When Britain handed the prosperous colony of
Hong Kong back to China 20 years ago, after 156 years of rule, most
people assumed that Beijing wouldn’t want to do anything to kill
the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Much of the talk then was of convergence.
Hong Kong boasted a freewheeling capitalist system underpinned
by an independent judiciary, a largely free press and basic
individual rights.
China, meanwhile, was still a nominally
communist dictatorship. Wouldn’t Hong Kong’s freedoms prove
irresistible to mainland Chinese?
But Chris Patten, the last governor, knew
better. “History is littered with the carcasses of decapitated
geese,” he remarked.
In authoritarian states, politics always
trumps economics, and control counts for more than success.
The
Beijing government, despite having agreed to a fifty-year
period of “one country, two systems,” appears to be bearing
down hard on Hong Kong. Its status as a Special Administrative
Region (SAR) seems less and less of a political safeguard.
In
turn, many of the 7.4 million islanders have begun to speak of
a distinct Hong Kong identity, as though it had some sort of
previous existence.
But that’s not true.
Hong Kong was a colony with no pre-colonial past, a purely
British invention and creation, following China’s defeat in
the Opium Wars.
Nonetheless, they
persist, as a way of trying to preserve their political
liberties.They
link the awakening cultural identity of Hong Kong to the
freedoms, civil liberties, rule of law, and democratic
practices that are enshrined in its
Basic Law, which was drafted in 1984.
They
champion local identity and values against a perceived
“mainlandization” of Hong Kong, defending its autonomy against
socio-economic integration with China.
A survey by the University of Hong Kong
Public Opinion Program found only three per cent of residents
ages 18 to 29 identified as “Chinese,” while two-thirds now give
“Hong Konger” as their identity.
Many look longingly to
another island, Singapore, a Chinese-dominated part of a
former British colony that had successfully established its
independence as a city-state from Britain’s successor,
Malaysia.
But the Muslim Malays
of that country were glad to see the Christian and Confucian
Chinese go; Beijing, on the other hand, considers the Hong
Kong Chinese simply part of the Han-majority state, one that
was intent on regaining territories lost to European powers,
and the Japanese, during its centuries of weakness and
humiliation.
Hong Kong does chafe under China’s increased
pressure. There have been mass protests since the autumn of
2014, when the
so-called Umbrella Movement captured international attention
by occupying sections of the city for weeks, in opposition to
the growing influence of Beijing.
The
movement distinguished
local culture, language, and experiences from the culture of
the mainland Chinese. Most people speak Cantonese, while the
official dialect on the mainland is Mandarin.
In March, a new chief executive for the
territory, Carrie Lam, was chosen by a selection committee
dominated by allies of Beijing. They also have a majority in the
legislature because half the 70 seats are selected by interest
groups mostly loyal to the mainland government.
But the other half is elected, and lawmakers
who favor greater democracy have won a majority of those seats.
In recent months two
young elected members of the Hong Kong legislature, Yau
Wai-ching and Baggio Leung, have been refused permission by
Beijing to take their seats because they appealed to a
separate Hong Kong identity and called for a greater degree of
autonomy if not outright independence for Hong Kong.
Yet the Chinese economic and political
juggernaut has, if anything, gained strength. Mainland companies
are challenging the local capitalists. Last year, more than half
of all companies listed on Hong Kong’s two stock exchanges were
entities from the mainland.
For residents who have watched Beijing
increasingly interfere in Hong Kong’s political affairs, the
activities of mainland companies seem like an ominous sign.
During local legislative elections last fall,
major Chinese state-owned enterprises pressured their employees
in Hong Kong to vote for pro-Beijing candidates.
Actually, China doesn’t need Hong Kong as
much as it used to. Its twentieth century role as the entrepot,
or connector, between China and the West has long since
vanished, as foreign firms are able to base offices in China and
sell directly to Chinese consumers.
On July 1,
President Xi Jinping of China visited the city and, despite
protests, cautioned that “making everything political or
deliberately creating differences” will “severely hinder Hong
Kong’s economic and social development.”
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