BANKERS TRUST SECURITIES RESEARCH
For Beijing, "One
country, two systems"
cuts both ways
inherent right as citizens of a democracy to send their money and their faxes wherever they pleased, and if Beijing objected then that was deliberate subversion of Hong Kong's democracy. Martin Lee said he wasn't trying to subvert China, because he was just advocating the overthrow of the Beijing leadership, not the termination of socialism.
Beijing on the other hand took the view that "one country, two systems" meant that each of the two systems had to refrain from subverting the other; that trying to overthrow the leadership was indeed subversion; and that it was respecting the internal affairs of Hong Kong, so Hong Kong had a reciprocal obligation to respect the internal affairs of China. China felt it had the right to fire its own newspaper editors, who are paid propagandists, without being accused of interfering in Hong Kong's autonomy. At the time China said that Hong Kong people would be forgiven for protesting in Hong Kong about Chinese policies but could not carry those protests across the border, 15
The bloodbath of Tiananmen Square has made virtually the whole world unsympathetic to Chinese arguments. But it is useful to turn the tables on these arguments. Suppose that Beijing had sent large amounts of money to Hong Kong groups advocating the immediate overthrow of the Hong Kong government, inundated Hong Kong's fax machines with propaganda advocating the overthrow of the government, organized major political groups around the theme of overthrowing the government, and smuggled revolutionary organizers across the border? Would Hong Kong people have accepted this as consistent with the "one country, two systems" policy?
China does retain one right in Hong Kong that Hong Kong does not formally have in China, namely the right to own newspapers and disseminate other forms of propaganda while attempting to limit capitalist "spiritual pollution” inside China itself. Formally this is unfair.! But the asymmetry derives from Hong Kong's system, which gives everyone the right to own newspapers and express their views. In practice, the asymmetry of rights does not work out unfairly. Since the height of the Cultural Revolution, China has not used its propaganda system to undermine Hong Kong, since it has no interest in doing so. The Hong Kong population, with British-level living standards, is not susceptible to Beijing's ideology. In practice, Hong Kong radio and television stations reach a vast audience in southern China, and that audience is totally susceptible to capitalist "flies and mosquitoes."
The essence of the "one country, two systems" approach to Hong Kong's survival is that two systems which ideologically detest one another must coexist for a long period of time. This is not unthinkable in the historical context of China's diversity and pragmatism. But it is difficult. It means
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