Will "Che Guevara" Prove to Be a Thorn in Beijing's Side?

Great Debates
1

Leung Kwok Hung, aka Long Hair, aka Che Guevara, provided the biggest upset of Hong Kong’s Legislative Elections, when he was voted in yesterday.

Long Hair, who describes himself as a ‘freelance writer’, has served four terms in prison for various minor offences and is a genius of self promotion. The very length of his hair is a good indicator of how long has transpired since he was released from doing time.

47, divorced, and a decent English speaker, Leung’s election is likely to have broader ramifications than in Hong Kong. With overseas media likely to make him their darling and raise him to cult status, there is every chance that the Chinese Communist Party will show itself unequipped to deal with what they are likely to perceive as a loss of face.

With PR in the Middle Kingdom not renowned for its subtlety or dexterity, any attempt to vilify Leung - or even ignore him - could end up as a PR disaster at a time when China is attempting to normalise relations with Hong Kong’s legislature by allowing elected pro-democracy representatives to travel to China.

I’d be interesetd to know if other media overseas have picked up on this story. When the new legislative session starts, we will see how effective Leung can be - always assuming they let him take his seat. At the moment, there is some doubt about this, as he seems reluctant to meet dress code requirements if they mean giving up his Che T-shirts.

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On the other hand, the groups attempting to get reform candidates into the 30 seats that they are allowed by Chinese law were only able to capture 18 of them (when they fully expected to gain all 30) and several of the reform candidates were driven out of the election on relatively minor “legal” embarassments.
So it does not appear that the reform movement is all that strong to begin with (either by failing to garner the needed votes or by failing to prevent whatever governmental fraud might have been used to edge them out) and Beijing might just choose to ignore the single voice of Leung. (Failing that, Lueng’s penchant for landing in prison makes a future arrest and removal from office somewhat easy for Beijing to arrange without raising too many eyebrows.)

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Look, what difference does it make? I mean, doesn’t Hong Kong’s Legislative Council have very limited powers?

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The pan-democracy groups (or reform groups) didn’t expect to win all 30 seats in the geographical constituencies. This was because of the ‘remaining votes’ proportional representation system that was adopted. Their best estimate prior to the elections was 22 seats.

I believe the significance of Long Hair’s election has everything to do with the fact that Hong Kong’s Legislative Council has so little power. That it has so little power is due to the fact that Beijing has provided the territory with a voting system that ensures that the composition of Legco will be favourable towards China. Therefore, even if 22 reformers had been voted in, the majority of the Legco would still have been pro-China owing to the fact that more than 22 of those elected in Functional Constituencies (special interest groups) were pro China. (The number was 23, in fact.)

If a majority of the Council was reformist, then its power to enact legislation that China didn’t support would have been quite real, and various bills might have been passed that would have not pleased the central government, for example, those relating to a minimum wage and a set working week.

Thus, in a situation where a lame duck Legco was assured, however well pan-democrats did, Long Hair’s election guarantees worldwide media interest in a man Beijing despises and who will not compromise his principles. China would have preferred the reformers to have won a couple more seats (as they were within a whisker of doing), and Long Hair to have lost.

I think Long Hair has mainly been pit in clink for public order offences relating to protests he staged outside the Legco building. Now that he’s inside, he’s unlikely to be fall foul of the same laws.

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:confused: Aren’t Communists supposed to be for those things?

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Quite. The only avowedly Marxist candidate is the one most despised by the Chinese Communist Party.

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From the Wikipeida (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Hong_Kong):

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‘According to the Article 68 and Annex II of the Basic Law, the passage of bills and motions introduced by the government requires a simple majority vote of Legislative Council members present, while bills and motions introduced by Legislative Council members require simple majority vote of each of the two groups of members present: those returned by functional constituencies, and those returned by geographical constituencies / Election Committee. As a result, a bill from the government is much easier to pass than a bill from members. This arrangement reflects the “executive-led” philosophy underlying the Basic Law, but was considered by some as weakening the role of the legislature in overseeing the government.’

Thanks for clarifying that - and correcting me - BG. It’s many years since I read my Basic Law!

9

You’ve got to understand that the Chinese government started its current cycle as a Stalinist regime (and arguably the most incompetant) and slowly went through the sequence of purges and microrevolution that everyone stopped caring about politics or ideology. Its now nothing more than a very big third world oligarchy. This is good and bad - good because their not actively revolutin’ any more, bad because they’ve seemingly dropped into a half-paranoid government autocracy.

Its not nearly as bad as it was in Mao’s day, but I can’t honestly say it beats, say, Indonesia.

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I doubt Beijing really gives a damn – they retain almost complete control of Hong Kong and now have a very public example of their tolerance of free speech.
China is starting to realise that free speech in HK is not at all dangerous as long as the economic status quo is upheld – and what better advert for an open society - one that attracts big business - than the ouspoken enemy of all things “wrong” being in Legco?

11

Another HK resident’s take, suggesting his “rock star” status has more to do with his election than anything else. Hey, we elected Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger here on little better than that.

12

My former colleague (academic not political, I hasten to add) Dr Yeung Sum will be a bit miffed to have reached retirement age four years before his time. But not half as miffed as commuters on the subway system to discover that Kowloon Bay Station has been relocated across the Kowloon Hills in the New Territories.

The author is on firmer ground when she quotes Long Hair:

"His criticism of the democratic parties’ leadership boils down to two points. First, they didn’t work hard enough to expand their platform and their appeal beyond the abstract issues of suffrage and democratic rule. “If you want to get people to the polls, you have to bloody well give them a good reason why they should cast their vote for you. The democrats sat on top of the political capital they built with the two successful July 1 democracy marches.”

The heavyweights of the Democratic Party have about as much charisma as one might expect of your average solicitor (which a good proportion of them are), and their thunder was stolen as soon as the pro-Beijing parties jumped on the bandwagon calling for electoral reform.

And being eloquent and quotable in both Chinese and English is a quality that puts Mr Leung at an advantage over many of his fellow Legco members.

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Firstly, this article has been written by someone who is, at best, just an occasional resident in HK. But more importantly, Longhair was not an actor or a wrestler – his fame has come about through very-visible political activism.