Exchange for Support (Lee Yee)
There was one other major world event on Jul 1, apart from the promulgation of the National Security Law for Hong Kong. A referendum was held in Russia on the revision of the country’s Constitution.
In the Newscast on the night before last, CCTV broadcast a key feature about the telephone dialogue between Xi Jinping and Russian President Putin. Putin expressed firm support from Russia for China's efforts to maintain national security in Hong Kong. Xi mentioned the Russian constitutional amendment, endorsed by a majority vote in a referendum, which will allow Putin’s term as the president to last until 2036. Xi reaffirmed China’s firm support for Russia's commitment to a development direction that is appropriate for the nation.
Not a word was uttered by China on Russia’s celebration of its 160-year occupation of Vladivostok. Instead, the compliments on Putin’s uninterrupted re-election were dished out in exchange for Russia’s support for the National Security Law.
Although there are 53 countries on the United Nations Human Rights Commission (and reportedly 20 more) that support Hong Kong National Security Law, once all the names of these countries are unfolded, it is not hard to spot that none of them are countries that would likely attract Chinese nor Hong Kong people to invest, study, or live in. There is not a single great power amongst them. However, though opposition to the law has only been voiced out by 27 countries, all of them are influential with significant leverage on world affairs. Of course, among them the most adamant is the United States, which has withdrawn from the Human Rights Commission. Now that Russia is at last joining the Chinese bandwagon, the situation looks a little less awkward for China.
On July 1, the referendum on the constitutional amendments in Russia drew to a close. 78% of the voters supported the amendments, the most important one of which is the "removal of the upper limit of the presidential term in the ‘re-election’ clause”. That is to say, all the presidential terms before the amendment takes effect will be revoked. Everything will be back to zero. Putin's term of office will start all over again. According to the new constitution, Putin can be re-elected as the president until 2036. He will have stayed in the highest power for the longest in Russian history, even surpassing the reign of Peter the Great.
Like Xi Jinping, who forced through the National Security Law for Hong Kong, Putin did not receive any blessings from other major international powers for his feat. There was no strong opposition because after all it went through a referendum. The United States and the European Union, however, were skeptical about the voting process, questioning whether there was coercion of voters, or repeated voting.
Russia's deletion of the presidential re-election regulations is analogous to China's deletion of the presidential re-election regulations in the year before last. With both world powers ruled by lifetime leaders, concerns about such a situation have been raised in international public opinion.
Despite all the twists and turns throughout history, in China as well other countries, everything boiled down to power struggles that basically stemmed from succession schemes amongst the most powerful, which in turn came with a lifetime tenure amongst top leaders. A lifetime tenure for the most powerful led to absolute power that bred absolute corruption, which is the root cause of all political complexities in human society.
All the struggles in the royal courts originated from the inheritance of power. The potential heirs, not the sons, of an emperor were the focuses. There was no place for normal family intimacies amongst sons, daughters, siblings, wives and concubines. Family relationships were built on associations with the potential heirs. For the past 70 years in the Soviet Union, the severe suppression of the people by the dictatorship, and all the brutal struggles have all been due to the inheritance of power at the highest level. During Mao Zedong’s rule, every single one of the never ending political movements of class struggles could be traced back to the inheritance of power at the top. Ordinary people were the victims as a result.
After millennia in the dark ages, it was not until 1776 when the United States became independent that the problem of inheritance of power at the highest level was basically solved. Finally, people could vote to authorize the succession of power in a legal manner, without bloodshed and contention. A system was established to ensure the separation of the three powers, a multi-party system, freedom of news reporting, speech, religion, and association, etc. as checks and balances of the highest power so as to prevent absolute corruption that came with absolute power.
In 1800, there were only three democratic countries in the world. By 2015, the number of countries authorized by the peoples’ votes increased to 130. According to Churchill, ‘democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ In all those that have been tried, plebs were inevitably victimized in the power struggles.
Deng Xiaoping might also have understood that power inheritance is the root cause of all political complexities. That was why he laid down the system for naming the heir for the generation after the immediate next. This system achieved a certain period of social stability. What is the impact of abandoning this approach? Putting China aside, what we saw in Hong Kong was the changes in the period from the Causeway Bay Bookstore incident to the implementation of the Hong Kong version of National Security Law.
