{"id":22035,"date":"2019-11-20T21:02:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T13:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/?p=22035"},"modified":"2019-12-02T21:19:44","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T13:19:44","slug":"dabs-jasper-tsang-reveals-big-splits-in-pro-government-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2019\/11\/20\/22035\/","title":{"rendered":"DAB\u2019s Jasper Tsang reveals big splits in pro-government camp"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt seems the government is unwilling to doing anything until it\u2019s too late\u201d says former Legco president<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adam N. Lee, Socialist Action<\/p>\n

Jasper Tsang is one of the founders of DAB and a pillar figure within Hong Kong\u2019s establishment camp, albeit one known for a measure of independent thinking. His interview with French scholar Jean-Philippe B\u00e9ja published in HKFP reveals the full extent of the splits within the ruling class.<\/p>\n

Tsang says there are four main protagonists in the current crisis: The protesters, the public, the government and Beijing. In the interview, conducted in October just after the government passed the anti-mask law, Tsang has no doubt that a \u201clarge part of our population\u201d supports the protests.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur biggest problem is that the weakest of the four players is our government. There is no strong decision-making mechanism. The CE listens to the hardliners, and there is no politician who could take responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tsang agrees that this is \u201cthe largest movement in the history of Hong Kong\u201d and says that, with the benefit of hindsight, nobody should have been taken by surprise. The politicians \u201cshould have known\u201d people in Hong Kong, especially young people, were angry with the government over economic equality and the lack of democracy.<\/p>\n

As a student Tsang participated in the Maoist-led revolt against British rule in the 1960s. His brother was jailed for 18 months by the British. Like many former Maoists in Hong Kong, Tsang and the rest of the DAB have marched in lockstep behind the CCP\u2019s transition into a regime that defends capitalism but with the methods of an ultra-repressive \u201cparty\u201d state. The DAB is effectively the CCP in Hong Kong, because the CCP itself does not operate legally in the territory.<\/p>\n

Tsang admits the pro-CCP establishment \u2013 himself included \u2013 sowed the seeds of the current crisis with their white terror against the democracy movement after the Umbrella Revolution of 2014:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last five years, the Hong Kong government and many of my colleagues in the pro-government camp thought that we were winning victory after victory; but every time, people became angrier.\u201d<\/p>\n

This period saw six opposition legislators ejected from their seats, hundreds of political arrests and new draconian laws enacted.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Pro-establishment argue for an independent commission<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tsang argues for political concessions to defuse the protests, especially for the government to accede to an independent commission to investigate the police. But this is being blocked by \u201chardliners\u201d \u2013 a euphemism for the CCP regime.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost everyone\u201d he says, including the DAB leadership \u2013 but only in private \u2013 have been urging Carrie Lam to adopt this approach. This is \u201cthe only demand that could be met\u201d says Tsang, who of course regards the demand for free elections as utopian.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not that the police doesn\u2019t allow her to do it. Carrie Lam explained that the morale of the police is quite fragile, and that the government can\u2019t do anything that would harm [their] morale. Perhaps she told Beijing that it was necessary to boost the police\u2019s morale, and therefore the central government came in support of the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality, the CCP regime now views any questioning of the police as a red line. The police have become its Pretorian Guard to implement a Tiananmen-in-slow-motion, forestalling the need to use mainland troops. For this reason, despite a majority of the local capitalist establishment wanting to meet this demand, of course in a very watered down form, it has been killed off by Beijing.<\/p>\n

That the ruling elite in Hong Kong is in crisis and more divided than ever does not mean we can put any hope in them to have a change of heart or deliver solutions. Real democratic change can only come about by the working class organising itself and fighting to take the power away from the capitalists and the authoritarian regime that defends them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt seems the government is unwilling to doing anything until it\u2019s too late\u201d says former Legco president<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":22036,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[133,124],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hong-kong","8":"category-news"},"yoast_head":"\nDAB\u2019s Jasper Tsang reveals big splits in pro-government camp - China Worker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2019\/11\/20\/22035\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"DAB\u2019s Jasper Tsang reveals big splits in pro-government camp - 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