2.24.
2.25.
power to compel tribal feeling. If they revolt against it, that itself is a reference and a tribute to the potency of what has been left behind."
"Each time they visit it, they ask themselves, 'Why are we here?
Why do we keep coming back?' Why must they return to this cruel, tormented, corrupt, hopeless place as though they still needed it? Could they never achieve immunity? And yet had China meant nothing to them, any other place thereafter would have meant less, and they would carry no pole within themselves, and they would not even guess what they had missed."
"When they leave it after their visit they feel that they have left
something of themselves behind, yet they also realise that they could never live there. Deep in their hearts they know that they love China best when they live well away from the place."
And yet now they are to be returned to live under its flag. Unless the British government understands those sentiments in the hearts of, I assume, many Hong Kong Chinese, and unless we act on that understanding by being straight and full-hearted with them during these last six and a half years, I fear that we may do the inhabitants of our last Asian colony a disservice; and we will miss for ourselves the point of 1997. And unless the Chinese of the PRC accept that "patriotism" (to which I turn in the next part of this paper) is far more complicated than ever they have acknowledged, I am genuinely concerned that they will lose the material and other benefit of a territory which has prospered on their trade, and grown and benefited under British governance.
The next steps are (a) to identify the views of people in the specific sectors mentioned in paragraph 2.4; (b) to draw up agenda items to which Hong Kong people believe they have particular contributions to make; and (c) to think in terms of a first meeting in Hong Kong intended to define the territory to parliamentarians and experts from elsewhere.
"Lifestyle" and Britain
I would like to examine for myself the attitudes in Hong Kong to the following extract from the article in quoted in paragraph 2.3 above: -
"I have spoken of the resilience of the people of Hong Kong, of how
they have survived stock-market crashes, typhoons and enemy occupation. Would Hong Kong survive the crisis of confidence that would follow if Britain ended up reneging on its obligations under the Joint Declaration? I have no doubt that it would. The people of Hong Kong would battle back, as they have before, as they will again. But what a terrible legacy it would be to a