• Digging In on Election Fight, Hong Kong Students Prepare for Boycott By ALAN WONG

Digging In on Election Fight, Hong Kong Students Prepare for Boycott
By ALAN WONG

A poster calling university students to join a meeting for a planned strike to protest Beijing's limits on how the territory's next leader will be chosen.

In September 2012, some 8,000 black-clad students assembled in front of the main library of The Chinese University of Hong Kong to protest the government’s push to introduce so-called national education into Hong Kong schools. 

 

The proposed curriculum changes, denounced by protesters as political indoctrination by the Chinese Communist Party, were shelved indefinitely.

Two years later, on Monday, Hong Kong university students will gather at the same site to start a boycott of classes to protest Beijing’s ruling last month imposing tight restrictions on how the city’s leader, the chief executive, will be chosen in the 2017 election.

The student strike would be the first of a series of planned protests, including a blockade of the city’s business district led by the Occupy Central With Love and Peace movement, which might presage what the activists call a “new era of civil disobedience.” 

This time, however, few participants expect they will achieve their goals quickly.

“In the short term, we of course believe that we won’t have very strong changes,” Lester Shum, a leader of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, which is spearheading the strike, said at a news conference on Thursday.
Alex Chow, secretary general of the student federation, said, “We want the Communist Party to understand that Hong Kong teenagers and students will not obey their absurd decision.” 

He added that he hoped the student strike would inspire other types of participation, such as labor strikes.
In Beijing on Tuesday, Zhang Dejiang, the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, which handed down the election ruling, told visiting Hong Kong legislators that protests like Occupy Central and the student strike would not change that decision. 

The ruling would, starting with the 2017 election, allow all eligible voters in Hong Kong — about five million residents — to cast ballots for the chief executive, who previously has been chosen by a small election committee.

However, under the new rules, candidates must first be vetted by a nominating committee loyal to Beijing. 

On Friday, Mr. Zhang said that candidates “do not have to love the Communist Party, but they cannot be opposed to the party and its one-party rule.”

Early next year, Hong Kong’s Legislative Council is expected to vote on legislation making election changes that conform to Beijing’s framework.

If that legislation fails to pass, the current system of selection by a 1,200-member election committee will remain in place.
On Friday afternoon, in anticipation of next week’s strike, students held a ceremony at the University of Hong Kong in a square named for the revolutionary and founding president of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen.

Levin Chan, who is majoring in economics and finance, said he planned to take part in the class boycott because he feels a responsibility to keep public attention on Hong Kong’s political development, although he added that it was “quite impossible to influence the government’s decision.”

The five-day class boycott will begin on Monday with a rally at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, then move to a public space near the Hong Kong government headquarters.

A coalition of legislators, called the pan-democrats, who have been pressing for a more open nominating system, have said they will veto the legislation on election changes when it is introduced next year.

Alan Leong, 56, the leader of the pro-democracy Civic Party, said in an interview on Wednesday that failure to implement a more open election method for Hong Kong’s chief executive would lead to a legitimacy crisis for the government. 

But any hope of greater democracy was dashed, he said, after Beijing’s decision in August.

“It is more than clear that the fight for democracy will not be successful during my lifetime,” he said.