Questioning Hong Kong's "legacy issues" in the mid-term of "no change for 50 years"

Under the new election system, Hong Kong will usher in the first Legislative Council election on December 19, and the sixth chief executive election will be held on March 27 next year.

Immediately after the election of the chief executive, July 1 is also the 25th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong's sovereignty. This time point is also the mid-term of the 50-year unchanged "One Country, Two Systems" promised by Deng Xiaoping that year.

At such a moment, it is necessary to continue to ask Hong Kong's "legacy issues", which is not only a reflection and summary of the past, but also a prerequisite and basis for Hong Kong to start again.

People may ask: After the "high fever" of the turmoil of amendments, coupled with the result of the "Hong Kong National Security Law" and the reform of the electoral system that will inevitably result, and Beijing's reintegration of Hong Kong into the national governance system, Hong Kong has really achieved Has it changed from chaos to governance, from governance to prosperity?

Now Hong Kong does not seem to be chaotic anymore. Horses run and dance photos. Although there are hidden fears of the epidemic, the markets, shopping malls, and subways are still bustling.

However, an undisrupted Hong Kong does not mean that the efficiency of governance has been improved, nor is it the same as "governance and prosperity".

Just like during the legislative turmoil, the easiest thing to do is to "stop violence and control chaos." The hardest thing to do is to understand and think about the deep-seated problems and secondary destiny of Hong Kong more extensively and profoundly through phenomena.

One of Hong Kong's legacy: deep-seated contradictions are hard to return

Twenty-four years ago, China and Britain had differences in the negotiations on the handover ceremony of Hong Kong's return. In order to demonstrate the "glorious retreat", the British side advocated that the handover ceremony should be placed in an open space in Central; the Chinese side had other plans and chose a new site. The second phase of the Convention and Exhibition Center.

On the surface, the appearance of the new wing of the exhibition resembles a wild goose flying north, symbolizing that Hong Kong, the "child" soaked in capitalism, has finally returned to the embrace of the "mother".

But after all, it is "viewed horizontally as a ridge and a peak on the side." Viewed from the top of Victoria Peak, the new wing of the exhibition is more like a giant tortoise, predicting that the Hong Kong people's heart will return to the long road like a tortoise.

In the dark, there is a certain number of its own.

The deep-seated structural contradiction facing Hong Kong today is not the decline of its own status and the squeeze of economic space, but the excessive concentration of resources and benefits in the hands of a few people. It has become a certain obstacle to Hong Kong's governance and social justice.

And this result also contains the background color of "viewing a ridge and a peak on the side."

It should be said that the central government’s Hong Kong policy in the 1980s had only two supreme goals: one is that Hong Kong must return; the other is to maintain Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.

The system design of "One Country, Two Systems" is also designed to comply with these two supreme political goals.

Deng Xiaoping put it very bluntly. If Hong Kong is not recovered in 1997, no Chinese leader or government will be able to explain to the Chinese people. "If it does not recover, it means that the Chinese government is the late Qing government and the Chinese leader is Li Hongzhang! "According to the central decision-making thinking, only by ensuring that Hong Kong's capitalist system remains unchanged can "prosperity" be ensured, and then "stability" can be maintained. The core of the capitalist system is to ensure the interests and creativity of capitalists.

In other words, to "prosper", it is necessary to take special care of the interests of the industrial and commercial circles from the policy level. The capital elitism logic of "Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong" has been converted into "businessmen ruling Hong Kong".

On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong held a sovereignty handover ceremony, heralding the official return of Hong Kong's sovereignty to China.

(VCG)

Such policy preference and special care have ensured the basic realization of the supreme political goal of governing Hong Kong within a period of time before and after the reunification, but at the same time it has also laid the roots for Hong Kong's hard-to-return government-government co-governance and some opposition to public opinion.

When the social wealth is sufficient to cope with various contradictions, the situation is not too bad, but once the various conflicts of interest intensify, this kind of political and business collusion will soon become the main object of questioning.

The key to the 2003 parade was the fact that the opposition was able to "raise their arms and gather those who responded." The key lies in the economic downturn. Hong Kong society has strongly opposed "businessmen ruling Hong Kong", "collusion between government and business", and "transportation of interests." "the sound of.

This is the source of the effective mobilization of the opposition.

In the "anti-government and business" social mobilization, the Hong Kong opposition is gradually searching for opportunities to expand the political space and deepen the "local", laying ambush for the radicalization, populism, localization, and even the independence of Hong Kong's social movements in the future.

With the help of social dissatisfaction, the opposition even took advantage of the victory and began to focus on achieving the greater goal of "double universal suffrage."

Compared with 2003, the structural contradictions facing Hong Kong today, especially the polarization between the rich and the poor, are even worse.

On November 10, the Hong Kong government issued the "Report on Hong Kong's Poverty Situation in 2020", claiming that after government policy intervention, the number of poor people in Hong Kong will fall to 553,500 in 2020, a decrease of 88,000 compared with 2019, and the poverty rate will drop by 1.3 percentage points to 7.9 %.

If policy intervention measures are not taken into consideration, the poor population and poverty rate in Hong Kong will be 1,652,500 and 23.6% respectively in 2020, and nearly half of the newly-increased poor population will come from unemployed households.

The 23.6% ratio means that one out of every four people in Hong Kong may live in poverty.

Zhou Yongxin, professor emeritus of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration of the University of Hong Kong, exclaimed, “Hong Kong’s original capitalist system will remain unchanged for the day, and the uneven distribution of income in Hong Kong will continue, and 1 out of 5 Hong Kong citizens is poor. It seems that the destiny will not change.” Living distress and worsening expectations in the future have further provided soil and a breeding ground for radical political movements.

In addition to co-governance by government and business, Hong Kong's power structure between executive leadership and the separation of powers has also invisibly exacerbated the depth and breadth of structural contradictions.

Although Hong Kong has highly autonomous administrative, legislative, and judicial powers, given the extremely superior constitutional status and power of the Chief Executive, the actual political system is still "executive-led."

Under the common constraints of Hong Kong’s legislative democracy, judicial independence, civil service autonomy, and the radicalization of social movements, the “administrative leadership” on paper in the Basic Law has fallen into an embarrassing situation where it cannot actually perform its functions as expected by the system. An important issue of Hong Kong's local political critique and the political conflict between Central and Hong Kong.

The Occupy Central movement and even native separatism are closely related to the Hong Kong opposition's disapproval of the executive-led and excessive political criticism.

But in fact, the original intention of the executive-led system is to maintain the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and avoid excessive politicization and loss of control from the central government.

The reason why Deng Xiaoping firmly opposed Hong Kong's political system of "separation of powers" was that he saw the impact that this system might bring to Hong Kong's prosperity and stability.

According to the analysis by Liu Zhaojia, the vice chairman of the National Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, one is that China’s political tradition and culture emphasizes "centralization". Deng Xiaoping believes that decentralization of power is not conducive to political stability and strong governance; the other is that the "colonial" political system is effective. It is an important element in maintaining Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.

Therefore, the political system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has to a considerable extent referred to the colonial political system with the governor at the core, but it is more advanced than the colonial governor system, introducing a representative system and the goal of double universal suffrage.

However, under the localized understanding of "Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong" and "a high degree of autonomy" and the guidance of political practice, the administrative-led system is naturally ignored. Most Hong Kong people believe that the separation of powers is the proper form of Hong Kong's political system. There have only been unnecessary debates over whether Hong Kong’s political system is executive-led or the separation of powers. In this form, because the power of final adjudication has been placed in Hong Kong, a pattern of judicial supremacy has actually been formed.

Therefore, when Zhang Xiaoming, then director of the Liaison Office of the Central Committee, mentioned that "the chief executive has a special legal status above the three powers," even if he said a big truth, it quickly aroused anger and panic among Hong Kong people.

In fact, the chief executive has dual attributes. The legitimacy comes from elections and appointments, and the accountability system also comes from the local government and the central government. Its dominance and detachment have a sufficient basis for the Basic Law and constitutional basis, but localized understanding and The autonomous process of local democratic politics and the constitutional arrangement of "one country, two systems" for the chief executive have had an important dislocation and conflict.

It is precisely because of this power structure that whether the chief executive represents the majority of Hong Kong’s public opinion or not, as long as he is recognized by the central government, he will fall into multiple attacks by the opposition in Hong Kong. Subject to the existing judicial supremacy constitutional structure and the emotional and opposing party politics in the Legislative Yuan, pan-politicized disputes are increasingly tearing the order of the Basic Law.

For the general public, who lives in the cracks and feels the consequences of marketization and political opposition, they assume that the source of all problems is aimed at the CCP and the central government’s intervention and the absence of universal suffrage, misunderstanding the real initiator of the contradiction, and gradually loses the ability to integrate into the country. Strategic vision to solve the dilemma.

Hong Kong Legacy Issue 2: The Colonial Ideology That Cannot Get Out

Marx's materialist dialectics may provide useful thinking directions for the perspective of Hong Kong issues.

According to the principles of dialectics, the internal contradictions of things (ie, internal causes) are the source and driving force of the movement of things themselves, and the fundamental reason for the development of things.

External contradictions (ie, external causes) are the second reason for the development and change of things.

The internal cause is the basis of change, the external cause is the condition of change, and the external cause works through the internal cause.

As the "external cause" of the Hong Kong issue, the CCP can only work through the "internal cause", that is, Hong Kong itself.

The core of the so-called problems of Hong Kong itself is the blind pursuit of laissez-faire capitalism and the colonial ideology that has not been able to get out of it so far.

The class problem that Hong Kong has been hard to come back to has been passed down from generation to generation of such blind and colonial consciousness.

Hong Kong was not bound by liberalism and colonial ideology at the beginning. Changes occurred before and after the "six or seven riots."

Infected by the world's left-wing political movement and Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, the Hong Kong leftist launched a massive "anti-British and anti-riot" movement in May 1967.

This movement originated from labor conflicts and social inequality in Hong Kong's local governance, and received active support from the mainland authorities and the private sector.

The official solidarity includes the Foreign Ministry summoning the British Embassy in China to express protests, and the People's Daily published a number of blockbuster articles; and the solidarity from the people is even greater, such as the rebel "burning the British representative office", and so on.

In the early days of the anti-British anti-violence period, although then Prime Minister Zhou Enlai repeatedly emphasized that the struggle must be rational and restrained, and also opposed the use of force in Hong Kong, the unstoppable vehicle dragged down the horse and embarked on a violent path of no return.

The Hong Kong leftist launched a massive "anti-British and anti-riot" movement in May 1967.

The picture shows the old photos of the June 7 riots.

(Photoblog.hk)

As the situation went out of control, the Hong Kong and British government's strong suppression was still increasing, but the mainland was subject to the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and had no time to take care of it. It lacked the decisive will to solve the Hong Kong issue immediately. Compromise position.

The leftists in Hong Kong instantly became the "rootless duckweed" that had lost a strong backing, and soon died down under the repression of the British Hong Kong government.

The original "anti-British and anti-riot" struggle was reversed into "political turmoil" under the operation of the "brainwashing to win the heart" by the British Hong Kong government.

Mao Zedong's instructions to "do not use force" at that time were based on practical considerations, but they established Hong Kong people's stereotyped prejudice against the mainland on a larger scale.

People suddenly realized that at a critical moment, the country can sacrifice "the good sons and daughters of the motherland educated by Mao Zedong Thought" at will.

This has led to a certain centrifugal effect of the Hong Kong Left on the center.

Moreover, Hong Kong society has become increasingly disgusted with the destructive nature of the leftist movement, which in turn stimulated the local consciousness of Hong Kong as a "new home", and objectively matched the long-term suppression of the leftist by the British Hong Kong government and the reform of Hong Kong's governance.

The "June 7 Riot" originally intended to resist the British, but unexpectedly produced a political counter-effect that pushed Hong Kong residents to the side of the British Hong Kong government. This had an important impact on the formation of Hong Kong’s social values ​​and political consciousness. The mentality of "China" began to permeate Hong Kong.

Qiang Shigong, who once worked in the Research Department of the Liaison Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and is currently the executive director of the Hong Kong and Macau Studies Center of Peking University, discussed the "Six-Seven Riot" in the book "Hong Kong, China: Perspectives of Politics and Culture" on the mentality and structure of Hong Kong people. Changes have been accurately analyzed.

"The British Hong Kong government's systematic "brainwashing to win the heart" project has completely changed the deep consciousness and psychological structure of Hong Kong people, forming Hong Kong people's jealousy and fearful psychology towards the "Left", the "Communist Party", the "Mainland", and "Socialism." This kind of fear echoes the "hatred of communism" of the Kuomintang dignitaries, big capitalists and leftist intellectuals who fled to Hong Kong from the Mainland, making "fear of communism" and "hostile of communism" the basic sentiment of Hong Kong citizens, which undoubtedly increases This has made Hong Kong citizens’ rejection of Hong Kong’s return to China more difficult.”

If the "sixty-seven riots" were the beginning of the disillusionment of the Hong Kong left with the mainland, then the subsequent "brainwashing to win the heart" project of the British Hong Kong government directly aggravated this sense of disillusionment and extended the radiation range to most Hong Kong people.

As a result, today, 24 years after Hong Kong's return to China, faced with such serious class problems and the polarization between the rich and the poor, Hong Kong still has a deep-rooted "colonization" complex and a blind pursuit of liberalism.

On the LED advertising screen in the airport terminal of Hong Kong, a securities company advertised that it can bring the greatest investment value to customers, that is, insisting on the "free economy" as its key selling point. Such scenarios are not uncommon in Hong Kong; even the SAR The government also made no secret of its preference for a free economy and a laissez-faire capitalist market system, and regarded this system as the "best system." In the previous July 1 parade, the dragon and lion flag representing Hong Kong during the British and Hong Kong period appeared impressively. On the night that anti-revision demonstrators attacked the Legislative Council, the British flag of Hong Kong was even spread on the rostrum of the Legislative Council.

All these reflect the deep-seated structural problems of Hong Kong, but also strongly stimulate the central government.

In Hong Kong, there is a seemingly logical and self-consistent argument for "love colonization".

A more common argument is that it is precisely because of the unsatisfactory reality after the reunification, especially the dissatisfaction with the central government's continuous erosion of Hong Kong's core values, that has led to Hong Kong people's nostalgia.

Under such psychological guidance, the CCP has become the embodiment of terror, and Hong Kong people are also accustomed to wearing colored glasses to see negative events in the Mainland.

This presumption and discoloration is not so much to pay close attention to the development of the mainland, but rather to consolidate one's own stereotypes, so as to continue to be more secure.

The "take it for granted" of Hong Kong people is also reflected in the misunderstanding of "One Country, Two Systems" and the "Basic Law."

Therefore, there has been the "Article 23 Legislation" storm, the habitual confrontation against the interpretation of the National People's Congress, the national education and the substantive appointment of the Chief Executive, and the prolonged anti-amendment storm in 2019.

From this perspective, although Hong Kong has returned in a political sense, the people's hearts have not yet completed the return.

Hong Kong Legacy Issue 3: Elites Deep in Western Value Alliance

Although Hong Kong has a population of more than 7 million, it is still a large number of civil servants, politicians and elite groups that dominate the operation of Hong Kong.

Originally supposed to be the political elites who promoted the healthy operation of Hong Kong society and continued to move forward, they have become the group most heavily bound and bound by ideology.

During the British Hong Kong government, Britain systematically carried out colonial education in Hong Kong and eventually cultivated the local culture of Hong Kong's westernization, thereby isolating Hong Kong from the Mainland in terms of cultural ideology and ideology.

After the return of Hong Kong, the central authorities did not promote the "decolonization" of Hong Kong. The values ​​formed during the colonial period in Hong Kong continued to undergo "cultural reproduction", so that Hong Kong elites generally recognized the Western world and recognized Hong Kong as an organic part of the Western world. There is a general lack of recognition that Hong Kong is an integral part of China and a metropolis under the jurisdiction of the Chinese central government.

It is precisely because of the unfinished "decolonization" and the lack of identity, the ideology of Hong Kong's political elite has always been in contradiction.

On the one hand, out of feedback to the people’s strong demands for social fairness and justice, Hong Kong should pursue fairness rather than efficiency; on the other hand, because Hong Kong has always believed in a free capitalist market system, it must retreat for the greatest political correctness. Secondly, Hong Kong's own structure is not so responsive to social justice.

For the sake of vain political correctness, abandoning the well-being of the majority of Hong Kong people has created the biggest reality of Hong Kong, that is, it has always been detached from the country in terms of economy and identity, thinking that it belongs to the Western value alliance and is part of Western culture. .

In addition, under the guidance of Western-centrism, it is believed that Western culture is superior to Chinese culture, Western nations are superior to Chinese nations, and Western systems are superior to Chinese systems.

There is only one way for the development of world civilization, which is to move towards a Western-style political and economic model. There can be no models of other national cultures. Only the Western way is the ideal destination.

On August 3, 2019, during the Hong Kong legislative amendment turmoil, a demonstrator held an American flag in a parade.

(Reuters)

Wu Qina, an associate researcher at the Institute of Modern History of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan has repeatedly talked about this phenomenon of "mind and reality out of touch" and the key behind it: "The most difficult problem to deal with may not lie in Hong Kong and Taiwan's suffering. A tangible colonial history and a tangible post-colonial phenomenon are more likely to be an invisible colonial phenomenon. Since the end of the 19th century, a large proportion of Chinese intellectuals and youth have opened their minds to modern industrial countries and their accompanying empires. As its colonies, the culture of socialism and colonialism is struggling to cut the connection with Chinese tradition and the connection with China’s reality. At least the mainland intellectuals still feel that Westernization is the only way to save China, and Hong Kong and Taiwan have become tangible colonies. Most of the elites are even more inclined to deny their own Chineseness, and are more eager to prove that they have completely separated from China, so they have to show their disgust and hatred for China in their actions. From this perspective, there is actually no real For Taiwan independence and Hong Kong independence, only some people pray for the restoration of Japanese and British colonial rule."

This kind of thinking and cognition is very concretely reflected in daily experience.

In the early days of the reunification, many Hong Kong people carried the passports of British overseas territories and went out to find the British consulate. After being rejected, they thought of the Chinese consulate. During the Brexit referendum, some Hong Kong people also wrote petitions with the intention of participating in Brexit. In the referendum, they were told that they did not have the right to vote. During the Occupy Central, in addition to the specific benefits of some opponents, there were many people who looked forward to the intervention of external forces such as the United Kingdom, which also accelerated the central government’s strong intervention. .

The Hong Kong political elite, locked in the dream of colonization and capital, can neither solve the problems of class consolidation and unequal distribution of benefits that Hong Kong society generally faces, nor can it truly complete "open eyes to see China", let alone "open eyes to see the world."

Therefore, when the whole world is taking the ride of the Chinese economy to develop upwards, such as South Korea and China establishing a free trade zone, Singapore is actively strengthening economic cooperation with China, and Europe, Latin America, and Africa are all devoting themselves to the "Belt and Road" strategy. Hong Kong, with its unique geographical location, not only did not try to catch the ride, but when the central government wanted to get it on the bus through a series of preferential policies, Hong Kong sometimes voluntarily chose to "jump the car."

The stalemate over the "co-location, two inspections" is a manifestation of Hong Kong's local political bondage and opposition to economic integration with the country.

Behind this choice, the limitations and narrowness of Hong Kong's political elite have been exposed.

Hong Kong’s economic soaring in the past was not a feat of capitalism. It was not only because of the wisdom and diligence of Hong Kong people, but also the political closure of mainland China and Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up. In the two stages of social development experienced by mainland China, Hong Kong was both I found my role.

Now, China’s influence is different from the past. At the same time, because the regional integration of the world economy is accelerating, looking at the reconstruction of the entire East Asian political and economic order, if it is not good at dealing with the relationship with the mainland that holds the dominant power in the region, its economic development There is no future.

Specific to Hong Kong, how can the overall economic transformation be achieved?

Where is the future of the entire society?

Excluding the only option in the mainland, not actively using the mainland as a parent body, and not aligning with national strategies such as the Belt and Road Initiative, and relying on Hong Kong itself to toss and turn, the problem can only remain unsolved.

Hong Kong's "sample" meaning

After the "high fever" such as the turmoil of the amendment, if Hong Kong wants to start again, it must ask the remaining questions again, especially the structural contradictions that exist in Hong Kong at the moment.

Regarding this contradiction, when Wen Jiabao, then Premier of the State Council of China, met with Hong Kong Chief Executive Tsang Yinquan in Beijing in 2005, he proposed for the first time that it "needs to be resolved," but he did not specifically explain the nature and essence of the contradiction.

It was not until five years later that there was a late explanation at the closing press conference of the Third Session of the Eleventh National People’s Congress: First, how to use the existing advantages to continue to maintain and develop Hong Kong’s financial center and shipping center And the status of a trade center.

Second, how to develop advantageous industries, especially the service industry, based on the characteristics of Hong Kong.

Third, we must take advantage of Hong Kong's proximity to the Mainland to further strengthen Hong Kong's ties with the Pearl River Delta.

The vast mainland market and the rapid development of the mainland economy are the potential for Hong Kong's future development.

Fourth, the people of Hong Kong must tolerate and help each other, build consensus, and unite as one to maintain Hong Kong's prosperity and stability.

In the future, Hong Kong will not only have great economic development, but will also develop democratic politics in a gradual and orderly manner in accordance with the provisions of the Basic Law.

Fifth, there are two points not to be ignored. One is to focus on improving people's livelihood, and the other is to develop education.

After all, it's development.

What Xi Jinping repeatedly emphasized in his 2017 visit to Hong Kong was also how Hong Kong can get out of the whirlpool of "pan-politicization" and set its focus on development and improvement of people's livelihood.

After all, "young people want to grow up happily, young people want to display their talents, middle-aged people want success in their careers, and elderly people want to spend their twilight years in peace. This needs to be achieved through development."

The root cause is that "development is the eternal theme, the foundation of Hong Kong's standing, and the key to solving Hong Kong's various problems." "At present, the task of development should be more focused."

On the evening of June 30, 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government's welcome dinner and delivered an important speech.

(Reuters)

The SAR government should understand the weight of these words, because whether it is the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong high-speed rail or the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area or other integration measures, it is a "key" sent by the central government to Hong Kong.

In the early days of the reunification, in order to take care of the emotions of the Hong Kong people, the central government chose to rule by doing nothing, and let Hong Kong find its own "keys." Misunderstanding of the relationship between "One Country" and "Two Systems".

Now the central government has given a series of "keys" to drive development through integration, which is both a warning and hope.

Of course, it has to be admitted that, in response to the "one country, two systems" itself, Hong Kong and the Mainland have been carefully handling the relationship between seemingly opposites but dialectical unity in the process of development and integration.

When preaching the spirit of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Wang Zhimin, the former director of the Liaison Office of the Central Committee of Hong Kong, pointed out the "six pairs of relationships" that have plagued Hong Kong for many years, namely the relationship between the Constitution and the Basic Law, the central government's power of comprehensive governance and the high degree of autonomy of the SAR. The relationship between the integration of the country and its own development, the relationship between the central government and the SAR government, the relationship between "Hong Kong Affairs and Hong Kong Office", "Hong Kong-style thinking" and "Mainland Way", "Beijing Thinking", "One Country" and "Two System”.

In the final analysis, these six pairs of relationships are still the relationship between "one country" and "two systems."

In the process of integration between Hong Kong and the Mainland with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area as the starting point, the first thing that needs to be clarified is the relationship between "one country" and "two systems."

The people of Hong Kong should believe that today, 24 years after the "first return", the "second return" is not the so-called "redification" of Hong Kong in the Western context, nor is it "one country, one system", making Hong Kong another. Shanghai or Shenzhen, but with the development of Hong Kong as the axis, continue to consolidate one country, two systems, so that the system concept proposed by Deng Xiaoping will not be aborted in the middle of the process and will fail, but how to better adapt to today's Hong Kong.

Moreover, the people of Hong Kong should be sure that the second return and integration will not only be China as a nation-state, but also China that provides a new framework for globalization.

In this way, Hong Kong’s role will be more diverse and more important, because it will become a local area, a unique strategic and institutional lever of Chinese globalization, and more importantly, it will become the same as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The driving force of this experiment.

With these triple identities, can Hong Kong not matter?

In addition, it can be expected that after Hong Kong is fully integrated with the Mainland, the "unchanged" promised by Deng Xiaoping will continue. For example, the capitalist system can still be continued, freedom of speech, democracy, rule of law, and judicial independence can still be enjoyed. Public security and management.

Of course, in addition to "unchanged", "changes" will inevitably occur. Such "changes" may make Hong Kong people feel uncomfortable in the short term. Putting it in a longer period of time may be the best way out, because This is determined by Hong Kong's own economic and social structural transformation needs.

To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping’s words back then, “Don’t worry about change, you can’t change. Besides, changes are not all bad things. Some changes are good things, but the problem is what has changed. Isn’t China taking back Hong Kong just a kind of change? So don’t say in general that you are afraid of change. . If anything needs to be changed, it must be better and more conducive to the prosperity and development of Hong Kong without harming the interests of Hong Kong people. This change is welcome. If anyone says that nothing will remain the same, you Don't believe it. We can't always say that all the methods under the Hong Kong capitalist system are perfect, right? Even the capitalist developed countries have their own advantages and disadvantages when compared with each other. Leading Hong Kong to a healthier aspect is not a change. Is it true that Hong Kong people will welcome changes in this direction, and Hong Kong people themselves will demand changes. This is certain. We are also changing."

Ever change is inseparable from its sect. The "sect" here is development and people's livelihood. This is also the biggest politics in this "system" of Hong Kong.

The Chinese Communist Party's growth into a century-old party, the ability to gain super-high support in the Mainland, and the ability of China to emerge from the quagmire of the decade of the Cultural Revolution, all rely on grasping the key in different historical periods, that is, to solve the problem of people’s food. Land to improve the economy and people’s livelihood.

For the same purpose of development, Hong Kong’s current wise approach is to put aside the superficial incompatibility and habitual differences, strand the political war of words, and rely on supporting facilities such as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong high-speed rail, Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, etc. Actively integrate and think about the transformation of Hong Kong as a master.

With the deepening of integration and the increasing frequency of exchanges, there will be more and more voices and practices that favor "one country" in the one country, two systems. How to ensure that the people of Hong Kong accept it without disgust will also test the wisdom and determination of the central government.

If you act too hastely and repeat the previous struggle, not only will you fail to achieve the effect of integration, it will easily exacerbate the tearing and estrangement.

After the promulgation of the National Security Law and the reform of the electoral system, many people are asking: What kind of Hong Kong will Hong Kong become in 2047?

Will the system of capitalism in Hong Kong then be an upgraded version of capitalism, or a low-quality capitalism?

Will Hong Kong become an ordinary city like other cities in the Mainland?

If Hong Kong completes the "second return," these problems that plagued Hong Kong people will naturally not be a problem, because by then there may be no need to change.

And this kind of "first return" and "second return", capitalism and socialism two different systems and systems of communion, interoperability, exchange and competition, not only for Taiwan, which is now in constant entanglement, is of great significance, but also for the whole of Taiwan. The world's thinking about how different systems and civilizations "marriage" may all be a sample existence.

Hong Kong should have such confidence and confidence, because to this day, Hong Kong is still unique and irreplaceable.