Thu, Jul 06, 2017 page8

• What the death of HK portends for Taiwan

  • By Tiffany Hsiao 蕭文婷
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  In 1995, two years before the UK handed Hong Kong back to China, Fortune magazine published an opinion piece titled “The Death of Hong Kong.” The author predicted that Hong Kong’s free economy would be eroded by China’s culture of corruption and that the “pearl of the orient” would become just another Chinese city, surmising: “It’s over.”

  When the article was published, most media and politicians laughed it off and thought the author was being too far-fetched. In those days Hong Kong had everything that China lacked: prosperity, stability and good relations with the international community, and it did not need anything from China.

  Hong Kong’s free economy was shored up by its independent judiciary and media, and its basic freedoms, so at the time most people predicted that China would come under Hong Kong’s influence and gradually evolve from totalitarian dictatorship to a more open society.

  An editorial published in the New York Times on July 1, 1997 — the day of the handover — went so far as to say that Hong Kong would be a “Trojan Horse” that would bring democracy to China and shake the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.

  Today, 20 years after Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty, China has indeed grown richer. In 1997, China’s per capita GDP was about US$780; now it is more than US$8,000. Most Chinese can live where they choose. However, China still has a totalitarian government that has not been democratized at all. Chinese media denounce “hostile Western forces.”

  The government strictly regulates the 7,000 foreign-based non-governmental organizations operating in China, all in the name of “national security.”

  Chinese universities have been told to ban Western textbooks to avoid being “polluted” by Western ideology.

  At the time of the handover, China needed Hong Kong as a springboard for its exports to the world, but Hong Kong did not need China.

  Now, economically, China no longer needs Hong Kong, but Hong Kong is becoming more dependent on China.

  More than half of Hong Kong’s exports go to China; revenue from Chinese tourists accounts for 10 percent of Hong Kong’s economy; “red chip” stocks account for 40 percent of the value of the Hong Kong stock market; and Hong Kong’s universities are filling up with Chinese students.

  Following the 2014 “Umbrella movement,” Chinese agents known as “black hands” have been intervening in Hong Kong’s politics even more blatantly than before.

  Bookshop owners and wealthy businesspeople were kidnapped and two members of the Legislative Council were disqualified for no legitimate reason. China’s open and hidden forces are running amok in Hong Kong, while the rule of law originally established by the UK has been wiped out.

  All this means that the “one country, two systems” arrangement that China promised is bankrupt. Where some predicted that China would “converge” with Hong Kong, things have instead developed in completely the opposite direction. Even Hong Kong’s original economic advantages have been lost to China.

  In the days before the handover, someone with an optimistic outlook asked then-Hong Kong governor Chris Patten why China would ever kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

  History is littered with the carcasses of beheaded geese, Patten said.

  Since the handover, one cannot help but feel sorry for Hong Kong and more than that, one must feel concerned for Taiwan.

  Tiffany Hsiao is a physician residing in the US.

  Translated by Julian Clegg
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