Conservatism in Hong Kong has become the underlying ideology of thepro-Beijing camp, which has been the major supporting force of theSAR administration led by theChief Executive. It is one of two major political ideologies ofHong Kong, with the other beingliberalism. Since theSino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, conservatism has been characterised by business elites joining with pro-Communist traditional leftists in aunited front to resist the rise of the demand fordemocratisation andliberalisation, in order to secure continued political stability and economic prosperity while maintaining a good relationship with thecommunist central government inBeijing leading up to and after the1997 handover.
Historically, conservatism derives from the Chinese tradition offamilism andConfucianism. These traditions were incorporated into the British colonial government's policies byGovernorCecil Clementi in the 1920s during the riseMarxism–Leninism andcommunism more broadly.Anti-communist sentiment continued after theSecond World War when waves of Chinese refugees fled to the colony as theChinese Communist Party (CCP) grew inmainland China in the renewedChinese Civil War. At this time, conservatives supported theRepublic of China (ROC), and werepro–Kuomintang (KMT). After thede facto end of the civil war and throughout theCold War, Conservatives have also takenlibertarian thoughts on economic policies. Before the 1980s, most conservatives held a stronganti-communist sentiment.
As a Britishfree port, the local elite of Chinesecompradors leveraged Hong Kong's status as a gateway to the vast Chinese market. Hong Kong merchants took the leading role in investment and trading opportunities by serving as middlemen between Europeans and the indigenous population of China and Hong Kong.[1] This relationship follows the principles oflaissez-faireclassical liberalism, which has since dominated the discourse of the economic philosophy of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong was previously rated the world's freest economy, a title bestowed on it byThe Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank,[2] and was greatly admired bylibertarian economistMilton Friedman.[3][4]
Hong Kong as a predominantly Chinese society has its owncultural conservatism based onConfucian teachings. The conservatism of the Chinese elites was protected under theBritish colonial rule in the early collaborative colonial regime between the Chinese elites and British colonialists. To facilitate its governance, the colonial government helped consolidate the gentry's power to preserve conservative cultural values in the wake of the progressivism ofChinese nationalism such as the 1919May Fourth Movement and the subsequentNew Culture Movement in the 1920s.[5]
AsMarxist andanti-imperialist movements grew stronger in China in the 1920s, Hong Kong Chinese elites sought refuge in traditional Chinese values and the British colonial government came to the defence of Chinese traditionalism.[6] During theCanton–Hong Kong strike in 1925–26 directed by theKuomintang government inCanton, Chinese elites, includingLegislative Councilunofficial membersR. H. Kotewall andShouson Chow, actively advised and helped coordinate counterstrike efforts.[7] Kotewall also addressedHong Kong GovernorCecil Clementi about the European inspectorate of the vernacular schools and emphasised the need for the colonial government to carefully monitor vernacular education, as the schools had become "breeding grounds for sedition". Clementi directly intervened in the Chinese-language curriculum, stressing Chinese traditional teachings and endorsing "the ethics ofConfucianism which is, in China, probably the best antidote to the pernicious doctrines ofBolshevism, and is certainly the most powerful course..."[6] In 1927, theUniversity of Hong Kong established a Chinese department which helped form the Chinese curriculum to be used in Hong Kong schools. The conservative Chinese curriculum was reaffirmed in the 1950s when the colonial government appropriated Chinese traditionalism to counterCommunist influences.
Post-war Hong Kong saw an influx of refugees fleeing from theChinese Communist Revolution. The resulting abundance of cheap labour contributed to Hong Kong's graduation to anadvanced,high-income economy sustaininggrowth rates (in excess of 7 percent a year). Hong Kongindustrialised rapidly from the mid-1950s to the 1990s when Hong Kong was dubbed one of the "Four Asian Tigers". To explain the "economic miracle", sociologistLau Siu-kai deployed the concept of "utilitarian familism", which summarises the general attitudinal orientations that were manifest in the post-war Chinese immigrants whose materialism made them the ideal economic beings.[8] For them, the utilitarian impulse was preceded by their attachment to traditional Chinese familistic values. The pre-conditional "minimally-integrated socio-political system" in the post-war colony where the polity and the society are seen as mutually secluded and the Hong Kong people were allegedly more interested in family than in politics, turning always to their familial relatives for help, instead of making demands on the government.[8]
Fiscal conservatism is thought to have contributed to Hong Kong's 20th century economic success. In 1971,Financial SecretaryJohn Cowperthwaite coined the term "positive non-interventionism", espousing low levels ofgovernment intervention and taxation, while at the same time providing regulatory and physical infrastructure designed to facilitate market-based decision making. The policy was continued by subsequent Financial Secretaries, including SirPhilip Haddon-Cave, who said that "positive non-interventionism involves taking the view that it is normally futile and damaging to the growth rate of an economy, particularly an open economy, for the Government to attempt to plan the allocation of resources available to the private sector and to frustrate the operation of market forces," although he stated that the description of Hong Kong as alaissez-faire society was "frequent but inadequate".
Milton Friedman wrote in 1990 that the Hong Kong economy was perhaps the best example of afree market economy.[4] Shortly before his death in 2006,The Wall Street Journal published his "Hong Kong Wrong – What would Cowperthwaite say?" which criticised thenChief ExecutiveDonald Tsang for having abandoned "positive non-interventionism" by defining "small government" as less than 20 per cent of GDP.[9]
Fiscal conservatism has remained the dominant economic philosophy in Hong Kong throughout its history, enjoying different labels including "consensus capitalism" (Financial SecretaryHamish Macleod, 1991–95), "minimum intervention, maximum support" (Donald Tsang) and "proactive market enabler" (Antony Leung, early 2000s). The basic principle of fiscal conservatism was followed by Financial SecretaryJohn Tsang from 2007 to 2017.[10]
The mainland refugees in Hong Kong also consisted a sizeable number of theright-wingNationalist (Kuomintang) soldiers and supporters, in which most of them held a stronganti-communist sentiment. In the 1950s and 60s, the Hong Kong society was divided into the pro-Communist left-wing andpro-Nationalist right-wing rivalry. In 1956, the Hong Kong local Kuomintang supporters attacked the Communists in Hong Kong which became theHong Kong 1956 riots.[11] 59 people were killed and 740 had been arrested, mainly for rioting and looting.[12]
Conservative rural leaders, business elites, film production companies including theShaw Brothers and Cathay Studios and the media, including Chinese newspapersSing Tao Daily,Wah Kiu Yat Po andKung Sheung Daily News and English newspaperSouth China Morning Post, also largely supported the British colonial government or the Kuomintang government in Taiwan until the 1980s. They joined hand in condemning theHong Kong 1967 Leftist riots instigated by the pro-Communist elements in the colony. TheNew Asia College which was established in 1949 by a group of anti-communist mainland scholars includingCh'ien Mu andTang Chun-i also attempted the promote the Confucian teachings and Chinese traditional values.[13] The New Asia College was later incorporated into theChinese University of Hong Kong in 1963.
The Nationalist–Communist rivalry was also part of the broader picture of theCold War. Besides funding the conservative Chinese cultural institutions such as the New Asia College and theYale-China Association, the United States also encouraged and took advantage of the anti-Communist activities of the Kuomintang. During the 1950s, the Third Force was created by theCentral Intelligence Agency as an anti-communist movement of Chinese, which posed a problem for the British authorities, who although ideologically aligned with the United States to keep Hong Kong non-Communist, had officially recognised the Chinese Communist regime in 1950 and were highly sensitive about provoking Beijing.[14]
As the Sino-British negotiation for the Hong Kong sovereignty after 1997 began in the early 1980s, the business elites sought the way to maintain thestatus quo of Hong Kong. They initially supported the BritishConservativePrime MinisterMargaret Thatcher's efforts in insisting the validity of theTreaty of Nanking of 1842. However,Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese paramount leader insisted in restoring sovereignty in Hong Kong in 1997, but guaranteed the "capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years," which was later written in the Article 5 of theHong Kong Basic Law.[15]
Besides its "Old Left" Beijing loyalists in the colony which were represented by theHong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), the Communist authorities in Beijing also actively ally with the business elites, professionals andrural leaders, who were used to be seen aspro-Nationalists, as part of their "United Front" strategy. Many tycoons and professionals were appointed to various bodies such as theHong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee (BLDC) andBasic Law Consultative Committee (BLCC) to draft the future mini-constitution of Hong Kong. In the wake of the rise of theliberal lobby which demanded a faster democratisation, the conservative bloc formed the Business and Professional Group of the Basic Law Consultative Committee and theGroup of 89 led by tycoonVincent Lo in 1986 to counter the liberal movement.
The business elites were concerned about the potential tax increases which might have been introduced by a democratic legislature to fund an expansion of the social budget, fiscal conservatism became an integral feature of theBasic Law, which writes the SAR "shall follow the principle of keeping the expenditure within the limits of revenues in drawing up its budget, and strive to achieve a fiscal balance, avoid deficits and keep the budget commensurate with the growth rate of itsgross domestic product" as written in Article 107, reflecting Beijing's and business bloc's interest in having a politically and economically conservative Hong Kong.[16]
The business and professional bloc favoured close limited on the franchise, the retention of an elite system of the government, the avoidance of party politics, and the maintenance of an independent judiciary.[17] The group proposed a conservative constitution of electing theChief Executive andLegislative Council after 1997, a legislature with no more than 25 per cent elected seats and chief executive elected by a 600-memberelectoral college,[18] in contrary to the more progressive proposal of the pro-democratic members of the Consultative Committee.[19] After theTiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, the Group of 89 softened its stance slightly with respect to direct elections and reopened negotiations with the pro-democracy camp which led to the outcome of the "compromise model". However the compromise model divided the group between the one who favoured compromise and the ones who favoured the pro-Beijing model put forward by theNew Hong Kong Alliance (NHKA).[17]
In the light of the first everLegislative Council direct election, the conservatives in the BLDC and BLCC formed several organisations. TheBusiness and Professionals Federation of Hong Kong (BPF) headed byVincent Lo was formed in 1990. TheLiberal Democratic Federation of Hong Kong (LDF) led byHu Fa-kuang andMaria Tam was formed in November 1990 with the support of the grassroots organisationsProgressive Hong Kong Society (PHKS) and theHong Kong Civic Association (HKCA). The LDF actively participated in the 1991 three-tier elections but was defeated in the liberal landslide led by theUnited Democrats of Hong Kong (UDHK) andMeeting Point (MP) alliance. TheNew Hong Kong Alliance led byLo Tak-shing was formed in 1989 by the conservative wing of the BLDC and BLCC group.
To curb the rise of the liberal force in the legislature, 21 appointed and indirectly elected Legislative Council members from thefunctional constituencies founded theCo-operative Resources Centre (CRC) led bySenior Unofficial Member of theExecutive and Legislative CouncilsAllen Lee, which transformed into theLiberal Party in 1993.[20] About the same time, the traditional leftists, which were now considered to be conservative, also formed in theDemocratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) led byTsang Yok-sing in 1992. The business elites, professionals, and rural leaders also further grouped themselves in theHong Kong Progressive Alliance (HKPA) headed byAmbrose Lau in 1994 under the direction of theNew China News Agency (NCNA).[21]
The conservatives strongly opposed theconstitutional reform package by last GovernorChris Patten which would faster the pace of democratisation. The Liberal Party lobbied against the bill as orchestrated by Beijing behind the scene, which saw the Patten bill as the "triple violations" of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the Hong Kong Basic Law and the Sino-British agreements. The bill was at last narrowly passed with the help of thepro-democracy camp. In response to the1995 fully elected legislature, the Beijing government set up theProvisional Legislative Council (PLC) with conservative majority.
Hamish Macleod,Financial Secretary of Hong Kong between 1991 and 95, coined the term "consensus capitalism", suggesting that the community had reached a consensus on the merits of Hong Kong's brand of capitalism, which was to "encourage free enterprise and competition, while promoting equity and assistance for those who need it......because the community righty expects a fair deal for everyone, and in particular that raw competition be tempered by help for those less able to compete." To Macleod, capitalism "provides the greater likelihood of maximising economic performance and defending political liberty while securing something approaching equality of opportunity."[22]
Donald Tsang, Macleod's successor as Financial Secretary also coined the term "caring capitalism" in 1996, which describe the governments's approach of giving priority to economic growth and then using the new-found wealth to develop social infrastructure and welfare services.[22]
Since thehandover of Hong Kong, the conservatives have been dominated the executive and legislature with the help of theElection Committee and the trade-basedfunctional constituencies with limited electorates respectively. The pro-businesseconomic liberalLiberal Party and theChinese nationalistDemocratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) were the two major partiesvis-a-vis the pro-democraticDemocratic Party in theLegislative Council in the first decades after the handover. The Liberals and the DAB were invited to the government coalition by the firstChief ExecutiveTung Chee-hwa as he appointed the two party chairmen, Liberal'sJames Tien and DAB'sTsang Yok-sing into theExecutive Council in 2002 under the newPrincipal Officials Accountability System. The Tung administration was characterised by Confucian paternalist values and conservative governance, as well as the civil service which was conservative in its outlook.[23]
The1997 Asian financial crisis forced the SAR government to take a more active role in the economic policies. In 2002,Financial SecretaryAntony Leung redefined the overall policy as "big market, small government" and that the government should be a "proactive market enabler" who took "appropriate measures to secure projects beneficial to economy as a whole when the private sector is not ready." In 2004, Financial SecretaryHenry Tang coined another new term of "market leads, government facilitates."[24]
The continuing economic recession, theSARS epidemic and the controversialBasic Law Article 23national security legislation drew the largestanti-government protest on 1 July 2003. James Tien subsequently resigned from the Executive Council in opposition to the legislation which forced the government to shelve the bill. In the followingNovember District Council election, the DAB suffered a great defeat which led to the resignation of Tsang Yok-sing as the party chairman.[25] On the other hand, Liberals received a great victory by winning twogeographical constituencies directly elected seats in the2004 Legislative Council election.
In March 2005, Tung resigned as Chief Executive for health reasons, and was succeeded byChief Secretary for AdministrationDonald Tsang who was a civil servant for nearly forty years. By co-opting supporters and some pro-democracy elites into the Strategic Development Commission, Tsang portrayed himself as the master of social and political harmony. In December, the Tsang administration'sconstitutional reform blueprint proposed theElection Committee selecting the Chief Executive be widened from 800 to 1,600 members in 2007 and empowered directly elected and appointedDistrict Council members to elect six of the expanded 70-member Legislative Council in 2008. The bill was ultimately defeated by the pan-democracy camp as they argued the Tsang's reform blueprint was too conservative while the conservatives accused the liberals of being obstinate.[26]
In 2006, Tsang proclaimed that "positive non-interventionism" was "past tense" for Hong Kong, which the role of the government was to "facilitate what the market does." Tsang's statement drew criticism locally and internationally, notably from economic philosopherNobel LaureatesMilton Friedman who had highly praised Hong Kong's free market economy,Edmund Phelps and an economist from theChinese Academy of Social Sciences.[24] Friedman published the article "Hong Kong wrong" onThe Wall Street Journal in October 2006 shortly before he died, criticising Tsang for abandoning positive non-interventionism.[27]The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, formally removed Hong Kong's designation as a bastion of economic freedom. Tsang later vowed his government's commitment to "small government".[28]
In the2007 Chief Executive election, Tsang faced challenged from a liberal candidate,Civic Party legislatorAlan Leong. With the conservative dominance of the Election Committee, Tsang defeated Leong 649 to 123 votes.[29] In theconstitutional reform package in 2010, the Tsang government reached a breakthrough with the pro-democraticDemocratic Party after the Democrats reached an agreement with the Beijing representatives to pass the modified reform package.
More than one conservative candidates ran in the2012 Chief Executive election. Chief SecretaryHenry Tang who was supported by the major business elites andLiberal Party and Convenor of the Executive CouncilLeung Chun-ying who was seen as the underdog and ran a more pro-grassroots agenda contested against each other. Although Leung eventually became the favourite of Beijing and won the election with the support of theCentral Government Liaison Office, the election divided the conservative bloc into a Tang camp and a Leung camp. After the election, Beijing called for a reconciliation of the two camps.
Leung Chun-ying administration was unable to unite the conservative bloc. TheLiberal Party, which suffered a great split after the2008 Legislative Council electoral defeat has openly criticised Leung. Liberal leaderJames Tien was ejected from theChinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) after he called on Chief Executive CY Leung to resign during the2014 Hong Kong protests.[30]Economic Synergy, the breakaway group from the Liberals, formed theBusiness and Professionals Alliance for Hong Kong (BPA) with theProfessional Forum legislators in 2012, whileRegina Ip, formerSecretary for Security who was in charge of the Article 23 legislation in 2003 formed in theNew People's Party (NPP) in 2011. Together with DAB and FTU, the BPA and NPP formed a loose pro-government coalition.
In 2014, the conservativeconstitutional reform proposals andNational People's Congress Standing Committee's (NPCSC)restriction on the nomination process of the Chief Executive also triggered the79-day occupy movement, as proposed by the pro-democracy groupOccupy Central with Love and Peace. To counter the occupy movement, the conservative activists led by former radio hostRobert Chow also formed theAlliance for Peace and Democracy to launch signature campaigns to oppose the occupy movement.[31] By the time, many pro-government activist groups began to emerge such asVoice of Loving Hong Kong, Caring Hong Kong Power and Hong Kong Youth Care Association, often with ultra-patriotic and militant rhetorics.
After Leung surprisingly declared he would not seek for re-election, Chief SecretaryCarrie Lam and Financial Secretary John Tsang became the main candidates in the2017 Chief Executive election. Tsang who was seen asultraconservative on his fiscal policy was challenged by Lam's call for a "new fiscal philosophy" to adopt more proactive approach in investing for Hong Kong and relieving people's burdens with the record-breaking fiscal surplus.[32] However, Lam was seen more politically conservative and was labelled as "CY 2.0" who would follow Leung's hardline and divisive policies, as compared to Tsang who called for reconciliation with the opposition camp.[33] The pro-democrats supported Tsang as they saw Tsang as the "lesser evil" of the two.[34] As a result, Lam won in the election with the alleged support of the Liaison Office.
Since the ascendance ofXi Jinping to theGeneral Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012 and re-elected to theparty leader in 2017, Hong Kong was increasingly facing Beijing's grip on its high autonomy. In 2014 in the midst of theconstitutional reform debate and theOccupy Central movement, theInformation Office of theState Council published a white paper titledThe Practice of the 'One Country, Two Systems' Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, written by Chinese conservative legal theoristJiang Shigong formerly working at theBeijing's Liaison Office in Hong Kong, raised concerns among the Hong Kong public.[35] The paper asserts its "comprehensive jurisdiction" over the territory. "The high degree of autonomy of the HKSAR [Hong Kong Special Administrative Region] is not full autonomy, nor a decentralised power," it says. "It is the power to run local affairs as authorised by the central leadership."[36] It also stresses that "loving the country is the basic principle for Hong Kong's administrators," who also have a responsibility to safeguard "the country's sovereignty, security and development interests and [to ensure] the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong." It also asserts the necessity "to stay alert to the attempt of outside forces to use Hong Kong to interfere China's domestic affairs, and prevent and repel the attempt made by a very small number of people who act in collusion with outside forces to interfere with the implementation of 'one country, two systems' in Hong Kong."[37]
In the following years, thekidnappings of the Causeway Bay Books staffs who published books critical of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party and the abduction of a Hong Kong-residing Chinese billionaireXiao Jianhua raised alarm of the increasingly blur border between Hong Kong and mainland China.[38] In 2019,Chief ExecutiveCarrie Lam push for theextradition bill which would establish a mechanism for transfers of fugitives between Hong Kong and mainland China, which raised concerns among various sectors of Hong Kong which feared it would further erosion of Hong Kong's separate legal system and its built-in safeguards for civil liberties, as well as damage to Hong Kong's business climate.[39] The opposition to the bill turned into anunprecedented city-wide protests throughout the latter half of 2019, which fizzled out due to theCOVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.
In June 2020, theNational People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) installed thenational security law on Hong Kong unilaterally which criminalised "separatism, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference", which many interpreted as a crackdown on civil liberties, government critics, and the independence movement.[40] Under the law, a National Security Division of theHong Kong Police Force would be given an enormous power andOffice for Safeguarding National Security would be exempt from Hong Kong jurisdiction.[41][42] The law also allow some cases to be transferred to the Chinese courts.[43] Various national governments expressed concern that the Chinese plans would undermine Hong Kong autonomy and the "One Country, Two Systems" policy and cancelled their extradition treaties with Hong Kong.[40] In response,United States PresidentDonald Trump declared that the administrative principle of "One country, Two systems" was no longer in effect, and terminated Hong Kong's special trade status with the United States underExecutive Order 13936.[44] Numerous Hong Kong and Mainland officials including Chief Executive Carrie Lam were sanctioned by the United States for "undermining the autonomy of Hong Kong."[45] U.S.conservative think tankThe Heritage Foundation also dropped Hong Kong from its annual "Index of Economic Freedom" in which Hong Kong had topped the list for a quarter century in 2021, explaining that it "measures economic freedom only in independent countries where governments exercise sovereign control of economic policies."[46]
Western observers attributed the shift of Beijing's policies toward Hong Kong to a new group of Chinese "statist" legal scholars who subscribed to an expansive view of state authority to ensure "stability overrides all else" which was inspired by conservativeNazi German legal theoristCarl Schmitt who served asAdolf Hitler's "crown jurist".[47] Chen Duanhong, a law professor atPeking University, directly cited Schmitt in defense of the national security law in 2018, arguing that the state had the right to suspend constitutional norms, especially provisions for civil rights, "when the state is in dire peril." has made a similar case. Jiang Shigong also employed Schmitt's ideas extensively in his 2010 bookChina's Hong Kong to resolve tensions between sovereignty and the rule of law in favour of the Chinese Communist Party and provided rationale for the autocratisation in Hong Kong.[47]
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A strain of conservatism was found in the emerginglocalist movement in the early 2010s aiming at preserving the distinct cultural identity from Beijing's growing encroachment of Hong Kong people's way of life and civil liberties. In 2011,Chin Wan, an assistant professor in theLingnan University's Chinese department published the book,On the Hong Kong City-State in 2011 which triggered fierce public debate and was popular among the young generation.[48] In the book, Chin pointed out the potential threat of the influx ofmainland tourists andimmigrants to the established institutions and social customs of Hong Kong, which he considered likely part of a colonisation scheme by Beijing, including the increasing use ofMandarin Chinese andSimplified Chinese in daily use and in schools. As a cultural traditionalist, Chin cited British colonial governor Cecil Clementi's fostering of local traditional culture in the 1920s, arguing that, thanks to British colonialism, "Hong Kong's culture today is both more modern and more authentically Chinese — or more rooted in ancient traditions — than the culture of mainland China," where orthodox religious customs and traditional written Chinese were abandoned under the Communist regime.[49]
Chin saw Hong Kong as the true claimant of the traditional Chinese culture and saw the Hong Kong–Chinese cultural distinction as the Confucian notion ofHua–Yi distinction (civilised–uncivilised dichotomy). At the time, such tendency of culturalist localism often mixed with anti-mainland and anti-immigrant sentiments and was condemned as "xenophobic" and "nativist" by pro-Beijing activists and the government.[50] On the basis of Chin's school of thought, he founded theHong Kong Resurgence Order with a manifesto aiming to "restore the ancient Chinese civilisation".[51] Some localist groups such as theHong Kong Indigenous took up some of Chin's conversationist ideas for their movement of defending Hong Kong's cultural identity against the influx ofMainland parallel traders which largely disrupted the local neighbourhoods in Hong Kong, as well as Beijing's increasing encroachment on Hong Kong's autonomy and their ways of life. They even launched several "liberate campaigns" against the Mainland elements in the communities. Some other small political groups including the Conservative Party which favoured the return of Hong Kong to become aBritish Overseas Territory were also set up.[52]
