ASIAN AFFAIRS ANALYSIS ON HONG KONG HONG KONG, A TALE OF MYTHICAL PROPORTION (This is the last part of Chapter One - Asian Affairs nș19) And so, the story of Hong Kong is a tale of mythical proportion with little relevance to the reality. But it was always the case. Hong Kong was an eldorado for the few. It remains so. Therefore we should not be surprised that Hong Kong people, from the top down are generally clinging to a mythical past rather than looking squarely at the facts and taking the interest of the community as the paramount criteria. It was in 1998 that we wrote: 'Hong Kong is part of the super-rich. It is even richer, according to the GDP benchmark, than its former master, the United Kingdom. But averages and trends and graphs and GDP that the Civil Service of Hong Kong is very good at putting together are not always what they seem. There may be more to them than meets the eye, and there is maybe a good deal less. A well-wrapped statistic can deceive. It can trick honest people into honest lies. Hong Kong statistics trick people into honest lies. Facts are not very kind with prejudices and lies. They outlast them and they ridicule them. Hong Kong is far from being developed in the sense you could say that a country with a GDP of US$24,000 per capita is developed. In a way, it is miserable, maybe because the government is a miser, except for its own servants, the highest paid in the world. Hong Kong has a myriad of problems to solve which is a legacy of the laissez-faire attitude that was the hallmark of the previous governments. But laissez-faire is not a hallmark of a free market system. It is a characteristic of indifference. It is not therefore surprising that there is a feeling of confusion at all levels. In the process, the tale of Hong Kong is exposed as being nothing more than a charade.' (16) Asian Affairs' views were at the time considered outrageous by most of the establishment of the city. Yet C.H. Tung himself told the Legislative Chamber in January 2003 'Now, we have the direction', a clumsy admission that before Hong Kong had none. The city is discovering that it is not what the British said to the rest of the world and to the Hong Kong people it was. Indeed Hong Kong since its handover to China in July 1997 has been bogged down by unprecedented problems. Some scholars argued in the 1990’s that it would happen. Historical precedents highlighted that none of the former British colonies did well once they were left to their own fate. Could it be that Hong Kong is suffering from the same virus, the ex-colonial bug? There were many reasons for the failure of the ex-British colonies. Some were certainly their own doings, others were circumstantial. But a few were imported from London and give some common traits to all of them, including Hong Kong. Hence, one may not be far from the truth when stating that Hong Kong may be the victim of a combination of factors, one of them being its British legacy that makes it unable to move as fast as its successful neighbors, the most impressive being Shenzhen located at the end of its mass transit railway system C.H. Tung sees that things are going wrong. He does not know why, but as a result he has transformed himself recently into a doomsayer. One of his recurring themes is to warn the community of tough days ahead. He attributes the bad news to events beyond his reach. ‘As the most open economy of the world, it was inevitable that the global economic crisis, etc. … would affect Hong Kong’ he said in his Policy Address of 2003. While there is not a single data to back up his claim, but rather the contrary (17), there is anyway a vast irony to say that the world is responsible for Hong Kong’s woes. Prior to 1997, the main worry in London and Washington was China. The communist state was the biggest threat to Hong Kong mythical prosperity and way of life. It seemed a plausible concern, since China was presented as a country where the state was not working for the benefits of its citizens while in Hong Kong, it was believed that the government was there to defend their liberties. That the story had no substance did not matter. It was pure British political grandstanding. As a result, a lot of energy was wasted to create a safety zone around Hong Kong that would prevent any kind of tinkering with the local system. Hong Kong was insulated and isolated, without consideration for its future. Notwithstanding, at the time, 80% of its economy was already China-bound. The divergence between reality and illusion was considerable. The system of isolation was marketed by Chris Patten. It had a name. It was the rule of law. It is certainly true that good politicians are the ones who recycle old ideas under new slogans. Patten had this talent. The rule of law is now so commonly accepted as a slogan than no one really bothers to check what, in Hong Kong, it veils. Without going into details, the rule of law could be summarized as a system that organizes rules, many of them in such a manner that changes are not welcome. The main characteristic of the rule of law is that it prevents change to established practices. Considerable amounts of money are spent on specialists, to find out whether a precedent could help a legal case to succeed. Therefore one could say that the rule of law does not look into the future, or does not look at what is equitable, but at what has been done in the past. When the rule of law refers to a colonial system, one can easily conclude that its use is to bring the past to overshadow the future. This is not a recipe for a positive dynamic but for at best the status quo and at worst, disaster (as many former British colonies can attest). In Hong Kong, although it was admitted that some improvements were necessary, no one paid any serious attention to the fact that the rule of law might just be a tool to protect vested and ill-gotten interests. It was presented as its best immune system against China. But what was supposed to be an asset for the city rapidly became a liability, as China was not after all a disease. It would rather be a drug that could enhance the performance of Hong Kong. As it happened, it was the only lever Hong Kong could rely on to slow its fall from its pedestal. However to go from China being dangerous to your health to China being a medicine in such a short time confused everyone. The spillover effect of the perceived change gave rise to a sentiment of chaos and, for a short while, of insecurity. People had lost their crystal ball. Hong Kong people don’t feel insecure any more , China, from a potential threat has become in less than five years the anchor of last resort. It is a telling indictment of the misleading policies of Chris Patten. Nevertheless, such a rapid change led them to feel pretty much in the middle of chaos. History books are full of such errors. In the future, they will record that the British and the Americans passed years trying to thwart any ambition China might have to integrate Hong Kong into its nascent economic system after the handover of July 1997. In the end, a mere five years later, with Chris Patten a forgotten man in the European Commission, the Hong Kong people wish their own Chief Executive would resign in the forlorn hope that the former Prime Minister of China, Zhu Rongji, would do them the favor of taking over the position rather then go into retirement. This is how far, and how weird some would say, Hong Kong has travelled between June 1997 and December 2002. Of course, this wild dream shared by half the population of a Chinese official taking the helm of the city is not going to happen. To govern Hong Kong, one needs to be of Chinese descent and to have spent twenty years in the city. That excludes anyone in power in Beijing or elsewhere in China. The city is truly isolated and left to its home-grown officials, no matter how good or bad they are. Indeed, one of the main problems of the city is one of governance. It is not that the Basic Law is not implemented but rather that it does not serve any good purpose. Today the latent defects of what remains mostly a text written with the exclusive view that it would freeze the colonial system into an everlasting model make it very difficult for Hong Kong to evolve. | |||
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