By Gordon G. Chang June 29, 2007
At midnight, July 1, it will have been exactly a decade since the great city
state of
Hong Kong passed from one sovereign to another. One moment it was a British
Dependent Territory of the United Kingdom; the next it was a Special
Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. (Why the fancy
terminology? Neither London nor Beijing, apparently, liked using the word
"colony.")
Colony or not, Hong Kong was handed from a democracy to an authoritarian regime.
It was a disgraceful exercise of state power for both countries involved. This
was not the mere transfer of a barren rock, as Hong Kong was once known. The
city state had become, by the late 90's, a major international center for trade,
finance, and culture. More than six million citizens woke up on July 1, 1997 as
subjects of a new regime, without their electoral consent. It was clear that, had
there been an election, the people of Hong Kong would have voted not to return
to the motherland. So it's no surprise that the city state's Chinese rulers, who do
not believe in elections (especially those held among uncontrollable populaces),
have blocked the development of democratic institutions in Hong Kong for the
past decade.
This is not what the Basic Law, Hong-Kong's mini-constitution, intended. That
document promises the city universal suffrage. Yet Beijing has time and again
told the people of Hong Kong that they are not ready to make decisions for
themselves. In the interim, a system rigged in favor of a small group of China's
favorite Hong Kong citizens has been used to pick the chief executive, as the
city state's leader is known. So add Hong Kong to the list of the broken promises of
communism. Despite major pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong every year
since the Chinese annexation of Hong Kong, especially in July 2003 and January 2004, Beijing has
continued to sneer at its residents.
There is, however, a small measure of justice in this world. In the ten years
since the so-called "reunification," the people of Taiwan have watched how
Chinese leaders have failed to keep their word to Hong Kong. Today, a sharply
declining portion of Taiwanese, usually no more than 15 percent in the polls,
want Taiwan to join the authoritarian China. For the rest of us, Beijing’s
high-handed treatment of Hong Kong is even more evidence that the Communist
party has no intention of ever permitting meaningful political reform in China.
So where was I during the last seconds of British rule on June 30, 1997?
Standing in the Hard Rock Café in Shanghai, in the middle of a crowd of
inebriated Chuppies, members of China's explosively burgeoning upper middle
class. They were cheering as they watched televised images of the goose-stepping
soldiers of the People's Liberation Army at the so-called "handover ceremony" taking place
in Hong Kong. For them, it was a moment of pride and joy: a long-held British
colony was finally returning to the bosom of the motherland. I had other
emotions.