Rapid democratization versus

expertise and decisiveness

It would be wrong to ignore the structural differences. For instance, the Chinese leaders rule through a political party and do not allow judicial autonomy, whereas the British put less emphasis on political parties and insist on judicial autonomy. Behind British colonial rule are the benign Westminster Parliament and British common law, whereas behind China's consultative bodies lie the rough games of the National People's Congress and the communist lack of legal protection for individual rights. Democratic centralism has been an instrument of oppression, whereas consultative colonialism has maintained a high degree of personal freedom.

Faced with difficulties in agreeing on the precise phrasing, the negotiators had recourse to what the British called the three little fudge words: elections, consultation and hight degree of autonomy. Hong Kong's legislature would be chosen by elections, but the kind of elections was not specified; there was a big difference between British style elections and Chinese style. British decisions with an important impact beyond 1997 would have to be based on consultation with China but the nature of that consultation was ambiguous.

During the Tiananmen crisis, Hong Kong people funded the Tiananmen Square dissidents, backed them with propaganda, smuggled the leaders in and out of China, channelled news of the massacre into southern China (thereby neutralizing Beijing's denial of the facts), mounted demonstrations of up to one million people to support the dissidents, and in the case of a group led by Martin Lee called for the overthrow of China's leadership. China responded only by complaining and by writing a non-subversion rule into the Basic Law. It made no threats, imposed no sanctions, and sent no subversive cadres to punish its opponents. In other words, while Hong Kong was ignoring the implicit rules of "one country, two systems" Beijing was honoring them impeccably. From this perspective, China's sincerity passed the test.

China had honored the requirement of mutual non-subversion whereas Hong Kong had not. Western sympathy with Hong Kong was too strong, ultimately, to face the fact that, however admirable its motivations, Hong Kong had acted suicidally.

The Hong Kong airport: independence

versus economic integration

From this premise the British government set out to create a huge confidence builder - the Hong Kong port and Airport Development Scheme (PADS), conceived as the largest and most expensive civil engineering project in the world during the 1990s. (Costed originally at over $16 billion, it is now running at over $23 billion.) It involved building one of the world's longest bridges out to an island off the coast of Hong Kong, leveling the entire island, and extending it with material obtained by huge dredging operations to create an appropriate surface, then constructing a very extensive infrastructure so that people could travel to this rather distant place in a reasonable time.

The shared wisdom of the construction fraternity agreed: one should always separate out construction projects and underprice them so as not to frighten those who will have to pay the bill. The government planned to finance PADS primarily through bank loans. However, international banks responded that since the repayments would all fall after 1997, and since China would be the beneficial owner, it was inconceivable that the banks would fund the project without both a strong Chinese endorsement and a Chinese financial contribution. Thus the British theory of totally autonomous decision-making initially fell foul not of Chinese interference but of the most basic rules of banking prudence.

Furthermore, the Joint Declaration specified that any decision with consequences beyond 1997 required consultation with China. The new Hong Kong airport was scheduled to open only in 1997 , and loan repayments would extend for many years afterwards. One of the Chinese government's suggestions was to build the airport in Shenzhen, the special economic zone adjacent to Hong Kong, at a fraction of the price. Britain objected that China would control the air rights and this would infringe Hong Kong's autonomy. China then offered to cede Hong Kong the land, the access and the air rights - a major concession of sovereignty comparable to Britain giving the USA control of Heathrow Airport and all associated air rights for fifty years. The British refused to discuss the offer seriously, although expert opinion on the merits of the case is at best divided.

Misperceptions of Hong Kong

The period after the Joint Declaration of 1984 was a boom time for Hong Kong. Its living standards came from far behind to surpass those in Britain. Even so, the British press - and most of the Western world's  - ignored every reality and persistently reported that Hong Kong was being destroyed by China. While the Western press trumpeted that foreign companies ere fleeing Hong Kong, the number of foreign companies roughly doubled. The number of Americans living in Hong Kong more than doubled. At precisely the time when the American press was reporting a vast exodus of American companies from Hong Kong, the Americans in Hong Kong were desperately trying to build the American school (Hong Kong International School) fast enough to keep up with the growing number of school children created by the influx of US companies. When the Western press was reporting a vast exodus from Hong Kong of forty-five thousand people per year in the mid 1980s no one major newspaper reported the countervailing fact that eighty-thousand people per year were moving into Hong Kong.

Television made its powerful contribution to the myths by featuring interviews with Hong Kong's most colorful and least representative political figure, Emily Lau to mount a crusade for complete Western-style democracy and what amounted to independence from China. She entered politics for the 1991 elections. Lau is Hong Kong's least representative figure in a number of ways. She is affiliated to no substantial political party or group. She is the only prominent political figure I am aware of who has explicitly repudiated the Joint Declaration by calling it a betrayal of Hong Kong. Her polished British accent, uncomplicated message and fanatical anti-China opinions make her the perfect interviewee. She is a bit of a figure of fun in Hong Kong, due to the extremism of her views, but CNN and BBC coverage has effectively portrayed her as one of the three most important voices of Hong Kong (along with Governor Patten and Martin Lee). No wonder that, at home, a British audience began to buy the line that Britain had somehow betrayed the people of Hong Kong and should do something decisive. The myth of betrayal, could be understood only as a powerful emotion, rather than analysis.

Rapid democratization versus

expertise and decisiveness

China values Hong Kong for its economy - as Britain did, as long as its hold on Hong Kong was secure. Britain now judges its performance in Hong Kong by the degree of its institutionalized democracy. Both China and the Hong Kong business community grew worried that the British administration in Hong Kong refused to address the question of how to maintain economic efficiency as democratization progressed. Many people pointed to the Philippines, where Cory Aquino's commitment to democracy was admired, but the country's inefficient patronage politics further degraded and impoverished economy. Here was an example of what Hong Kong had to avoid. In the Philippines in the early 1960s, the Filipinos were just behind the Japanese in standards of living, and most wealthy families had Chinese housekeepers from Hong Kong. Today the Philippines, lacking Asian-style mechanisms to ensure a priority for economic expertise, is one of the region's poorest countries. Most middle-class Hong Kong families now have maids from the Philippines. Indeed, the word "Filipina" is now used routinely as a synonym for "maid". Philippine decline was not solely the result of Marcos family theft, since the decline continued under Cory Aquino's democracy. 

In Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand, the civil bureaucracies have far more decision-making power than in the United States or the UK. Senior civil servants carry more prestige compared to senior politicians than in most Western countries. The West frequently denigrates this bureaucratic power as a lack of democracy, but is envious of the superior economic performance that results.

Hong Kong is a very transient society, and one characterized by an extremely short-term view. It is a society made nervous by decades of fear of the communists, and hence is very volatile in its moods.

Authority lay always in the hands of a Governor whose mandate was based on sound economic management, and consultation with lawyers, accountants and business leaders. The advisers provided the expertise and an interest in economic efficiency. These policies lay at the core of British achievement in Hong Kong, which by all accounts was the most successful of Britain's colonies. China approved. It also agreed to gradual democratization, as we have seen, including the eventual election of all members of the Legislative Council by direct democratic elections as understood by the British. But the Basic Law provided for a gradual transition, with eighteen of sixty people directly elected in 1991, and twenty directly elected in 1995. This system was to perform both the representative functions of the lower houses in the USA and Britain, and the more deliberative functions of the US Senate and the British House of Lords, but to do so in one house rather than two. One house makes the system more efficient because only one vote need occur, and there is no prolonged period of negotiation between different houses over nuances of a bill.

Hong Kong's system of consultative but expert and decisive government as a far as possible, while introducing limited elements of democracy to prevent the emergence of a political vacuum when the British withdrew. In the context of America's Senate or the British House of Lords, the two separate houses exist because of special historical circumstances, but they are acknowledged to have continuing value because they offer a needed counterweight, more reflective, more expert and more experienced, to the more populist lower houses. Both are chosen on a less democratic basis than the lower houses: for instance, giant Texas gets the same number of Senate seats as tiny Rhode Island. Hong Kong also has special historical circumstances, and it lives or dies on economic performance. But neither the British nor the Chinese sides thought efficiency would be served by having two houses, so they put both kinds of representative in a single house. Unlike the US Senate or the British House of Lords, the special sets in Hong Kong would eventually be phased out completely under the agreed Chinese-British plan, leaving a more democratic legislature in Hong Kong than in Britain. Prior to Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong people had been determinedly apolitical; politics just got in the way of business. Afterwards, they followed it seriously and had strong feelings, but were exceedingly cautious in their approach. Life is very good and very free in Hong Kong, and there is no inclination to put freedom and prosperity at risk.

In other words, they were enthusiastic about democracy, but not at the cost of jeopardizing Hong Kong's traditional freedom and prosperity.

The Patten programme

When Chris Patten took office as Governor in July 1992, he radically changed British policy. Previous governors had been men with great knowledge of China and Hong Kong, who believed it was essential to understand history and institutional structures in China and Hong Kong. They believed that any future for Hong Kong had to acknowledge China's core interests and overwhelming power, understanding that Hong Kong could have no future in confrontation with China. Prime Minister John Major deliberately chose in Patten a quite different perspective and gave him orders to march in a different direction. Patten was a politician, not an expert; a domestic politician, not a foreign affairs specialist. He showed a very impressive command of the details of economic policy and displayed a thrusting intelligence on complex economic questions. 90 days after his arrival in Hong Kong, Governor Pattern presented a new plan that constituted a radical reversal of the China experts careful rapprochement with China over Hong Kong. His political approach combined several elements:

- Dispense with the traditional process of consultation. Kept secret until a dramatic public announcement.

- Separate the legislature from the executive. This removed Martin Lee and the leading representative of the Chinese business community from direct influence over decision making.

- Appoint liberal young lawyers and journalists to Legislative Council seats rather than the economy-focused business people who would have held them in the past.

- Redefine nine new functional constituencies on the Legislative Council so that they would be elected by the entire working population rather than by narrower groups with specific expertise.

- Position himself as standing up for Hong Kong's interests and democracy by firmly opposing China.

- Focus media attention on the new electoral proposals, which in turn were defined as "democratic reform".

The core of the Patten "Reforms" was the effective transformation of functional constituencies into popular constituencies by opening them to the whole working population. What Governor Patten proposed would probably have been judged illegal if actually adjudicated in British courts.

In a dispute between business parties, all that counts is the text of the agreement; prior understandings of the original intent have no standing. In such dispute, Patten would be correct. But in a constitutional dispute, such as one involving the Basic Law, the original intent of the parties is the essence of the legal issue.

In a contract between subjects, only the cold print counts. Pre-contract negotiations cannot be introduced into litigation. Patten succeeded in selling to all British and American observer that he could effectively change functional constituencies into popular constituencies.

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