Published by World Tibet Network News - Thursday, December 28, 1995

26 Dec 1995 - Montreal Gazette - By: MARK ABLEY

Illustration: THOMAS CHENG, GAZETTE / Legislator Christine Loh worries about the future of democracy in Hong Kong; A booming Hong Kong is reclaiming land from its harbor.

Slumped on a sofa in Government House under an oil painting of a Chinese mandarin, the last British governor of Hong Kong has a weary, preoccupied air.

Small wonder: officials of the Chinese government have recently called Chris Patten everything from a ``big dictator'' to a ``1,000-year sinner.''

If he's bruised by the experience of confronting Beijing, Patten isn't saying so in public. Eighteen months away from the Chinese takeover of Britain's final major colony, he speaks glowingly of Hong Kong:

``It is a spectacularly successful community - not only in terms of business, but also in terms of social-welfare programs that are affordable. Hong Kong is a Chinese city. But the hard work and opportunism are operating inside a context the British have provided: an independent judiciary, open government, civil servants and police you can trust, and so on.

``They've produced this astonishing combustion that has made Hong Kong everything it is today.''

In statistical terms alone, Hong Kong is a blazing success. Crammed into less than 1,000 square kilometres, its 6 million people have created the world's eighth-largest trading economy, its busiest container port and one of its leading financial centres. Unemployment is a mere 3.6 per cent, the economy is growing by 5.5 per cent a year and the government actually realizes a surplus.

But every time Patten looks out the windows of his cream-colored Victorian home, he has an immediate reminder of another aspect of Hong Kong. The view from Government House down to the teeming harbor disappeared years ago in a forest of skyscrapers. One building in particular towers over the tennis court, palm trees, gardens and Union Jacks: the slender, 70-storey Bank of China tower, owned by the Chinese government.

``There's a saying in Hong Kong,'' says theatre director Ko Tin-Lung, ``that the Bank of China is shaped like a knife. A knife pointing at the Legislative Council. A knife pointing at Government House.''

The official date for the transfer of sovereignty is June 30, 1997. A joint declaration - signed in 1984 by Britain's prime minister then, Margaret Thatcher, and China's ``paramount leader'' Deng Xiao Ping - set out the terms of the deal. Under the agreement, Hong Kong will become a special administrative region of China, free to retain its own currency, make its own visa arrangements and keep its full-blooded capitalist way of life.

``It was a unique arrangement,'' says Wang Gungwu, vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong. ``There's no model, no precedent for it, in any history of East-West relations or of decolonization. Mind-boggling, when you think about it. Though a lot of people take it for granted now.''

In 1984, Hong Kong's time as a colony was already starting to run out. British warships had seized some of the territory in the mid-19th century, to give their opium traders a permanent foothold inside China, but the vast majority of land had been acquired in 1898, on a 100-year lease. Without the homes and water, roads and power supply of these ``New Territories,'' Hong Kong would have been hopelessly crippled.

GUIDING PRINCIPLE OF THE DEAL

The 1984 deal was based on a guiding principle of ``one country, two systems.'' No one, however, asked Deng exactly what he meant by Hong Kong's ``system.'' Many people here - including Patten - want to interpret the phrase as including the essence of liberal democracy: political freedom. But China has its own agenda, its own idea of Hong Kong's system.

The leaders in Beijing have never shown much interest in political freedom. As they moved with breathtaking speed away from Marxist economics, they looked admiringly at Hong Kong's triumphs in capitalism. As Deng remarked in 1988, ``At the moment there is only one Hong Kong, but we plan to build several more in the interior.''

Within a year of that remark, China had fallen into crisis. When the student-led democracy movement was crushed in Tiananmen Square, up to 1 million people protested in the streets of Hong Kong. It was a rude mutual awakening: Hong Kong woke up to the true nature of its future masters, while Beijing woke up to the dangerous beliefs of its future subjects.

With Tiananmen in mind, Britain granted Hong Kong a Bill of Rights - something it had neglected to do in the first 150 years of colonial rule. And when Patten arrived in 1992, he quickened the pace of reform. For the first time in local history, more than half the members of the Legislative Council are now elected.

Opinion polls - and electoral results - showed that the majority of Hong Kong residents approved of such changes. But Beijing was furious. In October, it announced a plan to water down the Bill of Rights.

``China has found it difficult to understand the values that underpin our capitalist system,'' says one of the elected legislators, Christine Loh. ``They're saying, `You can keep your hardware.' But the problem, if you like, is our software.

``People are afraid that after 1997, the software for our system isn't going to be allowed to work. And we are not interested in using China's software.''

China's unhappiness is shared by some of Hong Kong's most powerful citizens: its business tycoons. To them, democracy is not an opportunity but a threat. ``The more democracy you have, the worse the economy will be,'' property developer Cheng Yu-Tung has openly said. ``If you want to have greater economic efficiency, you will have to have less democracy.''

For the wealthy, Hong Kong is a city to die for. It has no sales tax, no capital-gains tax and an income tax of no more than 15 per cent. It also has miserly old-age pensions, much squalid housing and millions of pounds of sewage being dumped untreated into the South China Sea. Businessmen like Cheng want things to stay just the way they are.

``The business community has done a great disservice to Hong Kong,'' says John Burns, a professor of political science at the University of Hong Kong. ``Its unswerving pursuit of profit and its fear of higher taxes have robbed Hong Kong of the opportunity to create democratic institutions.''

In similar vein, Kevin Lau, an editorial writer at the influential newspaper Ming Pao, sees the crucial danger to Hong Kong after 1997 as internal.

``The threat is not just from outside - an oppressive government in Beijing,'' he says. ``The threat is from within - the conservative sector in this society that welcomes Beijing's approach. They will become the vehicles of control.''

Outside Government House, wrought-iron gates still bear the British coat-of-arms. Documents from the Hong Kong government still appear in brown envelopes that say ``On Her Majesty's Service.'' Patten, like every other British governor, does not speak Cantonese - the language used by more than 90 per cent of his subjects.

But the truth is, something profound has already changed in Hong Kong. In many ways, 1997 has already arrived.

``The reality is,'' says Canada's commissioner here, Garrett Lambert, ``that Hong Kong's position with regard to China is not unlike our position with regard to the U.S.

``There's already an extraordinary integration of the two economies. Officially, more than 1,000 Chinese companies are registered here; unofficially, there's another 1,000. Hong Kong is now very much affected by decisions taken internally by Beijing - in much the same way that Canada is by U.S. policies.''

Back in 1966, Hong Kong's trade with China amounted to less than 3 billion Hong Kong dollars. By 1994, the figure had reached a staggering $855 billion. The mainland is fast gaining dominance in such diverse sectors of the Hong Kong economy as banking, transport, tourism and foreign trade.

In short, China's economic muscle is already a fact of life here. The political muscle - for another 18 months - is more in the nature of a threat. But the threat is real enough to have provoked a high degree of self-censorship.

``What people want here is stability,'' says a senior civil servant. ``There is, admittedly, a good deal of uncertainty - I won't say mistrust.''

``Why won't you say mistrust?''

``Can I go off the record?'' he asks. Assured that he can, he explains: ``I don't want to say anything that would offend my future employers.''

Many journalists are treading gingerly, too. At the territory's largest English-language paper, the South China Morning Post, editor-in-chief David Armstrong argues: ``The business scene won't be much affected by 1997, unless it's by psychological factors. But at a policy level in government, and with some of the traditional civil liberties, it will probably get tougher.''

Armstrong should know. In May he abruptly dropped a popular, long-running comic strip called The World of Lily Wong. The reasons were purely financial, he claimed, and had nothing to do with the fact that in the week of its cancellation, one of the strip's characters had spoken rudely of Chinese Premier Li Peng. Few people believed him.

At the Oriental Daily News, Hong Kong's largest-circulation paper, chief news editor Spencer Chan describes his newspaper as politically independent. But he also speaks of ``the importance of prosperity and stability.''

``We support a smooth transition of sovereignty, and we are responsible people. So we don't carry any story that would be harmful to that.''

News, then, is already being massaged in the interests of stability, prosperity and a smooth transition of power. It's with excellent reason that Kevin Lau, the editorial writer for Ming Pao, stresses that ``we can't take our freedom for granted. We can't take our rule of law for granted. They have to be fought for - or we may lose them.''

In the more rarefied world of universities, you might expect self-censorship to be less of an issue. If so, you'd be wrong. Peter Wesley-Smith, dean of the faculty of law at the University of Hong Kong, is a leading expert on the territory's history. His book Unequal Treaty, on the 1898 deal between a robust Britain and a feeble China, was standard reading among negotiators of the 1984 agreement - on both sides.

Wesley-Smith expects the Hong Kong regime of the future to bring post-secondary education under stricter control. It might plant trusted people in key jobs, it might alter university courses, it might withhold research money from its perceived enemies.

More alarming, though, is Wesley-Smith's admission that even he is now engaging in self-censorship:

``I would like to organize a seminar on the question of Tibet and international law. It's a natural subject, really. But I'm not going to do it.

``I'd get great opposition within the faculty and the university. It would be seen as needlessly provocative. It would bring the law faculty into disfavor with the authorities.''

Sitting alone in a corner of the drawing room in Government House, Patten tries to put a brave face on his legacy.

``I hope Chinese officials will bear in mind the importance of winning hearts and minds, and not just taking over real estate,'' he says. ``I would like people after 1997 to think that Britain had done everything possible to secure democratic values and a decent future for Hong Kong.''

But he sounds almost forlorn. ``What people want here is stability.''