China Reminds Hong Kong of Its Control

(WSJ) Days after tens of thousands of people held a candlelight vigil commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, China's cabinet gave a blunt reminder to Hong Kong that it was in charge in the city, and would fend off any intervention from an "external force."

In a white paper issued by the State Council on Tuesday, the Beijing government stressed it has the comprehensive power to govern Hong Kong and said some "wrong views" existed in Hong Kong about political developments.

"As a unitary state, China's central government has comprehensive jurisdiction over all local administrative regions, including the HKSAR," the paper said, using the abbreviation for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

"The high degree of autonomy of the HKSAR is not full autonomy, nor a decentralized power. It is the power to run local affairs as authorized by the central leadership," it wrote.

The Beijing government has given similar messages in the past through some "general directives" from Chinese leaders' speeches and state media. But it was unusual to make such a declaration in a white paper—a government position paper on specific issues—which detailed the overall control of Hong Kong by the military, executive branch, legislature and judiciary.

Pro-democracy lawmaker Alan Leong said Beijing's message wouldn't scare Hong Kong people. "No worries; Hong Kong people are so used to the threat [from Beijing]," Mr. Leong said.

The white paper by the State Council the "gives an excuse for Beijing to further tighten its control of Hong Kong in coming days, " said Johnny Lau, a veteran political commentator and former correspondent for pro-Beijing newspaper. He noted this white paper was issued by Information Office of the Council "implying the central government is not only speaking to Hong Kong people, but the whole world."

"The mainland government is getting impatient about the growing opposition in the city, prompting it to take a harder line to declare its sovereignty over Hong Kong," Mr. Lau said.

Hong Kong is a former British colony that became a special administrative region of China in 1997, with its own political system and some autonomy. Over the years, Beijing's efforts to draw closer to 

Hong Kong have sometimes met resistance. In late 2012, the Hong Kong government tried to push through a plan to implement "nationalism and patriotism classes" in schools. The protests that followed forced Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to withdraw the mandatory implementation of the curriculum in October 2012.

Tensions between mainland and the city are on the rise in advance of 2017, the earliest that Beijing has said the city may begin to directly elect its leader. Activists have threatened to shut down Hong Kong's financial district in a civil-disobedience campaign called Occupy Central to demand universal suffrage, free from intervention of Beijing. At the moment, Hong Kong's chief executive is chosen by a 1,200-member committee composed largely of pro-Beijing and business camps.

Benny Tai, an organizer of Occupy Central, said there was nothing new in the white paper, but it was intended to scare Hong Kong residents.

Source: Wall Street Journal by Chester Yung