Hong Kong — China’s takeaway

Press, 4 May 1984, Page 12

Hong Kong — China’s takeaway

The colony’s Chinese do not believe the promise of freedom after 1997, says HUGH DAVIES, of the “Daily Telegraph.”

Every Wednesday afternoon, just before three o’clock, all foreign correspondents based in Peking troop from their bleak and well-monitored compounds to the equally austere International Club for a unique piece of carefully orchestrated oriental theatre, a press briefing by the spokesman of the Chinese Government. The affable Mr Qi is never late, and on the hour he reads a statement in Mandarin which is translated into English by an interpreter whom the official occasionally corrects, because he also speaks perfect English. The information imparted is generally routine. He tells of Vietnamese aggression on the border, of super-Power hegemony, of Mr Wu’s foreign travel. He then politely thanks his audience for coming and walks out. For no questions are allowed from the floor, except on the first Wednesday of the month. It is a ritual in the style of Samuel Beckett that Richard Nixon would have envied and Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, could not have got

away with in Hong Kong last month. During a more democratic press conference, he blandly stated his conviction that once Britain abandons the colony to Communist rule, the Chinese will maintain “existing freedoms” — free speech, free churches, a free press, and freedom from arbitrary arrest. He said this without blinking an eye. A British reporter who is married to a Chinese girl from Hong Kong pointed out that such freedoms were already promised to the Chinese people in the Chinese constitution, but in practice were not adhered to. The Foreign Secretary replied that the agreement with China would secure continutation of the “present familiar pattern of justice” and thus would ensure “those freedoms.” Hong Kong Chinese I have interviewed believe that his words insulted their intelligence. Many have been reared on the experience of their elders, who fled the mainland in 1949 and remember Shanghai. Others recall what happened to the inhabitants of Lhasa,

Tibet, who questioned religious persecution by the Chinese. A journalist recently expelled from China for alleged smuggling told me of how he was summoned to the Foreign Minister to explain why he had written an article criticising the way ancient Peking was systematically being destroyed with reconstruction.

where 80 per cent of the population is concentrated.

Many peasants have also rejected the one-child-a-couple policy, which has reportedly been amended for fanning families who depend on male offspring to scratch a living, and have been drowning baby girls. For Western consumption, much propaganda emphasis is being put on the peasants who are now being allowed to indulge in free enterprise and are apparently buying new cars and even light aircraft to spray crops from the air. However, apart from the odd flashing neon sign and the numerous billboards advertising Sony radios and Toyota cars, there are few signs in Peking that its residents are enjoying a lifestyle that is in any way comparable to that of their so-called “Hong Kong compatriots.” For people living in the capital, the atmosphere is more like that of Victorian England, with the daily fog of pollution hanging over the city and the constant drumbeat of puritanism.

He took his would-be admonisher to a window to illustrate his point. “Oh yes,” said the official, “I do agree, but why write about it?” With most of the colony’s people holding either Hong Kong-British passports or certificates of identity, few have any choice of a future, unless they have the cash to fork out $15,250 for a black market Australian passport. According to a survey compiled by the Hong Kong-based “South China Morning Post,” “Interviewees generally feared for their livelihood and the wellbeing of their children in the post-1997 period.” The hope is that China’s “four modernisations” push — technology, defence, industry and agriculture — will work. Leftist attempts to put the brakes on through a purge of Western influences have failed miserably in the countryside

The latter, of course, still exists in Hong Kong, where the authorities turn a blind eye to the Chinese prostitutes who haunt the notori-

ous “fish-ball" stalls of Kowloon, but last week snipped two pages of pictures from all copies of “Playbo/’ magazine arriving in the colony. As the world’s third largest financial centre, Hong Kong is a dynamic and exciting entity, and there is some puzzlement among observers as to how China will be able to explain to its people, long used to a dull but simple life ruled by Communist cadres, that it will allow five million Chinese in Hong Kong to continue a lifestyle so at odds with theirs.

Xu Jiatun, who as director of the Hong Kong branch of the New China News Agency is effectively Peking’s consul general, says that China is now to publicise its pllans for the colony’s future among the masses.

He explains: “The wider the publicity and the deeper the study, the greater will be the safeguard for the implementation of the policies.”

Presumably the publicity would include China’s intention, as Sir Geoffrey put it, to allow “freedom of travel” to Hong Kong residents. Just how this would work has yet to be explained. In the last few days, the finishing touches have been put to a 60mile long electrified wire fence around the Shenzen economic zone to seal off the coastline dividing the mainland from Hong Kong. Only Chinese with special permits are being allowed by the frontier guards to pass through the seven gates.

Surprisingly, public reaction in Hong Kong to Britain’s decision to pull out has been slight, with community leaders seemingly thankful that the die has finally been cast.

The thinking now is that with 13 years to go businessmen now have a good five years — a long period in Asian financial terms — to invest and make money before moving on.

Banks report that in contrast to last year’s flight of dollars — SUSBOO million arrived in Australia alone — their vaults are now bulging with cash, quite a lot of it from Communist Chinese.

These are led by Wang Guang ying, 64, Peking’s most prominent business representative in Hong Kong, who lives in a spacious flat in the middle reaches of the Peak, an area that dictates both the island’s topography and social ladder. He drives a silver-gold Mercedes and has an office on the 39th floor of a gleaming gold skyscraper.

As Teng Hsiao-ping, China’s archly realistic leader, once proclaimed: “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.”