In 2012, I published an article titled From Abnormal Politics to Normal Politics, which concluded that Hong Kong’s political form is transitioning from abnormal politics to normal politics. Normal politics usually refers to politics that revolve around material or practical interests and mainly entail conflicts over the economy, people’s livelihoods, powers, and other material issues. Typical normal politics is class politics, and the major political parties in society can be classified according to their different class orientations. In contrast, the factors that produce abnormal politics are mainly values, ideologies, beliefs and other things related to ideological and spiritual dimensions. In abnormal politics, political games are usually “zero-sum games”.
I argued in that article that more than 30 years before 2012, Hong Kong experienced a transformation from abnormal politics to normal politics. Nevertheless, the emergence of normal politics was only a recent occurrence. Abnormal politics has lasted for so long because the central axis of Hong Kong’s political struggle is over what kind of constitutional system Hong Kong should establish after its return to the motherland, and behind this struggle are severe and irreconcilable differences in political values and beliefs.
However, in a brief period before 2012, Hong Kong did experience some political trends that reflected the “mainstreaming” of normal politics. In 2003, large-scale demonstrations against legislation according to Article 23 of the Basic Law broke out in Hong Kong. However, after 2004, most sectors of society mainly focused on discussing practical issues such as the economy, society, people’s livelihoods, and living standards. The political situation in Hong Kong was relatively calm, and the political clout of the opposition forces seemed to be diminishing. From 2004 to 2012, there were no violent fights in Hong Kong. In that article, I said I believed that the main reason for the rise of normal politics was that various public opinion surveys showed that mainstream public opinion in Hong Kong had undergone significant changes, which was mainly reflected in the evident and gratifying changes in Hong Kong people’s attitudes toward the central government, the Chinese mainland, and the country.
However, the development of events after 2012 is that instead of becoming marginalized, abnormal politics once again surged to become the “mainstream” political form in Hong Kong. This was explicitly reflected in the anti-national education movement in 2012, the “Occupy Central” event in 2014, the Mong Kok riots in 2016, and the anti-extradition campaign in 2019-20. Violent struggles erupted in society, on the streets, within the Legislative Council, and between LegCo and the executive branch. It can be said that the intensity of politicization in Hong Kong had escalated to the point that it placed the effective practice of “one country, two systems”, national security, and Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability in grave danger.
There are several reasons why Hong Kong suddenly and rapidly plunged from relatively short-lived normal politics to abnormal politics.
First, the opposition forces in Hong Kong were still massive and formidable, and their brief political “pause” was actually a period for regrouping and waiting for opportunities to rise again. Significantly, the opposition forces still dominated areas involving thought and ideology, such as education, culture, art, media and the internet, and their impact on young people was particularly pernicious.
Second, since the United States began to feel “threatened” by China’s rise in the early 2010s and unrelentingly tried to contain its progress, Hong Kong’s successful practice of “one country, two systems” and its prosperity and stability were no longer in the interests of the US. For this reason, the US overtly or covertly involved itself in Hong Kong affairs, especially in peddling Western values, derogating “one country, two systems”, colluding with Hong Kong’s opposition forces, and cultivating pro-American forces. The interference of external forces, especially the US, is one of the prime reasons for the sudden resurgence of abnormal politics in Hong Kong.
Third, the increasingly close relationship between Hong Kong and the mainland created social conflicts that hostile forces could exploit. Since the large-scale demonstrations against Article 23 legislation in 2003, the central government introduced a series of policies and measures to promote Hong Kong’s economic development, improve people’s livelihoods, and enhance political stability. The core of these policies and actions was strengthening Hong Kong’s economic integration and personnel exchanges with the mainland. However, even if these measures benefited Hong Kong palpably, they also triggered conflicts among some Hong Kong residents against the central government, mainland enterprises, and mainland compatriots. They elicited criticisms of Hong Kong’s alleged “mainlandization” and the city’s loss of its high degree of autonomy. Complaints and concerns about the Hong Kong residents’ interests, values and lifestyles being “eroded” were strident. Hostile forces at home and abroad took advantage of the opportunity to spread alarmism and add fuel to the flames, rekindling doubts about “one country, two systems” among some Hong Kong residents, especially young people, fomenting fears of Hong Kong’s “decline”, and inciting mistrust of and resistance to the central government and the mainland.
Fourth, extremely “explosive” political issues resurfaced and soared to the top of the public agenda. The three major political issues of “national education”, “political reform” (mainly, universal suffrage for the post of chief executive), and the extradition-bill amendment became the dominant issues in Hong Kong after 2012 and forced all nonpolitical problems to the margins. The sudden rise of abnormal politics after 2012 was closely related to the emergence of these “explosive” and divisive political issues.
Finally, young people emerged as a significant political force, pushing Hong Kong politics to extremes and violence. Before and after the handover, when national education was absent and opposition forces dominated the fields of thought, education and media, two to three generations of teenagers were the victims of ideological indoctrination by the opposition forces. Not only had they become targets of active competition and praise from internal and external hostile forces — they also became influential in more intense and violent struggles in the future.
There are deeper reasons why abnormal politics can replace short-lived normal politics and become the main form of Hong Kong politics. Fundamentally, the normal politics that once briefly appeared did not have solid and lasting institutional, policy, and ideological guarantees. As a result, it lacked vital survival and sustainability capabilities and could easily collapse under violent onslaughts. Specifically, normal politics has difficulty becoming the leading political form in Hong Kong because internal and external hostile forces have substantial political clout within Hong Kong’s governance structure and society. Their political advantages in thought, education and media are undeniably formidable. By obstructing the implementation of national education, preventing the making of laws to safeguard national security, and instilling hatred and fear in all quarters of society, internal and external hostile forces have been able to successfully mobilize the masses and instigate struggles by using highly divisive, contentious, and difficult-to-reconcile political issues, pushing Hong Kong into the political abyss. For Hong Kong to transform from abnormal political dominance to normal, its political system, legal system, ideology, education, media and other fields had to undergo painful and fundamental reforms.
After the outbreak of extreme violence in 2019 in Hong Kong, the central government was determined to eradicate the sources of chaos in the city, restore normal politics to dominance, ensure the smooth implementation and longevity of “one country, two systems”, and prevent Hong Kong from becoming a threat to national security.
Today, abnormal politics has largely disappeared in Hong Kong, while normal politics is rapidly becoming the main political form in Hong Kong. Because of institutional and ideological guarantees in Hong Kong’s new political structure and order, normal politics will not be a short-lived phenomenon as it was in the early 2010s. Instead, it will most probably be Hong Kong’s long-term political form
Simply put, the central government’s new policy on Hong Kong directly confronted the root causes of abnormal politics in the past and took decisive and effective measures in systems, policies and ideological education to rectify the situation. First, in response to the violent and disruptive insurrection instigated by internal and external hostile forces, the central government promulgated the National Security Law for Hong Kong in 2020, which enabled some local laws in Hong Kong to be activated. The rigorous application of these legal means quickly produced immediate and thunderous effects, ending the two years of riots in Hong Kong and significantly reducing the space for political activities of internal and external hostile forces in the city.
Second, the central and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region governments have used legal means to expel the anti-China agitators from Hong Kong’s governance structure. In March 2021, the National People’s Congress passed a decision that established the basic principles and core elements that should be followed to improve Hong Kong’s electoral system and authorized its Standing Committee to reform the methods for selecting Hong Kong’s chief executive and Legislative Council, and at the same time establish a powerful mechanism to vet the candidates’ political allegiance to ensure that all candidates were patriots. The result of these critical reforms is that Hong Kong’s governance is entirely in the hands of patriots so that the principles of “patriots administering Hong Kong” and “executive-led governance” can be fully realized.
Third, in the new legal and political environment, internal and external hostile forces will no longer be able to openly launch political struggles in Hong Kong. The central government, the HKSAR government and patriotic forces now have a rare opportunity to promote national education, especially patriotic education, national security education and Basic Law education, in an environment with less interference so that people, particularly the young ones, can better understand the country, the central government, the HKSAR government and “one country, two systems”. Misperceptions and resistance can thus be gradually corrected, laying a solid foundation for the long-term operation of normal politics.
Fourth, the political reform issue that has plagued Hong Kong for decades and has long been the political capital of opposition forces will not be at the forefront of Hong Kong’s public agenda in the foreseeable future. After the central government carried out “major surgery” on the election methods for the chief executive and LegCo, the new election methods will be implemented for a long time, and they will be fine-tuned based on practical experience. Most people do not believe that Hong Kong’s political system will undergo significant changes again within a short period, nor will they regard the issue of political reform as urgent. On the contrary, the problems that most Hong Kong residents care about are practical topics such as economic development, improvement of people’s livelihoods, and improvement of governance.
Today, abnormal politics has largely disappeared in Hong Kong, while normal politics is rapidly becoming the main political form in Hong Kong. Because of institutional and ideological guarantees in Hong Kong’s new political structure and order, normal politics will not be a short-lived phenomenon as it was in the early 2010s. Instead, it will most probably be Hong Kong’s long-term political form. However, the central government, the HKSAR government and the patriotic forces still need to remain vigilant to changes in the situation inside and outside Hong Kong and continue to adopt timely and effective policies and measures to resolve problems. At the same time, they must strive to win the understanding and support of Hong Kong residents for their efforts to forestall the resurgence of abnormal politics.
The author is professor emeritus of sociology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a consultant of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
