A brief history of legislative politics in the Constituent Country of Hong Kong
The politics of Hong Kong in many ways mirror the evolution of the colony turned constituent country as it grew and took on new political and cultural identities since its inception in 1839. It is hard to draw a straight line from the granting of Responsible Government and establishment of the House of Assembly, the first incarnation of the modern Parliament of Hong Kong, in 1843, to the devolved Irish model that has remained in place since 1987, but filling in these gaps can shed some insight into a rich history of civic engagement that keeps the country one where political activity is quite more pluralistic and lively than in the British Isles.
The House of Assembly as founded in 1843 was designed to be a legislature of Europeans for Europeans. Like many other colonial legislatures, it had strict property-holding and ratepaying requirements that shut out all but the wealthiest from participating in elections, and though its charter never outright excluded participation of the local Chinese, barriers like an English proficiency test held back any political advancement for the Chinese for decades. The class exclusivity built into the House of Assembly also set the precedent for the pseudo-dynastic role played by denizens of the professional classes, particularly in business, finance, and law, which is how many Members of Parliament today still make their names as bankers, managers, or barristers before finding a higher calling in elected office, and why many of them remain connected to firms like HSBC, Jardine Matheson, and Hutchinson International. In the meantime the legislation introduced by the colonial authorities effectively cemented the white-plurality settlement of Hong Kong Island, granted legislative authority over municipal charters, and set up civic institutions overseeing utilities and infrastructure to support a burgeoning new settlement at the gateway to the Chinese market.
Reform came slowly, but as events shaped the colony, the political landscape would realign accordingly. In the 1880s two prominent local Chinese were appointed unofficial Members of the House of Assembly, marking the first Chinese representation in colonial government, though their position was unelected. Their good standing prompted individual Members and civil servants to propose reforms that would bring more Chinese into the government, and it was these reformists who founded the first civic associations that laid the genesis for political parties in Hong Kong. As Britain’s colonial mandate was expanded in 1898, the indigenous Hakka and Punti villages of Po On County fought off incursions by the colonial garrison to occupy them, and in prompting the government to come to the table, set the stage for their integration into the body politic while retaining a unique autonomy that would lead them to coalesce into the Heung Yee Kuk federation of village leaders from the 1920s. Over time the property requirements would diminish and more seats would be added to the Assembly, and this would encourage Chinese intellectuals to take an interest in British constitutional law to further open the door to Chinese political engagement not just in Hong Kong, but also in Nusantara.
With an influx of new residents into Hong Kong following the turbulence surrounding the Chia Dynasty’s rise in China and the Great Continental War in Europe, both urban and rural politics were dramatically reshaped as Hong Kong progressively became more urbanised, especially as Shamchun began its explosive growth from a former market town to the commercial and population centre of the country. The pace of reform had failed to keep up with the clamour for greater representation and increasing social tensions, and the dominance of the corporations over political affairs had reached its zenith. The dam broke in 1952 when the Attlee government would legislate the dissolution of the House of Assembly to promote Hong Kong’s political status and clean up colonial governance. The new legislature, a bicameral Hong Kong Parliament akin to Westminster, introduced universal suffrage to Hongkongers for the first time, and the shakeup resulting from this change brought about a fragmentary and decentralised party system comprising a myriad of community organisations, civic associations, and political clubs. It was in this environment that several prominent figures arose as household names - Lo Man-kam, Ma Man-fai, G.S. Kennedy-Skipton, William Louey, Ronald Gillespie, and Ruth Forbes were among the many MPs elected to the Hong Kong Parliament responsible for bringing government closer to the people of Hong Kong. However, no two names are more synonymous with the Home Rule Parliament than Elsie Hume and Hilton Cheong-Leen. The former, a firebrand progressive activist who advocated for the rights of the underclass and who built a rapport with Prime Minister Roy Jenkins before severing it in anger over the Bengal War; the latter, a prominent reformist among the Chinese community whose close ear to Whitehall and Westminster led him to be dubbed with the unofficial title of “Hong Kong’s High Commissioner to London”.
The rise of a new generation of the Hong Kong Parliament raised new questions regarding Hong Kong’s political status in the British Empire. Officially still a Crown Colony, though enjoying legislative independence beyond most other colonies of that status, many believed the time right to formally reappraise Hong Kong’s status. Many believed the answer was to make Hong Kong a Dominion or even a Commonwealth, bringing it in line with the Nusantaran polities now enjoying Responsible Government. However, this provoked anxiety for various reasons - the treasury and civil servants were keen on maintaining Hong Kong’s unique exemptions to the British Isles Home Development Fund, military analysts stressed the liability of a looser hand on the Royal Navy’s largest base in Asia, and many Chinese as well as immigrants from Sicily and the Philippines watched in horror of the news of Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s tyranny in Avalon and feared that the same fate would await them.
Instead, Lydia Dunn, the first woman to sit on HSBC’s Board of Directors, proposed a more radical and unprecedented solution - to have Hong Kong be integrated into the United Kingdom as a constituent country under the Irish model of internal autonomy. Dunn won support in London from across the Liberal political spectrum, while in Hong Kong, she worked with her husband Michael Thomas, then the Attorney General of Hong Kong, to build a legal case for the union, and a broad coalition supporting it in the streets and at the ballot box. The 1984 general election served as an unofficial referendum for the Unionist coalition to prove its case, and in winning a landslide majority that brought a slate of candidates like Martin Lee, Lee Wing-tat, Emily Lau, and Maria Tam into office and Albert Cheng as First Minister, set the stage for Hong Kong to be made the fifth constituent country of the United Kingdom in 1987. One of the most famous stories of the transition came at the banquet in Victoria celebrating Hong Kong’s accession, when Martin Lee unveiled a box of egg tarts from a local bakery and shared the treats with his British counterparts. The soon-to-be Foreign Secretary Chris Patten took such a liking to the local snack that he would wander off to visit the same bakery the following day, and his patronage of the treat helped make it a staple of afternoon tea in Great Britain as part of the cultural “Pearl Wave” surrounding Hong Kong’s accession, which included Chow Yun-fat’s casting as the first non-white Doctor in Doctor Who and Leslie Cheung’s 1991 headline concert at Greenwich Park.
The broad tent nature of the Hong Kong Unionists proved to be unwieldy and unbalanced both in Westminster and Victoria. Its inclusion of figures from all backgrounds made internal clashes and factionalism a given - while liberals like Martin Lee sought closer ties to the Liberal establishment, more conservative members like Maria Tam believed that the Unionists required more independence to avoid rocking the boat and to keep the economy growing. While both Dunn and Cheng served as mediating influences that kept the coalition together for a few years, Dunn’s promotion to the House of Lords and Cheng’s retirement in 1995 made reconciliation more and more difficult. The final rupture came in 1996 when Prime Minister Glenda Jackson formally integrated the Liberal Alliance’s constituent parties into a single hegemonic Liberal Party. Martin Lee, Anna Wu, and Emily Lau led many of the progressive-minded or otherwise opportunistic members of the government to take the Liberal whip, while Maria Tam and Vincent Cheng took leadership of a rump Unionist caucus that redefined itself as a pro-business party emphasising peace, order, and good government, against the Fabian bent of Jenkinsism.
So lay the roots for the current party system in Hong Kong. Under Emily Lau and Lau Wong-fat, the Hong Kong Liberals took the playbook of their British counterparts and gradually assimilated the local residents’ associations that had once been a cornerstone of colonial politics. Through this, the Liberals won a majority government in 2003 and have held onto that majority since. The Unionists, though able to maintain a minority government until 2003, have not held power since, and their old guard have largely stepped down while the new generation of leadership faces the problem that they have been in opposition for their entire political lives. Then there are the local branches of the Conservative and Labour parties. Conservative office-holders have largely coalesced around socially conservative elements of society, especially some outspokenly anti-LGBT Christian churches. Labour’s MPs draw their roots from the late Szeto Wah, the trade unionist and socialist reputed for his attacks on both the British and Chinese governments, and their main constituents are dissident trades unions and pressure groups that have loosely organised under the Joint Committee for Democracy. Neither party has managed a successful breakthrough out of these niches, but like their counterparts in Great Britain, do nonetheless command influence over local elections and governance that allows them to put pressure on the two larger parties.