Hong Kong Hiccup

 

Two systems?

Imagine what would happen if more than 7 percent of your country took to the streets to demand greater democracy. On July 1, about half a million people in Hong Kong did just that--for the second straight year.

Chinese officials promptly called the march "improper" and refused again to reconsider their ban on general elections for Hong Kong's chief executive and legislative council. Said one official yesterday, "Hong Kong is our pearl. What the central government has done is in the best interests of Hong Kong. You can't expect a parent to change his child's future just because he throws a tantrum."

 

Who Made Hong Kong?

Hong Kong is an odd bird. It rose to prominence as a British imperial outpost in the Far East, and now it's struggling to maintain that prominence as a capitalist outpost in communist China. Makes you wonder who in the world hatched such a place, doesn't it? Answer: drug dealers.

Xianggang, the "Fragrant Harbor"

Before there was a hustling, bustling Hong Kong--packed tight with people--there was an island in which few saw much use. A lively sea trade navigated the surrounding waters, but ships shunned the island itself, which was known chiefly as a hideout for pirates.

Things only began to change once the western "barbarians"--scurrilous sorts from Europe and America--acquired a taste for tea, silk, and fine porcelains imported from China. Western coinage flowed steadily eastward, and, since the Chinese had little interest in manufactures from the industrialized West, a large trade deficit soon sucked silver from European and American coffers. Western traders needed to fill their ships with some commodity that the Chinese would crave enough to tip the balance of trade back in a westerly direction.

Drug Money

In the days before McDonalds, movies, and Brittany Spears, the answer to western traders' prayers was, as it turned out, opium. The Chinese already had a tradition of taking opium in small doses. But at some point, the practice of smoking tobacco spread to China, and, with a little coaching from the Dutch, the Chinese learned you could smoke opium, too. The result was a highly addictive method of ingesting the drug. Soon China was dotted with opium dens filled with addicts slowly puffing their lives away.

Western traders were only too happy to feed their addiction. Vast fields of poppies were planted and harvested in India to supply the new Chinese market. The trade balance swung back in the other direction, until it was Chinese coffers that were being depleted. The Chinese government saw what was happening and tried to put a stop to the drug trade. But the western powers were too pleased with the money they were making to allow that. From 1839 to 1860, Britain and France literally fought to protect the rights of their opium traders.

God Save (and Enrich) the Queen

In 1842, a humiliated China not only agreed to allow the opium trade to continue, it ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in perpetuity as well. In 1860, it ceded nearby Kowloon Peninsula forever, too. And in 1898, it allowed Britain to lease the adjacent "New Territories" for a period of 99 years. Sleepy Hong Kong--old Chinese fishing hole and sometime pirate den--became an imperial British outpost at the center of international trade.

Hong Kong may have been neglected, but it had a lot to offer--particularly one of the world's best deep-water harbors and a location that could command the main trade routes between Europe and the Far East. No dummies, the British quickly build it into a vibrant economic center. People flocked in, though the Chinese who came had little voice in the government. The city was a British colony, after all, administered by a governor who was appointed by and answered to the British crown. Until 1997, that is.

There Can Be Only One--Or Maybe Two

Technically, the question of how to handle 1997, when Britain's 99-year lease expired, applied only the New Territories, since Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula had been granted to Britain in perpetuity. The new Chinese government didn't see things that way, though, and insisted on treating the entire territory the same. The British--in full retreat from their former imperial ambitions--were willing to go along, and so in 1982 negotiations began on how to hand Hong Kong back to China.

That involved certain obvious difficulties. China had become a communist state, while Hong Kong had become home to some of the most feverish capitalism on the planet. Yet two years of negotiations brought the Chinese and British governments to an agreement. For a 50-year term starting July 1, 1997, China would be one country encompassing two systems. Hong Kong would remain a capitalist outpost within a communist country. After 2007, it could even choose its own government by democratic means. Meanwhile, Hong Kong's economy would serve as a money pump, injecting currency into China's less developed regions.

Ach! Tung

That was the plan, at any rate. In 1997, amid much pomp and circumstance, Hong Kong's last British governor, Chris Patten, stepped down, and shipping magnate Tung Chee-hwa became "chief executive." China's communist government seems happy with the way things turned out--Tung pretty much takes his orders from Beijing. He was never popular among Hong Kong's rank and file, and he lost even more support when his government tried to institute an anti-sedition, anti-subversion, anti-secession law in July 2003. Still, with Beijing's blessing, he is the man in charge.

So Hong Kong marches into the future with more questions than answers. Will the mainland government eventually allow democratic elections? Will China remain one country with two systems, or will Hong Kong's political and economic independence be strangled into nonexistence? Most economists agree that China badly needs Hong Kong to remain a capitalist money machine, but that's bitter medicine for a communist to take.

Want to learn more?
Take a virtual tour of Hong Kong
http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/interactive/tour/index.jhtml 

From: KnowledgeNews