Opinion | The hocus-pocus of Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution—rebels with a phony cause

By Philip Yeung, university teacher

PKY480@gmail.com

One by one, justice is being meted out to the agitators in Hong Kong's unrest. Their day of reckoning is here. A sad and sordid chapter in our history is finally closing.

Hong Kong's golden period of maximum freedom was in the first 22 years post-Handover, never under the British---touted the freest place on earth during this period. But thanks to a swarm of mushy-brained copycats, the bubble soon burst.

Never an electoral democracy, Hong Kong enjoys the best of both worlds, wallowing in western lifestyles and values, while pampered by its new sovereign. In the 1997 afterglow, on average, 19 street demonstrations flared up on any given day. They would have been mercilessly crushed by colonial rulers, with protestors either jailed or deported. But protected by the "one country, two systems" umbrella, Hong Kong became the protestor's paradise.

Then came Occupy Central, the brainchild of a bird-brained law professor, Benny Tai. Life was too good for this tenured academic. He went for the melodramatic and we all paid for his folly.

What was the fuss all about? The mass protest was triggered by the proposed Extradition Bill which, running counter to the spirit of "one country, two systems", should never have been introduced. But Carrie Lam its leader lacked the sensitivity to see its constitutional ramifications. She was also slow to react. And when she eventually did, as a face-saving gesture, she would only "suspend" the bill, not "shelve" it. This was a strategic error of the first order. Her belated apology, when it came, angered the protestors more. Unable to defuse the crisis, Lam helplessly watched her city get sucked into the vortex of a super-storm.

The anti-extradition tussle quickly transitioned into a fight for universal suffrage, or one-person-one vote. Noble-sounding, yet hollow underneath. Yes, Hong Kong has never been an electoral democracy, but is otherwise a rule-governed civil society, notoriously apolitical, and shamelessly commercial. Misled into a dirty campaign, Hong Kong people lost their political virginity.

Turns out, the mass protests were in fact underpinned by something meaningless. The city's fundamental freedoms were never curtailed or threatened. Hong Kong lacked only the right to pick their leader via one-person-one-vote. But this right is utterly inconsequential, for the simple reason that under its Basic Law, the appointment of the Chief Executive is subject to Beijing's approval, whether the candidate won the majority of 1,200 electors or 7 million voters. In this context, universal suffrage has no meaning.The prolonged protest is thus a tempest in a teacup, a much ado about nothing. But aided and abetted by evil foreign forces, riot organizers painted a different picture. Lurking behind the scenes was the US consulate in Hong Kong with a thousand plus employees on its payroll---unheard of for a single consulate. How many people do you need to issue visas or talk trade? What are the rest up to? You know the answer.

From the go, the campaign was stage-managed by a cabal of mindless copycats. New York had its Occupy Wall Street. So, we had to have our own Occupy Central. North Africa had its Color Revolution, and we had our own Yellow Umbrella Revolution. What's so sacred about one person one vote anyway? America has just elected unhinged Trump twice to run the country. He might like to be seen flipping burgers, but he is unfit to even run McDonald's.

Our street protests were different. They attracted 12-year-olds who hardly know their own names. Day after day, month after month, rioters went on a rampage, setting a dissident on fire, smashing multi-million-dollar lab equipment, terrorizing university presidents, and paralyzing the central business districts. In this orgy of destruction, Hong Kong gained nothing and lost almost everything: its legendary rule of law, its reputation as a global city of tolerance, turning friend against friend, and family against family. Its after-effects quickly spilled over  Taiwan, whose leader Tsai Ing-wen was teetering on 12% popular support. Suddenly, the Hong Kong riots breathed new life into her politics, with "one country, two systems", a formula mooted for its reunification with the Mainland, totally discredited. The geopolitical consequences were incalculable, with tensions migrating offshore to the Taiwan Strait. America had masterminded the perfect storm.

Why did things go so wrong?  Blame it on a cocktail of factors. First, the protestors were culturally rootless and historically illiterate. Post-handover, students were taught no Chinese history. As strangers, they treated their motherland with suspicion. Their lawlessness was, above all, a spectacular educational failure. They tried to twist "one country, two systems" into "no country, one system", with the reckless ridiculously calling for Hong Kong's independence.

Secondly, the young failed to see China's transformation in the last 40 years---from a dirt-poor country into a modern society humming with technology. Their bias against Beijing dangerously outdated, they became putty in the hands of foreign provocateurs.

This fabled city was built on the back of generations of never-say-die entrepreneurs. Overnight, its gilded brand was tarnished and trashed.

Activists on the wrong side of the law ended up either in jail or in exile. Those in exile now taste first-hand the humiliation of being a third-class citizen, eking out an existence in the margins of an unwelcoming foreign country. As for Benny Tai, a lost soul pretending to be a true prophet, he can cry into his prison pillow for the next 10 years. Do I feel sorry for him? Not when I think of the trail of destruction he has left behind. He has driven a beautifully apolitical city into a hocus-pocus revolution. He has played a fool's game-- and is paying a fool's price.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

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