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The Institute for the Study of Cont
the elder statesman, and his colleague Premier Zhao Ziyang should have expressed this view to the British Prime Minister in September. What would have been astounding is any departure from this position-that is, if any Chinese leader had not mentioned sovereignty or had chosen to gloss over the issue. Such an attitude would be unthinkable—as well as politically suicidal for any Chinese leader adopting it. It would amount to a repudiation of China's traditional concept of its history and its destiny.
Yet in addition to this strand of sacred principle, there is another equally consistent element that has shaped China's views on Hong Kong over the last 140 years-a strong sense of practicality, embodying not just a resignation to making the best of things as they are but also an active wish to take advantage of existing situations. The permanent element of principle relates to the long term-which, in Chinese usage, tends to mean very long-term, if not "for ever"; the element of practicality relates to less distant propsects—but again, in Chinese tradition, even short-term considerations can embrace a period far longer than western norms would connote.
The thread of practicality, at any rate, has been continuously discernible in China's outlook on Hong Kong since the colony was founded and has been no less apparent in recent years. Though China can argue that it never really recognised the two cessions and the lease, it has certainly recognised them as facts that it has had to live with; and it has had to recognise that for the other signatory, Britain, the treaties have been the legal foundation on which its rule has rested.
Trade is a matter of practicalities. Even in the first few decades of the colony's existence, when the balance of trade was highly unfavourable to China and when the British occupation must have been at its most objectionable, there was discussion and, to a certain extent, co-operation between the Chinese provincial authorities and the British administration of Hong Kong over such matters, for example, as customs procedures and the return of fugitive criminals.
Needless to say, the channels of collaboration grew wider as the pattern of trade gradually changed to a level of equality, which then in turn gave way to a situation where the economic advantage of Hong Kong to China far outweighs the economic benefits that Britain derives from the colony. Today, when it is reckoned that Hong Kong buys about a quarter of China's exports and is the medium through which China acquires about 40 per cent of its foreign exchange resources, the channels of co-operation between Hong Kong and the Guang- dong provincial authorities have grown into a considerable network.
This brings us to the other half of the statements-of-position on Hong Kong that have emanated from Peking in the summer of 1982-the assurance, which Deng also repeated in his meeting with Mrs Thatcher, that China wants Hong Kong to continue as recognisably the same free port and industrial community as it is today. Practicality and utility are the bases on which this assurance rests and from which it proceeds.
Chinese attitudes towards Hong Kong result from the interplay of these two strands-the respective influences of principle and practicality. At bottom and in theory there is no conflict between them; as observed on the surface, they sometimes pull in opposite directions. Most of the puzzling or apparently
Prospects for Hong Kong
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"inscrutable" facets of Chinese reactions to the West are explicable by reference to one or other of these two influences or to the varying combinations of the two.
Further, these two factors largely transcend ideological commitments. At the level of practicality, Hong Kong's economic and material progress—and, by implication, some at least of its social advances-have won praise both from the non-Marxist republican Sun Yat-sen,3 in 1923, and from Chinese Trade Minis- ter Li Qiang when he visited Hong Kong in 1978. When it comes to the historic principle, there is no difference between the views of Peking and those of the Chinese Nationalist government in Taiwan; the Nationalists too insist that Hong Kong is part of China—an attitude consistently maintained by the Kuomintang.
Apparent anomalies are easier to understand in terms of the dual influence. For example, it is noteworthy that in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th, when China would have relished a chance forcibly to end the existence of Hong Kong, it lacked the power to do so; whereas, from the mid-20th century, when it has had the power and the means to do this, it has not wanted to. The capacity to act is one thing; practical wisdom can counsel inaction. Certainly, it is worth bearing these two influences constantly in mind when we examine Chinese attitudes towards Hong Kong over the last 15 years or so, beginning with the dark days--for both Hong Kong and China-of the Cultural Revolu- tion.
Chinese attitudes since 1966
It is virtually impossible to determine, even now, to what extent the 1966-67 emergency in Hong Kong is traceable to any calculated decisions in Peking and to what extent it resulted from a more or less accidental “spillover" of the upheavals that convulsed the whole of China, combined with local discontents. When Chairman Mao allowed turmoil and xenophobia to become policy aims in themselves, it followed that the results were such as to defy the normal processes of analysis.
Certainly it is permissible to speculate that some elements of the Chinese leadership may have seen national interests being served, in that disorder in the streets of Hong Kong and Macau would teach both territories a "lesson", reminding them through a "shake-up" of their dependence on the goodwill of the big neighbour. Certainly, too, one may speculate that, but for the constrain- ing effect of the Sino-Soviet rift which developed in the early 1960s, the impact of the Cultural Revolution on Hong Kong could well have been more traumatic than it was.
It is more useful, however, to concentrate on what actually happened. The two important facts are: (a) Even at the worst times of the 1966-67 troubles in Hong Kong, China still sent in the food supplies and other provisions needed to keep the territory going; and (b) The Cultural Revolution did end-its excesses and excitements being curbed and steadily diminishing from 1968 onwards.
If the Cultural Revolution can be described as a form of national psychosis, there was nothing psychotic about the new face that China began to display to
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