Money is the Authoritarian Power

A legal aid group in Beijing was recently shut down by the government and was subject to a penalty of 1.2 million yuan (US$175,000) for alleged tax evasion. Xu Zhidong, a member of the group, was detained by the authority on July 30. By coincidence, in Hong Kong, a supposedly free city of China, two cultural preservationists were suddenly charged with HK$270,000 (US$34,000) as a compensation for the cost of a judicial review two years ago. Money seems to be a new weapon for the Beijing and Hong Kong governments to suppress the civil society.

Gomeng group, a Beijing-based legal aid group, recently represented parents whose children suffered from milk tainted with industrial chemical melamine, a scandal resulting in a worldwide panic over Chinese food. Before detention of any lawyer, the fine came first and the amount was high enough to make the group bankrupt and terminate its operation. And the arrest followed, despite without any notice, in the way expected by many Chinese political dissidents. Over the past few years, many lawyers have been suspended their licenses and some of them are even detained and charged with serious offenses such as "subversion".

The year of 2009 is viewed as a politically sensitive year in Mainland China. Although the 90th anniversary of the May 4 Movement and the 20th anniversary of the June 4 massacre already passed, the control over dissident voices and activities continues. Early this year, Liu Xiaobo, a famous dissident writer and an intellectual leader of the democratic movement in 1989, was arrested and charged with "sedition" and "subversion".

While the case of Beijing almost becomes a part of the ordinary life in China, what happens to the activists in Hong Kong came as a surprise. Two years ago, massive protests against the demolition of the Star Ferry Pier and the Queen's Pier, two iconic buildings at the city centre of Hong Kong. Hoi-dick Chu and Loy Ho filed an application for judicial review of the government's decision. At the same time, they applied for legal aid to cover the huge cost of court proceeding involved. Yet the legal aid failed to cover the first few days of court proceeding. After two years, the government issues a notice to claim from them a huge amount of compensation for preparation work.

It is believed that the government raised this issue again at this moment because Hoi-dick Chu gets involved in another movement against government's project of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Rapid Railway. The compensation, high enough to make Ho and Chu bankrupt, is taking a chilling effect in Hong Kong. Since 1997, quite a lot of social movements against Hong Kong government's misbehavior have ended up with judicial review challenging the administrative power which is not elected and also not accountable to any electoral body.

What makes these two incidents similiar and unusual is money. In the past, coercion is the Beijing government's favourite mean. The Hong Kong government always acts like a lenient authority. Probably now they already make up their mind to learn more from the Singapore government to use money to crackdown on the civil society.