80 per cent of those who have bookkeeping jobs say that they intend to move from Hong Kong. 60 per cent of the Hong Kong lawyers will do the same thing, 90 per cent of nurses, etc. !
The vacancies after them are already difficult to fill. On Saturdays an English-speaking local newspaper has 110 pages of adds under "vacancies".
Each conversation I have had with a Chinese during the last couple of months has led to the same question: "What do you think about '97?" Of course they hope that I'll say that it'll be okey, "one country, be system.
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When I express my pessimistic view, spiced with contempt for Britain's spinelessness and the surrounding world's lack of interest, they sigh but it is not a sigh of resignation. Instead there is a short laughter - Chinese laughters seldom express happiness but more often fear or nervousness,
it is a detaining manoeuvre and then they formulate the standard joke: "One country,
no systems".
Then they start to ask practical questions. A 29-year-old government official who sold his second-hand Mazda to me asked me: "Where do you think I should move, Staffan?" "To Sydney or Singapore?" And a taxidriver who drove me from the airport one night told me in rudimentary English that he would move to Bali and work as a taxidriver there.
"Bali? The paradise island belonging to Indonesia?", I asked in surprise. "Yes, Bali", the sulky taxidriver said. "Have sister, have brother". "Do you have an Indonesian passport", I asked. "No have passport, have money."
And that's that. A cold, indifferent world is not conquered with tears or demonstration banners. It is conquered with money.
With that view of life, it is not surprising that the people of Hong Kong are now bringing down the world's condemnation on themselves, when they or rather the British mother government are sending boat refugees back to
Vietnam by force.
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The world cannot see pictures of small children behind bars. At the same time, no government in the surrounding world is prepared to accept them. While the western world has a double standard of morality, the Hong Kong Chinese have a cruel single standard of morality. It is impractical for one of the world's most densely populated areas to accept that many refugees.
The fact that they themselves once were refugees and are preparing themselves to become refugees once again is no argument for the Hong Kong Chinese.
Sometimes the Vietnamese behind their bars hold up a banderole saying: "It is us today, tomorrow it will be you". Hong Kong Chinese do not see the parallel. Some of them say with the cynisism of a stand up comedian: "They are boat people, we are the yacht people."
They do no listen to listen to a visiting American woman politician's argument either: "The size of New York City is the same as Hong Kong and New York City accepts 300,000 refugees every year, legal and illegal. That is what makes New York tick". Hong Kong people think that Hong Kong is ticking enough as it is.
This winter of despondency there is an insolent spirit in Hong Kong: "Don't cry for me
we'll make it on our own".
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This is simplified by the fact that this year's credo is action and adventure: the Year of the Horse in Hong Kong.
Staffan Heimerson
Foreign correspondent, Hong Kong