April, 2001: Publius

By Greg Rushford
Published in The Rushford Report

HONG KONG—-Spy novelist Stephen Coonts’ latest thriller, Hong Kong, is prominently displayed in the windows of leading bookstores here. If it is possible to libel a city, Coonts has succeeded admirably. In the novel, the Brits turned Hong Kong over to “communist” rule in 1997. Heavily armed People’s Liberation Army troops are “choking the streets.” The territory’s timid newspapers — the ones that haven’t been shut down and their editors jailed — are “published under the watchful eye of a totalitarian government.” Chinese Shengyang J-11 fighters are stationed at Hong Kong’s gleaming new international airport on Lantau Island. And Hong Kong is used as a base to spark violent revolution on mainland China. Outrageous nonsense.

“Sounds like a good read,” chuckled a prominent “pro-Beijing” politician here who was not outraged at all. “Novelists have such wonderful imaginations.”
The point: By contrast with the unforgiving attitude of communist authorities on the mainland, even the so-called “pro-Beijing” sympathizers here actually appear to be “pro-Hong Kong,“ where tolerance is in the lifeblood. Nobody of importance here — nobody — is calling for the territory to trade in its traditions of free speech and free trade for how those things are presently handled on the mainland.

Still, it is widely feared here that under the uninspired leadership of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong is on a slow-but-steady slide to becoming a backwater to the mainland. The worries are well-grounded: Tung’s mistakes regarding key rule-of-law issues have been well reported. He has run to Beijing to overturn Hong Kong’s Court of “Final” Appeal in cases where Beijing has no direct stake. Tung also seems to be politicizing Hong Kong’s vaunted independent civil service, seeking to control top officials by putting them on fixed-term contracts.

Tung is also dragging his feet on (finally) bringing universal suffrage to the former British colony. Universal suffrage for the chief executive and the legislative council is Hong Kong’s for the taking after 2007. This right is prescribed in the mainland-approved Basic Law, which leaves the choice to democratize to Hong Kong. What a wonderful encouragement to mainland China, if Hong Kong would demonstrate the virtues of democracy!

So, which will it be: Hong Kong as a shining example, or a backwater?
Despite the concerns, I wouldn’t take that bet on the latter possibility just yet. This city is more resilient — and complex — than outsiders generally recognize. Hong Kong is a long way from being smothered. Be careful of the stereotypes that we in the press are so quick to apply to leading figures here.

Why, I even met one “pro-Beijing” sympathizer here who casually mentioned in the course of a conversation (off the record, to be sure) that he admires the last British governor, Chris Patten, who is famously detested and feared by mainland authorities. “Patten was the first to tell Hong Kong people that economic freedoms and democracy must go hand in hand,” I was told.

Intrigued that the first two Beijing sympathizers I met were hardly the dour communist types one would expect, I sought out Tsang Yok-sing, who chairs the Development Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong. Known by its acronym DAB, Tsang’s political party draws much of its support from leftists, even Communists, who chafed under British colonialism. While the DAB’s economics might be suspect in reasonable economic circles, the party’s politics sound, well, reasonable.

“Why are you “pro-Beijing” and not “pro-Hong Kong?” I asked Tsang. “Are you working for the day when Hong Kong adopts mainland China’s legal system, the way the mainland handles the press, dissent, and so forth?”
“We don’t like our [pro-Beijing] label, because basically we don’t believe you are either pro-Beijing or Hong Kong,” he replied. “We really believe that the ’one country, two systems’ is in China’s interest.”

While Tsang made clear his respect for mainland China, the more he spoke the more he reflected traditional Hong Kong attitudes about the virtues of its own system. “We are fully aware of the deficiencies of the political and social systems inside China, even though we are happy with the changes in China in the last two decades that have brought China nearer to the standards of a modern society,” he declared.

“We believe that China is moving in the right direction and that there is no possibility of moving back,” he added. “But there is still a large gap.”
“Hong Kong has a lot to contribute to development in China, not just economic value.” One example he cited: “We have Hong Kong judges teaching the judges in China how to run a court case, for example.”

“What about the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is illegal on the mainland but allowed to operate freely and openly in Hong Kong?” I asked. (A few days later, I talked with a young woman who was passing out Falun Gong literature near the Star Ferry. On the mainland, passing out literature and downloading Falun Gong materials from the Internet are criminal activities. Does the Hong Kong member of the Falun Gong feel intimidated by official surveillance? “Not at all,” she replied.)

“It is no secret that the Chinese government is not happy with any Falun Gong in Hong Kong,“ the DAB’s Tsang told me. “All of the people in the Pearl River delta watch Hong Kong television, and they see officials say, ‘What’s the harm with Falun Gong?’ This doesn’t bother me, but it bothers the government in Beijing.”
Continuing, Tsang said that “we have laws in Hong Kong. If the Falun Gong is not engaged in any unlawful activity, then the government shouldn’t do anything.”
“What about universal suffrage?” I asked.

“Universal suffrage is in our platform,” Tsang replied.

Chief Executive Tung refuses to take questions on universal suffrage.
This is the point where you begin to realize that Hong Kong politics really are complex. Some “pro-Beijing” political forces like the DAB espouse populist economics that are at odds with Hong Kong’s free-market traditions. The DAB isn’t called “pro-Beijing” for nothing. Still, the DAB is also busy organizing at the grassroots level, doing the things that political parties are supposed to do in a democracy.

Officials like Tung, a former shipping executive, reflect the views of Hong Kong’s business community. While the business community’s instincts on economic issues, in my view, are sounder than the DAB’s, grassroots democracy makes business types uncomfortable. No wonder: Tung and many of the tycoons first obtained power under the British. They tend to see democracy as a threat to their comfortable (colonial) status quo, and not as the greatest gift by example that Hong Kong should be setting for the mainland.

Sorting all this out is a bit confusing for outsiders. When you talk to a Hong Kong politician, you may be talking to someone who has conservative economics but is weak on democracy, or vice versa.

One leader here who has sterling democratic credentials is Democratic Party leader Martin Lee. Talking to Lee — one of Tung Chee-hwa’s strongest critics — was also encouraging. How concerned are you that Tung and his aides have echoed the Beijing line by calling the Falun Gong basically an “evil cult?” I asked.

“The Falun Gong, which have not harmed anybody, have been thrown out in Macau, and have been imprisoned in Beijing,” responded Lee. “But in Hong Kong, they have been allowed to use City Hall to meet. This speaks volumes.”
Despite his toadying to Beijing, Tung has not pushed for mainland-style sedition laws under Article 23 of the Basic Law.

The biggest worry is that Tung keeps talking as if his number one goal is to watch out for Beijing’s interests, not Hong Kong’s. This is the way to make Hong Kong into a backwater instead of the great international city that it is now.

“C.H. [Tung] has his eye all on Beijing, and doesn’t think internationally,” explains Margaret Ng, a highly regarded lawyer and Legislative Council member. “When you look just at Beijing, you are provincial. It is only when your eye is on the world that you will remain an important part of China.”

But how to get the chief executive to grasp this?

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