Hong Kong’s Ticket to Political Strife
Here’s how to build a high-speed railway if you really want to piss off the public: don’t thoroughly consult the public, make sure it costs more than any other railway in the world (US$330 million per kilometre is a good starting point) and bulldoze a rural village of 3,600 to make way for it. When people start to get mad, act defensive and claim that if the railway isn’t built the whole economy will be sidelined.
Then you’ll have the situation we have here in Hong Kong, where the legislature approved funding for a HK$67 billion (US$8.6 billion) 26-kilometre high-speed railway, known as the “express rail” or gou tit in Cantonese, to the mainland Chinese border. When it’s completed — ostensibly by 2015, but likely later than that — it will link up with a huge high-speed rail network currently under construction in China.
While business leaders are eagerly awaiting the project’s groundbreaking, recent polls show that a majority of the population oppose the railway, whose construction will involve the demolition of Tsoi Yuen Village in the New Territories. (My friends Derrick Chang and Zoe Li put together a nice photoessay about the village for CNNGo.)
I recently wrote a story about the express rail controversy for Allvoices, a news website that has just started to supplement its “citizen journalism” with reports from professional journalists. There’s a lot more background and detail on the controversy in the article.
Talking to a number of protesters outside Hong Kong’s Legislative Council building got me thinking: just why are people so upset? When I asked some protesters why they were angry, they cited the railway’s cost and the planned destruction of Tsoi Yuen Village as they reason they had joined the rally. I pressed them on why they felt so passionate about a village they had never been to.
The answer I got from Claudia Tam, a 19-year-old high school student who was selling handmade jewellery at the rally to support the anti-railway cause, was a good representation of the general feeling amongst the crowd. “It’s unfair that the village will be destroyed but we don’t have any rights to express ourselves,” she said. “The people in the government just decide things for themselves without asking people what they want.”
It’s clear to anyone who lives here that most Hong Kong people are unhappy with the status quo. They want more of a say in how the city is run but the current political model, designed to concentrate power in the hands of Beijing-friendly officials and powerful businessmen, doesn’t give them a voice. I think it’s fair to say that if Hong Kong had a fully democratic system of government, many of the city’s problems (poor urban planning, air pollution, a dysfunctional school system, to name a few) would be easier to solve. Nothing much gets done when a government is constantly fighting against its own people.
In a broad sense, the express rail would probably be good for Hong Kong. It would be a boon to its economy, it would draw travellers away from fuel-guzzling airplanes and buses and it would give the city a tighter link with a country with which it is inevitably becoming more integrated. But the government has done such a poor job of planning the project and addressing legitimate concerns about its route, cost and impact that it brought long-simmering public resentment to a boil.
It’s especially significant that it’s young people who are most passionately opposed to the construction of the express rail. The so-called “post-80s generation” doesn’t abide by the same respect for authority that most of their parents did. They aren’t afraid to make a fuss.
Most importantly, unlike the young people involved in the pro-Communist 1967 riots, they aren’t rallying for any particular ideology other than freedom of expression, democracy and a transparent, accountable government. Keep an eye on Hong Kong — interesting things will happen here over the next few years.
Tags: High-Speed Rail, Hong Kong, Protest
Christopher Szabla says:
I can see how this would be a catalyst for political unrest in Hong Kong under its current regime, but I don’t think the outcome would really be that much different with a more accountable government. The demolition of this village sounds like what happens to the communities that get in the way of runway expansions of European airports – usually plowed over after minimal public comment periods – rather than the sort of wanton disregard for any private property that plagues, say, the PRC.
So sure, sometimes widespread opposition can scare off a plan that’s been hatched by elected politicians, but opponents of these projects in more democratic countries usually wind up picketing unelected courts and administrative agencies with little more hope for success as these Hongkongers.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Christopher DeWolf says:
You’re probably right that, even if Hong Kong’s government was fully democratic, something like this would still happen. But at least the government would be accountable.
Daisann McLane blogged about the protests with an essay that’s a lot more eloquent and engaging than the article I wrote. She thinks that these protests mark the birth of a Hong Kong civil society.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:38 am