From the Umbrella Movement to the Anti-Extradition Bill Protests: Hong Kong’s political predicament under Chinese rule

Hong Kong has for months been rocked by protests, triggered by the government’s proposal of an extradition bill. With demonstrations taking on a much wider scope of demanding democratic reform, this paper attempts to offer possible explanations for the current political impasse between Hong Kong and mainland China over the issue of universal suffrage. In doing so, this paper seeks to construct a triangular model of institutional constraint, clashing visions of democracy and mutual political distrust for understanding the struggle of the political parties in the pan-democratic camp (the pan-democrats) for realizing universal suffrage in Hong Kong since the 1980s, the nature of current political predicament they found themselves in and the current political impasse between the pan-democrats and Beijing. While acknowledging that Hong Kong’s democratization has been a slow and frustrating process, this paper argues that the dilemma facing Hong Kong’s pan-democrats and Beijing’s leadership is attributed to the institutional constraints of Basic Law on Hong Kong’s system of governance, the clashing visions of Beijing-led Chinese-style democracy and Western-style liberal democracy as advocated by the pan-democrats and the mutual political distrust between the two parties.