Hongkong-the despair and the hope
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Hongkong is probably finished. It is like a gold town in the Yukon in the 1890s. One moment such towns were full of life. Buildings went up swiftly. New banks opened every day. The hotels were full. The pleasure quarters never slept. Most impor- tant, the many new arrivals were grimly determined to improve their lot. Here, a casual observer might well say, is a community that has a future. Yet a year later the town might be empty. Gold. the reason for its existence, had run out.
Nothing as substantial as gold has ever been dug out of the soil of Hongkong. Hongkong's only resource, as has been said many times and lost none of its truth by repetition, is its people. Nearly all are Chinese. Nearly all are refugees or the children of refugees who fled from China because they could not stand the place. Not all came to Hongkong. Southeast Asia has large com- munities of what are called Overseas Chinese. But Hongkong was on the doorstep, a bit of China that, because of an accident of history, was run by the British who were said to be foolish and, if needs be, bribable. Hongkong was easy to get to, and into, espe- cially in the muddled times that followed the communist seizure of China in 1949. Even up to a dozen years ago the British sport- ingly allowed anyone to stay if they could get through the barbed wire on the border.
These are the people, with either personal experience of China or brought up with folk-tales of life under communism, who face
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or that clause in the Basic Law: on the question of how many members of Hongkong's own legislature should be directly elected: of the assurances given by a procession of British Foreign Secretaries that Hongkongers' rights will be protected. or the Westminster Parliament would want to know the reason why.
All this has been much discussed across the noodles and won- ton soup, and been dismissed as irrelevant. The Hongkongers believe that when China moves in it will do as it wants. irrespec- tive of the protests of the British or anyone else. Democracy may be a new word to them, but oppression is not. The Chinese in Hongkong are probably better able to understand the thinking of the men in Beijing than are the mandarins of the British Foreign Office. Certainly. Hongkong is an important source of foreign currency for China. We all know that. But since Tian An Men. when a million Hongkongers took to the streets in support of the dissidents. China has come to regard Hongkong as a source of dangerous ideas about personal freedom. Suppressing these has become more important than preserving Hongkong as a golden goose, if a choice has to be made.
There is hardly a family in Hongkong which has not made at least rudimentary plans for leaving before the Chinese take-over. Many do not have the personal wealth that has made Hongkongers so welcome in Canada. But they are not poor. Much has been made of the hard-working nature of the Hongkong Chinese. They do work hard, but this is not because they have some genetic asset unavailable to Chinese on the main- land. Hongkong Chinese love leisure: they long for the end of the day when they can get out the majong board. But work, and the money it earns. means freedom. So they work long hours, and they save. and they invest. As 1997 approaches these ordi- nary or not so ordinary-people will cash in their assets and be off. Even those who have no money, the improvident minority who have never saved or those who have suffered ill fortune, will try to move on from the island of ill omen. There will be a new lot of boat people. Taiwan will be their likeliest destination.
All this has been so predictable that it seems incredible that Sir Geoffrey Howe, in the years that he was Foreign Secretary,
being handed over to the concentration camp of China in 1997. Whatever lingering sentiment they may have had about the moth- erland, it vanished like a gutted candle flame last June when the old men who run China killed the young people in Tian An Men Square who had dared to call for changes.
The exodus from Hongkong has already started: the flight of the better-off is a daily story in Hongkong newspapers. They have made new homes in Australia, Canada and other places. Having secured their retreat some have returned, but only to spend the remaining years of freedom making money as fast as possible before leaving their former home for ever. The business community wails about the brain drain that has deprived it of tal- ented middle-managers. But the rest of the Hongkong communi- ty is not brainless.
Hongkong officials tend to be disparaging about the lumpen- proletariat of Hongkong. They point to the general lack of inter- est shown by the majority of Hongkong people towards discus- sions about the Basic Law, the document drafted in Beijing that is supposed to protect the people of the territory after 1997. Hongkongers simply do not understand democracy, they say. But the ordinary people are neither apathetic nor ignorant of what is going on. Their own numerous and vociferous Chinese news- papers published in Hongkong have extensively reported the intricacies of the post-1997 debate: on the wording of this clause
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assured the Beijing government that Hongkong would be handed over intact, that it would be little different from what it was under the British. He once ruminated to friends that Hongkong was like a Ming vase, to be handled carefully until it was restored to its rightful owners. Britain's inability to keep its foolishly made promise has infuriated the Beijing government which had come to believe that. come July 1997. it could take over the keys to a Hongkong with all its wealth intact. China, it might be argued. has been equally foolish in believing that Britain could deliver. But to come to that conclusion the Beijing government would have to acknowledge that the people of Hongkong loathe the idea of living under China's rule. Curiously, the men who run China believe they are popular, or at least no more unpopular than the leaders of other countries.
The people of Hongkong have one chance of retaining their freedom.
It could happen if there is a revolution in China. Revolution came close to breaking out in June. The revolutionaries mis- judged their leaders determination to stay in power, whatever the cost in lives of their fellow countrymen. Instead, those who died for demanding the simple decencies of a free society posthu- mously inaugurated the extraordinary events of Soviet Europe. Chinese aspirations have not gone away. They have merely been placed under lock and key. In the fire next time the soldiers may demur from killing their own people, as happened in Romania. Deng Xiaoping may deservedly end up on a lamp-post. Central authority would decline, and China could break up as it did at the end of the Manchu dynasty. Whatever government then tried to run China would be too busy trying to salvage the ruined country to bother about occupying Hongkong. Hongkong would still suf- fer. Just as China benefits from Hongkong's prosperity, so Hongkong lives off China trade, as a flea lives off a dog. A divid- ed China would do Hongkong's prosperity no good at all. But consider the choice: a ghost town Hongkong run by a police state, or a free Hongkong on hard times. A lot of people in Hongkong hope for revolution in China.
KEITH COLQUHOUN
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