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There was then a period of about three months when a lot of my Chinese friends and acquaintances came to me and congratulated me on making the speech saying that it was good such a speech was made but that they, of course, couldn't say so out loud; and when I said why not, they told me about the pressure which was being put on them by the Chinese establishment to make sure that they behaved as 'patriotic' citizens of China. But slowly then, first one, then another, and then a whole flood of our Hong Kong Chinese, who did not have right of abode anywhere but Hong Kong, started speaking out, and by the end of 1986 we had one of the liveliest political debates going anywhere in the world. But then in January of 1987 a funny thing happened to us on the way to Beijing. An old-fashioned purge within the Politbureau started a new movement in the tradition of the 5-Antis, (and whatever other wonderful euphemisms have been used in China for such movements,) this one going under the name of 'thrift and fighting bourgeois liberalism' whatever that may be. The double-speak of Communism makes a phrase like 'bourgeois liberalism' a convenient rod to beat any kind of opponent who happens to disagree with whoever is in power in Beijing. And of course one of the problems is that we don't really yet know who is in power, except that whoever it is, he or she may want to turn the clock back to the type of communist puritanism which MAO Tse Tung aspired to and which led from the 'Great Leap Forward' to the 'Cultural Revolution', two self-inflicted disasters greater than those inflicted in the previous decades by the Japanese conqueror.
And now the great man himself has spoken and told us Hong Kong belongers in no uncertain terms, (a) that neither Hong Kong nor China's populations are ready for democracy, and (b) that the division between the executive, legislative, and judiciary is quite unnecessary and inefficient!
DENG Xiaoping is a very sympathetic sort of man. His pronouncements are often jocular and, unlike MAO Tse Tung, I have no difficulty in thinking of him as 'Uncle DENG'. The only problem is that when he speaks softly he swings a very large stick, and he often, unfortunately, swings that stick in a China shop. His remarks regarding direct elections etc. have certainly intimidated a considerable number of our fellow citizens in Hong Kong, and we are fast retrogressing back to the time when the average Chinese citizen here believes that it is far better and far safer to keep his mouth shut.
And I am standing here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. The most dangerous thing that can be done now is not to speak up.
On the contrary, it is of the utmost importance that everyone speaks out now, even before the Green Paper, and especially before the first Basic Law Draft is published because it is far more difficult to alter papers once they are published than to try and influence the drafters of such papers while they are still trying to set down their ideas in writing. And let me here address a word of counsel to the Drafters: It is often said that those who speak out and whose views are not in line with those of the established orthodoxy are in a minority and that the silent majority does not agree with those of us who, because that is the only way we can attract attention to what we believe are correct ideas, make a lot of noise. Now I have heard this sort of thing ever since I stepped out of my nice business cocoon into the public arena. I was told many years ago that I was being far too noisy about the pollution in the environment and that the silent majority couldn't care less because, and I quote, 'they don't know any better, so they are quite used to noise, bad air, and sewage smells', unquote! So something like five years ago the Building Constructors Association, to their everlasting credit, conducted a survey and found that pollution, and especially air and noise pollution, figured higher in the local population's concern than even law and order. So much for the silent majority not caring. I believe, on the contrary, that the silent majority cares very much about pollution, about self-Government, and about Hong Kong's need for the greatest possible autonomy.
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Just as important of course is that the British and the Hong Kong Governments are not intimidated by statements emanating from China's paramount leader, or, for that matter, statements emanating from Senior Government advisers who have vested interests to protect, and I will have a few more words to say about the latter. But as regards the former I really should not have to remind Whitehall or their representatives here that Britain has a democratic tradition stretching back to the Magna Carta and that this is the first time in Britain's colonial history that a dependent territory is not given independence, and that therefore Britain has a responsibility to make sure that a democratic form of Government, which per se means direct elections, is installed here before Britain hands the Territory over to China.
DENG used the Hong Kong Basic Law committee members as his trumpet to show China and the world that here is DENG Xiaoping in full charge, that it was he who had used the broom and swept out the bourgeois liberalism from the Politbureau and that if Mr. ZHAO Ziyang had any idea of holding on to the two jobs of Secretary of the Party and Prime Minister, he was very sadly mistaken, and that, incidentally, if anybody in Hong Kong thought that the idea of two system-one country applies to politics, they had better think again because as far as Mr. DENG Xiaoping is concerned the idea of two systems-one country applies to economics only. So, my friends, here in the great man himself telling us how HE wants to run Hong Kong. He wouldn't have done that, however, if he hadn't been frightened, and I repeat the word 'frightened', of what this large measure of autonomy which was promised to us in the Joint Declaration could do in making Hong Kong even more cohesive and even more successful than it is already. Because, I suspect, China needs Hong Kong very badly and it needs the transfer of expertise and capital from here to China, especially in the way of management, but if Hong Kong becomes too successful then it also becomes a point of envy, a part of China to point to and say, well if they can have direct elections, why can't we? If they can have autonomy, why can't we? If they can have democracy, why can't we? But there is something else here far more important and worrying for DENG, namely, if Hong Kong is democratic and
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There was then a period of about three months when a lot of my Chinese friends and acquaintances came to me and congratulated me on
making the speech saying that it was good such a speech was made but that they, of course. couldn't say so out loud; and when I said why not, they told me about the pressure which was being put on them by the Chinese establishment to make sure that they behaved as 'patriotic' citizens of China. But slowly then, first one, then another, and then a whole of flood of our Hong Kong Chinese, who did not have right of abode anywhere but Hong Kong, started speaking out, and by the end of 1986 we had one of the liveliest political debates going anywhere in the world. But then in January of 1987 a funny thing happened to us on the way to Beijing. An old fashioned purge within the Politbureau started a new movement in the tradition of the 5-Antis, (and whatever other wonderful euphemisms have been used in China for such movements,) this one going under the name of 'thrift and fighting bourgeois liberalism' whatever that may be. The double-speak of Communism makes a phrase like 'bourgeois liberalism' a convenient rod to beat any kind of opponent who happens to disagree with whoever is in power in Beijing. And of course one of the problems is that we don't really yet know who is in power, except that whoever it is, he or she may want to turn the clock back to the type of communist puritanism which MAO Tse Tung aspired to and which led from the 'Great Leap Forward' to the 'Cultural Revolution', two self inflicted disasters greater than those inflicted in the previous decades by the Japanese conqueror.
And now the great man himself has spoken and told us Hong Kong belonger in no uncertain terms, (a) that neither Hong Kong nor China's populations are ready for democracy, and (b) that the division between the executive, legislative, and judiciary is quite unnecessary and inefficient!
DENG Xiaoping is a very sympathetic sort of man. His pronouncements are often jocular and, unlike MAO Tse Tung, I have no difficulty in thinking of him as 'Uncle DENG'. The only problem is that when he speaks softly he swings a very large stick, and he oftern, unfortunately, swings that stick in a China shop. His remarks regarding direct elections etc. have certainly intimidated a considerable number of our fellow citizens in Hong Kong, and we are fast retrogressing back to the time when the average Chinese citizen here believes that it is far better and far safer to keep his mouth shut.
And I am standing here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. The most dangerous thing that can be done now is not to speak up.
On the contrary, it is of the utmost importance that everyone speaks out now, even before the Green Paper, and especially before the first Basic Law Draft is published because it is far more difficult to alter papers once they are published than to try and influence the drafters of such papers while they are still trying to set down their ideas in writing. And let me here address a word of counsel to the Drafters: It is often said that those who speak out and whose views are not in line with those of the established orthodoxy are in a minority and that the silent
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majority does not agree with those of us who, because that is the only way we can attract attention to what we believe are correct ideas, make a lot of noise. Now I have heard his sort of thing ever since I stepped out of my nice business cocoon into the public arena. I was told many years ago that I was being far too noisy about the pollution in the environment and that the silent majority couldn't care less because, and I quote, 'they don't know any better, so they are quite used to noise, bad air, and sewage smells', unquote! So something like five years ago the Building Constructors Association, to their everlasting credit, conducted a survey and found that pollution, and especially air and noise pollution, figured higher in the local population's concern than even law and order. So much for the silent majority not caring. I believe, on the contrary, that the silent majority cares very much about pollution, about self-Government, and about Hong Kong's need for the greatest possible autonomy.
Just as important of course is that the British and the Hong Kong Govern- ments are not intimidated by statements emanating from China's paramount leader, or, for that matter, statements emanating from Senior Government advisers who have vested interests to protect, and I will have a few more words to say about the latter. But as regards the former I really should not have to remind Whitehall or their representatives here that Britain has a democratic tradition stretching back to the Magna Carta and that this is the first time in Britain's colonial history that a dependent territory is not given independence, and that therefore Britain has a responsibility to make sure that a democratic form of Government, which per se means direct elections, is installed here before Britain hands the Territory over to China.
DENG used the Hong Kong Basic Law committee members as his trumpet to show China and the world that here is DENG Xiaoping in full charge, that it was he who had used the broom and swept out the bourgeois liberalism from the Politbureau and that if Mr. ZHAO Ziyang had any idea of holding on to the two jobs of Secretary of the Party and Prime Minister, he was very sadly mistaken, and that, incidentally, if anybody in Hong Kong thought that the idea of two system-one country applies to politics, they had better think again because as far as Mr. DENG Xiaoping is concerned the idea of two systems-one country applies to economics only. So, my friends, here in the great man himself telling us how HE wants to run Hong Kong. He wouldn't have done that, however, if he hadn't been frightened, and I repeat the word 'frightened', of what this large measure of autonomy which was promised to us in the Joint Declaration could do in making Hong Kong even more cohesive and even more successful than it is already. Because, I suspect, China needs Hong Kong very badly and it needs the transfer of expertise and capital from here to China, especially in the way of management, but if Hong Kong becomes too successful then it also becomes a point of envy, a part of China to point to and say, well if they can have direct elections, why can't we? If they can have autonomy, why can't we? If they can have democracy, why can't we? But there is something else here far more important and worrying for DENG, namely, if Hong Kong is democratic and
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