Let us, as Deng would have said, try to seek truth from facts. What are the facts about today’s Hong Kong?
Hong Kong is one of the most successful cities in the world. With no natural resources, Hong Kong’s 6 million people have created the world’s eighth largest trading economy, equivalent to about a fifth of China’s GDP. Hong Kong boasts the seventh largest foreign-currency reserves in the world–the second highest per head. Hong Kong has the world’s busiest container port. We have some of the lowest taxes in the world. Thirty-five years of economic growth have been accompanied by steady progress in other fields, too. Where only 1 in 33 of our young people went into higher education 10 years ago, now 1 in 4 does so. Life expectancy in Hong Kong is second only to Japan, child mortality lower than the United States, Germany or Australia.
This isn’t a statistical almanac or a page from the Hong Kong budget book. These are the vital signs of a living, vibrant community. A community which has succeeded over the years through all the ups and downs of the history taking place around it. A community which has not just coped, but grown, prospered and become accustomed to taking momentous events in its stride.
What else does the world see in Hong Kong? Great social stability. This is a moderate, calm, levelheaded place. Overall crime is down, and violent crime down dramatically–not just on last year but on a decade ago.
Hong Kong gets rave reviews from the IMF and from leading international think tanks. We’re the freest economy in the world, according to the Heritage Foundation; and the second most competitive, says the World Economic Forum.
What is the formula that has produced this happy combination? No secret formula, but the hard work and the entrepreneurial flair of Chinese men and women under a rule of law and an efficient, uncorrupt administration dedicated to free-market economics. Hong Kong is a very free society–free economically, and free politically, too. People are free to say what they think, write what they like, travel wherever they want, criticize me and their government–a freedom which, now and then, like people in most free societies, they indulge in. Hong Kong has a free press, an independent judiciary. A self-confident legislature. Everyone, government and governed, is subject to the law.
It is these political freedoms which, as much as Hong Kong’s economic freedom, lie at the heart of Hong Kong’s success. That is why they are at the core of the Joint Declaration, the treaty under which sovereignty returns to China on June 30. China has promised Hong Kong that its political rights–as well as its economic freedoms–will be guaranteed for 50 years beyond 1997. Why has it done so? Not out of altruism, but from a hardheaded recognition that if this is the formula that has produced such riches under British sovereignty, it would be wise to stick to it under Chinese sovereignty as well.
It is a pity, therefore, that some recent Chinese actions have caused anxiety in Hong Kong and around the world. First, China’s decision to trash Hong Kong’s freely and fairly elected Legislative Council–elected by over a million people just over a year ago–with a ““provisional legislature’’ selected by just 400 friends of China. This is a bad, totally unnecessary and legally questionable move which saddles Hong Kong–a First World city–with a political institution most Third World countries would be ashamed of. No wonder the ““provisional legislature’’ dare not meet in Hong Kong, but gathers furtively across the Chinese border. The British and Hong Kong governments will have nothing to do with it. Britain has extended an open invitation to China to join it in asking the International Court of Justice to rule on the legality of this body and of our own freely elected legislature–an invitation which, thus far, China has, revealingly, declined to take up.
The second cause of concern is China’s decision to scrap Hong Kong’s Bill of Rights and its Societies and Public Order Ordinances. These threats to key provisions of Hong Kong’s civil-liberties legislation have been roundly condemned in Hong Kong and have generated damaging publicity overseas. Hong Kong’s legal profession has been united in its opposition. The Bar Association published a devastating critique. The question which everyone asks China and its supporters is why? Why are these steps necessary? No one claims there is a public-order problem in Hong Kong, where people debate, argue and, yes, sometimes demonstrate with great patience and moderation. Part of the reason for that moderation is precisely because people know that, at the moment, these freedoms are available to them, that the safety valves exist to let off steam every now and then. Those peaceful demonstrations reflect stability, not instability.
The encouraging news of the last few weeks, however, has been the united response in Hong Kong to these threats. Right across the community people have spoken up against them–spoken up calmly, rationally, intelligently, in the Hong Kong way. They come back, again and again, to the most powerful question in the world: why? They have yet to receive an answer. But I am pleased that my successor, Tung Chee-hwa, has announced that he will consult widely before deciding how to replace the civil-liberties provisions which he and China at present wish to abolish. The strongest leaders are leaders who are strong enough to listen. I urge Mr. Tung, who is a thoughtful and decent man, to listen to the people he is soon to lead–to listen, and to think again.
Just four months from the handover, it is natural that there are worries about the future. I believe strongly that the best advocates for Hong Kong are those who address those worries head-on–not in a hysterical or melodramatic way, but calmly and sensibly–rather than gloss over them or try to sweep them under the carpet. Unbridled optimism just breeds cynical skepticism in Hong Kong’s friends. It’s not unreasonable of them to expect us to level with them.
So am I, the departing British Governor, optimistic about Hong Kong’s future? Yes–with the qualifications I have expressed. Why? Because Hong Kong is the most successful Chinese city in the world. That’s fact, not speculation. A city that is as free and open in its politics as it is in its economics. A model for Asia–the best of East and West, learning from both and from which both can learn. ““A slice of the future,’’ as one American newspaper called it. That’s Hong Kong today. And it could–and should–be the Hong Kong of tomorrow as well.
