are numbered. And the mother nation, the colonial power refuses very energetically to take any responsibility.
In the worst type of class consciousness, the British are going to give only 50,000 families genuine British passports and permission to move to the UK when this fateful symphony reaches its crescendo. Those who will receive passports are the rich and the powerful.
The country responsible for this pitiful behavour, unique in modern history that of, in cold blood, handing over people living in a democratic state governed by law to a totalitarian communist regime with bloodstained hands is Great Britain, i.e. the same British nation that with head held high refused to hand over little democratic Gibraltar to General Franco's threatening police state.
It is the same British who were proud of the air bridge which helped West Berlin when the Soviet Union tried to starve the German city into surrender in 1957. It is the same Margaret Thatcher who went to war on the Falkland Islands to protect 1800 half-Britons' right to avoid having to live under Argentine dictatorship.
In other words, there is a reason why Hong Kong is now going through a winter of despondency. Sometimes they come together for a demonstration but there is no igniting spark.
When the Hong Kong inhabitants, with death directed against the leadership in Beijing, made an action to show their solidarity with the Romanians who had just executed Ceaucesco and his wife, the communist couple that ruled Romania, only a little more than 100 people participated.
Not many people take part either when a proposal for a local constitution is burnt in a bonfire. After each round of Chinese-British negotiations the proposal gets more and more watered down.
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Hong Kong is not a place of political commitment.
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In the Year of the Horse in a time when the whole world rejects refugees Hong Kong is a place of action.
The people of Hong Kong are making sure that they have emergency exits. They are all saving money so that they obtain, through money instead of a passport, the right to continue their lives in freedom somewhere else. Most of them would prefer to go to the US. The words in the song "I lost my heart in San Fransisco" are true even to those Chinese who have never been there.
It is like a transcendental exprerience to walk along Des Voeux Road in the heart of Hong Kong and look at a bright red double-deck tram decorated with Chinese letters but with a sign, indicating the name of the terminus, that says: "Western Market".
The rich realists choose Canada, primarily Toronto and Vancouver. A person from Hong Kong is welcome there if he invests SEK 1.5 million and creates at least one new job for a person already resident there.
In Australia the Hong Kong Chinese are buying the so-called Gold Coast. Young, hard-working computer technicians, engineers and accountants begin new lives in Sydney and Perth (they prefer Sydney since the local population in Perth is racist and the atmosphere anti-yellow).
People in Hong Kong buy passports for those countries that issue them in exchange for guarantees that they will transfer their know-how and money: Tonga in the South Pacific is open and General Noriega's cousin reigned at Panama's consulate in Hong Kong and sold passports over the counter at SEK 12,000 each.
Matrimonial agencies in the US offer men and women who are prepared to marry Hong Kong Chinese so that they in that way can obtain a new citizenship. Portugese and Spanish estate agents arrange exhibitions in hotels in Hong Kong and sell houses and flats in Algarve and Costa del Sol. This is also a way to escape Beijing's domination.
People who are not very rich study English. Those who do not have money offer their brains instead. "The brain drain" is already a fact: 55,000 of Hong Kong's most qualified professionals left the colony last year.