ISLAND RACE AGAINST TIME
Christopher Hitchens reports on the
Hong Kong authorities' opposition to democracy as 1997 approaches
Hong Kong TIMES may be uncertain in this most exotic and populous of our remaining possessions. There may be attacks of nerves at Jardines, frissons at Government House and a strange jumpiness among 'old hands' and hardened China-watchers. Even the gamblers and speculators and Wanchai girls, normally so adept with their cross-border facility, show the extra furrow that is the infallible sign of stress. On all brows, the figures 1997 are blazoned like a doom-laden hieroglyph. How marvellous, then, is the calming and strengthening effect of one dignified, graceful English- woman; a still centre in a turning world. I still feel privileged to have shared the same table with her at a reasonably good dim sum restaurant near the Star Ferry.
Elsie Elliot has lived in Hong Kong for almost half a century, and in mainland China before that. People wave to her in the street, and offer courtesies in Can- tonese. Taxi-drivers refuse to take her money. Bankers and businessmen are starting to ask her to lunch. This is all because, for the last several decades, she has been a lone, persistent voice on behalf of democracy. I can still remember reading a prophetic pamphlet that she wrote, for the old Movement for Colonial Freedom, in 1966. Her modest demand then was for directly elected local government. Her reward was a police frame-up engineered by a senior officer who is now wanted for serious crimes and has taken refuge in Taiwan. She is now, to the surprise of some, vice-chairman of the Urban Council.
Over our dim sum she pronounced the most perceptive judgment that was to emerge from a fortnight of sentimentality and ballyhoo. 'Those who called for demo- cracy before,' she said, 'have mostly gone quiet. And those who opposed democracy are now all for it when it's far too late.'
The self-evident truth of this observation should not allow it to be dismissed as obvious. The Red Guard types who used to rail against colonial rule in the late Sixties did not want an elected government in Hong Kong any more than they did, or do, in Peking. And the fat cat types (who really are very plump and very feline) did not object to mainland rule as much as they did to democractic rule. They may yet make good partners for the commissars. What, though, of the men and women of no property and no ideology?
There's something weirdly apposite in the way that everybody here refers to the Legislative Council; a silly body which until September 1985 was made up of the governor's nominees. It now, adventurous- ly, has 24 elected members out of 56. (I should love to have been at the meeting where those exact proportions were de- cided. Twenty-eight too high for true efficiency, 20 too obviously rigged — have we got a quorum? I move the motion for 24 be now put.') Even these bold 24 are `indirectly elected', which means that most residents don't know who their member is. Anyway, the official and demotic name for this Council is 'Ledge-Co', which is why I say it is apposite. The more you hear it said, the more it sounds like the wrong instrument for the conduct of brink- manship. Sir Geoffrey Howe says it, as if saying 'the Synod', every ten seconds or so.
I hadn't seen a prolonged stonewall by Sir Geoffrey for some years, and this was a real corker. Would there be direct elec- tions? 'A matter for Ledge-Co.' What about the Daya Bay nuclear plant? 'A matter for Ledge-Co.' And so on. Had the Peking authorities confided their view of direct elections for the colony? 'Not for me to speculate about the Chinese govern- ment's views.' At this point I shook off the magnificent torpor which Sir Geoffrey skilfully induces and said, 'With respect, you weren't invited to speculate; you were asked to say if you knew what their attitude was.' Another coma-inducing euphemism followed. The Chinese language press were present in force for this meeting — the British being chiefly occupied with some trip to the mainland — and Sir Geoffrey would have been misled if Sir Edward Youde later told him that his stonewall had `gone off rather well'. Hong Kong repor- ters afterwards were aghast at his evasion of the simplest possible question, endlessly reiterated by them in both tongues through a translator. Would 1997 find Hong Kong a democracy, at least in principle, or not? The most salient test of this question, and of who has the right to ask it, has already occurred. The Chinese govern- ment is building a nuclear power plant at Daya Bay, a part of Guangdong Province about 30 miles from the centre of Hong Kong. Most of the high-tech input is coming from British and Hong Kong con- tractors. Even before Chernobyl, it would have been hard to find anyone who would recommend such a plant so close to such a densely populated place. But after Cher- nobyl one million Hong Kong signatures were collected against the project. As Martin Lee, one of the elected members of Ledge-Co, puts it, 'such a display of dissent is unprecedented in Hong Kong'. What was the reaction of the authorities? The Government continued to issue reassuring statements in favour of the plant, while Ledge-Co voted overwhelmingly not to debate the question at all until after the contracts for the plant had been signed. The best that can be said of this is that it is good practice for living under mainland rule.
The dismal thing about this post-colonial cowardice, based on a collusion between fat cat and commissar, is that it may be unnecessary. The Chinese are willing to put up with quite a lot in order to get a peaceful transition, and they have put their signature on an agreement for 'one coun- try, two systems'. Elsie Elliot told me that she was invited to China not long ago, in order to see her old home and to meet the widow of Chou En-lai. She keeps up contact with Ji Pengfei, the Long March veteran who is now in charge of relations with Hong Kong and Macao. She is con- vinced that the lessons of the Cultural Revolution have been sincerely assimi- lated. Hong Kong, which is only spoken of now as a source of capital and technique for China, could — who knows? — become a centre of debate and political innovation as well.
The very least that can be attempted is the minimum provided for in the Chinese- British declaration of 1984; that is, an elected legislature and an executive that is accountable to it. But even as that docu- ment was drying, Mrs Thatcher appeared to contradict its spirit. In a famous ex- change with Emily Lau of the Far Eastern Economic Review, who asked about the propriety of 'delivering' over five million people, the Prime Minister replied that the overwhelming majority of Hong Kong people supported the deal and added cattishly, 'You may be a solitary excep- tion.' This would have been a bit much even if there was a way to discover the desires and preferences of the people of Hong Kong but, as Ledge-Co so vividly demonstrates, no such method exists. If the 1988 elections are conducted on the pattern established so far, then the 'insular possession' will have missed an extraordin- ary opportunity to rejoin the parent coun- try in dignity and style.
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