Forging Bourgeoisie into Radicals

Take a people normally known for their industry and business acumen, promise them freedom and self-rule, and then renege on those promises. The result? According to William McGurn in today’s WSJ ($), it’s the politicization of “almost all aspects of Hong Kong life.” Beijing’s paranoid rulers and their Hong Kong lackeys, led by the island’s chief executive Tung Chee Hwa, are forcing citizens of the former British colony to choose between obsequiousness or activism, and they’re choosing the latter. (Links to my blogs on Hong Kong may be found here.)

As Mr. McGurn says, that’s a shame, both because of the encroachment of Beijing into daily life in Hong Kong, and because it’s so destructive of the island city’s prosperity. A former editor with the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review, McGurn is well placed to spot changes in Hong Kong’s culture and psyche.

He reports: “The signs of this increasingly politicized society abound. Just last week, the government passed laws designed to gain control over the Catholic schools, which educate a good chunk of the citizenry. Allen Lee, a pro-business candidate who until recently represented Hong Kong in the National People's Congress, resigned when he received a phone call from a Beijing 'friend’ he didn't know talking about his wife and daughter, which he (correctly) interpreted as a threat. Even worse is how people whisper and pull punches in an effort to avoid crossing a line that is nowhere defined and always in danger of shifting.”

“But the worst thing Mr. Tung has done,” writes Mr. McGurn, “is to help politicize almost all aspects of Hong Kong life. As this year's peaceful march demonstrated, Hong Kong people are hopelessly decent, well-behaved and middle-class. But the more Beijing and its local mandarinate betray the promise given to them in 1984 – ‘Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong’ -- the more they court what they most fear: a base for anti-China activities.”

As if they were straight from central casting, China’s rulers are reacting to Hong Kong’s growing discontent by flinging wild accusations about the character of the island’s pro-democracy leaders. Again, quoting McGurn: “[I]f Beijing continues to label as ‘unpatriotic’ or ‘traitors’ (as has happened to Bishop Joseph Zen [who led the recent peaceful protest] and prominent democrats such as Emily Lau and Martin Lee) those who want only for China to live up to its promises of self-rule for Hong Kong, the logical next step is to conclude that the only hope lies in regime change. In a city where half a million people turn out in 100-degree heat to show their aspirations, the danger of suppressing liberals is to create radicals.”

Although Hong Kong's people didn't know true democracy under British rule, they did enjoy civil rights. As McGurn argued in his 1991 book Perfidious Albion, the handover of Hong Kong always carried greater risk of a gradual encroachment on the island's freedoms than a dramatic military action along the lines of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It looks increasingly like he was right then -- and now.