration of central authority,” said Dr Brian Fong Chi-hang, a researcher at the Education University of Hong Kong who studies the growing influence of mainland China. “The ways that the Hong Kong government officials are treated, even where they are seated, can convey that.”

The main ceremonies of Mr Xi’s visit will take place in a convention centre a few minutes’ walk from the thoroughfare that became the main camp for protesters. Thousands of police officers will be on guard to hold back demonstrations.

Among the events Mr Xi will attend will be the swearing-in of Ms Carrie Lam, Beijing’s favoured candidate, as chief executive, the most powerful government post in the city.

Even that routine formality will be a reminder of the local government’s deference to the mainland. Two pro-independence politicians elected to Hong Kong’s legislature were barred from taking their seats after they changed words in their oaths of office to show anger with Beijing.

Hong Kong newspapers loyal to Beijing have said that Mr Xi will visit another symbol of central power, the garrison of the People’s Liberation Army. China’s first aircraft carrier will also visit in July, after Mr Xi leaves, reinforcing the military shadow over the city, those papers also said.

Mr Xi has stepped up Beijing’s reassertion of power over the former British colony after signs there of deepening disaffection with China. But his harsher policies seem to have reinforced that disaffection, especially among the young.

A recent survey by the University of Hong Kong Public Opinion Program found only about 3 per cent of residents ages 18 to 29 identified as “Chinese”, a steep drop from over a decade ago, when about 30 per cent did. Almost two-thirds in that age bracket now give “Hong Konger” as their ethnic identity.

But China under Mr Xi has not hesitated to enforce its will in Hong Kong, even at the risk of appearing to blatantly violate the “one country, two systems” pledge.

The abduction and detention in China in 2015 of five Hong Kong booksellers who produced potboilers about Communist Party leaders served as a warning that residents could be seized with little public protest from the city authorities. So did the abduction in January of one of China’s wealthiest financiers, who was spirited from a Hong Kong hotel.

Early on, some in Hong Kong hoped that Mr Xi might be a more pragmatic leader. As an official in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces in eastern China in the 1990s and early 2000s, he repeatedly visited Hong Kong, seeking investment and business lessons from the wealthy port city widely envied across the border in the mainland.

In a 2005 visit, as Communist Party secretary of Zhejiang, he told executives that he wanted to “converge with and absorb Hong Kong’s obvious advantages in the service sector”, a provincial newspaper reported at the time.

Mr Xi’s family background also fed hopes that his oversight might be rather mild. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was an early supporter of China’s economic liberalisation under Deng Xiaoping. From the late 1970s, the elder Xi was a senior official in Guangdong province, next to Hong Kong, and wooed cross-border investment by backing new special economic zones.

Yet by the time the younger Xi was climbing into China’s leadership, relations between Beijing and Hong Kong were increasingly strained. In 2003, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents jammed streets to oppose a proposed internal security law backed by Beijing. Mr Hu Jintao, the president of China at the time, and the Hong Kong administration backed down.

Since Mr Xi took office in 2012, Beijing has been bolder in pressing demands on Hong Kong. China holds much more economic influence than it did 20 years ago, and any party leader would probably use that influence to blunt defiance in the city, several experts said.

Mr Xi has also been single-minded with what he sees as China’s territorial integrity, whether it concerns Tibet, Taiwan, the South China Sea or Hong Kong.

Indeed, even during the 2014 protests, Mr Xi held up Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” approach as a model that might eventually coax Taiwan, the self-governed island, to accept Chinese sovereignty.

But any hope of soon winning over Taiwan has dimmed, weakening the need to treat Hong Kong so carefully.

“Hong Kong is now dispensable,” said Dr Steve Tsang, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London who studies Hong Kong and China. “That doesn’t mean that the Chinese government wants to lose Hong Kong, mess up Hong Kong. But, fundamentally, that change in context means the Chinese government can afford to take a much more robust position over Hong Kong.”

Even Hong Kong’s position as a financial capital, since rivalled by Shanghai, is no longer so vital to Beijing.

Still, Mr Xi may find time to court members of the powerful business elite, most of whom remain in his corner.

Mr Xi only wants Hong Kong to be “a good son” to China, said Mr Lui Che-woo, a billionaire who was part of a business delegation from the city that met with Xi in Beijing in 2014.

“Being a good son doesn’t mean you need to be obedient all the time, but at least you should be reasonable and benefit China’s system and society,” Lui said. “Hong Kong is the central government’s, of course it has to listen.” THE NEW YORK TIMES

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