Keeping the hope of democracy alive? The anti-extradition bill movement and Hong Kong’s political predicament

Hong Kong has for months been rocked by protests, triggered by the government’s proposal of an extradition bill. Yet, notwithstanding the controversial bill’s withdrawal, demonstrations have continued and have taken on a much wider scope of demanding democratic reform. One of the five key demands listed by the protesters is the implementation of universal suffrage. It is in this context that political parties of the pan-democratic camp have played an important role in pushing for the realization of universal suffrage in Hong Kong since the 1980s. This democracy movement has culminated in the 2014 Umbrella Movement, albeit without success. In attempting to offer possible explanations for the current political impasse between Hong Kong and mainland China over the issue of universal suffrage, this paper seeks to construct a triangular model of institutional constraint, clashing visions of democracy and mutual political distrust for understanding the pan-democrats’ struggle 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.