The well-known Hong Kong film director Wong Kar-wai (
The recent, uncontested nomination of Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) to a second consecutive five-year term is the unpleasant result of Hong Kong's acceptance of China's "one country, two systems" policy. The deeper significance of Tung's appointment is that it shows social forces in Hong Kong are beginning to break up under Beijing's aggressive interference. They are being replaced by instruments of Beijing's power that are difficult to challenge and are led by Tung.
Beijing's power in Hong Kong has grown through a complex network of relationships in political and industrial circles. Basically, wealthy business leaders in Hong Kong and the children of Chinese Communist Party cadres have become the main players in this network. The main reason Hong Kong business leaders actively try to curry favor with Chinese officialdom is that they hope to build a mutual patronage and support relationship and use this political protection to expand their own interests and market shares in China.
Hong Kong is a society that glorifies wealthy businessmen. In a society with huge income dis-parities, these business leaders have a greater right to speak out and more social influence. The Far Eastern Economic Review, for example, once pointed out that "what is threatening Hong Kong is not Chinese-style communism, but rather Chinese-style capitalism."
Chinese-style capitalism emphasizes a dependency relationship based on political power, and in the process of throwing themselves into the arms of Chinese officials, Hong Kong businesspeople have undoubtedly given Beijing's political forces easy access to Hong Kong society. In fact, the Communist Party has not tried to rearrange Hong Kong society, but rather selected political representatives from among the existing social elite on the basis of loyalty.
Since Hong Kong business-people are falling all over themselves to invest in China, Chinese officialdom has acquired the power that the threat of political sanctions offers. In 1994 when Jimmy Lai (黎智英), who owned the Giordano clothing stores at the time, criticized -- in his own Next magazine -- then premier Li Peng (李鵬), Giordano's stores in China were closed down, one after the other.
Tung may only be a symbol. If there were no Tung, there would still be many businessmen fighting to become chief executive and Hong Kong society would still be breaking up.
Civil society in Hong Kong since World War II has seen only short periods of heated activity. One of these occurred while the Cultural Revolution raged in China and Hong Kong's left-wing youth were attracted by the world-wide surge in radical leftist movements. Another, later period was that involving a film movement which set out to search for Hong Kong's roots. These were, however, isolated and brief occurrences that did not amount to a strength-ening of civil society.
Even though the British colonial government established a Legislative Council that was partially elected by popular vote, and even though there were people in the Democratic Party calling for human rights and participating in the council's elections, the council was incapable of effectively monitoring the government. The people in the Democratic Party were little more than missionaries and preachers.
The powerlessness of civil society accelerated Beijing's hold on the territory and the sinicization of the government. Beijing dispatched a group of interim members to replace the partially-elected council on the eve of the 1997 handover. Shortly after the handover, 51 of the 60 council seat were occupied by members sent by the Beijing government and the Democratic Party was ousted from the council.
The belittling of the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region by the government itself is displayed in the self-inflicted destruction of judicial independence. In the early days after the handover, the government planned to send back Chinese children who had illegally entered Hong Kong during British rule. Under the Basic Law, however, these children had the right of abode in the territory. During the legal battle that ensued, the territory's government argued that this interpretation of the Basic Law was inadequate and that the Standing Committee of the Na-tional People's Congress should have the final say. Once this step was taken, the "one country, two systems" policy was exposed as a lie.
Hong Kong citizens today don't give any thought to "one country, two systems," recognizing it as a sham. What they care most about is probably whether Hong Kong's economy will take a turn for the better. Hidden behind this issue lies the territory's biggest prob-lem, which is whether it will be able to maintain its competitive advantage in the face of the strong challenge mounted by Shanghai.
Even though Hong Kong is the prototype for the "one country, two systems" policy, Chinese officialdom must use various forms of political interference to stop Hong Kong's recession-mired economy from deteriorating further.
However, the most fundamental problem is the risk of marginalization. The competition between Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou is the subject of vigorous debate within China. The central dictatorship that rules China means that the appropriation and distribution of local resources are still governed, not by the rule of law, but by the arbitrary decisions of officials.
How, then, does a city go about obtaining the resources necessary to compete? It still has to be done by relying on the relationship between local party leaders and leaders at the central government level. Since a stable and powerful "Shanghai Gang" has formed among officials in Beijing, Shang-hai has become a major source of prominent central government figures. Shanghai will never go short of the resources it needs for continued development.
Due to the heated competition between China's three biggest cities, Hong Kong risks being marginalized. Chinese officialdom is eager to show the world the results of the Chinese people's economic development. Hong Kong's economic miracle was achieved under British rule and the Chinese government takes the view that the territory, viewed in the context of the entire nation, has no urgent need for additional resources and that it is sufficient for Hong Kong simply to maintain its current position.
Taiwan should be able to learn from the Hong Kong experience something about the protective functions of democracy, the establishment of a powerful civil society through the workings of democracy and the assertion of the people's opinion through elections, which should enable the nation in turn to prevent the disintegration of society.
As far as the more contentious issue of trade and economic relations between Taiwan and China is concerned, Taiwanese businessmen should learn from Hong Kong's predicatment now.
What is more important is that Hong Kong criticized the British colonial government for backing down on issue after issue when faced with Beijing's domination of the agenda for the negotiations on Hong Kong's return to China. Why did Hong Kong citizens complain about the British fail-ures in the negotiations instead of reflecting on their own failure to address the issue of sovereignty effectively?
Taiwan must learn from Hong Kong's mistakes.
Hsu Tung-ming is a freelance writer based in Beijing.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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