Trusting heathen hearts

Murray Sayle

Hong Kong At last, it's official. On 1 July, 1997 at the latest, the People's Republic of

China, prop, whoever is on top of the Pek- ing heap at the time, takes over the sovereignty and administration of Hong ICong, the last substantial bit of the British 1.,111Pire in the Far East to go the way of Nineveh and Tyre. Britain folds, we might saY, looking over the players' shoulders, China scoops the pot.

And what a pot. From the window of the

General Post Office, under the framed por- trait of Her Majesty, you can see China's winnings piling higher every day. On your left, the uncompleted Hong Kong Club, „Wci storeys for the members and 38 for of- fices, a modernistic masterpiece by the emi- nent Australian architect Harry Seidler. A covet-drive away across what was once the racket ground is the new, unfinished storey t'reY headquarters of the Hong Kong d Shanghai Bank, a grandiose successor . in the building they left behind in Shanghai. n 1949 (now the offices of the Shanghai Municipal government and Communist par- tt,, thanks very much). Hard by is the tall, tiled Connaught Centre, known affec- Tin2MtelY Anus e Chinese as The House of a

iousand es after its unusual circular

bwindows. Until recently it was the highest uilds in Asia, but now, crowding along- it, is Exchange Square, which will be, if blocks in d when the world. c We are looking at, in various stages of w(nnPletion, a couple of billion pounds' fort, orth of construction, enough loose cash to

fY a whole flock of Falklands. The

,T.,Wering cranes swing every day, the "olugent Cantonese crews sing as they work bveertinte for hard currency. There seems to Na race to have everything ready for day, h ong's new rulers b. wKith even a residencey fitthe forappointed the new mMese Governor, the seven million pound sion Just completed in Mediterranean seti are. for Michael Sandberg, the optimistic airtnan of the Hong Kong and Shanghai are The Chinese Communists themselves sin,doing their bit, too, with a new, pencil- of,,t?wer under construction for the Bank be ',ulna. To show who's to be boss, it will , 10 storeys, five higher than the Honk 4'11:1 Shank's HQ. Geoffrey Geoffrey Howe, at his news con- th eriee, here last Friday did not exactly pat 911nese on the back and say 'One day Yours this as far as the eye can see, will be fro—s- What the Foreign Secretary, fresh wool Peking, did say was more cautious: 'It iteuld not be realistic to think of an agree- ct nt: that provides for continued British nimistration in Hong Kong after 1997.'

But this, we know from unimpeachable sources, is exactly what Sir Geoffrey's team of negotiators, guided by steely soprano orders from London, pushed for all the weary months from September 1982 to mid- December last, while Hong Kong's hopes ebbed steadily away. Does this mean that all those bottoms were calloused, all that tea drunk and foreheads wiped with hot towels for nothing? Is the British side simply cav- ing in? Is a diplomatic Dunkirk in the mak- ing, as many, perhaps most, Hong Kong people fear? The answers lie in the minds of the negotiators, into which we must, brief- ly, peer. As harsh Peking winters have given way to leafy springs and hot, dusty summer, the British and Chinese negotiating teams have never ceased proclaiming, in chorus, that what they want for Hong Kong is 'stability and prosperity'. While distinctly easier to agree on than chaos and povety, this wish is no doubt genuine enough, and leads naturally to a further area of agreement: what they both want is Hong Kong more or less the way it is now. But how is it now? The Chinese side are not exactly deeply versed in the ways of the West, as we know and love them. Bossman Deng Xiaoping worked in a French rubber factory in the early 1920's, and the rest of

his team seem never to have been out of China, or even to Hong Kong. Their idea of 'capitalism' is pre-war Shanghai, where Deng spent 1928-29 hiding from the nationalist police in the various foreign concessions. The Chinese negotiators can, however, read, and they have observed that Hong Kong is, on paper, an , an enviably complete autocracy. Hong Kong certainly has no open politics, virtually no representative in-

stitutions, scarcely any trade unions, and an all-powerful Governor who could, in theory, lock up all 5.2 million inhabitants tomorrow with a nod of his plumed hat.

The Chinese therefore conceive of Hong Kong as a vast racket run for the benefit of

the British and their faithful Chinese run- ning dogs, with a percentage creamed off the top for the personal bank account of the lady whose portrait appears in. all Hong Kong post offices, police stations and other bastions of imperialist exploitation (a lot of Hong Kong Chinese believe this, too, but think they are getting value for the money).

Nothing, therefore, seems simpler to the Peking leadership than to substitute one authoritarian rule for another, with one of their running dogs wearing the plumped hat, QE2's cut rerouted from London to Peking, and business otherwise pretty much as usual. Even the present Hong Kong laws, which feature such things as imprisonment without trial at the Governor's pleasure, can be happily retained, with only minor changes, like redirecting appeals from the Hong Kong courts to the Central Commit- tee in Peking, being necessary to keep up with the times.

The British view of Hong Kong is, pre- dictably, somewhat different. Certainly, in the letter of the law, the Governor disposes powers that would have entranced the Emperor Caligula. In practice, however, Hong Kong pullulates with lawyers and journalists, British, Chinese and foreign, all on the lookout for briefs and scandals. Nowhere is there a freer press, which does not hesitate to criticise, not only the Gover- nor (locally considered easy meat) but the all-highest authorities in Peking. The Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review has, for instance, just published a long complaint by the well-known Italian jour- nalist Tiziano Terzani that he was expelled from China on a spurious charge of smug- gling 'antiques' framed up by the Public Security Bureau in Peking, and warning that the same shadowy outfit is busy collecting names in Hong Kong ready for der tag in 1997.

This sort of thing is, it seems, exactly what Hong Kong is worried about. 'Per- sonal freedom is the right Hong Kong peo- ple value most highly', said a delegation from the colony's Executive Council which was in London recently to put their case to Mrs Thatcher. 'China's recent history has not been stable and is not reassuring. Fur- thermore, there is no known precedent for one country to operate successfully two totally opposite systems at the same time, and no one knows whether it will work.'

What these good people are asking for, of course, is the rule of law, and they seem eager to settle for even the de facto version which now operates in Hong Kong, despite the theoretical tyranny of the plumed hat. Some form of continued British presence after 1997 seemed at one time the best way of securing it, and hence the long stalemate in the negotiations. 'We had to hang out as long as we could', a Foreign Office spokes- person might have explained, had British lips not been sealed by a rather one-sided pledge to keep the negotiations secret. 'What would history have said, if we hadn't even tried?'

By last December enough tea was enough, and the British team 'condi- tionally' conceded both sovereignty and administration after 1997, the matters on which Sir Geoffrey has now unconditional- ly gone public. Since then the British side have been pushing for a set of detailed guarantees by China, to be enshrined in some kind of international agreement, that Hong Kong people will enjoy what we would call civil rights. Last week Sir Geoffrey even mentioned 'freedom from arbitrary arrest' as one of the rights that Britain wants guaranteed. A Foreign Office person in an unbuttoned moment might have explained: 'We want these guarantees in writing, because Chinese respect written agreements, and also as a proof that the whole Chinese leadership assented to the deal, and not just a faction thereof.'

The British side are hoping to involve other countries, as well, by settling such headaches as the acceptability of Hong Kong passports (this is going to be tricky with Indonesia, for instance, which doesn't even recognise Peking), Hong Kong's quotas of textile exports under the various international Multi-Fibre Agreements, the landing rights of the Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific, and the host of minor problems associated with Hong Kong's promised semi-autonomous status — and all this in writing, before the day of separation from Mummy dawns.

The Chinese side have not, predictably, responded joyfully to these demands. While it may be true that the Gang of Four did away with several million people, they deny that the present leadership has ever arbi- trarily arrested anyone, or would dream of doing such a thing in the happy future. The people of Hong Kong (a few running dogs excepted) are counting the days until they can be reunited with the motherland. The argument that the British Parliament is legal- ly obliged to cede back to China the parts of Hong Kong that were ceded to Britain by the Ching dynasty in 1842 and 1860, and will need to be satisfied that Hong Kong has received adequate guarantees for its future, is privately denounced by the Chinese as a typically ingenious imperialist trick. The Peking negotiators, refuse 'to \ sign anything, and there, once again, things are stuck.

rlould Spectator readers, negotiating in a

small committee, have done any bet- ter? In hindsight we can see some assump- tions which seem to have crept, all unacknowledged, into the discussion. It has been the common wisdom, for instance, that China clearly wants Hong Kong to continue because it's here now.

Even in the darkest days of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution water, pigs and poultry continued to flow from China into Hong Kong in a steady, life-giving stream. The very concrete of which the commercial cliffs of Hong Kong are con- structed all comes from China. The Chinese border guards have co-operated loyally with the Hong Kong puppet police in keeping

The Spectator 28 April 1984 illegal would-be immigrants out of Hong Kong's promised land. China, clearlY' wants Hong Kong to stay in business, the argument goes, and therefore Thatchetiall firmness now will avoid a lot of trouble in the future. The deals which have kept Hong 1{9hg going so far have not, however, been negotiated on such a lofty level. They hers been cobbled together by Cantonese, heirs of legendary trading skills. Doing business with the commissars of Peking is quire another matter, and we might, for a start' notice that no one in 5,000 years has ever managed to make a mutually satisfactory treaty with the Empire of China or its suc cessors, the latest to be disappointed being the other Communist colossus, the USS.,".,

The common perception in Asia

tat Chinese are people of their word is aeerl. rate enough in day-to-day matters. The 131.°i tionallyt. hp eerFa rpbr tiodoadcoehfnf becryhtforeigners ne:t seosrat ghmee otrhrueel et f ; with one's forehead and respectfully he the commands of the Son of Heaven. t" was the disinclination of the British negotiator Lord Napier to adopt this 9P- 111 proach in 1839 which led to the first 00 War and the British acquisition of Ho," Kong in the first place.) Now, once agal the Yellow Emperor has spoken, through the personae of the Central Connittee, the CPC, indicating that the con1Par,.11,°ts „h of Hong Kong are held in specially tub esteem. No more need, or will, be said , From this lofty viewpoint, British stave bornness can stem only from iga°,11114,incg about the proper (Chinese) way a --,-- a things, or, a darker suspicion, a reagth-_, action to defend the Royal rake-off from Hong Kong. A further, practical, point 74 the fact that a signed agreement will indeed mean reopening the whole Hong K0118 ens in the Peking Politburo, giving him Xioaping's enemies a chance to accuse In s obfrinkgowhtimowdinogwtno. imperialism, and PerhaP distinct We must therefore face the dist' possibility that nothing will ever be sigirl_.`„ by Peking guaranteeing the future of Flout: Kong, and that Britain will silently llav,e.,4c fold portraits, plumes and all and sat'he away on the appointed day, leaving 0013", a topless towers of the business district abver, memorial. The future is not, lowehat, either as clear, or as clearly gloomy as Le and the best guide to the likely outcome Kmaonygbaetwthheatmisomacetnutally going on in "

To begin with, and surprisinglY

enou.e business is booming. The rag trade and lutoh` manufacturing, which together erne per cent of the labour force, are doing. Hong Kong's quality is improving aloYw ll thehattime and there is once again talk battered Hong Kong dollar is underva...1 There is, in other words, a vitality in "..°: Kong which might even survive p, feokri:gw.0"..".1 the arrival of potentates from The property market is, on the twtr 'her" lei hand, flat as a chopping-board, and huge buildings by the Post Office may

be the last fling of the traditional British- dominated Hong Kong establishment, the gigantism which, evolutionists tells us, often signals the disappearance of a doom- ed species. For, in truth, come 1997 or not, British (Scottish, mostly) financial interests in Hong Kong are fading out anyway, to be replaced by American, Japanese and, in particular, aggressive local Chinese money- power. A typical Hong Kong story is the rise of Li Ka Shing, a one-time flower seller who now owns the old-line Caledonian trading firm Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, and basks in the title 'the god of wealth'.

In the same way the Bank of China and its affiliates now have 30 per cent of Hong Kong's savings to play with, steadily eroding the deposit base of the Honk and Shank. These are natural and inevitable processes, the same by which the locals bought out British investors in Canada, Australia and the USA. In the absence of HM's mythical percentage, there is therefore no good economic reason for Bri- tain to expose the flag in Hong Kong much longer anyway, and Peking has always been the only possible residual legatee.

There is a hopeful sign however, in the identity of at least one of the new people who are buying in, as the British sell out.

Wang Guang Ying, an avuncular one-time `patriotic capitalist' from Tientsin, arrived in Hong Kong from the People's Republic of China last year with 50 million US dollars spending money, a recommendation Hong Kong people understand. Wang's Ever Bright Industrial Co. now has some half-billion dollars invested, none too expertly it is said, in Hong Kong industry and property. This flashy display of confidence has been financed, it is clear, by the Bank of China, or, at one remove, by Peking.

Wang has come, also, well connected. He is the brother-in-law of the late Liu Shao Chi, former head of the Chinese state and designated heir of Mao, who died in prison in China in 1969 branded as a 'hidden scab, renegade and traitor: 'China's Khrushchev' and the 'arch capitalist-roader'. Liu, the most eminent victim of the Cultural Revolution, was therefore a man after Deng Xiaoping's heart and was, indeed, a close associate of the current strongman.

Deng himself, while still a self- proclaim- ed Communist and faithful exponent of the thought of Mao Tse-tung, is clearly fascinated by capitalism. China has now tried just about everything else, and seems clearly on the way to restoring in some form a free market and elementary property rights or, to put in bluntly, taking the capitalist road. This will be a nationalist, tightly-controlled kind, of course, and will doubtless be presented as yet another Thought of Mao, who once said: 'The only standard by which truth can be assessed is its practical results.' Mao may yet figure as the greatest of all the capitalist-roaders, and Hong Kong, the home town of practical results, is a pilot scheme and working model of the capitalist road soon to be reunited with the motherland. Significantly, capitalist economic ideas are flooding unhindered into China from Hong Kong as you read.

Here, in terms of its value to China's modernisation schemes, is that last and best hope for Hong Kong's future, rather than any promises which might be wrung out of the present Chinese leadership by stone- bottomed tea-sipping men from the Foreign Office. The most effective preparation for the great changeover may therefore be no preparation at all, beyond a cooperative attitude and a careful, non-dogmatic play- ing of the situation by the ear under the plumed hat.

This is far from perfect, of course, and there will be many hazards to avoid. Under any suzerain, some things are just not on, and just as Chinese are not allowed to eat dogs where the Union Jack waves, they will not be allowed to practice non-Communist politics under the five-starred red banner. It would therefore be pointless, cruel and pro- bably dangerous to allow open politics in Hong Kong now, only to have them brutal- ly extinguished by the Public Security Bureau on 2 July 1997.

Similarly, with so many punters in PlaY' Hong Kong's currency and economy are certain to fluctuate wildly between now and 1997, leaving ample scope for their , assorted joint British and Chinese manaFers to engage in name-calling and recrimina- non. Either side can readily get a Hong Kong crowd into the streets (this will Pro; bably happen anyway, sooner or later) and joint repression will be an ugly business' leading to more recriminations. And lica Kong may simply spoil from the clura,,sY, attentions of too many bureaucratic coo" from up north, before its value to China has been fully realised, or the Behemoth .has. had time to adjust to its frisky foster-chi-110;s Still, as long as Deng Xiaoping 113 ,t things may still be okay, with civil rights no altogether absent, if their connection wi'.1" modernisation is spotted in time. A Ile", breed of Chinese people's capitalists tnao. yet manage to make Hong Kong the tied New York of Asia. They will certainlY falA plenty of office space to do business in, an some quaint windows to look out of.