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COMMENTARY
Let us now
praise Tung Chee-hwa
By Todd
Crowell
HONG KONG - I confess I always had
a soft spot for Tung Chee-hwa. I think it
originated when I followed him around during the
weeks preceding his selection as Hong Kong's first
Chinese chief executive in the fall of 1996. I
remember him standing outside one of the
flophouses in Mongkok where the cage men live in
wire cages as in dog kennels. He was obviously
moved by what he saw. Standing before a clutch of
reporters, he said, "It was worse than I
imagined."
That underscored, for me
at least, one of his fundamental strengths, the
fact that he is a decent man, a quality that seemed
to be accentuated by his broad, honest, friendly
face and unstylish crew cut. It is a quality that
is rare, it not impossible to find, among
political leaders. It is refreshing, even heart-warming to
see it.
It may well be that he was a
little too decent for the position he was thrust
into. One of the many criticisms of his
administration was that he never fired anyone,
most notably the former financial secretary
Antony Leung after he had purchased a luxury car,
knowing in advance he was going to raise the tax
on autos. Any other democratic leader would have
wasted little time giving Leung the heave.
We Western expat journalists never cut
Tung much slack from the beginning. Not long after
the handover in 1997 from Britain back to China,
he had said some words to the affect that he
admired the governing style of Singapore's
longtime leader Lee Kuan Yew, the bete
noire of most Western journalists in Asia.
That probably cooked things for him on that front.
Moreover, Tung had the misfortune to
follow in the footsteps of another, entirely
different kind of politician, the last British
governor of Hong Kong, Christopher ("call me
Chris") Patten. He was a leader who probably
represented the ideal for many of us and who also
had caught the imagination of many of Hong Kong's
Chinese residents as well.
In his
governing style Tung never could strike the happy
medium between being a mandarin, which was
probably his natural bent, and a Western-style
politician. He never seemed comfortable or
authentic when his handlers thrust him into a
crowded shopping mall in Kowloon so that
photographers could take a picture of him munching
custard tarts.
Then there was the
embarrassing occasion when his handlers sent his
wife Betty out to "reassure" scared victims of
Amoy Gardens housing estate in the middle of the
severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crisis;
she was fully armored in what looked like some
kind of space suit. Tung might have worn better if
he had succeeded the next-to-last British
governor, the more retiring Sir David Wilson (who
was replaced because his style didn't suit the
British).
During the early years of his
administration, Tung maintained respectable poll
ratings, despite the economic hardships spawned by
the Asian financial crisis (which broke out his
second day in office). People were willing to cut
him some slack despite such foul-ups as the bird
flu scare, the bungled opening of the new airport,
scandals in the public hospitals and a badly
managed and later abandoned property scheme.
The new chief had one advantage: people
believed he was trusted by Beijing, and thus well
placed to insulate Hong Kong from overt
interference by China. As the years passed and
anxiety about mainland meddling receded, Hong
Kongers, mired in more mundane concerns such as
jobs and asset values, became less forgiving of
their leader.
But in the longer term, Tung
won't be judged on how he handled bird flu or SARS
or the civil service or whether he was too
beholden to local property tycoons, or all the
other criticisms. His historic mission was to
guide Hong Kong through the stormy early years of
this unprecedented political experiment called
"one-country, two systems". Judged from that
perspective he hasn't done badly.
Either
by calculation or serendipity - I suspect the
latter - our chief played a pretty shrewd game. He
issued a stern warning to the Falungong followers
to obey the law and described them in the
Legislative Council (Legco) as having aspects of
an "evil cult", using the same language of
Beijing. Of course, this infuriated liberals,
democrats and a lot of expatriates. Yet the
leaders in Beijing heard these worlds and thought,
"our man in Hong Kong is sound", and leave Hong
Kong alone.
One can easily imagine what
Chris Patten would have done in similar
circumstances. He would have gone on the radio and
issued a blistering attack on China's persecution
of peaceful religions and praised how things were
done differently in Hong Kong. Beijing would have
seethed. Yet in the end the outcome would have
been the same: the Falungong would go on doing
legally in Hong Kong what the group would be
arrested for doing in Tiananmen Square.
It
has been years since the name Tung Chee-hwa has
appeared in print or heard on the airwaves without
the prefix "beleaguered", "bungling" or
"unpopular" attached to it. According to Hong Kong
University, only about 16% of Hong Kong people
would vote to retain Tung if they had a chance.
That puts him down in the range of Richard Nixon
when he resigned in 1974, or along with some of
the more hapless Japanese prime ministers of
recent years.
Hong Kong does not elect its
chief executive, so Tung hung on. But ever the
Confucian gentleman, Tung knew that the Mandate of
Heaven had been withdrawn after he was publicly
berated last December in Macau by Chinese
President Hu Jintao. The only thing left was a
face-saving way to ease him out of office and make
way for somebody more attuned to Hong Kong's
current realities, someone with perhaps a few more
political skills if not charisma.
Before
the handover in 1997, the conventional wisdom held
that Hong Kong, being a "purely" economic entity,
should have as its first chief executive somebody
with a lot of business experience, somebody who
was plugged into the business community. As a
scion of a wealthy shipping family, Tung seemed to
fit the bill. That was a costly mistake. Hong Kong
has more than enough people with business savvy to
weather the economic tempests of recent years.
What it lacks are good politicians.
Hong
Kong, post-handover, has proven itself to be very
much a political organism. By some estimates an
average of 20 public protests of various sizes and
stripes take place every day. Hong Kong needs
somebody at the helm with considerably more
political suppleness than Tung ever displayed.
That is why the denouement and early retirement -
kicked upstairs by Beijing to a ceremonial post on
the Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference - is a merciful outcome - for him and
for Hong Kong.
Todd Crowell is
the author of Farewell My Colony: Last Days of
British Hong Kong. He comments on Asian affairs
at www.asiacable.blogspot.com .
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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