The Robert Chung Affair at a Hong Kong University

The Robert Chung Affair at a Hong Kong University
It's instructive to compare the wide exposure this case received in Hong Kong, making headline and lead news in the media, whereas the case of NCKU's defiance of a legal Ministry ruling and related human rights abuses at that university has received almost no national exposure.


7/15/2003 4:05 PM
Subject: HONG KONG: The Robert Chung Incident. This is a summary of the
scandal at the University of Hong Kong that made headline news in July,
2000, discussing a "culture of subservience," where relationships replace
"accountability" (law) at the university.
http://www.ahrchk.net/hrsolid/mainfile.php/2000vol10no12/770/

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Asian Human Rights Commission - Human Rights SOLIDARITY

HONG KONG: The Robert Chung Incident
n July 7, Hong Kong awoke to a front-page story
in the local South China Morning Post in which
Dr. Robert Chung Ting-yiu, director of the Public
Website Opinion Programme of the Journalism and Media
Studies Centre at Hong Kong University (HKU),
said that he had received political pressure from
Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa through a 'special
channel' to discontinue his public opinion polls
on Tung's popularity and the Hong Kong
government's credibility. A week later Chung
revealed that the 'special channel' was the head
of the university, Vice Chancellor Cheng
Yiu-chung, and his deputy, Pro Vice Chancellor
Wong Siu-lun. Although the allegations were
quickly denied by Tung and the two HKU
administrators, a controversy immediately erupted
in Hong Kong over questions of government
interference in the work of academics. As a
result of these concerns about the state of
academic freedom in Hong Kong, the university set
up a three-member panel to investigate Chung's
claims. The panel was led by Justice Noel Power,
a non-permanent member of the Court of Final
Appeal (CFA) and a former acting chief justice,
and included Ronny Wong Fook-hum, a senior
counsel and former Bar Association chairman, and
Pamela Chan Wong-shui, chief executive of the
Consumer Council.

Through the 11 days of open hearings in August,
the panel heard that Andrew Lo Cheung-on, a
senior special assistant to the chief executive,
met with Vice Chancellor Cheng on Jan. 6, 1999,
in which the topic of Robert Chung's public
opinion polls was discussed. Lo asked whether the
polls were done in Chung's personal capacity or
were carried out in the name of the university,
whether the polls were monitored by the
university and who chose the topics for the
polls. The vice chancellor responded that the
academic environment at HKU prohibited any
interference in the work of its professors.
During the meeting, Lo also inquired whether
Chung's polls could be considered to be neutral
as Chung was a political commentator in the
community as well as a pollster. Lo raised this
issue, he said, because Chung was often quoted in
newspapers on political topics and because he had
sent a letter to Tung before the handover in 1997
with suggestions on political reform.

The panel also learned that this meeting was
followed by two others initiated by Prof. Wong on
Jan. 29 and Nov. 1 between himself and Robert
Chung. It was at these meetings that Chung claims
political pressure was exerted on him to stop his
polls on Tung and the government. However, Wong,
who was Chung's Ph.D. thesis supervisor and
mentor, maintains he met Chung to share with him
the concerns of others in the community about his
work, including the vice chancellor and the
office of the chief executive. According to
Chung, Wong also raised a concern about the
university's name being attached to his polls,
especially at the Nov. 1 meeting since Martin Lee
Chu-ming, leader of the Democratic Party, had
used an HKU opinion poll reflecting Tung's
unpopularity in the Legislative Council (Legco)
to complain about passage of a motion of thanks
to Tung for his annual policy address. Chung
quoted Wong as saying that, 'if the University of
Hong Kong were to continuously be deemed as
politically not neutral, it would affect the
university's future development.' As a result of
the first meeting, Chung testified at the hearing
that he became more careful about the choice of
his opinion poll topics and that he stopped
publishing a review of his polls as he could no
longer claim that they were free from political
pressure.

At the second meeting in November, Chung said
that Wong also expressed again the vice
chancellor's displeasure with his polls and
wanted an explanation of them and whether they
would continue. Wong added, says Chung, that what
the vice chancellor thought, as well as Wong, was
that it would be best if the polls on Tung's
popularity were discontinued. If not, Chung says
he was told by Wong that the vice chancellor
'would dry up our research programme'-a remark
that Wong denied making.

In addition, the panel was told during its
hearings that Tung Chee-hwa had directly told
Vice Chancellor Cheng that he was concerned with
Robert Chung's polls on his popularity and the
government's credibility. In their testimonies,
Pro Vice Chancellor Cheng Kai-ming and Prof.
Felice Lieh-mak, head of the Department of
Psychiatry and a former member of the Executive
Council (Exco), Hong's Kong's cabinet, said that
in a meeting with Cheng on May 11, 1999, that the
vice chancellor had said that Tung had raised
concerns about the opinion polls with him.
According to Prof. Cheng Kai-ming and Prof.
Lieh-mak, the vice chancellor though did not ask
them to take any action nor did he indicate any
specific response requested by the chief
executive, although, they said, the vice
chancellor was worried about the chief
executive's views.

Prof. Cheng Kai-ming added that he was aware of
allegations in late 1998 or early 1999 that
political pressure was being applied on the
university.

'I developed the impression,' he said, '[that]
the university was under very unfavourable
considerations by either the government or even
people who are near to the Beijing government. .
. . [A]t one point, we felt very conspicuously
that most of the committees that were newly
established for very, very high-powered
decision-making in the government very
conspicuously did not include any member from the
Hong Kong University.'

At the conclusion of the hearing, the panel
released their 74-page report to the public on
Sept. 1. They stated that they found Robert Chung
to be 'an honest witness who was telling the
truth in relation to the matters he is
complaining about.' However, the panel found
Andrew Lo Cheung-on, the chief executive's senior
special assistant, to be a 'poor and untruthful
witness' and that neither Lo nor the vice
chancellor 'disclosed the full and truthful
extent of what was said in [the] meeting [of Jan.
6].' Moreover, the panel continued, 'We are sure
that it was in consequence of a discussion
between the vice chancellor and Prof. S. L. Wong
that Prof. S. L. Wong met and spoke to Dr. Chung
in January 1999,' adding that 'the January and
November conversations were both covert attempts
to push Dr. Chung into discontinuing his polling
work.' They reached this conclusion, the panel
explained, because 'there is a secretive air
about both meetings.' They argued, 'It is this
failure to have open discussion through
recognised channels that weighs heavily with the
panel when considering whether these were illicit
endeavours to silence Dr. Chung because of
political considerations. We have no doubt that
political consideration was the principal reason
that motivated the Jan. 29, 1999, meeting. We are
further satisfied that, while there are other
reasons that led to the Nov. 1, 1999, meeting,
political consideration remained an operative
one.'

As a result of the panel's findings, Vice
Chancellor Cheng Yiu-chung and Pro Vice
Chancellor Wong Siu-lun resigned on Sept. 6 just
before the university council met to vote on
whether or not to accept the panel's report.
Because of their resignations, the university
council decided neither to accept nor reject the
report of the panel, which the university council
itself had selected and empowered with the task
of uncovering the truth about the issues raised
by Dr. Chung. The chairperson of the council,
Yang Ti-liang, said afterwards that the
possibility of legal action, which had been
threatened by the vice chancellor, had played a
role in the council's decision.

In spite of the findings of the panel and the
ensuing resignations at the university, questions
still remain about the role, if any, of the chief
executive, who chose not to testify at the
panel's hearings, saying that he has 'the
responsibility to protect the dignity of the post
and ensure [that] the government can operate
efficiently and normally.'

However, the controversy itself has raised
questions about the dignity and integrity of the
office of the chief executive. Tung could have
restored respect for the office by volunteering
to testify before the panel, especially since
Tung claimed that he was innocent and had nothing
to hide. His mere denials without testifying
before an independent body has not erased the
questions in people's minds.

Because of Tung's refusal to testify and the lack
of credibility attributed to Lo by the panel,
questions remain unanswered about Tung's role in
the Robert Chung incident as well as continuing
uncertainty about Lo's involvement in the
controversy. These unresolved issues have acted
as an impetus for Legco to hold its own inquiry.
Consequently, after the Sept. 10 Legco elections,
Martin Lee Chu-ming of the Democratic Party
sponsored a proposal to create a select committee
to investigate the Robert Chung saga further, a
committee that, unlike the university panel,
could compel Tung to testify. On Oct. 20,
however, the proposal was defeated 32-20 in Legco
by the pro-China and pro-business political
parties that dominate the legislature after the
government lobbied against the proposal,
indicating again that it is less than forthcoming
about revealing all of the facts about the
affair, that it fears further public scrutiny.

Naturally, this episode has evoked concerns about
academic freedom as well as guarantees of freedom
of speech in Hong Kong three years after its
sovereignty was transferred to China. Do
academics, for instance, have the space to
conduct opinion polls about the government and
its leader? Is a mechanism for gauging the views
of the people of Hong Kong, of feeling the pulse
of the community, being restrained? Is an avenue
for expressing one's views being suppressed? What
is most worrisome is that features of the
political culture of the mainland are perhaps
being imported consciously or unconsciously by
Hong Kong's officials into the community, a
political culture built on a suffocating control
of dissent that gives the mistaken appearance of
political stability and consensus.

As Prof. Ying Chan, Chung's current boss, stated
at the hearing and other commentators have noted,
there is apparently now a 'culture of
subservience' in Hong Kong in which too many
people seek to appease or not lose favour with
those in authority or to neuter any possible
political implications of their work. Because of
the presence of this new culture, many people in
important responsible positions in the community
seem to second-guess what others in authority
want them to do or say. This attitude has
implications for policies and responses to
events, such as the actions of HKU's leaders
involved in the Robert Chung incident, for it
seems clear from the panel's investigation that
the top levels of the university administration,
especially the vice chancellor, were overly
sensitive to the political implications of the
university's work and thus sought to take steps
in order to be seen as a politically neutral
institution in the community and in the eyes of
those in power in Hong Kong and probably in
Beijing as well. Tung Chee-hwa himself has been
accused of succumbing to this subservient
culture, and it can be said, in fact, to be the
basis of his philosophy for implementing the 'one
country, two systems' formula that undergirds the
basis for the transfer of Hong Kong's sovereignty
to China. Indeed, it perhaps explains why Tung
has been able to carry out the concept of 'one
country, two systems' so 'successfully'-'success'
being defined here as a frictionless relationship
between Hong Kong and Beijing-and why many people
believe that China will give its blessing for
Tung to serve a second term as chief executive in
2002.

Another ramification of the 'culture of
subservience' is censorship, both self-censorship
as people alter their work to align the products
of their labour with the perceived desires of
those in authority and control over the work of
others as is evident in the Robert Chung affair.
Lost in this process of conformity are a
diversity of views about the solutions to the
community's problems as well as people's freedom.
Life becomes harmonious, but monotonous and dull.
Society loses the energy that is needed to
invigorate itself and to generate new ideas, new
ways of thinking and doing things, new responses
to the needs of society.

Overall, the attitudes and events in Hong Kong
that seem to indicate the adoption of a 'culture
of subservience' point to a basic conflict
between two basic characteristics of
relationships between superiors and subordinates,
i.e., between loyalty and accountability. The
first characteristic-loyalty-is usually based on
personal relations developed between two people
over a period of time. However, the second
characteristic-accountability-is grounded in the
structure, practices, rules and regulations of an
institution. In China, much of what takes places
in society-the implementation of government
policies and laws, business deals, etc.-is based
on personal relationships or guanxi, i.e., on
loyalty and trust. The concept of accountability,
on the other hand, is not well-established on the
mainland, although the continual and ongoing
campaigns against corruption in China seem to
reflect a greater level of awareness and respect
for the notion of accountability. However, guanxi
is such a powerful force within the political
fabric of the mainland that it can presently
overcome the practise of accountability.

In the Robert Chung affair, the support shown by
Tung Chee-hwa for his senior special assistant,
Andrew Lo Cheung-on, even after the HKU panel
deemed him to be a 'poor and untruthful witness,'
indicates that Tung prefers loyalty over
accountability, for Tung immediately defended Lo
after the panel's report was released, saying
that Lo, who worked for Tung's shipping company
before following Tung into the government in
1997, was a 'reliable and honest person' and
stating that Lo would not lose his job. This
stance, however, raises questions about the
sincerity of Tung's insistence on making senior
government officials more accountable, a major
theme of his annual policy address in Legco in
October.

The Robert Chung incident also reveals another
aspect of the emerging political culture in Hong
Kong that is seemingly being influenced by the
customs on the mainland: the use of third-party
intermediaries to influence one's words and
actions through informal and quiet contacts. This
practice, like loyalty, is also based on personal
relationships, although the relationships need
not be as well-established as in those involving
loyalty. This custom, of course, was quite
evident in the case of Robert Chung as Prof. Wong
became the messenger of Vice Chancellor Cheng and
perhaps Andrew Lo Cheung-on was Tung's emissary.

Thus, there is a fear in Hong Kong that the
political culture of China is beginning to infect
the political culture of Hong Kong. Prior to the
transfer of Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997, some
commentators hoped that the more democratic
system in Hong Kong would have a positive
influence on the development of democracy on the
mainland. However, in the intervening three years
since Hong Kong became a part of China, it is
becoming clear that, if anything, the reverse
process is at work. To counter this trend, people
must make public the attempts to politically
exert influence and apply pressure that are done
privately. More Robert Chungs must be willing to
step forward in order to preserve Hong Kong's
present open political culture before it quietly
is eroded into silence.