The humbling of the white man in Hong Kong
By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - With the 10th anniversary of this city's handover to Chinese rule
finally - and mercifully - about to pass, there has been no shortage of
analyses over the past several months of whether July 1 should be a day of
celebration or lament. In fact, the anniversary itself will be an anti-climax,
because we all already know how we are supposed to think and feel about the
historic occasion.
The script has been written, and it is a humbling one for expatriates - that
is, for the throwback expats of yesteryear: Caucasian and English-speaking with
limited, if any, knowledge of
Chinese. These mostly Anglo-American types, once masters of the Hong Kong
universe, now play a bit part - and, indeed, sometimes a beggar's role. When a
local newspaper ran a story this month about jobless white people sleeping in
the streets of some of the city's most vibrant and prosperous districts, it was
just the latest reminder of how much times have changed.
One of the down-and-outers who featured prominently in the article - a
41-year-old Briton named Chris Venables - attracted the attention of a Hong
Kong social worker, who gave him HK$90 (about US$12) to get a haircut and
launder his clothes so that he would look presentable for a job interview at a
local school.
In the end, the Fresh Fish Traders' school wound up hiring Venables to teach
English part-time during the summer for HK$4,000 a month. The school's
principal, Leung Kee-cheong, said Venables could be hired as a full-time
teaching assistant, earning HK$7,000 monthly, if he performed well in his
part-time role. Venables' rags-to-run-of-the-mill employment story also became
part of a photo exhibition on the city's street people displayed at the
Cultural Center.
Despite the Venables parable, however, most gweilo and gweipor -
or ghost men and women, as Caucasians are known here - continue to live the
good life in a city that offers a cornucopia of international cuisine, a
shop-until-you-drop ethos and a growing entertainment scene that includes
everything from local Canto-pop bands to jazz clubs to international acts such
as Eric Clapton and Christina Aguilera.
For the most part, however, those prodigious expat pay packages of the colonial
era (as well as the arrogance that often accompanied them) are a thing of the
past, although there is no shortage of ostentatious displays of wealth by
Chinese high-fliers. It is also true that there are a lot fewer white people in
Hong Kong these days.
While Hong Kong, now a city of 7 million people, has always been overwhelmingly
Chinese, 594,000 foreigners - nearly 10% of the population - lived here just
before the handover, according to government data. The foreign population now
stands at 7.1%, and its ethnic mix has changed dramatically. As expected, the
British - truly the ghost men and women of today's Hong Kong after 156 years of
colonial rule - disappeared in big numbers.
Their population, the largest non-Chinese presence before 1997, is down 85% -
from 175,000 prior to the handover to 25,000 as of last year. But other
predominantly gweilo populations are also significantly lower. The
Canadian and American presence has dropped by 63% and 53%, respectively.
Overall, as of 2006, the city's Caucasian population stood at 36,000, with
positions once held predominantly by Anglo-Americans now occupied by locals and
a growing number of expats from other Asian nations attracted to Hong Kong's
booming economy and cultural potpourri.
From the old gweilo guard that has stayed behind, however, you won't
hear a lot of complaints. Like everyone else, they are choking on the city's
growing pollution problem, but they, too, have learned how to play the new
game.
For William Barnes, managing director in the Asia-Pacific region for MacDermid
Inc, most of the significant changes commonly associated with the handover
actually started well before 1997. Barnes, an American who has lived in Hong
Kong since 1984, says MacDermid, which supplies chemicals and equipment to
electronics, industrial plating and printing businesses, has been largely
unaffected by the handover.
"For my business," he said, "there has been little change that could be
attributed to the handover. The business migration of factories, including many
of our customers, had started well before the handover. The emergence of China
as the world's factory had also started well before. It has certainly
accelerated since the handover, but not as a result."
The decline in the Caucasian population - which many believe has led to a
corresponding decline in the standard of English in the city - also does not
bother him.
"I don't feel this is a great concern for our business. Yes, I would prefer
better English standards, but the future is for the rest of us to study
Mandarin. Many years ago, we sent a lot of expats to this region, and our
company policy was that all hires must have a reasonable level of English. Now
we use the smallest possible number of expats, and we make all new recruits
take Mandarin lessons."
Business is also good for Peter Riha, a 21-year resident of Hong Kong who is
managing director of Solarmax Ltd, an importer of wine, beer and fine liquors.
The native Austrian's biggest complaint is that the government abandoned its
admittedly difficult campaign to win public support for a sales tax, which he
thinks would have broadened the city's revenue base to protect it better
against economic downturns in the future.
Riha also expresses disappointment about the city's politics. Noting that there
has been minimal progress so far on Beijing's promise to grant full democracy
to Hong Kong, he said: "Hong Kong could have become a model for the rest of
China and could have helped with the future reintegration of Taiwan. Now, when
Taiwan looks at Hong Kong, they don't like what they see."
What they have seen, of course, has been repeated demonstrations for democracy
in the city over the past decade, the biggest and most worrisome for Chinese
leaders being the July 1, 2003, protest that brought 500,000 people into the
streets. But that was then - after Hong Kong had been battered by the Asian
financial crisis, bird flu, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and the
inept leadership of its first post-colonial leader, Tung Chee-hwa.
These days, with the Hong Kong economy rebounding on the back of China's
sustained boom and the city's chief executive, Donald Tsang, enjoying
widespread popularity, it is impossible to imagine a demonstration of that
scope. Democracy is still the desire of the majority here, but the passion has
waned. Diehard democrats, however, are trying hard to whip it up again for what
has become a city tradition over the past decade: the annual July 1 protest
march. Don't expect a big turnout this time around - but the democracy question
will continue to hang ominously over Hong Kong and, therefore, also over the
mainland.
For Chis Forse, a Briton who has called the city his home since 1974, Hong
Kong's biggest problem since the handover is its educational system. As
director of student services for the English Schools Foundation (ESF), a
network of 20 English-language schools originally established to serve British
expatriates, Forse sees middle-class Chinese families increasingly giving up on
Hong Kong's outdated, rote-driven schools and forking over the necessary
tuition to attend ESF and other international schools in the city.
"Education is one of the least successful sectors since 1997," he said, "at
least in the eyes of the public. The Chinese middle class is voting with their
feet ... I would say that the ESF is one of the British administration's great
gifts to Hong Kong. A system that was once 70% British is now 50% Chinese and
serving English-speaking and bilingual Chinese children."
As for the bugbear of democracy, the educator thinks most overseas observers
miss a key point: Hong Kong already possesses the most important
characteristics of a democratic society - an independent judiciary and freedom
of expression, assembly and the press. As long as these basic freedoms hold, he
says, Hong Kong will continue to be an attractive place.
"Maybe we will lose a little over time to other Asian cities that are more
affordable," he said, "but I doubt it. Hong Kong works."
While tens of thousands of expats have fled the city, there is no shortage of
optimism among those who have stayed on. Very few have gone begging.
Kent Ewing is a teacher and writer at Hong Kong International School. He
can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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