TNAG-1386-FCO40-1834-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-and-citizenship-1985 — Page 31

democracy now looks much less certain

indeed one former Hong Kong senior civil servant has publicly claimed that it was simply ruse to persuade Parliament to pass the Agreement." It is therefore scarcely surprising that there is an air of nervousness in Hong Kong, and that the national sport of China-watching has become even more popular, so that when Peking's representatives are reported as blocking discussion on the Basic Law Drafting Committee, comment- ing on the possibility of ending jury trials, or implying new forms of censorship, these accounts are picked up and headlined in many English language newspapers.

This nervousness is exacerbated by the scale of change demanded of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is not like a twentieth-century social democracy: it is much more like a nineteenth-century newly-industrialised city, composed largely of immigrants and young people (70% of the population is under 35; only half of the people were born there), with all the energy and individual will to succeed which that implies. It is a society based firmly on the profit motive and the law of supply and demand (even mercy flights out of Saigon for Hong Kong people in 1975 had to be seen to break even at $HK700 a time).

There are many problems to be resolved in the short period before Hong Kong returns to China. A society which has grown up in the artificial environment of a paternalistic colonial structure geared to providing the best possible and most flexible environment for capitalism has to establish and make its own the institutions which will allow it genuine autonomy within a monolithic communist state. 'One country two systems' sets the unrestrained capitalism of Hong Kong in permanent tension with the state socialism of China, and business confidence will be quick to withdraw from Hong Kong if there are any signs that that balance is not finely held. In addition, there will be demands for change from among the many people who want independence from colonialism and who are impatient to improve social conditions and begin to redistribute wealth in Hong Kong. Yet those people have no experience in political skills and are faced with powerful entrenched opposition from the existing power structures in Hong Kong and also from the Chinese authorities, who appear to be unwilling to see fully representative democracy in Hong Kong, on the grounds that it could increase instability and might imply a challenge to the one-party system of the mainland. (The 23 Hong Kong members of the Basic Law Drafting Committee, chosen by China, almost all represent right-wing business interests.)

It is because of this uncertainty, and because there are no clear

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