Seven years after HK handover, the final
frontier By Gary LaMoshi
HONG
KONG - Seven years ago, on June 30, 1997, the night of
the Hong Kong handover, the rains that bucketed down
that afternoon and continued biblically for the next 40
days momentarily abated. In the pause, thousands of
people gathered outside the Legislative Council
building. On the balcony above the crowd, Martin Lee and
other elected lawmakers losing their seats to Beijing's
appointees clasped hands and sang "We Shall Overcome".
Across town at the formal handover ceremonies, their
replacements were sworn in for a predawn session after
meeting for months across the border to avoid treason
charges.
Despite the assurances of "one country,
two systems" and guarantees of "a high degree of
autonomy" with Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong, the
handover was a Star Trek moment: Hong Kong and Beijing
would boldly go where no lands had gone before. Unlike
the old TV series, Hong Kong was getting good ratings;
the whole world was watching this unprecedented change
of government.
Viewed from LegCo's (Legislative
Council's) courtyard on the night of June 30, 1997, Hong
Kong's future resisted certainties and demanded
curiosity. Foreign news correspondents huffing and
puffing about "communist" Chinese tanks massing along
the border or swooning over the Hang Seng stock index's
record highs - as if either explained it all - were as
pitiful as the handover night drunks in tuxedos and
Union Jack top hats. Savvy Hong Kongers combined the
flavors of uncertainty and inevitability when they
answered the frequently asked question, "What comes
after 1997?" with "1998".
The general good
manners among the thousands outside LegCo - after all,
this is Hong Kong, where you're rarely spared any
visual, verbal or guttural reminder that Japanese are
the demure and polite nationality in East Asia - added
to the surreal night's tone. We were well behaved enough
to let the police pause at midnight to remove their
Royal Hong Kong Police badges, pocket those valuable
colonial artifacts, and pin on their new insignia for
the Special Administrative Region, or SAR.
Those
police, though, now worked for the people who brought us
the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Great Leap Forward,
and on this very night, elected legislators were
unseated and People's Liberation Army tanks zoomed over
the border. Forget the life of the party; the Chinese
communists were now the party of Hong Kong SAR life.
A nervous thought seized me in the LegCo crowd:
what if there was trouble here? What if heckling turned
to scuffling to fighting to rioting among this crowd of
thousands, some of them drunk, many of them without a
common language? At what point would Hong Kong's new
leadership decide those tanks might be needed in the
streets of central Hong Kong to maintain order? It was
one of those idle flashes you'd rather suppress, like
the image during your flight's takeoff of the plane
bouncing back onto the runway.
A month after the
handover, the rains morphed into the first typhoon
direct hit on Hong Kong in decades. As a local newspaper
editor, I dispatched reporters to find out whether Hong
Kong authorities had guidelines (and from whom) to
summon the People's Liberation Army for disaster relief,
the way US governors call in the National Guard. The
government spokesperson scoffed at the idea, as did my
editorial colleagues.
PLA tanks and troops in
HK seemed farfetched The possibility of PLA tanks
and troops in the streets seemed more farfetched as
mainland rule evolved in Hong Kong. Indeed, after 1997
came 1998, 1999, 2000, and so on. My choice to become a
permanent resident was my vote of confidence in Hong
Kong's future as an international city. (See Hong Kong
bucks immigration trend, February 21) There were some
changes for the worse, but most stemmed from the
collapse of the Asian economic miracle concurrent with
the handover - Thailand thought it could slip a currency
devaluation past the markets with Hong Kong hogging the
spotlight.
Hong Kong's new post-handover
restrictions, such as a ban on displaying the Taiwan
flag, were the equivalent of trash piling up alongside
the building but still far below my windows. The worst
moves, such as the appeal of a Hong Kong court ruling to
Beijing's National People's Congress and government
intervention in the stock market, were the work of chief
executive Tung Chee-hwa, chosen by Beijing via 400
handpicked local voters. The electorate was expanded to
800 special friends of the big motherland for his
reelection in 2002.
Homegrown elements anxious
to please Beijing seemed the greatest threat to Hong
Kong's "high degree of autonomy". Mainland leadership
seemed quite satisfied to keep its hands off Hong Kong,
even if only as a positive model for eventual
reunification with Taiwan.
"The future of Hong
Kong will be created by the Hong Kong people
themselves," China's Premier Wen Jiabao declared on the
morning of July 1, 2003. "We hope our Hong Kong
compatriots will treasure the opportunity to become the
masters of their homeland." Wen went home hours before
500,000 Hong Kongers marched to oppose proposed
draconian security laws, the largest crowd since a 1989
rally to support demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. (See
Article
23 protestors take aim at Hong Kong elite, July 1, 2003)
Defenders of Hong Kong's rights may have won
last year's battle but they are losing the war. Beijing
has decided mere veto power over political development
in Hong Kong wasn't enough. The Standing Committee of
the National People's Congress decreed Hong Kong could
not choose its next chief executive by a vote of all
Hong Kong residents in 2007, even though the Basic Law,
the local constitution, allows it. (Shame on Britain for
this constitution that permits rather than mandates free
elections, not to mention its 156 years of colonial rule
without them.) Beijing also won't allow universal
suffrage to elect the full legislature in 2008. The
current system reserves half the seats for closed
constituencies generally loyal to Beijing.
The
international response to this betrayal of Hong Kong has
been muted. No country is going to risk its economic
relations with China, as a market, source of products
and/or investment destination, over what Beijing terms
an internal matter. (Taiwan, take note.) Hong Kong's
increasing economic dependence on the mainland rather
than its global links reduces both international
community concern and leverage.
Beijing tries
nice words, war ships and coercion Some in Hong
Kong argue that the game is over and it's time to simply
get back to work. Supporters of the big motherland have
encouraged this viewpoint, first with conciliatory
words, then with threats ranging from warships in
Victoria Harbor to thugs threatening radio hosts and
even trashing the offices of democratic legislator Emily
Lau.
Beijing's new approach leaves little doubt
that mainland leaders are ready to cross the final
frontier, or at least want Hong Kongers to think they
are. As on the night of June 30, 1997, Hong Kong is just
one confrontation between partisans - real or staged -
that gets out of hand away from martial law from
Beijing.
But times have changed. Democratic
Party founder Martin Lee says he wants to cooperate with
Beijing, something he perhaps unwisely refused to do
seven years ago. Others, such as former legislator and
future chief executive candidate Christine Loh, urge
that Hong Kong offer Beijing reassurances that calling
for democracy doesn't threaten the mainland. But the
most important reassurance Hong Kong can offer the
mainland is, until they get political reform, that they
will continue to march for democracy and shame their new
colonial rulers from Beijing.
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