Why Hong Kong protesters are forcing university leaders to pick a side – academic freedom is at stake

Behind public support for the protesters is the realisation that Hong Kong has paid a steep price for silence over policies that pushed integration with the mainland
University leaders’ failure to speak up on the extradition bill and during the early days of the protests does not bode well for academic freedom

Phil C. W. Chan

Published: 9:00am, 6 Nov 2019

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One of the factors distinguishing the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, now in their 22nd week, from the 79-day “umbrella movement” in 2014 is the level of general support protesters continue to receive from residents and non-protesters. This is all the more remarkable considering the duration of the current unrest, the extent of violent actions to which protesters have resorted and the frequent use by the police of tear gas, beanbag rounds, rubber and live bullets, and water cannons.

It is this general support that contributes to the government’s failure to quell the protests, even after Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced the formal withdrawal of the extradition bill on September 4.

Not only are the protests the biggest challenge to the Communist Party since the handover and Hong Kong’s worst post-war catastrophe, they embody a seismic shift in terms of how Hongkongers define and identify ourselves, institutions of power in the city, relations between Hong Kong and the mainland (and mainlanders), and the nature of Hong Kong society. Hong Kong will never be the same again, even after the protests eventually end.

Reasons for this general support can be traced, in part, to a tacit acknowledgement by the older generations that we did not speak up when we should have. After the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 and the crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989, Hongkongers with means, and those working in the colonial government, police or military, emigrated to other countries, while those who couldn’t resigned ourselves to the handover.

Since July 1997, with the exception of the Article 23 protests in 2003, Hongkongers have acquiesced in government policies that aimed at Hong Kong’s total and complete integration with mainland China. This includes the disqualification of pro-democracy legislators and electoral candidates, and the “co-location” of Hong Kong and mainland immigration officials at the West Kowloon high-speed railway station, while Beijing continues to deny Hongkongers universal suffrage promised in Articles 45 and 68 of the Basic Law.

The “umbrella movement” failed because Hongkongers could not put up with being unable to get to work or get home as fast as we would like.

Hongkongers have come to understand that, but for the Legislative Council protest on June 12, the extradition bill would have been enacted into law thanks to pro-establishment legislators’ support, and Lam would have created a “favourable environment” for Article 23 legislation.

In addition to forcing Lam to back down on her extradition bill and calling Beijing’s bluff on its constant threats of sending in the People’s Liberation Army throughout July and August, the protesters have exposed the depth of corruption in Hong Kong. Corruption does not only involve the taking of a bribe, and it is not necessarily illegal. It is “legal corruption” that is the most insidious and pervasive.

Joel Hellman and Daniel Kaufmann, both economists previously at the World Bank, argue that inequality of influence generates “a self-reinforcing dynamic in which institutions are subverted, further strengthening the underlying political and economic inequalities”. This is based on findings from the 2002 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey.

Property developers and multinational corporations, among others, have discovered there is a heavy political price for doing business in Hong Kong, and they may easily be used by the Hong Kong and central governments as scapegoats in a political crisis.

An anti-government protester gives a thumbs up to a soldier from the People’s Liberation Army, outside the PLA building in Admiralty, Hong Kong, on August 31. Photo: Sam Tsang

Co-option of the powerful is by no means confined to avenues where monetary gain is the primary concern. Universities are equally susceptible.

While the Basic Law provides for academic freedom in Article 137, Beijing has long regarded universities as primary sites of ideological engineering and control. The councils of Hong Kong’s eight publicly funded universities include members appointed on the basis of political or commercial interests. It should come as no surprise that former chief executive Leung Chun-ying criticised Rocky Tuan Sung-chi, vice-chancellor of Chinese University, for agreeing to condemn the police for “any proven case” of brutality.

It feels like a lifetime ago that the vice-chancellor and pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong resigned in 2000 for pressuring Robert Chung Ting-yiu to discontinue his public opinion polling programme on chief executive Tung Chee-hwa and his administration.

Arthur Schopenhauer observed that “to be a philosopher, that is to say, a lover of wisdom (for wisdom is nothing but truth), it is not enough for a man to love truth, in so far as it is compatible with his own interest, with the will of his superiors, with the dogmas of the church, or with the prejudices and tastes of contemporaries; so long as he rests content with this position, he is only a [friend of his own ego], not a [friend of wisdom]”.

University administrators and academics, especially those in law, could have been far more vocal in dissuading Lam from her extradition bill before the protests erupted in June. Instead, having learned a lesson from the University of Hong Kong’s council rejection in 2015 of Johannes Chan Man-mun’s appointment as pro-vice-chancellor, they have largely fallen silent throughout the saga and protests, with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Polytechnic University meekly condemning “violence in any form”.

Teng Jin-guang, Polytechnic University’s president, refused to shake hands with two mask-wearing doctoral graduates, while uttering the platitude that a diversity of opinions should be respected.

Lam, chancellor of all Hong Kong’s publicly funded universities, has declined to take part in any of their graduation ceremonies altogether, continuing to reserve her public gatherings only for people she deems worthy. This is not the sort of behaviour one expects of a Hong Kong chief executive who has pledged “dialogue” and “listening”. Hongkongers deserve a leader brave enough to brace herself for the metaphorical eggs and tomatoes.

Freedom, of course, includes freedom to choose not to be free. Academic freedom in Hong Kong, thus, encompasses a university’s freedom to be co-opted. Article 137 of the Basic Law refers to academic freedom enjoyed by educational institutions, not individual scholars. Even scholars need to pay rent.

Phil C.W. Chan is senior fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy. He holds law degrees from the University of Hong Kong, Durham, and the National University of Singapore (PhD). He is author of the book China, State Sovereignty and International Legal Order

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