OLD CHINA HAND-OUTS

Ian Buruma explains the strange

affinity between Red China and Hong Kong businessmen

Hong Kong IT WAS a perfect, cloudless day in Hong Kong. We were sitting under a marquee on the lawn of David Tang's country house, drinking champagne, waiting for the chil- led soup to be served. Then, suddenly, the comparative calm of merry voices and tinkling crystal was disturbed by the sound of a helicopter swooping our way. Necks craned to see who it was. 'What colour?' someone asked. `Red and white,' someone answered. 'Must be Robby!' shouted David Tang. Never mind the 13 per cent inflation rate or the collapsed airport deal or the anniversary of the Peking massacre. Some people are still doing all right in Hong Kong.

David Tang (`Tango' to his friends) is a somewhat theatrical character with a Hooray Henry voice, scion of a wealthy Chinese business family, connoisseur of fine cigars and English society, internation- al fixer, fundraiser and investor. David Tang does not quite run Hong Kong, nor did the assorted socialites, rich business- men and decorative ladies (one of whom our host described as a splendid piece of drapery) sitting round the table, but some of their closest friends and associates do.

Hong Kong's rulers are a small unofficial aristocracy of Chinese tycoons, top British colonial civil servants and bankers. As with aristocracies everywhere, the origins of some of these grandees would not bear much scrutiny. The Chinese tycoons though not David Tang — often followed the usual course from rough-diamond businessman to charity king, and their `The looks that you lost, were they any good?' rough-and-ready ethos (as well as a lot of their spare cash, not to mention the odd starlet) has tended to rub off on some of the bankers and civil servants. It has been a cosy arrangement, cemented, in such bas- tions of Hong Kong power as the Jockey Club and the Hong Kong Club (now open to Chinese, if not yet to dogs), an arrange- ment between Chinaman and Brit to keep Hong Kong ticking over with a maximum of profit and a minimum of fuss.

This arrangement is now being chal- lenged from two sides: a new gang is starting to muscle into the action from the communist north, putting the financial and political squeeze on the ancien regime, and the local middle class, led by sharp lawyers and a handful of intellectuals, is beginning to find its political voice. Although the communists from the north are incompara- bly more powerful than the lawyers and fledgling politicians in Hong Kong, it often seems that the latter fill the old aristocracy, or at least the businessmen amongst them, with more alarm. They may not like or trust the commies, but they think they know, as one of the tycoons put it to me, how to `crack' them. For the tycoons may be charity kings, but many of them still think like rough-diamond businessmen. They believe they can make a deal with Peking, by stuffing the right pockets, by coming to a new cosy arrangement. The politicians and civil rights activists are seen as a nuisance. They are troublemakers who muddy the waters, upset Peking, upset the arrangement, busy-bodying do-gooders who get in the way of serious business.

While we were sipping champagne on David Tang's lawn, about 25,000 people in central Hong Kong were marching to the New China News Agency building, the unofficial Chinese embassy in Hong Kong. They were commemorating the victims of the Peking massacre and demanding an end to the one-party dictatorship in China. Along the route the organisers had plas- tered slogans: `We still mourn the deaths of our compatriots', `We demand the right to democracy.' Above the slogans were large painted eyes, dripping tears, reflecting in their pupils a tank crushing the statue of the goddess of liberty on Tiananmen Square. These large unforgetting eyes could not be ignored; they were every- where in Hong Kong.

'All this shouting will do them no damn good. I don't see any advantage in being a politician: there's no money in it.' This was Gordon Wu talking to me in his office on the top floor of a hideous skyscraper he built, cheaply. Wu is currently embarras- sing the Hong Kong government by telling Peking that the government plan to build a new airport is an expensive scam to bring in British business. He, Gordon Wu, can build it for half the price. Wu is in some ways a typical Hong Kong tycoon. He spent some time in America and has an endearing way of speaking like Edward G. Robinson. He was the one who told me that Peking could be 'cracked'. That deals can be made. That big business was the best guarantee for a good relationship with the new colonial master.

'Look,' he said, 'I'm naive about poli- tics. But from my observations, what you need in China is an iron fist in a velvet glove, benevolent dictatorship. When the economy is good, then democracy can creep in. If you have democracy from day one, you have chaos.' As for 'those radical extremists', those lawyers and politicians who talk so much about democracy in Hong Kong, why, 'if they ruled Hong Kong, the people would kick them out. What we need is a good economy. The Hong Kong people don't care who rules China. It is none of our damn business.'

David Tang, who could not be less like Gordon Wu personally, says more or less the same. The thing to do, he believes, is to educate the communists in the ways of capitalism: 'Let them all come here, the more the merrier, they will soon learn.' Like the perfect product of empire that he is, he likes to explain the native mind to us round-eyed guilos, or foreign devils: the natives will never speak the truth to a Westerner; the local politicians are Wes- ternised idealists; Chinese basically are only interested in making money; they will suck up to any master, and, 'frankly, if I must choose now between sucking up to the British and sucking up to the Chinese, I would choose the latter, since they already run the show'. One might speculate on the difference between the typical Chinese mind, as the typical colonial Chinese mind, the immigrant's mind, on the make and more inclined to protect his business by favours than by getting involved in politics.

This mentality suited the British colonial rulers in the past, it suited the mafia dons and tycoons who ruled with them, and it suits, at least for the time being, the communist cadres hovering in the wings. The fly in the ointment is indeed the budding democracy movement, whose spokesmen demand directly elected seats in the legislature instead of appointed grandees. So far they have only been granted 18 seats out of 60, and 20 by 1997. They demanded a Bill of Rights, which they got, last week, and which was im- mediately opposed by Peking. But even though the success of the democracy move- ment has been limited, it is seen as enough of a challenge to the old colonial arrange- ment, soon to be replaced by a new one, that the tycoons find themselves on Pek- ing's side. Rule by patronage and privilege is more congenial to colonial aristocrats, communists and gangsters than the open competition of democratic politics.

In the long run the tycoons might fall foul of the cadres, of course, as they did after 1949. Communists have a better understanding of corruption than of busi- ness, and the tycoons might find them- selves squeezed dry. And when it comes to a choice between keeping the monopoly on power and the future prosperity of Hong Kong (or even China), the communists will choose the former. There was an ominous news item in the South China Morning Post last week, describing how the communist regime was obstructing the businesses of former supporters of the democracy move- ment, businesses with the best foreign connections, businesses which best can help the Chinese economy. The attempt of Hong Kong tycoons to crack Peking by making deals makes them vulnerable to communist manipulation.

The disastrous negotiations about a second Hong Kong airport are a good case in point: the Hong Kong government proposed the expensive scheme as a mea- sure to boost confidence after the Chinese crackdown in 1989. Peking, realising that nobody would invest without its blessing, questioned the decision. Word was put out that Britain was emptying Hong Kong's coffers to hand out fat contracts to British firms. Peking expressed its deep concern about the interests of the Hong Kong people. And the tycoons, such as Gordon Wu, patriots to a man, with only the best interests of Hong Kong at heart, saw a chance to get into the action by playing along with Peking. Peking, said Wu, was legitimately acting as the temporary spokesman for the future autonomous government of Hong Kong. In this way Peking would gain control over Hong Kong before 1997. And Wu, among others might expect to land the contracts.

'Fiona's gone home — she found some mysterious corn circles on her hat.' The Hong Kong government, mean- while, is made to look impotent and foolish. Unelected and foreign and close to the end of its tenure, it cannot convincingly speak for the people of Hong Kong, and so it is assumed — an assumption assiduously encouraged by Peking — to be speaking entirely for London. The colonial arrange- ment that worked so well before has become a political liability. As one British diplomat in Hong Kong admitted off the record, 'it was a colossal mistake not to grant direct elections to Hong Kong be- fore'. Even Gibraltar has an elected cabinet. With no one to speak for Hong Kong it has been all too easy for Peking to exploit the vacuum, with the witting and unwitting help from the tycoons.

Now the Government is caught between two incompatible promises: to help Hong Kong build the institutions to run its own affairs and to hand the territory over from one colonial power to another. By trying to please both sides, the Government ended up pleasing neither. It is damned for selling out Hong Kong by appeasing Peking, and damned for depriving China of its coveted prize: a docile apolitical colony.

In a recent Time magazine interview, Martin Lee, QC, the best known Hong Kong politician, who leads the United Democrats, called the British Govern- ment's performance 'despicable'. The Brit- ish reneged on their promise to institute democracy: 'They could have given us more and left it up to the Chinese to demolish it.' It is not yet too late to risk the wrath of Peking and ensure that Hong Kong can elect more of its own representa- tives. But the odds, in Whitehall as much as in Peking, are against it. Foreign Office mandarins cannot bear to disrupt good relations with China, especially by en- couraging anything so un-mandarin-like and un-Chinese as democracy. The cultural argument that certain peoples are not suited to liberal democracy is a particularly pernicious one, beloved by mandarins and cultural experts everywhere, and gratefully seconded by the totalitarians who run their countries like prison camps.

Albert Ho, the main thinker behind Martin Lee's campaigns, has been called un-Chinese, indeed even anti-Chinese ever since he was a student leader in the 1960s. He described to me in his chambers how he had protested against Mao's Cultural Re- volution and stood up for human rights, a brave thing to do, since the majority of 'patriotic' students in those days were in favour of Maoism. Despite his being branded anti-Chinese, Ho regarded him- self as a patriot. In fact, Ho is as Chinese as David Tang is anglicised. He speaks in a thick Cantonese accent and lacks even Martin Lee's British barrister's polish. His politics are not some pastiche of half-baked Western notions; like many of the student leaders on Tiananmen square, he believes that 'rule of law and democracy are univer- sal rights'. Another young lawyer, called Daniel Fong, remarked that there has been so much debate about the legal future of Hong Kong that few people were as aware of the rule of law as the Hong Kong people — it will be their only protection against the arbitrary rule of communism. He pointed out that the most popular televi- sion programmes in Hong Kong today are Western-style courtroom dramas in Can- tonese. This is why Hong Kong's plight has the makings of a real tragedy. Just as it is finally evolving from a docile, racketeering colony to a mature, liberal society, it is to be handed over to one of the most back- ward, oppressive and corrupt regimes in the world.

Even Gordon Wu does not deny this. But like all the tycoons and other members of the old aristocracy, who still speak of cracking Peking, making deals or convert- ing communists to capitalism, he has an out: 'If they try to put too much squeeze on me after 1997, I shall leave.'

`What about the people who can't?'

`They will be left to their fate.'

I thought of this chilling little dialogue as I mingled with the 50,000 people who had gathered in the park around Queen Victor- ia's bronze statue on the anniversary night of the Peking Massacre. These were not just sharp young lawyers and political activists, but a cross-section of Hong Kong, young, old, rich and poor, hoping against hope that they might live in a free, or at least freer China. Around us were the ubiquitous eyes reflecting the tanks. There was a large black memorial stone for the victims of '89, where people paid their respects with candles and incense. There was supposed to have been a replica of the goddess of liberty which had been torn down on Tiananmen Square. But the Hong Kong government, afraid as always to offend Peking, had obstructed its entry to Hong Kong. The goddess of liberty was last seen on a boat somewhere off the coast of Taiwan.