Pro-Democracy Protesters March Through Hong Kong
NY Times: Pro-Democracy Protesters March Through Hong Kong

By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: December 4, 2005

HONG KONG, Dec. 4 - A huge throng of pro-democracy protesters poured through the skyscraper canyons of Hong Kong this afternoon, defying warnings from senior Chinese officials, who have refused to set a timetable for general elections here.

So large was the crowd that the march continued well past sunset, as more and more men, women and children of all ages emerged from side streets and subway stations to join the protest. Organizers estimated the peaceful crowd at 250,000, while the police put it at 63,000.

By either standard, the turnout was larger than expected, and that was especially surprising because Hong Kong's economy is booming, unemployment is falling and the city now has a popular and charismatic leader, Donald Tsang.

The scale of today's march and the emphasis on full democracy pose an acute problem for China's leaders. They have declared it "unlawful" even to ask for a timetable for popular elections in Hong Kong, which Britain returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

At a news conference late this evening, Mr. Tsang, Hong Kong's chief executive, said that he wanted full democracy here in his lifetime and that he shared the aspirations of many of the protesters. But he also insisted that the legislature vote on Dec. 21 on a plan he drafted that would permit only limited political changes in the near future.

These changes include the doubling of the size of the committee of prominent citizens that chooses the chief executive, to 1,600 members from 800, for the next elections, in 2007. Mr. Tsang's plan would also expand the legislature slightly in 2008, although business and professional groups would still be allowed to choose nearly half the lawmakers.

A carefully worded report by the official New China News Agency in Beijing late this evening said that "thousands of Hong Kong citizens" had marched in protest against Mr. Tsang's plans. But the report never mentioned that the marchers were actually calling for full democracy instead.

The protesters want one-person, one-vote elections for the chief executive and all members of the legislature.

Late into the night, a crowd of democracy protesters peacefully occupied the plaza between the main government buildings here, a gated area usually closed to the public but opened to marchers in a conciliatory gesture by the government. Ronny Tong, a prominent pro-democracy lawmaker, was in the crowd and said after Mr. Tsang's remarks that Mr. Tsang's legislation would fail because democracy advocates felt it did not go far enough.

The bill requires support from 40 of the legislature's 60 members, and the legislature's 25 pro-democracy members will all vote against it, Mr. Tong said.

"We feel that we have a new mandate from the people of Hong Kong," he added.

Mr. Tsang said that he would consider ways to change his proposal, but noted that he had limited scope for doing so.

China's leaders and Hong Kong tycoons have opposed greater democracy here, fearing that it could set a precedent for challenges to one-party rule on the mainland and for higher taxes and greater government spending in Hong Kong itself.

Martin Lee, the founding chairman of the Democratic Party here, said this evening that the day's march had only been about democracy in Hong Kong itself. But Lee Wing-tat, the party's current chairman, acknowledged last month that if Beijing officials accepted a timetable for democracy here, it would be much harder for them to turn down similar demands that might surface later in Shanghai and other large Chinese cities.

Hong Kong's population has grown tenfold since the end of World War II, mainly through immigration from the mainland; the opening of the border in recent years has resulted in extensive travel and increasingly broad awareness on the mainland of events in Hong Kong.

It is the principle of democracy that now seems to embolden young and old demonstrators alike. Stanley Lai, a 46-year-old garment trader, and his 8-year-old son, Kushi Lai, carried a sign in the march that read, "We have a timetable for school work and study, why isn't there one for universal suffrage."

"I don't understand much about universal suffrage, but I know that when we pick a class monitor, we do not want the teacher to name one for us," Kushi said. "We want to select the one we want by votes."

Chinese leaders have extended a series of economic favors to Hong Kong over the past two years, including preferential trade access to the Chinese market and easily obtained visas for Chinese tourists who want to visit Hong Kong. An abrupt recovery in the Hong Kong economy together with the removal last March of Mr. Tsang's deeply unpopular predecessor, Tung Chee-hwa, seemed until the last few weeks to have robbed the democracy movement here of much of its strength.

Demonstrations in July 2003 and July 2004 drew crowds that organizers estimated at 500,000 people, but those gatherings were not just about democracy. They included protesters demonstrating against the territory's economic stagnation at the time, against Mr. Tung and, in 2003, against Mr. Tung's unsuccessful proposal to impose strict internal-security regulations backed by Beijing.

A similar demonstration this past July that focused only on democracy, after the economy recovered and Mr. Tung stepped down, drew only 21,000 people, according to organizers and 17,000 people, according to the police. That demonstration drew little support from the territory's powerful church groups and nongovernmental organizations, which waited to see what kind of proposal Mr. Tsang would produce.

Mr. Tsang's background as a Roman Catholic - the democracy movement here is heavily Catholic - and his decades of loyal service to Britain before the handover had raised expectations that he would pursue a faster pace of democratization. His limited proposal this autumn reflects an awareness of continued leeriness of democracy among China's leaders.

Qiao Xiaoyang, the deputy secretary general of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in Beijing, held a news conference in nearby Shenzhen on Friday to denounce the latest demands here for a democracy timetable. He described them as "unlawful" and "unattainable."

The Basic Law, a mini-constitution for Hong Kong imposed by China after the handover, establishes the Standing Committee as the final arbiter on legal and political issues. The Standing Committee issued a blueprint in April 2004 for very limited political change here, and the Chinese government refuses even to discuss any proposal that goes beyond that blueprint.

What happens next in Hong Kong is unclear and will depend to a considerable extent on Mr. Tsang, said Ivan Choy, a political scientist at Chinese University in Hong Kong. If the legislature defeats Mr. Tsang's political proposal, the possibilities include a political standoff, even more aggressive demands by emboldened democrats and probably more demonstrations.

The size of today's rally "is out of the original expectations, so it imposes a lot of pressure on Donald Tsang," Mr. Choy said. "He is in a dilemma and cannot do anything."
- posted by 770 @ 01:23