I think it’s remarkable that confidence has stood up as well as it has. Some of the things predicted in the ’80s – capital flight, a tidal wave of emigration – haven’t happened. But the Chinese seem reluctant to comprehend that confidence is pretty fragile.
Why is it that privileged [Hong Kong] people are prepared to sign up to arrangements whose sole intention is to choke off the voice of those who represent the majority of public opinion? I’ll say this. They wouldn’t be doing it if most of them didn’t have foreign passports in their back pockets. Some say if we just make this accommodation, everything will be all right. But where are they going to draw the line? We’re talking about not just turning the video back a bit, but a very rapid reverse on the protection of civil liberties and development of democratic rights.
What these people are doing now is conveniently forgetting the terms on which the agreement to transfer sovereignty was signed: the 1984 Joint Declaration, which is a guarantee that Hong Kong will survive as an open and free plural society for 50 years after 1997 – part Chinese, part universal, if you like.
What [Hong Kong] people were promised in 1984 was that they could have democratic institutions, admittedly like some in the West but also like some in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand. You can’t now start saying the only bits that matter – that are really Chinese, really Hong Kong, really Asian – are those that say people can go on making money.
If we’d made the accommodations that some old Sinologists wanted, we would now have less freedom, less democracy, less protection of human rights. And we would have had those things before 1997, with Britain’s connivance and Britain’s imprimatur, Britain’s chop. Who do you think the demonstrations would have been against?
What I believe they’re being asked to do – and I hope they turn down the job – is to exclude from the Legislative Council anybody who’s likely to disagree with what Chinese officials would want. That’s the name of the game.
The economy is extremely sound, and the people of Hong Kong are energetic and resilient and have got through some pretty choppy waters in the past. Secondly, this is a city in its prime. There’s a great pulsing society here. And a civil society. Churches, professions, voluntary organizations, newspapers, political parties, and a well-educated, well-informed, well-traveled middle class. All that produces a political agenda, and nothing will get that back in the bottle. You can dismantle institutions, but I don’t think you can destroy the values that have helped make Hong Kong such a special place.
