Part 2
By Seah Chiang Nee
With the colonial sun about to set, British are changing tact - promoting democratic structures instead of running them down, a worry to the big hongs - and China.
Jan 8, 1987

When I visited Hong Kong last December, the British colony was enjoying a strong economy. Exports were strong and the colony was reaping the benefits of China's efforts to modernise.

Americans, Japanese and Australians were moving in to fill up the gaps left by the rapid process of divestment of the local hongs.

I was unable to get a room; hotels were fully booked. In overcrowded Mongkok, the population at night swelled to three times its normal size as residents in surrounding resettlement estates flocked there to shop, eat, work or be entertained.

An average of 35,000 people flocked to the races at Shatin; perhaps 10 times that many worked or lived with radios and earphones stuck to their ears to await results that may mean a fortune made and a dream realised.

To a casual visitor, Hong Kong has started 1987 looking no different from what it was in 1977 - or 1967. It is working hard, playing hard and reaming heard.

Walk around Kowloon, see the topless spots that still charge exorbitant fees for the unwary just for the pleasure of buying a few coloured drinks for a beautiful hostess.

Saunter across Temple Street, and you can buy anything from an X-rated home video tape to the services of a teenage girl. In short, nothing seemed to have changed.

But appearances can be deceiving. There have been marked changes. Some of them are for the better.

Police corruption has been significantly reduced. Crime syndicates operating underground casinos and heroin smuggling rings have been smashed, probably for good.

They had thrived in the 1970s as a result of police corruption. The Hong Kong police force was once described as the best "that money can buy". This has changed dramatically.

Complaints of police brutality have declined. The Independent Commission Against Corruption has worked beyond the belief of many cynics.

The younger people are certainly more polite today. Ask any Singaporean who had been shopping there regularly for the past 10 years and he will probably tell you of an improved attitude towards shoppers. People are more responsive to enquiries from strangers on the roads.

Greater changes

The mindset changes are the most pronounced. There is a growing sense of identity among the people, 60 per cent of them born in the colony and know of no other life.

This became evident during my visit. At the funeral of the late Governor Sir Edward Youde recently, more than 35,000 people from all walks of life, young and old, had queued for up to four hours in an unprecedented outpouring of grief.

"I have never seen anything like this before. People were used to regarding the Governor as a distant figure in ceremonial outfit, who is in Hong Kong to do a job for the British government," said a British expatriate friend, who had lived there for a long time.

"It's like their way of saying that he may be British but he's our governor, he's our man," he added.

Throughout Chinese history, the Cantonese people have been known for their rebelliousness against authority and a strong sense of politics.

While colonies has festered with independence movements and anti-colonial fervour, the Cantonese in Hong Kong had turned their minds, not to making revolutions but to a single-minded purpose of enriching themselves.

The 1997 issue may have changed that. An apolitical Hong Kong will have, at most, another 10 years to go before disappearing. As part of China, it cannot, and will not, be the same as the Hong Kong that most of us in Singapore know.

Today, most of the people are still largely unconcerned with politics and the workers with trade unions.

But everyone is worried about the future. A growing number, perhaps one or two out of 10, is worried enough to want strong constitutional safeguard for their future to be written into a Basic Law now being drafted.

Demands for direct elections to a legislature with real powers (and formation of political parties) are increasingly being made. Others want to see the formation of Western-type trade unions.

As a colonial authority, the British have ruled Hong Kong in a passive way with as few laws or policies as possible, the world's last laissez-faire society.

Somebody calls the Governor's job a "baby kissing" one, working on the principle of "active non-interventionism".

What a British author calls a "Borrowed place, borrowed time" lives from year to year without five-year plans or long-term objectives.

Taxes are cheap; there is no need to worry about defence and foreign policy.

In that Hong Kong had the best protection anyone can ask for. Any country which attacks Hong Kong is deemed to have attacked Britain - and China at the same time.

Actually, people are telling me power in Hong Kong is shared between the Big Hongs, the big local companies and China in the background.

The British presence is tolerated. With the colonialists preparing to leave, the political winds are blowing more to Big Business.

Already besieged by worries about 1997, the big hongs are concerned about the increasing political activism.

They are fearful of Western liberals upsetting the apple-cart, trade unions adopting the English model of class struggles. They are concerned about a possible upsurge of political parties splitting the society into querulous factions.

Dr Joseph Y.S. Cheng, senior lecturer at the Department of Government, Chinese University, wants a system of democracy written into the mini-constitution to safeguard Hong Kong's future as part of communist China.

"There is no proof that democracy is incompatible with stability and prosperity.

That is the best way to make sure China keeps its promise not to interfere in Hong Kong for 50 years.

Dr Cheng lauds the shift in the traditional centre of power away from the hongs. "The oligarchy of the rich has already ceased to be part of the formula for success in Hongkong.

"In view of the demand for political reforms, the business community now tries to retain its established political privileges," he says.

To the rich, it sounds like declaration of a class war. Dr Cheng adds: "In a pluralistic society, it is a natural phenomenon for various interests and compete with each other."

Talk of a classless society worries not only the wealthy but the communist authorities in China as well.

They don't want too much free politics but they fear any campaigns against capitalists in Hong Kong even more.

Beijing has a long turbulence of such nonsense. It sees Hong Kong as a novice in politics. Making money, yes it is very clever at it; making politics - the liberals will make a mess of it.

And Beijing doesn't want to be forced to crack down on Hong Kong for another reason - Taiwan.

It wants Hong Kong to work peacefully so that Taiwan will be placated to return to the Motherland.

Same Message

The British, however, are threatening to cause trouble by trying to convert their colony - in its sunset colonial years - to a democratic part of a vast communist nation.

This is a complete reversal of their position all these years which is Hong Kong is a colony at China's doorstep. It can never be democratic.

I remember a conversation I had with a Labour Office (read ministry) information officer about 10 years ago on the subject of greater rights for workers.

A worker had lost his hand in a machine accident after working for a small factory for 17 years. The boss paid his hospital bills and said "sayonara" to him with three months' salary. No compensation and of course, no retirement savings.

I was then News Editor of The Hong Kong Standard and had asked him why the Hong Kong people could not be granted a small measure of representative government that other British colonial subjects elsewhere were given.

Angrily, he accused me of not knowing Hong Kong and its sensitivities it was living under.

"You must be new here. This is Hong Kong, old boy! You don't talk about things like that. Even if we want it, China won't tolerate it," he said.

It was at the Hong Kong Journalists Association club house at Wanchai. After a few more beers his face got redder his voice, louder. At one stage I thought he was going to hit me.

Today, the British have done a complete U-turn, pushing six million Hong Kongers to have as much self-determination as possible handing them over to China.

In the time I was in the colony, hardly there had a day passed without a newspaper here publishing one or two demands for more political, social or other rights for the people.

Some are seeing this more as a maturing process. Others regard the phenomenon as an ill wind that blows no one any good.

The general view is that Hong Kong as part of China will be a very different society from what it is today.

Britain is fearful that its rule in the next 10 years will be difficult. Chinese by nature respond to power.

People are anxious about law and order. Can police discipline be maintained? I find these fears among the people are real.

Some people told me that a major outbreak of violence or a breakdown of law and order - maybe over a bus fare rise or a political strike - could invite a premature Chinese takeover, perhaps even under different rules.

This may only be a distant possibility, but it is scary for everyone both in and outside Hong Kong.
By Seah Chiang Nee