The talks in
Hong Kong between pro-Chinese government officials and pro-democracy student
leaders are aimed mainly at easing tensions in the streets. Not on the agenda
is fundamental reform of the conditions that provoked the unrest.
Chief among
these conditions is China’s refusal to loosen its grip on the city’s political
system by allowing full and open democratic elections for Hong Kong’s top
public office, as it had promised to do. The protesters insist that it is their
right to choose who runs Hong Kong, but Beijing-backed officials have supported
only cosmetic changes to the city’s restrictive election law.
A related
problem, as Neil Gough of The Times reported
recently, is a persistent and widening wealth gap in Hong Kong. A small
pro-Chinese government elite has profited greatly from the city’s role in the
rise of China, while incomes and opportunities for
the middle and working classes have been squeezed. This elite, which
controls the most lucrative sectors of Hong Kong’s economy, fears that greater
democracy — in the form of political participation and shared prosperity —
would threaten the increasingly monopolistic crony capitalism from which they
benefit.
The
inequality that has helped to fuel the unrest in Hong Kong is reflected in the
name the protesters took for their effort — Occupy Central, an allusion to the
Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in the United States three years ago that
elevated the issue of inequality in America’s political and economic debates.
Occupy
Central, however, has a bigger challenge than its American namesake. It faces a
totalitarian regime determined to deny its opponents the political means of
changing their circumstances.
The problem
in America is a dysfunctional political system that puts party ambitions and
campaign donations above public needs. Still, elections and other established
political processes, when used
and protected,
provide a way to identify and choose new and presumably more responsive
leaders.
The worthy
goal, in Hong Kong and the United States, is to link robust democracy to robust
capitalism to broadly raise living standards. Like all worthy goals, it is not
achievable or sustainable without struggle.