World Watch: WTO worries in Hong Kong
HONG KONG–With some 6,000 international trade officials due here for December's meeting of the 148-nation World Trade Organization, Hong Kong leaders are on edge over the prospect that the event will draw thousands of antiglobalization protesters.
While the formal agenda is about expanding free trade to expand the global economy, the test of the moment may turn out to be about the status of free speech in the former British colony that reverted to control by China in 1997. So far, the signs are guardedly encouraging, as Hong Kong seeks to showcase the freedoms it has retained under its status as a special administrative region of China.
Some 10,000 antiglobalization activists are expected to come to demonstrate during the December 13-18 WTO ministerial meeting, and local officials are concerned about a repeat of the violence that occurred at some past sessions, such as when thousands rampaged through Seattle causing damage and battling police during the 1999 WTO meeting there.
"We are not taking it lightly," Hong Kong's top official, Chief Executive Donald Tsang, told a group of visiting American reporters. "We have seen what happened in Seattle."
Still, Hong Kong officials say they will accommodate protests so long as they are peaceful. There are plans to establish areas for permitted demonstrations not far from the WTO meeting site, the harbor-front Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center that will be ringed by security.
"We do allow people to demonstrate in areas we believe they will not cause havoc to civilized life," said Tsang.
Hong Kong is eager to host the WTO meeting to burnish its reputation as a longtime beacon of free trade and to highlight its recovery from the Asian economic crisis. But it will have to make some adjustments for the week: Officials are planning to close schools, reroute traffic in the central business district, and advise companies to postpone important business meetings. The event is expected to draw some 6,000 delegates, along with around 3,000 journalists and 2,000 other officials.
Hong Kong allows much more leeway for protest than the mainland, where such unauthorized gatherings are banned, but there have been concerns that freedoms in the territory are eroding under Beijing's influence. One sign of high-level concern about the WTO protests is that Yang Wenchang, who is one of Beijing's top officials here, has met with Hong Kong's police chief to discuss preparations to deal with protests and potential violence during the WTO meeting. "I said to him, 'Are you confident?' He said, 'I am full of confidence. The Hong Kong police will handle it according to Hong Kong law,' " Yang said.
For now, Beijing apparently is not inclined to pressure Hong Kong to bar the activists. "They can go to the street and demonstrate peacefully," said Yang, who is commissioner of China's foreign affairs ministry in Hong Kong. "They can publish their views. They can do many things but no violence."
WTO meetings draw a variety of protesters–anticorporate and antipoverty activists, labor union representatives, farmers, and environmentalists–who argue that free trade rules benefit big corporations at the expense of workers, poor nations, and the environment. Hong Kong officials seem particularly concerned about participation here by farmers from South Korea, where there have been violent street protests. At the 2003 WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, a South Korean farmer committed ritual suicide to protest agricultural policies. In addition, authorities are worried that Falun Gong, a group banned by China, will seek to grab attention for its cause.
While Hong Kong imposes few restrictions limiting foreign visitors, Tsang indicated that immigration authorities are developing a watch list, in consultation with foreign law enforcement officials, "to ensure that serious troublemakers will not cause havoc." It is not clear whether the list will be used to bar certain individuals from entering Hong Kong.
The WTO meeting is seen as a make-or-break moment for the round of trade liberalization negotiations that began in Doha, Qatar, in late 2001 with the goal of providing a boost to global economic growth. The negotiations have been hung up over a dispute between the United States and the European Union about eliminating farm subsidies, which protect domestic farmers and limit the ability of poorer nations to sell their agricultural products in the major markets. Developing countries insist they will further open their industries and, especially, service sectors to western companies only if there is progress on the farm issue.
advertisement
