The Wrong Man for the Job

It is often the fate of unpopular political leaders to discover that news of their departure is more compelling than anything they did while in office. Tung Chee-hwa is discovering this to be so, as Hong Kong brims with reports of his pending resignation.

Although Tung is widely perceived as both incompetent and out of touch, his departureif it indeed takes placeis unlikely to be greeted with enthusiasm. On the contrary, many in Hong Kong will see it as an ominous sign of China’s tightened grip on the political system, flying in the face of previous assurances that Hong Kong people would rule Hong Kong. No doubt ill health will be cited as the reason for Tung’s departure, but only the most gullible will believe it. In truth, if Tung goes, it will be because the Chinese leadership wants him out before his administration discovers new ways to blunder.

Tung came to office on a wave of goodwill. But this was soon dissipated by a reluctance to engage with the people, an almost embarrassing embrace of any visiting Chinese official, and a resolute refusal to contemplate constitutional reform. The Communist Party leadership chose Tung because he was seen as being intensely patriotic and shared their authoritarian instincts. And it helped that he was not Cantonese, unlike the majority of Hong Kong people, but came from a prominent Shanghainese family, and was far more culturally in tune with the nation’s northern leaders.

Tung had the great misfortune to become Hong Kong’s first Chief Executive just as the Asian financial crisis broke and the local economy slid into decline. But his real difficulties stemmed not from economic discontent but from a feeling that he was out of touch with the people. Matters came to a head during the SARS crisis when Tung stayed away from both the victims of the disease and from those battling on the front line against it. Dismay over his invisibility turned to farce when his wife was dispatched to a particularly badly hit housing estate dressed in a spaceman-like outfit that ensured she would be spared any chance of bodily contact. Tung’s defenders insist that he is a sincere leader not given to cheap gimmicks. But he did not need the glad-handing skills of his predecessor Chris Patten, Britain’s last governor, to demonstrate a responsiveness to popular opinion. He just needed to show that he had some idea why his stubborn opposition to an extension of representative government generated the kind of monster protest rally first seen on July 1, 2003, and repeated last year.

The Chinese Communist Party will never admit that it made a bad choice of Chief Executive. But nor do those Hong Kong democrats who have long called for Tung’s head have any reason to celebrate his dismissal. For the manner of his departure is likely not just to impede progress toward the achievement of democracy. It also demonstrates that Beijing has long forgotten the promise of a “high degree of autonomy” for its new colony.