Try to imagine for a moment how Hong Kong’s boisterous push for democracy must look to the Communist party in Beijing. A bit of history is in order.
First, in 1842, British imperialists forced the Qing emperor to cede Hong Kong after deploying gunboats against China for daring to oppose the opium trade. In subsequent years, the British showed scant regard for their Chinese subjects, banning them from white-only residential areas and never allowing them so much as a sniff at a vote. Before London finally handed Hong Kong back in 1997, however, the last governor mischievously sowed the seeds of democratic ambition, an act of political sabotage the equivalent of introducing a killer weed into foreign soil.
Since the time of Hong Kong’s return, Beijing has stuck pretty faithfully to the “one country, two systems” framework, allowing the so-called special administrative region a “high degree of autonomy”. As Li Fei, a senior official from Beijing sent this week to explain China’s universal suffrage proposals, remarked: “The central government is implementing democracy in Hong Kong 17 years after the handover, much faster than Britain did in its 150 years of rule here.”