Hong Kong is NOT China (and no, I don’t like it to be)
Back in October 2020, I came across this article via New York Times’ (“NYT”) Chinese twitter account which I follow. It prompted me to say something back. I had been having thoughts come up in my head and had been wanting to put them down in writing. However due to work and personal commitments, I had not been able to sit down and do it until the week before last Christmas.
I had learned from NYT’s notes that my article would not meet the requirements for Letter to the Editor, and hence would unlikely be accepted or published. Yet I had put it forward, on 10 Jan 2021.
I have not heard back from NYT since, except from an auto-reply email. So I believe it is safe for me to publish my article elsewhere.
And here it is:
Hong Kong is NOT China (and no, I don’t like it to be)
By Ric Li
Before I go any further, I would like to talk about two things regarding connections with Hong Kong.
Speaking of one’s connection with Hong Kong, I cannot bypass the mentioning of my grandad, my mother’s father. Grandad had been living in Hong Kong even before I was born. As far as I could remember, Grandad, together with Grandma before she passed away in 1991, would once a year, or every other year, travel back to Guangzhou, formerly known as Canton, a city of two-hour’s train ride from Hong Kong, and spent a month living in the house, which he owned and was then occupied by his two daughters, his son-in-law, and his grandson. My interactions with Grandad during his stay were mostly the ‘catch-up’ on the day of his arrival, which would then basically be his inquiry about my school performance, or grades. When I grew older, the “catch-ups” would have become more of a tick-the-box exercise, as they would inevitably end up with Grandad’s recount of the two events which, I supposed, had scarred him for life: One being him made by Japanese troops to get on both of his knees at a checkpoint, during the Second Sino-Japanese War; the other where his zupu, Chinese Genealogy book, was burnt to ashes by Red Guards during the Culture Revolution. The latter had also led to him fleeing the Communist China, leaving his entire family behind in Guangzhou, until later having his wife and son reunite with him in Hong Kong.
Grandad never hid his grudge against the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”) and had always wanted the rest of his family to relocate to Hong Kong, which he then considered a safe haven from the rule of the CCP, even after the city having been returned to China. I hence took it for granted that Grandad had embraced a comparatively more liberal system in Hong Kong, after decades of living there. But it was not long before I found out I was wrong. It was one afternoon in May 2004, during a trip where I set foot in Hong Kong for the very first time in my life under the Individual Visit Scheme, mostly thanks to the SARS epidemic in 2003, when Grandad and I were watching news on TV. When it came to a story where protesters in Hong Kong marched and then gathered in front of a government building to submit their petition, Grandad made a comment, something along the lines of “What’s wrong with the Hong Kong people? Protests almost daily…” That comment was flabbergasting, to say the least. Apparently, Grandad’s resentment towards the CCP did not translate into endorsement for liberty or democracy. I did not ask, but it did not take long for me to figure out why: Grandad was a TCM, Traditional Chinese Man, entrenched in antient Chinese characteristics — patriarchy, authority, and the two combined. That explains why my mum was Grandad’s favourite, among his three children, as she was compliant and never challenged him in his face.
Grandad died in April 2014, at the age of 101, just months prior to the Umbrella Movement. It would be fascinating, but now I would never know what Grandad would have said of that, and of the 2019 protests, if he had lived long enough to witness those two events.
The other thing I wanted to mention is about a 1989 double-episode feature (episode 1 and 2) of a weekly documentary program, named Hong Kong Connection, which has been produced since 1978 by RTHK, Radio Television Hong Kong, the public broadcasting service of Hong Kong. Those who have been closely following the pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong would have noticed a new wave of exodus, albeit curbed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, from Hong Kong by Hongkongers, thanks to the turmoils in 2019, and later the implementation of the National Security Law (“NSL”) by the CCP, in July 2020. The Hongkongers born in the 1980s or prior would probably be experiencing some sort of Déjà vu, when they compare the current development with that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when mass migrations took place following the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which would lead to the handover of Hong Kong to China, and especially, following the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. The British National (Overseas) passport, or BN(O) passport, had long been criticised for its impracticability, until recent changes, because it did not allow passport holders to abode in the UK. Little did people know though that, another patronising, yet naïve, idea to ‘rescue’ the people of the then-soon-to-be former British colony — while I appreciate the good will behind it — had also been put forward shortly after the 1989 incident: Re-creating Hong Kong on the west coast of Scotland.
The idea is patronising, because the site, named Ardnamurchan, where the “new Hong Kong” was proposed to be rebuilt, could be described by such a saying as “If you can see the mountains, it’s about to rain. If you can’t see the mountains, it is because it’s raining.”.
The proposal is naïve, because it somehow assumed Hong Kong could be replicated, just out of anywhere in the world. There is one fatal defect in that idea: it on the one hand was excessively confident about Britain’s influence in Hong Kong’s having become a “success story”, and on the other hand, ignored the fact that Hong Kong would not have prospered, had it not been for China, or put ironically, yet precisely, a closed, restrictive, and backward China. It is true that Britain’s rule over Hong Kong had brought to its former colony merits such as common law, rule of law, and judicial independence. These qualities, together with a relatively clean and highly efficient government, and a high degree of freedom, in trade, economy, monetary etc., as well as a comparatively high level of civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly, have laid the foundations for Hong Kong to have become an international financial centre. But even so, they have at most formed the structure. It was China’s massive demand for international capital (time stamp of reference: 1:09:00~1:10:00), information and technology, and its inability to acquire them freely, due to the restrictions imposed on it by itself or others, mostly by itself, that had fed oxygen and nutrients to make Hong Kong a functioning, and vital, organ.
So yes, Hong Kong has thrived, by being China’s gateway to the world. But it has managed to do so, solely because of its uniqueness. Hong Kong is unique in that, it is so inseparable from China in many ways, yet it had been seen as vastly different to China — a distinction which was not seen in any mainland China cities and existed not simply due to physical borders. Unfortunately, such unique status of Hong Kong has been chipping away in recent years, especially in the past decade, as its government and so-called “elites”, have formed such a view that the future of Hong Kong rests on China. The opinion piece titled “Hong Kong Is China, Like It or Not”, which was penned by Ms. Regina Ip for the New York Times, has lent a voice to that kind of view as well. It is hence not difficult to see why Hong Kong government officials’ tone of voice has started to echo that of Beijing.
On a sidenote, Ms. Ip did not state it explicitly but in her article, through and through, she expressed a tone of ‘parentalism’ towards the protesters, something Grandad probably would have shared, by implying that it was completely the protesters to blame for the violence seen on both sides of the conflict but avoiding to analyse and reflect on what the Chinese and Hong Kong governments had or had not done that led to the chaos.
Last year’s (2019) Hong Kong pro-democracy movements actually began with mostly peaceful and orderly demonstrations. But situation took a turn for worse when radical measures were employed by some of the activists, thanks to the scornful Chief Executive and police force, as well as the latter’s alleged misconducts. There rose the term “Lam Chau” (攬炒), a Cantonese phrase which literally means “fry together”, or alternatively translated into the famous The Hunger Games quote “If we burn, you burn with us!”, which was favoured by the activists. As a native Cantonese speaker, I certainly understood what the phrase meant, but I just could not comprehend how those protesters would be able to achieve the so-called “mutual destruction” — not that I agree with such tactics. True, that they had caused chaos on the streets in Hong Kong by, for example, continuous demonstrations blocking major thoroughfares; also true, that they had caused disruptions to Hongkongers’ everyday life by, for example, paralysing the MTR system. But those, to me, were at best a deferring factor for visitors to make leisure or unnecessary business trips to Hong Kong.
It requires much greater force than that to destroy Hong Kong, I thought.
In mid-August 2019, about a month and a half since the beginning of waves of anti-government protests, speculations started to circulate online that China had deployed troops in Shenzhen, a neighbouring city to the north of Hong Kong, which was seen as a sign that armed forces would be used to suppress the upheaval.
Will the history repeat itself? Are we going to see the same scenes in Beijing from thirty years ago? I, for a moment, had these concerns that were shared by many others. But then, my reasoning started to kick in: As the old saying put it, a coin has two sides. China needs Hong Kong, just as much as Hong Kong needs it. No other cities in China can do what Hong Kong has been doing for China. Definitely not Shanghai which, at the turn of the 21st century, was touted to replace Hong Kong in a decade’s time, nor Macau or Shenzhen, which have emerged as the new favourites in CCP’s latest propaganda. Furthermore, it is not 1989. With its economy highly integrated into that of the world, the consequential damages which military interventions could cause to Hong Kong and itself, would be so devastating that China just simply could not afford. CCP would have played into the Lam-chau camp’s hands, should it have gone down that path.
As I expected, streets in Hong Kong did not turn into another Tiananmen Square. Hong Kong dodged a sudden death.
Nevertheless, “something had to be done”, as Ms. Ip mentioned in her piece. Then there came the COVID-19 pandemic. Restrictions on gatherings had put a temporary halt to the kind of mass demonstrations seen in 2019. But Beijing wanted more than that. Hence the imposition of the NSL. The protesters are now repressed, at Beijing’s will.
The saddest thing throughout the Hong Kong pro-democracy saga is that, again Hongkongers did not get to decide their own fate. Unlike most of the mainland Chinese, at least my direct connections there, the majority of Hongkongers desire democracy. They signalled that via the 2019 District Council elections which, I believe, was why CCP would have moved to take actions into its own hands. It must have been a well calculated move as well — killing two birds with one stone: subduing the pro-democracy movements without sending shock waves to the global society, and finally putting in place the legislations that the CCP had longed for. No wonder Ms Ip would now have felt comfortable to come out, and written that article, attempting to reassure the world that Hong Kong can still “maintain its unique characteristics”, while dropping a “like it or not” condescending note.
But again, it takes two to tango. While China may be able to assert its claim and influence upon Hong Kong, it cannot control how the world city is perceived by the rest of the global community. I do not speak for everyone, but I believe there are lots of people in the world who, just like me, are not happy with what China is doing to Hong Kong and deem that the city has lost its charms. I also believe, that such change in perspectives can deal Hong Kong a blow, even more long-lasting, and more damaging, than the few punches thrown by Donald Trump.
In fact, it is not only what people outside China and Hong Kong think about the latter that matters. It may not have crossed the mind of many people, especially of those in the pro-integration camp, i.e., Hong Kong’s integration and absorption into mainland China, that Hong Kong had thrusted into rapid industrialisation, arising from merely a trading and shipping hub, and later become one of the Four Asian Tigers, largely owing to the skills and capital brought by refugees of mainland China, like Grandad, who had sought shelter in Hong Kong. Hong Kong had offered them, other than civil rights, protection of proprietary and private properties which is, up to now, absent in China, still. Would Hong Kong still be an ideal destination for skilled and/or wealthy mainland Chinese who wish to migrate to a safer and more liberal place, if the line between itself and mainland China gets even blurrier and more frequently crossed? What about talents from democratic countries? That does remain to be seen!
At the end of the day, Ms Ip is entitled to her own opinion, and Hong Kong is indeed part of China. But Hong Kong is NOT China — it belongs to the world.
