Hanging on in Hong Kong

Murray Sayle

Hong Kong Mime was, in the grimmer days of Chair- 1 man Mao, when the border crossing from the People's Republic of China to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong was one of the more mind-bending Checkpoints Charlie of our much-checked planet. The bourgeois traveller down from Canton, penitential suitcase in hand, descended from the softclass compartment of his China National Railways train, had his passport stamped by a green-suited, red- starred border guard, and trudged 50 yards or so of wooden bridge over the muddy Slam Chun river to the British side, where a policeman in heavy blue serge collar and tie and massive beetlecrusher boots, sig- naled, louder than words, transit to a dif- fennt world.

loth of these officials were, and still are, Chaese, but their interests seemed entirely diftrent. One scanned the traveller's face for;igns of rightist deviationism, while the othr seemed more concerned that his wok contained adequate funds for a visit to tie Crown Colony. One exuded the at- mohere of a political prison, the other the feeltg that anything went, except cruelty to dog and disrespect towards Her Majesty. Har to believe, in those days, that these men were compatriots, possibly cousins, destied one day to live under the same flag.

A:the Day approaches, it is still hard to beliee, but Mao is gone, and things are fare less dramatic on the border. The Chinse check you out of the People's Repulic in Canton, now, before you board the tun. In a way, Hong Kong has already begu: Canton shops offer many foreign prodcts, mostly Japanese, everyone takes Hon; Kong money, taxis stop for foreign- ers ii the streets, waitresses in the hotels wearikirts, not trousers (the first women I saw n the People's Republic dressed as such, and there is much strolling and windw-shopping at night, although the only ice easy to practise in Canton is still heav.cigarette smoking. People are also, in the bng Kong way, ruder, more offhand, moren a hurry.

Siping the green tea your softclass hoste; brings you, you observe, through the trin window, Hong Kong getting closer by thtninute. People are no longer allowed to tut their TV aerials towards the Hong Kong trasmitters, but practically every houschas one. And they are said to swivel after ark. The Shen Zen Special Economic Zone,just before the border, is a boom town, where citizens of the People's Repulic toil in factories, jointly managed by errepreneurs from Hong Kong, for the highe: wages paid for similar work in all China. Shen Zen also has China's closest approach to a western-style supermarket.

Then, never missing a diesel beat, your Chinese train is over the border bridge and into British territory. The first big sign of change is modern earth-moving equipment, China's loaded donkeys and rock-filled baskets gone for good. At Tai Po the single- track line opens a vista of Tolo Harbour, rimmed with trim white villas and dotted with the sailboats of the bourgeoisie. In Sha Tin New Town a huge, unfamiliar structure turns out to be the new Hong Kong racecourse, complete with air-conditioned stables for the horses. (China has, of course, not a single operating racetrack, the grandstand of the former Shanghai Jockey Club being used these days for compulsory political rallies.) A last tunnel, and your journey ends at Kowloon Station, with a superb view of the hanging gardens of Hong Kong Island, the thicket of sky- scrapers along the waterfront, the harbour jammed with junks, freighters and war- ships, the streets lined with banks and moneychangers, one of the most exciting cityscapes of the world.

Visually, spectacular progress has replac- ed drab poverty, but in a drowsy way Can- ton feels a lot more optimistic than Hong Kong. To coin a phrase, a spectre is haunt- ing the Crown Colony, the spectre of 1997, when the 99-year lease extracted from the moribund Ching Dynasty, China's last, is due to expire. This gives a city living on bor- rowed time a deadline for the arrival, as it were, of the removalists, but not exactly a breathing-space: in truth the 1997 crisis is upon us now.

The people of Hong Kong certainly have a lot to lose. With an average income of £2,000 per head, Hong Kong is, after Tokyo, easily the wealthiest city in Asia. Heading all the rest are 1,500 millionaires, almost all Chinese, with assets of flO million or more each. After them come a million middle-class Chinese, the most solidly prosperous group on the Asian mainland, with credit cards, comfortable, if crowded apartments, western hobbies, children aspiring to attend one of Hong Kong's universities (one English, the other Chinese) and, in short, with much that middle-class people enjoy anywhere in the world, with the harsh exception of a secure nationality or future. Hoping to join them in the bourgeois lifestyle are Hong Kong's remaining four million or so population, among the hardest workers and savers known to economic science, all but three per cent currently in gainful employment. Standing apart from the Chinese but enjoy- ing, on the whole, excellent relations are Hong Kong's 60,000 non-Chinese, half

Apart from being a place where Pe°P.ii like to live, Hong Kong is the third finatd centre of the world, after New Yortmk„7,0 London, the best anchorage on the

coast, a major centre of light manufa,t i ,

ng and textiles, a destination no seu;;; tourist should miss (hotels pricy but grit value, everything else cheap), the layover of all airline flight crews, the ri'ld and communications hub of east Asia °ad, the best liberty port for sailors in the Or'set As it stands, Hong Kong is a InaOr to China, bringing in, one way and an°Iii,eler, some 40 per cent of China's despera` needed foreign exchange earnings. Wh,e,n0 else, for instance, could China sell pigs a day, two million eggs, water, 00,9 sand and cabbages, all for hard currenc)A. China owns 13 banks with 189 branches al! more than a billion pounds of depositsn'Pl Hong Kong shipping firms, departn:,,,e4 stores and real estate companies. """:0 Kong has invested just as enthusiasticallY):15 China, and loans by Chinese-owned bthe in Hong Kong to state enterprises in ‘iis mainland' are now well over two billi°11,,re dollars. Hong Kong's human resources ; even more important to China, a garhernn on her doorstep of bilingual exPertsae. science and technology, business inal17°05 ment, market research, western fastuo and other mysteries vital to China's OP°

ic15'

Hong Kong has, in fact, only three advantages from China's viewP°intin. 1) with twenty times the per caPita. come of China itself, Hong Kongsi iflCth to make the mainland Chinese restless '11/ 2) this has been achieved under a forig

their spartan living standards, - en

flag, rrt.101

3) the lease, with its awkward ter-100 date, compels some sort of decision

Apart from the fateful date, the ond lease Hong Kong's future.

itself is an historical absurdity, and b.ceijii-ere doubt valueless in international law, 11 sve is such a system. Hong Kong Island was'oe know, seized by Britain in 1842, afrernne disgraceful Opium War promoted bY William Jardine, known to the Chines:a, Iron-headed Old Rat, who was in turri,r;,f)0 ting to the seizure and destruction of 2u all'd cases of British opium which Jardine into his cronies were trying to smuggl,..e boa, China. The matter still rankles in 1- hsti and the patriotic mandarin Lin Tsfe-few who burnt Jardine's opium is one ° for imperial officials still revered, his image the instance appearing in bas-relief on out, Monument to RevolutionarY Heroes pelk. side Chairman Mao's mausoleurn .11,,at ing. (It is good to know, incidentallY, .1.1Ling subsequent luminary of the still-flouriThis firm of Jardine Matheson contributeujuin time and cash to the Spectator, the ,c)Fe.) of all too tiny a part of the bourgeoist, The lease, however, relates to thecPrin'ese

Hong Kong located on the mainland, housing a lot of the p0Pulat0i°011 and the indispensable racecourse. It

!rafted by a British Army captain, on some tion that strategic depth was needed to "eeP the Russians and Japanese out, and no “.rerrit was ever negotiated or paid, a defect 7aich alone makes the lease worthless. This is not, however, the heart of the matter, or nev,en Peripherally important. In fact, if was minded to continue reaping the oubted advantages of the treaty port, a uistant, non-menacing European power, Militarily unimportant but equipped with 111°dern technology, would be the ideal custodian. Britain, furthermore, has by general agreement of the people of Hong Kong r(arld China too, less vocally) an excellent thecord here, particularly in the years since ve Second World War and the Communist .let°rY in China. In all the plotting and ekounter-plotting of the Mao epoch, Hong 211g was never once mentioned, and no 'mlior British official here, apart from one 13:liceMan, has been caught with his hand the till, a record probably unique in Asia. the lapse of Chief Superintendent k„(klber, for which he did time in a Hong g prison, seems to be viewed less "ritanically by the tolerant Chinese IP:Illation than by his British former col- th glies, to judge by a locally made film on l'e'e subject. The problem lies not in the ealitY of the lease, the historic sins of the ie(ssee, or even the desirability of Hong is°.ng continuing in much the happy state it jitvill,n°w. The difficulty is that its doing so oives rtitt. risks which no one is prepared to

Let

, us, first, take the Chinese view. ha„ "awn-off strongman Deng Tsiao-ping g Publicly urged Hong Kong investors to teet their hearts at ease', and lesser Chinese n.aders have repeatedly said that they are e'ePared to see Hong Kong continue as a eaen.tre of commerce and finance under the

Ditalist system'.

oh/tre they wavering in their Marxist faith? zh" the contrary, Deng, Hu Yao-bang and ih,!;° ZiYang, the troika currently doing til`lr best to run China, are as surely Corn- as Pope John Paul II is a Catholic. seleKilY for China, they also pride them- 1%,,ves on being practical men, and they Krs'w a good thing when they see one. biWor does Marxism, for that matter, for- karic°Inmerce with capitalists. The prophet to—u,', was, in fact, highly ambivalent titi:grtls the system he laboured to over- week, As readers of Das Kapital, or last t4'se,"'s Spectator, will know, the historic the aSsigned the bourgeoisie is to prepare floe industrial base for socialism, and than where are they/we doing a better job 134„ in Hong Kong. Capitalists who are 'ing for the socialist future might esh-refore well be left to get on with it, is "heciallY as Hong Kong, the physical city, tith"°t Portable and can be reclaimed at any va"the' complete with most of the surplus dit,' sweated out of the proletariat by Jar- hurt Matheson and Company. What's the ir.,,tY, when final victory is sure?

‘ i here is a similar ambivalence, we might note, on the other side of the barricades: one minute Communists are the resurgent voice of the people, good sales prospects for pipelines, or overeager agrarian reformers, while the next they are persecutors of Poles, enslavers of Afghans and pups out of Attila the Hun's pack. Their money is, just the same, as bankable as anyone else's).

But Deng and his colleagues are patriots as well as Communists, and, being less con- ceited, more realistically so than the Mao couple ever were. Reclaiming Taiwan for the Motherland is an absolute priority, hardly likely in logic while sovereignty over a corner of the mainland itself is still in foreign hands. Nor is the troika's position so secure that they can afford to appear soft on imperialism to the generation who were teenage Red Guards a decade or so ago and will soon be reaching jobs with great poten- tial for rocking China's immense, over- crowded boat. Whatever happens, Hong Kong is China's internal affair, a position from which the troika or their successors cannot, publicly or privately, ever budge. Nor, being busy with revolution, have they had much time to reflect on the nature of 'Capitalism', which, to them, is pure heartless greed, just as it was when Deng Tsiao-ping was a young agitator in the vast brothel and sweatshop of Shanghai in the 1920s. Hong Kong's success in finding a tolerably decent life for some four million refugees and their families owes as much to British notions of civil rights, free speech, freedom from arbitrary search and seizure and so on as it does to the exploitation of the workers. That capitalists are likely to flourish in such circumstances is well known, a constant problem for democratic socialists of the West. It is not a problem that troubles China's present leadership, who are no doubt quite sincere in their belief that Hong Kong constitutes the Stock Exchange, the Jockey Club, and a corrupt proletariat hardly worth the bother of liberating. No Marx-based social order hp muili of a record on civil rights, which seem to evaporate at a glance from self-willed bad guys like Stalin, Pol Pot and Mrs Mao's husband. The touching faith that they can be reliably guaranteed by 'Socialist Legality' is not one shared by many people in Hong Kong. Future civil rights are not, of course, uppermost in the minds of the 1,500 Hong Kong millionaires, who have without known exception made arrange- ments to jet out well before things go sour. But for the rest, holders of only a Hong Kong Identity Card or a Hong Kong British Passport, which gives no right of entry into Britain or anywhere else, the promise that they can stay in Hong Kong and practise 'Capitalism' is not reassuring, especially when Chinese commentators add that of course crimes like 'counter-revolution', 'anti-Chinese activities', 'disclosing State secrets' and 'slandering the Motherland' will not be tolerated in the Communist.trun, capitalist Hong Kong of the future. Con- versely, if the Chinese leadership saw any connection between civil rights and 'Capitalism', they wouldn't be Marxists. Some of Hong Kong's laws are, on raper, pretty repressive, while China is of course theoretically a perfect democracy. The dif- ference is in the spirit of the two administra- tions.

If, therefore, the British flag is a credible guarantee of civil rights which is, in China's ultimate interest, attracting capitalists to Hong Kong, why not keep it flying? It is conceivable that; once sovereignty was conceded by Britain, the Chinese might find it convenient to defer the arrival of their zealous bureaucrats and thought-police until the time was ripe, several months of Sundays hence. Chinese commentators have, in politer terfns, pro- mised as much; and after all China now en- joys theoretical sovereignty over the very land, in the leased territories, where the racehorses loll in their air-conditioned stalls. The British flag, even conditionally, would give a competent and honest ad- ministration the legal basis appropriate to its responsibilities and all would go on more or less as before.

This solution is not a runner, unfor- tunately, because Britain, as reluctantly as China wants to get into Hong Kong, has to get out. The decision has not, of course, been publicly announced, as no firmer push on the panic button could be imagined, but every entrance and exit, every speech and aside in the unfolding drama confirms that it has already been made. Even such curiosities as Mrs Thatcher's assertion, on her visit here, that the Hong Kong treaties were sound international law point un- mistakably to the short and 'probably troubled future British Hong Kong still has to run. • The process was already under way in 1962, when the Nationality Act deprived Hong Kongers of Chinese ancestry (and, in- cidentally, my good self, of British ancestry) of the automatic right of entry in-

to and residence in the United Kingdom. Hong Kong's palmiest days, under the Governorship of Sir Murray (now Lord) Maclehose, the ablest man ever to hold the job, were still ahead, but the cloud was already on the horizon. It blew up like a typhoon when the task force hoisted rusty anchors for the Falklands.

The message of that affair is not, of course, that Britain is once again a world power, despite the fact that five Hong Kong men, crew auxiliaries aboard Royal Navy ships, died there, and the Hong Kong Legislative Council, without consulting anyone, rushed £2 million pounds to the Falklands Fund. The moral of the Falk- lands is that the claim of sovereignty in- volves, inescapably, the responsibility of defence. Hong Kong is easily the most populous and important of the remaining 12 British dependent territories. It is also the subject of the best-founded foreign claim (two, actually, if we count the Chinese Nationalists' on Taiwan). The serious military force here, four battalions of Gurkhas and, currently, a battalion of the Scots Guards, ominously based at Fort Stanley on Hong Kong Island, are in sup- port of the civil power, and more than ade- quate for the purpose. They could not, however, defend Hong Kong, and no pre- parations have been made to that end. Calculations that no one is threatening Hong Kong, while now true, are not enough. The only sure way to avoid an oriental Goose Green is to move in more troops, leaving Belfast to the IRA and Bremen to the KGB, or move the flag, which must be defended, out. The die, clearly, is a-casting: Hong Kong is going to have to look after itself, and the very best of Chinese luck.

The terms of the lease, therefore, which compel a reluctant China to reassert its sovereignty by 1997 at the latest, set the same date as the absolute cut-off point beyond which Britain can carry a respon- sibility so far from home no longer. This calculation, no doubt, lies behind Mrs Thatcher's stab at international law. The issue is confused, at the moment, by one of Hong Kong's periodic property slumps, caused by the grotesque overlending of the 192 foreign banks which have set up shop here, hoping to get into the China trade. This sort of money is as timid as tadpoles, and not much more intelligent, and most of the loans will turn out to be worthless stakes in unrentable skyscrapers. Life, however, will go on, and so will the produc- tive part of Hong Kong, all the better for a sharp drop in rents. Speculators, however, have loud voices, and the Hong Kong air is full of mindless appeals for 'confidence', meaning that the property punters are howling for someone to make them an offer so that they can sell up and get out. Deeper and more disturbing is the recognition that the processes impell- ing Chinese intervention and British disengagement are irreversible, and the lack of confidence by the people of Hong Kong that anyone is genuinely looking out for their interests, or that Chinese bureaucrats, whatever their intentions may be, are suitable gardeners for this exotic oriental blossom.

How will the story go from here? One of this sample of scenarios should play: The Saigon Scenario. This is the one everyone wants to avoid. Promises are made, all goes well for a while, then some external adventure of China's, or internal swing of the pendulum, starts a panic, the hunt for saboteurs, class enemies and Viet- namese agents starts up, and there is another tragic rush for the boats. In a re- cent poll, 22 per cent of respondents, cor- responding to 700,000 people, said that they would 'try by every means' to leave Hong Kong if there was a thorough-going Communist takeover.

The Shanghai Slumber. Likelier, and not quite so alarming. Here, when Chiang Kai- shek left for Taiwan just ahead of the vic- torious Communists in 1949, capitalists were also invited to mend their ways and stay on, out-and-out bloodsuckers of course always excepted. Some lasted as long as six months, but the fear of arrest, the im- possibility of making money, and there be- ing nothing to spend it on, persuaded them all in the end to leave. Many made their way to Hong Kong, exploited workers and all. For western visitors Shanghai is now a ghost town, but it is the biggest city in China (and the world), and by the stan- dards of the People's Republic it is both stable and prosperous, exactly as Hong Kong has been promised it will be. Every time I see a member of the Royal Hong Kong Police evicting a squatter, I am reminded of the picture of 'puppet police oppressing the workers' in the Shanghai Revolutionary Museum.

The Singapore Syndrome. This may be what the Chinese discussers (as Hong Kong is an internal affair of China's, they reject the title 'negotiators') may have in mind, much as they dislike Lee Kuan Yew's authoritarian, anti-Communist islet. A local Chinese bigwig approved by Peking is elected president, Hong Kong gets its own The Spectator II December 1982 flag, and all goes as merry as a Chinese I`l° Year. Maybe. Lee certainly has Sing0P°,11,,1 interests at heart, much as he may conll17 them with his own. He also has two ly weak neighbours, Malaysia and la; donesia, and an Israeli-trained armourev force neither of them is anxious to trYf sovereignties with. Either the President a the People's Republic of Hong Kong iS unconvincing Chinese communist frari,,,- man, or he has enough military force ' maintain a tolerable independence, the It ter hardly conceivable. Either way, 14.1/he'' Kong's skilled and mobile people WI long gone. The Macao Model. Also acceptable eclei China, because they have, in fact, aeeelit,c, it in Macao, which China says is Ch territory territory under temporary Portuguese ministration', much as it has been for t' past 450 years. The Portuguese flag wavess Portuguese law is administered, but there 'e no imperialist nonsense about Portugaes sovereignty. The Governor of Maca'

, Vasco Almeida e Costa, a relaxed, engagn

°"cgi figure who goes in for two-toned shoes °Jai , sunglasses, explains that he sleepssoullw)s at night because 'Portugal has no Prose with China over Macao'. True, because the arrangement has no date, the entire 13°r; tuguese population, 4,000, could leave °I1.5 single ship, the Chinese middle class I minute, and Portugal itself has had little ex" perience of the benefits of civil rights' Macao, the last Latin outpost in Asia, Ptcle vides temporary jobs for hard-to-Piaci military men made redundant by the elld Portugal's colonial wars (like Goverriclr Costa, an up-and-coming former naval Pei; son) and a job of any kind is welcome I Portugal, the Macao of Europe. But will Hong Kong's starch Brl Commonwealth and Chinese civil servarl'ir so used to running their own show, be c?on tent to work under the ultimate supervisi theit of the commissars of Peking, and bY rules and regulations? Not on your colon:i nelly, we might guess. 'Too proud,' °Pirl„t a shrewd source close to Governrae;, House in Macao, and I think Sue EXcele,„ cia is right. Portugal has nothing to Macao, even face, while Britain faeesthe potential disaster in Hong Kong. Ir1 ng meantime, Chinese punters from Kong, bored with the horses, the Stock P",,, change and the property market, i1(7, Macao ct ha eol s and solvent ve na all-night gphat t barber seirn gs htohper: s cinastelS b sig to Lusitanian tradition. As Hong K° goes, so, economically, will go Macao. 'Everyone wants Hong Kong to survIvo", so somehow it will.' You hear this aifl especially from people with investmen.ls an Hong Kong, a foreign passport arla„, if airline ticket in their pockets. 'After r we'd worried about the future, there de °I: pnloauHsiobnleg t hKaotnigntneloliwge.'ntTpreuoep, lazdgivitensetrrame), and goodwill, should be able to resolve Q`,dy, problem. But then, if life was that .ons, othpeiruemw.ould be no divorces, no revolutic)..... nor, for that matter, fortunes in seiIlaa