Hong Kong's embattled democracy: Perspectives from East Asian NIEs

This article examines the origins and development of Hong Kong's embattled democracy. It seeks to explain why, although Hong Kong has already acquired most of the "prerequisites" for democratization, its democracy has been so restricted and contested compared to those in the East Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs). It also argues that Hong Kong possesses much less favorable structural conditions for democratization than its East Asian neighbors because it has a stronger conservative alliance of state and Big Business on the one hand, and a weaker populist alliance of service professionals and grass-roots population on the other. However, the Tiananmen incident of June 1989 revitalized the Hong Kong democracy project almost overnight, and now that the democrats have been strengthened, they have been able to contest the rules of restricted democracy as imposed by the conservative alliance of Beijing and Big Business.