A Tale of Two Cities – Part 1: Hong Kong
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way”
So begins A Tale of Two Cities, describing the environment in Paris and London, four years before the French Revolution. Charles Dickens’ book is listed as the second-best-selling single volume book of all time. Reading those lines again suggests it might well get a re-run, describing Washington and London right now. However, I thought it might also make a good introduction to two other cities today, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
I first visited Hong Kong nearly forty years ago. Some elements of that time remain: the Star Ferries crossing from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island, the rattling trams on the island, the Peak funicular, the light displays on the buildings at Christmas and Chinese New Year, the rabbit warren of fire risk apartment blocks scattered through the older areas of Tsim Sha Tsui, Yau Ma Tei, Wanchai and Causeway Bay, the packed tiny floating homes in Aberdeen Bay and Po Chong Wan, the mansions near The Peak on Strawberry and Severn Hills.
But that’s a trick! Change is everywhere. To take one example, a look around Central today is to witness towers growing in front of you, concrete and steel stalagmites, inching up, seemingly one on top of another. At the same time, the distance between the island and the mainland keeps shrinking. Ice House Street, alongside the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, is now 1,500 feet away from the harbour where it once ended. The Special Administrative Region is getting fatter and higher. The official population is about 7.5m, an overall population density of 6,300 people per square kilometre (only a little less than the top three, Macau, Monaco and Singapore), but it’s much higher down in Kowloon and around Central (going north from Sha Tin, Hong Kong SAR is mainly park land, covering about 70% of the whole region).
So much for first impressions. I arrived in Hong Kong the day after the annual ‘Vindicate 4 June and Relay the Torch’ vigil, which is held every year in Victoria Park, a (long) stone’s throw from The Excelsior Hotel (where I am staying for a few days). The vigil is to remember the events at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989, and the massacre of hundreds (maybe thousands ) of students and supportive residents. Following Deng Xiaoping’s lead in introducing reform of the economic system in China, and moves to increase a market based system, students had become increasingly concerned about a number of issues, mainly to do with lack of a democratic process, political corruption, and lack of freedom of the press. The protests culminated with what has been claimed to be one million students congregating in Tiananmen Square. Martial law was declared in May, and then Deng authorised the army to clear the Square on 3 June, using force as necessary. The army shot students, and later civilians through the night and the following day as they encountered peaceful but determined resistance.
On the twentieth anniversary of the events, the vigil in Hong Kong attracted some 200,000 people (the official police estimates are always considerably smaller, but their figures are strongly disputed by press observers and others). That was the most to have attended a vigil: I was there that year. Since then the number has declined, although it went back up to more than 180,000 in 2015 (and even the police agreed there was a large number, close to 100,000 in their estimates, by far the highest tally they have ever provided), likely to have been the effect of events in 2014, which I will turn to in a moment. This year the organisers claimed the number 115,000, 5,000 more than in 2017.
The June 4 vigil is one of three events that tell the story of Hong Kong in recent years, and especially over the past five years. While it is a reminder that the spirit of protest and democracy is still strong in Hong Kong, it is also evidence that, slowly but surely, the Chinese Government is extending its control over the Special Administrative Region. Patiently, deliberately and clearly, a western version of democracy is no longer considered acceptable, despite all the plans and agreement made prior to the handover in 1997.
Before I move on to how the city state feels today, you might need a quick reminder of the two other events in recent years where students sought to sustain the fight for democracy, despite little support from a most residents and considerable resistance from the government.
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), which is the de facto legislative body for China, and has power to interpret the laws of the country, including its constitution. Hong Kong’s Basic Law was established at the time of handover to China in 1997, but the agreement left the NPCSC with the right to interpret that law. In August of 2014, the NPCSC set new rules for the election of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong. The decision stipulated “the method for selecting the Chief Executive by universal suffrage must provide corresponding institutional safeguards for this purpose”. What this meant was that for the 2017 Chief Executive election, a nominating committee was formed to nominate “two to three candidates, each of whom must receive the support of more than half of the members of the nominating committee”. Critics quickly noted this nominating committee was largely comprised of ‘pro-Beijing’ and business interests.
Protests followed, and by late September students had assembled in an area close to the government complex, moved on to Civic Square, and by the end of the month students and supporters had taken over streets in Central, Admiralty, Wanchai and Causeway Bay – effectively the main area of Hong Kong Island close to the harbour and facing Kowloon. The resulting massive protests led to what is often referred to as the ‘Umbrella movement’, umbrellas being used to protect participants from missiles and tear gas: the yellow umbrella became the symbol of protest. It proved to be a divisive response. While some political leaders praised the concern for democracy, most did not. In the end, force was used to remove the occupy camps, and over the course of the next three years several people were imprisoned for several months (the importance of which was that imprisonment meant those jailed would never be able to run for political office in Hong Kong in the future). Court cases are still continuing today.
At the time, this was exhilarating, exciting. Though much smaller, it reminded me of the student protests in Europe and North America in the late 1960’s over the US involvement in Vietnam. But in the end, many residents saw this as an unnecessary way to upset Beijing, and counter-productive to the future of Hong Kong. The student leaders were brave, symbols of commitment to democratic principles, but already Joshua Wong, Alex Chow and Nathan Law have faded out of the limelight. Unmoved, China has continued to inch Hong Kong away from the democratic processes and policies it once followed. The general feeling is China has ‘won’ by being absolutely unyielding.
Further evidence of this came with the other much publicised and polarising event in recent years, a consequence of the election of 4 September 2016 for places on the Legislative Council.[i] The result was that the ‘anti-Beijing’ groups (of which there were several) won 29 out of 70 seats; crucially this meant they managed to retain the majority in the geographical constituencies and block any attempt by the pro-Beijing representatives amend the rule of procedures to curb radicals’ filibustering and, even more important, have the critical one-thirds minority to maintain the veto power on government’s constitutional reform proposal. If you were cynical, you would notice that all the pro-Beijing group had to do was to invalidate 6 anti-Beijing representatives.
On 12 October 2016, five localist and eight pro-democrat legislators used the oath-taking ceremony as a platform of protest as they had in the previous sessions, by either shouting slogans or making extra statements before or after taking their oaths. Despite earlier practice, the fight was on. The President of the Legislative Assembly actually prevented several of the group from taking their oaths, and on 7 November, the NPCSC unanimously passed its interpretation of the Basic Law, stating a person taking the member’s oath “should take it in a sincere and solemn manner”. It went on to rule “if the oath-taker refuses to take the oath or otherwise deliberately fails to take it in the correct way, he or she cannot retake the oath and shall be disqualified from assuming public office”.[ii] Six were disqualified, and the one-thirds minority lost.
Talking to my friends, there is an inevitable sense of change in Hong Kong. In schools, Putonghua (standard Chinese as used on the mainland) is replacing Cantonese in the schools. English street names hang on in Kowloon and parts of Hong Kong Island, but all have Chinese equivalents. Visitors going to the main areas and shopping centres will find English is spoken, but moving away from these locations it is less familiar. There is an acceptance that the mainland’s law prevails. The occasional disappearance of protestors (as well as mainland crooks hiding in Hong Kong) leads to ritualised protests, but little is done, or can be done. In terms of nationality, those in Hong Kong are now Chinese citizens, and can only differentiate themselves through being described as ‘Hong Kong Residents’.
Overall, I sensed that people are proud to live in Hong Kong, one of the great cities of the world, but feel that their future is clouded, and that long before the fifty year agreement over the ‘separate but equal’ period comes to an end (in 2047) Hong Kong will be effectively absorbed into China.
It’s not just about change. For a long time, Hong Kong was the entry to China for European and American businesses. Then, in more recent years, it became the back door for the Taiwanese. With less restrictions for the Taiwanese, Hong Kong as an entrepot is less important. At the same time, as Shanghai continues to grow as a financial and business centre, so Hong Kong’s previous dominance is slipping.[iii]
Pundits used to compare Shanghai to Hong Kong before the handover, and even after that they predicted that Hong Kong would eventually be displaced by the most affluent and populous city on the mainland. … There are reasons to be concerned. In many ways, Shanghai and Hong Kong appear to be running neck and neck. For example, Shanghai came third, behind Hong Kong (second), in new stock listings last year. The annual throughput of Shanghai’s container ports has already surpassed Hong Kong’s, which has slipped down the global ranking to only the fifth-busiest port in the world. Also last year, Shanghai’s economy grew by 6.8 per cent to 2.75 trillion yuan (about US$400 billion), outpacing Hong Kong’s 2 per cent growth to around US$319 billion. Besides, Shanghai has aggressively pursued every opportunity to become a successful knowledge-based economy and innovation centre over the past decade, and many world-leading science and technology multinationals have established R&D centres there.
As I see it, Hong Kong must pose a dilemma for China. It has been a key trading port for a long time. Major companies are located there. It is useful. In an ideal world, it would be part of China, inside, not a Special Administrative Region on the outside. It will return to China, but 2047 is a long way off. The Chinese government can nudge and push, and slowly drag it closer, but it will still be on the outside in the short term. What can they do? Build up Shanghai to the point that Hong Kong is no longer important? The next few years will be critical for Hong Kong in determining whether Shanghai will take over.
I will return to giving some views of Shanghai next week. For now, my view of life, hopes and worries in Hong Kong?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us”
[i] I would love to explain the intricacies and unfairness of elections in Hong Kong, but that would take too many pages, and I am far from expert on all the strange elements of the system! There is a good introduction on Wikipedia < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Council_of_Hong_Kong.
[ii] Once again, Wikipedia gives a good summary of the complicated series of events: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Legislative_Council_oath-taking_controversy.
[iii] This hopeful article from the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s main newspaper, actually illustrates the challenges well < http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2108930/hong-kong-still-has-edge-over-shanghai-how-long>
