Vera Stanton
On a cold morning in early January this year Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam met Major General Peng Jingtang, the newly-appointed Head of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Hong Kong garrison, at the opulent Government House. With a new Covid outbreak dominating the city’s attention, very little news and no fanfare accompanied the occasion.
General Peng arrived direct from his post in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where he headed an elite counter-terrorism paramilitary force of the People’s Armed Police (PAP). The PAP is part of China’s huge internal security apparatus – larger even than the PLA.
The eighth garrison commander since the 1997 handover, Peng is the first appointed since protests and civil unrest rocked the city in 2019, and the first direct appointment from the PAP.
Astute China watchers will recognise Peng’s arrival at the Hong Kong garrison as yet another hardline appointment designed to ‘help safeguard stability and prosperity’ in the renegade Special Administrative Region (SAR).
The People’s Armed Police oversee security in Xinjiang’s prison camps
Peng came from a high-level security role in Xinjiang, where authorities are conducting systematic repression of the Muslim Uyghur minority group.
In Xinjiang Uyghurs have been rounded up and sent to ‘re-education camps’, where detainees and observers have reported forced sterilisations, forced labour, beatings, torture and rape, all in the name of ‘counter-terrorism’ and security operations.
The PAP in Xinjiang, of which Peng was Chief of Staff – are responsible for the oversight of security inside the province’s detention centres. The abhorrent acts of Xinjiang prison guards were recounted in the harrowing story of Uyghur woman and prison camp survivor Tursunay Ziyawudun.
The UK, Canada and the US, amongst others, have already called China’s systematic and ongoing persecution of Uyghurs genocide. Thus far, the New Zealand Labour Party has refused to use the term ‘genocide’ and has stuck to more watered-down language such as ‘severe human rights abuses’.
Peng’s appointment followed the installation of other hardline CCP apparatchiks in Hong Kong, following months of civil unrest in 2019
Peng’s appointment came almost exactly two years after the sudden installation of Luo Huining into the role of head of the Central Liaison Office, as Beijing’s top level representative in Hong Kong.
Luo was something of a surprise choice because of his complete lack of experience in foreign affairs and unfamiliarity with matters pertaining to Hong Kong.
What Luo did possess, however, was loyalty to Xi and experience in tackling difficult ‘security problems’, especially during his time as governor and Party Secretary in Qinghai – a remote Western province bordering Tibet and Xinjiang. During his reign, he oversaw and enforced Beijing’s ‘cultural and religious destruction’ of the Tibetan people.
Some commentators believe that it was no accident that Luo’s appointment came at the end of a long and distinguished career in the ranks of the CCP. Unsullied by existing political ties to the Hong Kong and Macau SARs’ bureaucratic hierarchy, and with a need for further career progression, enforcing Beijing’s hardline policies regardless of the consequences would not be a problem for Luo.
Close Xi Jinping ally Xia Baolong was installed as head of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office
Soon after the appointment of Luo, the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office came under the directorship of Xia Baolong, a close ally of President Xi Jinping. Xia was Xi’s deputy during Xi’s reign as Communist Party (CCP) Secretary of Zhejiang province from 2003 to 2007. Xia took the reins after Xi’s departure.
Xia has a reputation as a CCP hardliner, and his appointment was viewed as a sign of Beijing’s intention to ratchet up scrutiny and ideological control in Hong Kong.
While he was Secretary of Zhejiang, Xia ordered a crackdown on the province’s Christian churches. Xia was responsible for ordering the local government of Wenzhou – a city populated by more than a million Christians – to tear down crosses and raze the churches.
This included churches that were officially sanctioned by the local authorities. During the purge, a number of influential church pastors were also arrested and detained.
New Chief Executive endorsement demonstrates that Beijing views security as the city’s top priority
On April 4th, incumbent Hong Kong Chief Executive (CE) Carrie Lam announced that she would not be running for another term in the upcoming elections. Current Chief Secretary and Lam’s second-in-charge, John Lee quickly became the rumoured choice for the new CE.
The rumours were confirmed two days later when Lee resigned from his role as Chief Secretary. On the same day, the Liaison Office confirmed that he would be the only candidate to receive the Central Government’s endorsement.
Lee’s career was not as an administrator, like his predecessors, but as a police officer. He was head of Hong Kong’s Security Bureau during the 2019 protest crackdown. He was a strong proponent of the 2020 National Security Law (NSL), which criminalised loosely-defined and wide-ranging acts of succession, subversion and ‘colluding with foreign forces’. Lee publicly stated that he was thankful to Beijing for pushing through the NSL.
Lee is also of the belief that the CCP’s counter-terrorism measures in Xinjiang were ‘worth studying’.
The nomination of former police officer Lee into Hong Kong’s top role breaks with the tradition of CEs who have risen through the ranks of Administrative Officers. As a candidate outside of the ranks of the civilian administrators, he will need to rely heavily on the Central Liaison office – and Luo Huining – in his choice of appointment of high-level officials.
Beijing’s pattern of installing hardliners with a strong focus on ‘security’ is a new and deeply concerning trajectory for the city
The appointment of loyal hardliners, all of whom built their careers upon their successes in tackling significant ‘security problems’, is a deeply worrying development for the future of Hong Kong. The selection of John Lee for Hong Kong’s top leadership role only serves to enhance these concerns.
It seems unlikely that Xi’s henchmen will trouble themselves with the needs or well-being of the Hong Kong people. Worryingly, their policies may prove to dramatically accelerate the downward trend in quality of life and decline of personal security for the residents of the city, and finish Hong Kong as an international business and financial hub once and for all.