By Jay Scott Kanes

HONG KONG -- Massive, unpopular, distrusted and ever-manipulating, the largest political party in Hong Kong operates in secrecy like an illegal organization. No one admits to joining, yet the membership numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rules the world’s most populous nation, but lurks behind closed doors in Hong Kong, its most developed city. The Party’s name never appears on political posters or the ballots in Hong Kong’s so-called “elections”. Even so, by applying pressure from behind the scenes, it controls nearly everything.

Hong Kong people should know more about the CCP and what it does among them, says Christine Loh who has written a “politically sensitive” book, Underground Front, The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong (2010, Hong Kong University Press, 360 pages). Trained as a lawyer, Loh’s a former legislator now leading the Civic Exchange, a public-policy think-tank.

“I think it’s healthy to discuss this subject,” Loh said. “Probably Hong Kong people never will learn about Chinese politics if we don’t enter a phase of believing we can take an active interest – finally asking about the Party, what it does, what it did and how it works. Continual silence just slows Hong Kong’s ability to understand the political system we need to navigate.”

At the University of Hong Kong, Loh recently joined outspoken journalists Ching Cheong and Steve Vines to discuss Underground Front and its “taboo topic”. “The Communist Party’s so important,” said Ching. “It affects our daily and future lives.”

“By any measure, it’s by far Hong Kong’s biggest political party, yet it ‘doesn’t exist’,” Vines marveled.

Loh doubts if the CCP feels “ready” to bring its activities into the open. Using propaganda and not-so-subtle manipulation, it tries to steer Hong Kong’s people toward greater “patriotism”, meaning devotion to the Party. Loh writes: “…the united front… is a strategy to unite with all forces that could be united with the CCP to fight a common enemy. It is thus a co-optation strategy to bring as many people on side as possible, and coupled with propaganda, these were, and remain, the essential hand-in-glove tools to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Hong Kong community…. While propaganda work provides the substance and materials of the Party line on various issues, united front work targets people of influence to bring then on-side so that they could accept the party line or at least not object to it.”

Nationwide, the CCP totals 73 million members, apparently including several hundred thousand members and dozens of affiliated organizations among Hong Kong’s seven million people. From a Hong Kong Liaison Office, it pushes tentacles deep into the media, labor unions, business groups and the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), a much smaller political group that enters elections. As needed, these united-front organizations “perform” by vehemently proclaiming the Party line on contentious issues.

“The head of the Party committee always comes from China – it’s never someone local,” said Ching, who once worked for the left-wing media. Later, he went to prison for offending the Party.

After 1984 when Britain agreed to return Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, the CCP sent “a lot more people” to live and work here. Opportunistic locals, like business tycoons and celebrities, became easier to recruit. Pliable tycoons always protect their interests and could be persuaded by providing the right rewards, like business privileges or prestigious positions on advisory bodies.

Disagreements within the Party stay out of public view. “It’s a complicated picture,” Ching said. “There’s a sharp conflict between locally recruited members and those sent from the Chinese mainland. More conflict divides the local members. Those recruited before 1984 suffered in the tough times of British rule. Later when lots of people tried to enter the Party, the early recruits called them ‘suddenly turned patriotic guys’.”

The CCP wants to maintain a “pure” membership. “It’s hard to join the Party and even harder to leave it,” Loh said.

“If you wanted to join, you wouldn’t even get an application,” Ching agreed. “Only after the Party organization spots you and persuades you by whatever means does an application form appear.”

The recruitment, persuasion and membership procedures resemble those of a cult or triad society (Chinese crime gang). As Loh’s book reveals: “It is heavy-manpower work requiring great patience and a large bevy of people to cultivate relations with all sorts of people in Hong Kong. Since personal relationships are very important in this line of work, the Party often uses its best people for those contacts that are considered the most valuable. They would even pay attention to the target’s birthday and other anniversaries to ensure gifts were sent and well-wishes delivered so that the friendship could be cemented. They would invite them to travel to the Mainland and to meet important people so as to give the target a sense that the authorities valued the relationship. It is vital that the target is made to feel important.

“Party members have revealed that when they joined the Party in the past they were taken to Guangzhou to process the formalities for admission, which required the applicant to provide detailed background information. Members’ files were kept in a two-story building at Xiaobei Huayuan in Guangzhou where CCP Hong Kong had an office. As part of the initiation process, a new member would attend briefings.”

Despite the rigid procedures, most modern members join for opportunistic, not ideological, reasons. “I’d guess that ideology and true loyalty to the country no longer matter to the new recruits,” Ching said.

“In Hong Kong, the harshest anti-Communist critics all come out from within the Communist organizations,” he added. “Why? Because we have the ability to think independently and so know there’s something wrong with the Party policy.”

Little wonder that corruption rots much of China’s political structure! “No one in all of China knows exactly how the Communist Party finances its operations,” Ching said. “That’s because there’s no difference between the Party coffers and the state coffers. Basically, they’re the same, so it’s difficult to pin down exact figures on how much the Party spends each year. Unless you work in the Party’s central secretariat, you couldn’t venture even the slightest guess.”

With the CCP so deeply embedded, most Hong Kong people know it won’t retreat anytime soon. But no amount of propaganda, arm-twisting and cajoling means they need to like the Party or its agenda.

For more information about the book Underground Front: www.civic-exchange.org or www.hkupress.org.


Loh finds plenty to ponder in a city gripped
by a powerful, but shy, 'political octopus'.


Vines, Loh and Ching make a forthright trio.