Two days before the ninth anniversary of China's take-over of Hong Kong, I was happy to see Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council issue a report on my hometown. It warns that the "one country, two systems" model has focused more on making Hong Kong a part of China than allowing the two to go their separate ways. Hong Kong is losing its autonomy and democratic freedoms as China gains greater economic and political control over the former British colony, the report says.
Sadly, it's all true. On July 1, 1997, the UK handed Hong Kong over to the People's Republic of China. Overnight, the 156-year-old British colony was switched into a Chinese one. My hometown was an exception to London's post-World War II decolonization process -- independence was never seriously put on the table, as it ought to have been.
To this day, nothing saddens me more than that prime minister Margaret Thatcher was the person who signed the 1984 deal in Beijing to give Hong Kong up. I shall never forget an exchange between a local reporter and the British prime minister at a press conference in Hong Kong.
Question: Prime minister, two days ago you signed an agreement with China promising to deliver more than 5 million people into the hands of a communist dictatorship. Is that morally defensible or is it really true that in international politics the highest form of morality is one's own national interest?
Answer: Everyone in Hong Kong is happy with the agreement. You may be a solitary exception.
Well, as it turned out, among the people of Hong Kong there's nothing solitary or exceptional about the opinion expressed by the reporter. Twenty two years on, the sentiment still lingers. According to a University of Hong Kong survey released last week, 51 percent of the population is not proud to be a Chinese citizen (47 percent are).
But Beijing has won, at least on the surface. And you could see it on display on the streets last Saturday. Like previous years, the pro-democracy camp marked the anniversary with a march for democracy. Although the turnout this year -- 58,000 according to the organizers and 28,000 estimated by the police -- was a rebound from last year's 20,000, partly because of the well-publicized participation of the city's former No. 2 official Anson Chan (陳方安生), it was still a far cry from the half a million or more people who demonstrated in 2003 and 2004.
And for the first time, the pro-Beijing camp managed to gather the same number of people, or possibly even more, to attend a "patriotic" parade held to counter the march. Fifty-thousand people (police said 40,000) watched a gala performance featuring lion-dancers, martial artists, pop singers and a military parade by the People's Liberation Army's garrison stationed in Hong Kong.
Beijing sent the chairman of the People's Political Consultative Conference, Jia Qinglin (賈慶林), who ranks fourth in the party hierarchy, to Hong Kong to boost support for Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權).
Hong Kong is now in its best condition since the handover, Jia proudly said, referring to the strong economy.
Jia also brought some economic goodies with him, proclaiming a further relaxation of Chinese market access for Hong Kong businesspeople. No wonder then, according to the university survey, 56 percent of Hong Kong people now view Beijing's policies positively, up from 20 percent last year.
"The fact that the economy is looking up doesn't mean that people have stopped having demands for democracy. The two support and depend on each other," said Chan, the former chief secretary who has recently emerged as a leading figure to fight for the expansion of democracy in Hong Kong.
Beijing is worried that she might pose a credible challenge to Tsang's re-election bid when his term expires next year.
Beijing has always considered Hong Kong to be an economic city which would be ill-served by more democracy. A recent controversy, however, clearly illustrates how much Hong Kong has been pressured to adapt to Beijing's way of conducting business -- which is, in fact, bad for business.
Two weeks ago, two Western firms -- Australia's Macquarie Group and Texas Pacific Group of the US with its Asian affiliate Newbridge Capital Group -- launched bids for Hong Kong's main fixed-line phone operator, PCCW. PCCW chairman Richard Li (
Not so fast, Beijing said. China's state-owned telecom giant China Netcom, which bought a 20 percent stake in PCCW last year, issued a statement saying "we do not want to see any changes in PCCW, which is owned and managed by Hong Kong people," implying that foreigners should get their hands off. This was certainly news to a free economy that imposes no restrictions on foreign telecom and media ownership. For example, Hong Kong's major mobile phone operator, CSL, is wholly owned by Australia's Telstra. A Malaysian group is also the largest shareholder of an English-language newspaper.
When everyone is dying to get a share of the China market, it's suicidal to go ahead with any transaction without Beijing's blessing.
"Even if the purchaser successfully bought PCCW's entire assets, it would be difficult to establish a good relationship with China Netcom to explore the China telecom market in the future," a source told a local paper.
When even the chairman of a Beijing-friendly business political party says "As a businessman, I think Richard Li should do what is best for shareholders. The deal isn't contravening [Hong Kong] law, and we think it should be allowed," you know Beijing's iron fists and invisible hands are felt everywhere in Hong Kong.
Liu Kin-ming, former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, is a Washington-based columnist.
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