Today we continue our series on ageing Hongkongers whose personal history is interwoven with that of the city since the second world war. In this Lessons from the Past report, Gary Cheung features Democratic Party founding chairman Martin Lee Chu-ming who advocates universal suffrage in Hong Kong and is adamant that democracy will eventually arrive in China.The Democratic Party, which is still the biggest group in the pan-democratic camp, could have been named the "Hong Kong Communist Party" if its founder had got his way nearly 30 years ago.

In 1990, prominent barrister and lawmaker Martin Lee Chu-ming and fellow democrats put their heads together to establish a new political group. When discussing what to call it, Lee had an ingenious, not to mention cheeky, idea.

"My suggestion was the 'Hong Kong Communist Party'," he said. "The Chinese Communist Party had not been properly registered in Hong Kong. So we could have used the name Hong Kong Communist Party. If they attacked us, it would have been fun. It would be the Chinese Communist Party attacking the Hong Kong Communist Party!"

But when they voted to choose the name, there was only one vote in support of his proposal. "That was my vote. My members didn't have the foresight," Lee said in a recent interview with the Post.

The group was eventually named the United Democrats of Hong Kong, which merged with Meeting Point, another pro-democracy group, in 1994 to form the Democratic Party. Lee, who was chairman of Hong Kong's Bar Association from 1980 to 1983, became founding chairman of both the United Democrats and the Democratic Party.
Lee, the international face of the fight for democracy in the city before and after the 1997 handover, is known as being an anti-communist politician. It may sound inconceivable that he once suggested the name Hong Kong Communist Party for his group. But his family had a long history of dealing with the communists.

His late father, Li Yin-wo, was a Kuomintang general who fought against the Japanese during the second world war. While studying in France in the 1920s, Li crossed paths with Zhou Enlai, later to become premier after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

"My father studied pharmacy at Lyon University and was very active among Kuomintang people in France whereas Zhou was active among the communist students," Lee said."They knew and respected one another. One day they sat down, each trying to convert the other. And after 24 hours, they shook hands, parted company and each went his own way."

Li moved to Hong Kong with his family after the communists won the civil war in 1949 rather than heading to Taiwan like many of his army colleagues. He became a Chinese teacher at Wah Yan College, Kowloon, where Lee studied.

"My father told me he moved to Hong Kong because the Kuomintang government was too corrupt. He said: 'I don't want to spend the rest of my life serving a corrupt government'," Lee said.

"My father didn't want to stay on to help the communists because they attacked the family, which is the basic unit of society. He said: 'How can it destroy the basic unit of society? I cannot subscribe to that so I decided to come to Hong Kong.'"But Lee was puzzled as to why his father moved house nearly every year. Li revealed why when his son was studying at the University of Hong Kong in the late 1950s.

"My father said: 'Every year Zhou Enlai would send his emissaries to Hong Kong to invite me back to China to help him. I didn't want to serve the communists so I moved house to get away from them. So hopefully they would not come and bother me again,'" Lee said.

His father died in 1989 at the age of 92.

The younger Lee became an accidental hero in the eyes of Beijing loyalists in Hong Kong when he represented a manual labourer from the Federation of Trade Unions in the late 1960s.

The coolie insisted he was innocent and framed by police for possession of dangerous drugs. "He was convicted and was appealing," said Lee, who became a barrister in 1966. "I remember in those days, people in Hong Kong generally didn't like communists because they caused a lot of problems during the 1967 riots. So no solicitor wanted to represent them."


The 1967 riots were a spillover from the Cultural Revolution, which began on the mainland a year earlier. The communist-instigated riots claimed 51 lives, including 15 in bombings.

"But barristers have no choice, we have the taxi cab principle - that is, whenever a case comes to you and you have the expertise to do it and they are willing to pay your fees, you have to accept it," said Lee, who agreed to act for the coolie.

"I soon discovered there was something wrong with the trial because the defendant spoke Chiuchow dialect and couldn't understand Cantonese. But the proceedings were conducted in Cantonese and then translated into English. The defendant didn't understand what was being said in court."

Lee appealed on these grounds and succeeded, and there was a new trial. The coolie was eventually acquitted.

"They wanted to carry me on their shoulders and to invite me to Beijing to see the leaders," he said. "The taxi cab principle requires me to do the case but it does not require me to do anything after that. So I declined both requests."

He said his success in defending the coolie might have laid the foundation for his subsequent relationship with Beijing. In 1982, he led a group of lawyers and professionals to the capital to discuss the future of Hong Kong with top mainland officials.Li Hou, deputy director of the State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, received the group. He told them Beijing would take back Hong Kong in 1997 when the lease of much of the territory expired and sought their views on the scenario.

"I said if you want Hong Kong to continue to prosper but also be handed back to China, it's like the fish and the palm of a bear, which are both Chinese delicacies. You can't have both," Lee told the mainland official.

An angry Li slammed the table, and asked why Lee had so little confidence in the Chinese people in Hong Kong? Li said Singapore was a Chinese community and doing very well.

Lee reminded him Singapore was an independent country. "If you allow Hong Kong to be independent, you won't need a statesman like Lee Kuan Yew to do it properly for the people there," Lee said. "I told him that without independence, it would not be possible for Hong Kong to continue to prosper when its sovereignty is handed back to China."Lee proposed extending Britain's lease of Hong Kong for another 50 years when it expired in 1997 while China would take back sovereignty."

Those were the days when people could voice their opinions publicly and fearlesslyMartin Lee

Li rebuffed Lee's proposal, saying "sovereignty without administration is empty".

Lee had another chance to express his views on Hong Kong's future the following year. He and another 11 people formed the "Young Professionals Delegation" and headed north for talks with central government leaders. It was arranged for them to meet National People's Congress vice-chairman Xi Zhongxun, father of current President Xi Jinping, at the Great Hall of the People.

Ahead of the meeting, the delegation, which included legislator Allen Lee Peng-fei and barrister Andrew Li Kwok-nang, was told Xi was a man of "liberal thinking". "I don't remember anything in particular but it was a cordial meeting," Lee said.

Andrew Li became Hong Kong's chief justice in 1997 and remained head of the judiciary until his retirement in 2010.

"In those days, China wanted very much to take Hong Kong back. They were completely accommodating and their intention was to let Hong Kong people feel comfortable," he said.He noted the central government's accommodating approach was in stark contrast to its growing assertiveness over Hong Kong in recent years, probably because the city's value had declined in the eyes of Beijing.

I believe democracy is certainly good, not just for Hong Kong but for every countryMartin Lee

Although his stance was markedly different, Lee was the target of Beijing's attempts to create a united front in Hong Kong and was appointed a member of the Basic Law Drafting Committee in 1985.

In 1987, Xu Jiatun, director of the Hong Kong branch of Xinhua News Agency, the predecessor to Beijing's liaison office in the city, suggested Lee form a political party with Allen Lee and some businesspeople. But Martin Lee declined.

But it was the 1989 Tiananmen Square krackdown that forever changed Lee's ties with the mainland. He and fellow democrat Szeto Wah vowed to boycott the Drafting Committee's meetings after mainland authorities snuffed out the 1989 pro-democracy protests, killing hundreds. Beijing later stopped the pair from taking part in the drafting process until they gave up their "anti-China stance".

Lee, who turns 81 in June, said a lot of people believed it was impossible to achieve universal suffrage in Hong Kong.

"If we keep on fighting, there is always a chance, difficult as it is. I believe democracy is certainly good, not just for Hong Kong but for every country," he said.

"Even if China is the last country to have democracy, it will come to China, though I will not be there to see it."

Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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