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Grim anniversary of Hong Kong returning to China
On July 1st 1997, Hong Kong was handed over by Britain to China, ending over 150 years of British rule. That 25th anniversary has generated a good deal of media coverage involving Beijing’s rise to global power, China’s reaction to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the constant threat against Taiwan, and of course Hong Kong itself under the “one country, two systems” agreed at the time.
China’s president Xi Jinping visited Hong Kong last week to mark the anniversary. It was his first trip beyond the mainland since the pandemic. It was also his first since the territory was engulfed by pro-democracy protests in 2019. Since then, he said, Hong Kong had “risen from the ashes”. In a speech he said it was entering a new period of “order and prosperity”.
Security was tight across the city. Members of the League of Social Democrats, an activist group, were told by police not to stage any protest on 1 July, after members were interviewed and had their homes searched. Authorities took no chances, ensuring the highly choreographed visit was filled with pomp and pageantry – and no sign of dissent.
Xi called on Hong Kong’s residents to contribute to the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and insisted Beijing had always acted “for the good of Hong Kong”. John Lee, a former security minister, now the chief executive, named protests in the pro-democracy movement as challenges the city had overcome, while Xi said the introduction of national security legislation and its revamped “patriots-only” electoral system safeguarded Hong Kong people’s democratic rights.
Before Friday’s ceremony, the US, the UK, Australia, and the European Union all issued strong statements to condemn what they called “loss of freedoms” in Hong Kong. The territory was promised 50 years of self-government and freedoms of assembly, speech and press that are not allowed on the Communist-ruled Chinese mainland. As the city of 7.4 million people marks a quarter of a century under Beijing’s rule, those promises have all but evaporated.
Xi’s previous trip, in 2017, was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the territory’s handover. He obviously sensed then that trouble was likely, warning that “any attempt to endanger China’s sovereignty and security, challenge the power of the central government” or to “use Hong Kong to carry out infiltration and sabotage against the mainland” would be considered “an act that touches the red line”.
Back in 1997 China promised that Hong Kong would be governed for the next 50 years enshrining the freedoms Hong Kongers had enjoyed under British rule. Just a quarter of a century later, those freedoms no longer exist. What was a free and open society became a police state within just a few years. Nearly 200 activists have been detained under a draconian national-security law that was passed by China’s legislature in June 2020.
Since the 1980s Beijing has encouraged Chinese citizens to relocate to the Asian financial hub. The Chinese Communist Party has been able to send around 150 people every day through a one-way permit scheme. More than 1m people from the mainland have migrated to Hong Kong in this way—about a seventh of the city’s current population. Hundreds of thousands more have come through other visa schemes.
Chris Patten, now Lord Patten, was the last British governor of Hong Kong. He was there at the handover ceremony, together with Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, and Tony Blair, the then Labour prime minister. Patten is an unusually impressive Conservative politician. He has just published a book telling about his five-year tenure to try to prepare it not (as other British colonies over the decades) for independence, but for handing back in 1997 to the Chinese, from whom most of its territory had been leased 99 years previously.
The book gives insights into negotiating with Beijing, about how the institutions of democracy in Hong Kong were (belatedly) strengthened and how Patten sought to ensure that a strong degree of self-government would continue after 1997. Unexpectedly, his opponents included not only the Chinese themselves, but some British businessmen and civil service mandarins upset by Patten's efforts, for whom political freedom and the rule of law in Hong Kong seemed less important than keeping on the right side of Beijing. The book concludes with an account of what has happened in Hong Kong since the handover, a powerful assessment of recent events and his reflections on how to deal with China - then and now.
Boris Johnson headed to last week’s Nato summit with fresh warnings that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown the need for extra vigilance and caution over potential Chinese action against Taiwan. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, who was also in Madrid, was most explicit, calling for faster action to help Taiwan with defensive weapons, a key requirement for Ukraine since the invasion. “There’s always a tendency – and we’ve seen this prior to the Ukraine war – there’s always a tendency of wishful thinking, to hope that more bad things won’t happen and to wait until it’s too late.” Her words went well beyond the standard UK government language on the issue. It is hard to be optimistic about the future nature of Beijing’s relations with the West.
BY: IAN BLACK
