Opinion | Carrie Lam's legacy - The rebirth of Hong Kong
By Tom Fowdy
Today the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Carrie Lam, announced she would not be standing for a second term in her position, paving the way for a new leader of the city. She will leave office of course with the territory being a very different place to how she found it, a testament to the radical upheaval and change which has struck it in the past 5 years or so since she replaced CY Leung. Lam is of course, a scapegoat in western public opinion. The BBC leads the news of her resignation today with an insidious narrative detailing how "China gained greater control"- as if it had no place in the city, and it is no wonder on that note in 2020 Lam was sanctioned by the United States following her delaying of the legislative council election. But of course, this tells us little about what happened in Hong Kong, "why it changed", and what her role in it all was.
In 2015 I lived in Hong Kong studying a one-year program exchange at HKU. Lam had not been elected as the city's chief executive at this point in time, but the city was already at a turning point. Tensions were high as a population in the city voiced growing hostility and paranoia towards the Chinese mainland. Based on what I've seen and discussed with locals, many believed they were superior to the people of the mainland and tensions were not just political, but cultural and social too. I understood as an insecurity and displacement of identity. The previous year, the Umbrella Movement had taken place, and one night there were rival pro and anti-China protests outside the dormitory building where a nearby university executive meeting was taken place. The Hong Kong "localist" protesters so to speak, violently blockaded the building. It was a taste of what was to come.
Carrie Lam was an individual who stepped into an increasingly bubbling pot, a pot is which metaphorically describes the handover Hong Kong since 1997 and its relationship to China as a whole. She was not the instigator of crisis so to speak, but had taken the position on the eve of its inevitable eruption which was aggravated by this growing identity conflict, and soon the additional petrol poured onto the fire of America's foreign policy turning against China and seeing Hong Kong as a political opportunity to exploit such. 2019 would be the defining year, when a wanted fugitive for murder who killed his girlfriend in a hotel room, Tony Chan Tong-ka, fled to Hong Kong (which had no China-based extradition treaty) and avoided punishment. The proposed extradition law which emerged from the scandal was weaponized as an opportunity to instigate an uprising, the riots began.
At the time, Carrie Lam appeared to be like a rabbit caught in headlights, seemingly losing all control of the events in Hong Kong as geopolitical pressures descended on the city. Yet she stood her ground and to everyone's surprise outlived the unrest itself and much to claims by many, wasn't responsible for any gravely misguided decisions which exacerbated the situation. The Hong Kong Police were often mischaracterized as brutal, but in reality, not a single protester died at the hands of authorities during the saga. Lam was both firm and cautious.
Still, it would be Beijing's intervention that saved her political skin. The radical decision of the mainland through the National People's Congress to impose the national security law on Hong Kong was a demonstration of how serious the situation had become, and that irrespective of who or what the chief executive did there was little hope for a "local resolution" to the unrest. Lam immediately adopted a much firmer position thereafter. The NSL would swiftly bring an end to the Hong Kong unrests and ultimately quell the motivating ideology of Hong Kong separatism, quelling the identity conflict which had plagued the territory since its own handover and ultimately paving the way for the city to "come to terms" with its belonging to China.
This would be followed by other changes too, including to the legislative council and the electoral system. Inevitably, the western media, the UK and the US have all lambasted these moves as a crushing of personal freedoms, Hong Kong's autonomy and an attack on "democracy", asserting that China has no say over the territory's future. Yet on the other hand, it has also finally closed the chapter on the legacy of colonialism in Hong Kong. Carrie Lam was one of the individuals who oversaw this change, even if she had little control over many of the events around her. She will exert in her own opinion that she defended the security, stability and prosperity of the city. A longstanding social and political conflict which predated her ultimately posed to wreck chaos, destruction and senseless violence across the territory. As she leaves office, those dreadful events leave with her. Hong Kong now enters a new era. The West may not approve it, yet it will ultimately be for the city's common good.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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