Anson Chan is usually and correctly identified as a former Chief Secretary - head of the civil service - of Hong Kong. But she is more than that. As the world prepared for the 1997 change of Hong Kong's sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China, Mrs. Chan was the linchpin of trust that made the handover work smoothly. As long as she was there, the world knew Hong Kong would continue with its own rule-of-law system, one that both the people of Hong Kong and the global business community could trust.
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Anson Chan stands between the Chinese and British Flags at the sovereignty handover ceremony in Hong Kong, June 30 - July 1, 1997 |
Mrs. Chan has been out of government for some time, but she has never ceased to be a voice for what she believes Hong Kong should be.
Today Hong Kong is facing a crisis. The outward manifestation is the Occupy Central movement, which is succinctly defined in a paragraph from the South China Morning Post:
"Occupy Central is a civil disobedience movement which began in Hong Kong on September 28, 2014. It calls on thousands of protestors to block roads and paralyze Hong Kong's financial district if the Beijing and Hong Kong governments do not agree to implement universal suffrage for the chief executive election in 2017 and the Legislative Council election in 2020 according to 'international standards.'"
Today's quotes are from two separate articles by Anson Chan, both of which have appeared recently in major U.S. outlets. The first - on the people's right to be angry - was in an article for Time, published on September 30. The second is from her opinion piece on Wednesday, October 1, in the
Boston Globe.
Her Time article began with a lament. "For me," she wrote, "the most heart-breaking aspect of the current unrest in Hong Kong has been to see our police force kitted out in full riot gear like Star Wars Stormtroopers..." Hong Kong demonstrators - kids doing homework - have always been peaceful, she said, and the police have traditionally kept their part of an unwritten bargain with civilized restraint. Now that is changing.
In her Boston Globe article, she injected some rational optimism:
"I don't believe rumors that the Hong Kong garrison of the People's Liberation Army is being readied to clear the streets. That would precipitate a collapse in confidence and a flight of capital from Asia's foremost banking and financial services center that even the diehards in Beijing will stay away from - not least because of the huge sums of mainland Chinese money that have found their way into the city's banks and stock market."
But she added:
"It is nevertheless crucial that Western governments make clear to China that the world is watching." In both pieces, Mrs. Chan discussed Beijing's interference in Hong Kong's promised democracy. In her Boston Globe article she wrote:
"The decision of China's 'parliament,' the National People's Congress, to palm us off with sham democracy for the 2017 election of the next chief executive is the straw that broke camel's back. Despite having promised this election will be by universal suffrage, only two or three candidates selected by a nominating committee stacked with Beijing loyalists will be allowed to stand. In short, the election will be rigged from the outset, with the outcome a farce."