HONG KONG HISTORY
2
What I've written so far begs some statement about what I think Hong Kong is like today. The statistics on that are to be found copiously throughout the rest of this book. But figures need to be fleshed out. I find my thoughts drawn back often to two very personal moments. One was shortly after my arrival as Governor here in 1992, when I was finding out about welfare services. On a hot, wet day in July, I had been to a rehabilitation centre and emerged to find a number of parents of handicapped children waiting in the rain to petition me. I was struck by their patience, by the moderation of their requests compared to the difficulties they faced, by their love and concern for their children. Those are qualities that I have met time and time again here. The moderation, particularly in the politics, is remarkable given the extraordinary changes that Hong Kong has experienced and is going through. It is a testimony, also, to the social stability that has been fostered in Hong Kong through deliberate change in response to social need. The second event was more traumatic, seeing the families of those who had died or been injured in the terrible fire at the Garley Building, poor people devastated by the loss of children, brothers, sisters. It was a salutary reminder that while the boosters of Hong Kong, myself included, often talk about how median incomes here have exceeded US$25,000 a head, the majority of Hong Kong's citizens have not attained that level of comfort, that their hopes for the future are not founded on financial resources but on prospects for their sons and daughters, on the exchanges and satisfactions of family life.
The glitz of society life, the full throttle thunder of economic activity, the fascination of living on the edge of the extraordinary changes that have swept through China over the past 150 years, all those things tend to take the eye away from a vital part of Hong Kong's story, the creation of a resilient, sophisticated, highly educated society, ambitious to improve the lot of its members, caring to those in need, offering freedom to exercise abilities. How many would have predicted such an outcome from a community of refugees and merchant venturers ruled over by a colonial power? How many realise how important it is to Hong Kong's present success and future prospects?
Economic opportunity has been indispensable to Hong Kong, but without the freedom and ability to take and to create that opportunity it would have meant little. Investment in education has been of greater importance than equities, while civil liberties have become inextricably linked with the success of the economic liberties this city affords. And it is worth asking how far history, or rather the fact that people coming here have been able to leave old histories behind them and start again, has been important to the shaping of this society. That is not to suggest that people here have forgotten their pasts, no-one does that. Memories of home towns from Hankow and Santau to Bombay and Arbroath have been brought here, but the liberty that Hong Kong has offered to people to live at peace with the past has not been the least of the freedoms that it has given.
To ask China to forget the colonial episode is no more realistic than to expect local people to have any deep commitment to a colonial administration, an administration that, despite near-complete localisation, could never become 'our government' in the way that 'Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong' might do if the words are allowed to mean what they say. But when the convenient paper target of the last veneer of colonial rule is peeled away with my departure at midnight on the 30th of June, there is an opportunity to look afresh at what lies underneath. And what is that? Not some seething pot of repressed ambitions, conflicting ideologies and burning grievances,
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