The bibliography of Steve Tsang's A Modern History of Hong Kong overwhelms.
A consistent narrative neither overlooks nor exaggerates shortcomings. Governor
Young's "1946 outlook" (no return to pre-war manners, involvement of residents in
government), overlaid by the long Grantham years, was forgotten by the 1960s. Britain
as a power was in decline, and China obsessed by past humiliations. The 1997 lease
termination had already exposed differences between the Colonial and Foreign Offices in
1945, expunged after an amalgamated Foreign & Commonwealth Office administered
colonies in the interests of Britain's external relations, and not of the inhabitants. Tsang
untangles the knots of UK's interests, pursuing trade and tolerance with China, while
overseeing the notional two-way flow of local sojourners and forestalling conflict
between Chinese Communist Party and Kuomintang supporters in the streets.
HK's role of entrepot faded as Cold War embargoes tightened, while industry
developed from pre-war torchlights, through plastic flowers for Daz packets, to hi-tech
electronics and investment in Guangdong. Taipans remained blind to Chinese
entrepreneurs' domination of wealth-creation, as HK became a financial centre
supporting service industries. "Positive non-intervention" was not laisser-faire, since
Government controlled land use tightly. This atmosphere was one key to the
development of a distinct identity, neither British nor 100% Chinese. Another had been
the 1950 border closing, with its ineffective self-balancing quota of Cantonese, few of
whom returned north. The tenfold rise in population since the People's Republic of
China's declaration proved the power of the magnet.
1966-67's Cultural Revolution frustrated Governor Trench's ideas for local
administration; he had contemplated City District Officers, while commissioning a report
on local representation, mothballed in face of riots. Apparently the Secretary for Chinese
Affairs saw a challenge to his liaison officers. Confrontation allowed a new SCA to
revive the CDO scheme, administrative officers looking after urban areas. Tsang praises
Trench for beginning reforms for which MacLehose later received credit, including
housing - and anti-corruption. MacLehose had the pull with Whitehall to turn law on its
head - unaccountably wealthy had to prove innocence, a weapon denied to the anticorruption
police who named offenders to Trench and MacLehose but had no evidence
to stand up in a court where prosecution must prove guilt. The Independent Commission
Against Corruption needed only to show a lifestyle beyond legitimate income. Tsang
considers that the HK government met the traditional requirements for good Chinese
government. Absence of democracy was shallowly excused as avoidance of PRC/KMT
conflict in HK's ballots (but there was sense in Trench's view that the plethora of expert
committees offered wider informed consultation than any parliament of ideologues).
The shibboleth "One Country, Two Systems" had been devised with Taiwan in mind,
only happening to fit the Joint Declaration. Clever old China hands sought to finesse
negotiations based on subtle reinterpretation of words in treaties only recognised by
themselves; they failed by ignoring Chinese advice not to discuss sovereignty with
Deng, for whom it was unshareable, whatever the attendant historical accidents, to be put
right when convenient to China's priorities. It was Thatcher's folly to stand on the
international inviolability of a signed treaty. Ultimately diplomats judged Britain's
interests in international contexts: Thatcher thought marginally of the people involved.
Businessmen supposed on more stable ground that Deng would not wring the neck of the
goose laying golden eggs for China's trade. After the Joint Declaration the "transitional
period" began: PRC assumed that in 1997 a machine would exist of which China would
smoothly assume control.
Patten-bashers are reminded that "democratization" started under Governor Youde,
stiffening PRC attitudes: "convergence" now meant HK ways conforming to PRC's.
Tsang emphasizes how different the thought processes of London and Beijing were: yet
where the Chinese saw an agreement as negotiated on "equal" terms, they fulfilled it to
the strict letter. Tienanmen ignited the latent interest in the future for 3.25 million
Chinese, by British law born The Queen's subject citizens, but still to PRC wholly
Chinese. Granting 50,000 Hongkongers, who had helped model the colony, right of UK
abode, in the context of Britain's incipient immigration problems, spoilt any hope that
the 3 million others, however remote their ambition to settle in UK, trusted Britain to
place their welfare at the head of agenda. Confidence weakened when PRC intervened in
the Port and Airport Development Strategy (designed to underpin HK's future as
regional powerhouse beyond 1997), not only because sovereign China insisted on
controlling processes extending through retrocession, but because China could not
understand that HK's commercial wealth belonged not to the government but to its
entrepreneurs.
Less interested in HK than Thatcher, Major lost faith in the old guard after his Beijing
visit over PADS. Hence Governor Patten. Again the two-way distorting mirror undid
cleverness. Patten's "democratization" was modest, but because it was trumpeted as
major, objections from PRC and cadres were loud, making Patten a public hero. He did
PRC an unacknowledged favour by removing the overlapping memberships of executive
and legislature (making it impossible for popular elected legislators to sit on the policy
council). Yet pressure to legislate and effect the changes before handover conflicted with
the PRC's deliberative practices (almost amounting to procrastination) and prevented
prior Chinese agreement. Beijing then claimed that the "through train", whereby the
newly elected Legco would still function after 1997 to its satisfaction, was derailed; a
"new kitchen" would be constructed under purely Chinese auspices: UK was powerless.
A Preparatory Committee would set about devising a substitute provisional appointed
Legco, in advance of the Preliminary Working Committee's approach to the drafting of
the Basic Law constitution. Tsang concludes with a close look at the legacy, which
readers must judge for themselves.
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