Hong Kong on the Brink

Eleven weeks ago, the placards carried by protesters said "Withdraw Extradition Bill". Now, they proclaim "FREE HONG KONG". What began as a spontaneous protest against a hated piece of legislation has turned into an aggressive pro-democracy movement.

Sri Lanka has a population of 21 million. Imagine if 7 million of them came out for a protest march in Colombo. The police and the armed services would be outnumbered, and the protesters could lay siege to the city and even topple the government. When two million protesters marched through downtown Hong Kong in June, they were one third of Hong Kong's population. The protesters have brought the city to a standstill. The government hasn't fallen yet, but remains in paralysis. Hong Kong has no armed forces, but there's a garrison of Mainland Chinese forces based in Hong Kong, and more troops across the border, but any intervention by these them could be the end of Hong Kong as we know it.

I came to Hong Kong in 1995. Two years later, the British handed over the colony to China. After the Tiananmen incident in 1989, about half a million Hong Kongers, those who could afford it or those who had professional qualifications, left, to settle down mainly in Canada, Australia, and Britain. Most who remained in Hong Kong, and even some expatriates, were not optimistic about its future. As long as it was under the British, Hong Kong had been a humiliation for China, and some even expected Chinese tanks to roll down Tolo Highway, which connected Hong Kong to China, after the handover on July 1. (I could see the highway from where I lived on the Chinese University campus)

Hong Kong's breathtaking skyscrapers 

But, no tanks came. For me, the immediate impact was in cricket. The university cricket team used a Royal Air Force (RAF) grounds for our games, but, after the handover, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) took over the camp and we couldn’t play there anymore.

Historical Context

Till 1949, Hong Kong only had a population of half a million within its 500 square miles. That year, the communists took over China, and a massive exodus to Hong Kong occurred, raising the population to 2 million. The elderly taxi driver who drove me to the airport regularly, Mr. Wu, told me that he swam to Hong Kong with a bicycle tube around his neck. Most of these early immigrants are now dead, but the stories they told their children and grandchildren, about suppression of freedom in China, have not been forgotten.

The early refugees lived in shacks, coping with landslides and fires. With time, the British administration managed to build enough public housing to accommodate all, although some residential units were as small as 200 sq. ft. Eventually, citizens gained much personal freedom, and access to free education and healthcare. Public transport - the Mass Transit Railway (MTR), the bus service, taxis, and ferries – are perhaps the world’s best. Currently, Hong Kong boasts a sound banking system, an independent judiciary, about $400 billion in foreign reserves, and enforces rigorous anti-corruption laws. The stock-exchange rivals London and New York. Last year’s budget surplus was $40 billion. The annual per capita GDP is $49,000 (for comparison, the figures for the UK and Sri Lanka are $42,000 and $4000 respectively). To cap it all, the life expectancy is the highest in the world, for both Hong Kong men and women.

But, there’s a dark side to Hong Kong. About 15% of the population, mainly recent immigrants from the Mainland (57,000 arrived in 2016 alone), live below the official poverty line. Their housing could be horrendous; exploited by landlords, they live in so called “sub-divided” flats, some as small as 100 sq. ft. for a family of four.

Changes

For about ten years after the handover, life went on as usual. The same civil servants and policemen continued to serve, and the same journalists’ bylines appeared in the newspapers. Train announcements were in Cantonese and English. Mainland Chinese visitors were few, because they needed visas to enter Hong Kong, which were not easy to obtain.

Gradually, I began to note changes, both at the university where I taught and elsewhere in Hong Kong. More students from the Mainland were entering Hong Kong universities, even to the detriment of local students: at my university, the majority of doctoral students turned out to be Mainlanders. Many newly appointed professors also had Mainland origins, as did some university Presidents/Vic-Chancellors. However, personally, I continued to enjoy academic freedom: no one observed my lectures, and none checked my lecture notes.

China had eased visa requirements, and Hong Kong shops began to overflow with Mainland shoppers, buying up everything from designer handbags to name-brand watches, from milk food to toilet paper. The MTR became clogged with Mainland visitors, easily noticed because they spoke Mandarin and brought huge suitcases into the railway carriages. In 2018, for instance, about 46 million Mainland visitors entered Hong Kong, further crowding the 7 million locals. Naturally, this caused a great deal of resentment.

Failure in Administration

The last British Governor, Chris Patten, had been a popular figure. But, all the Chief Executives (CE) - equivalent to Governor - appointed after the handover turned out to be utter failures. They had all been nominees of China, through an election in which only 1,200 chosen few Hong Kongers voted. The first, Tung Chi Wa, a businessman, resigned before his term was up. During his tenure, when a so-called National Security Legislation was proposed, half a million marched in protest. The bill was withdrawn. The second, Donald Tsang, is now in jail for corruption. As a Catholic, he attended mass every morning, and to me, that alone was suspect enough! The third, C.Y. Leung, was, like Tsang, a puppet in the hands of property developers.

Carrie Lam, the current Chief Executive, is a long term civil servant, like her predecessor Donald Tsang.  She, too, is a “good Catholic girl”, having even attended a Catholic convent. Top level civil servants in Hong Kong are a pampered lot. Lam famously did not know where to buy toilet paper, or how to go through the turnstiles to enter the MTR! When civil servants are appointed CE, perhaps their main shortcoming is the inability to create policy, having been trained only to carry out the decisions made by their superiors.

Despair among Hong Kong’s Young

Early on, my students had little interest in politics. I taught at a public university and most students came from the working class. Stories abounded of social mobility, of children of poor refugees from China, living  in crowded housing, rising to become top level professionals. My students also aspired to rise above their parent’ living standards, and many did.

Two sisters, whose parents were a cook and a cleaner, gained full scholarships to Oxford and Cambridge to pursue doctoral degrees. Another, the daughter of a hawker, earned a First Class Honors in English. She narrowly missed a scholarship to Oxford, and could have easily found employment in a top business firm. Instead, she joined the police as a probationary police inspector, telling me she admired the police for keeping her impoverished neighborhood safe from drug dealers and gangsters. A close friend, a world class academic, also came from a similar background.

But now, such social mobility is more the exception than the rule. I see two reasons. First, the more affluent children attend international schools, and go to the UK, Australia and the US for higher education. They return to Hong Kong with better English language and all round skills, and get the plum jobs.

The second is unaffordable housing. Housing prices have skyrocketed in the past 20 years. Presently, Hong Kong is the world’s most expensive housing market, at HK$17,000 per square foot (US$2000, or Sri Lankan Rs. 385,000/: for a square foot). For comparison, the rate for New York is only US$520. For most Hong Kongers, owning their own home is an impossibility. Those who do call themselves “mortgage slaves”, some holding more than one job to pay off killer 30-year payments. The property developers’ solution has been to build tiny flats, selling 160 sq. ft. flats for HK$3 million. Meanwhile, greedy landlords are subletting their flats, forcing whole families to live in horrendous conditions.

How the Hong Kong poor live

For the housing debacle, the culprits are three fold. First, the government (yes, even under the British), which controls all land and auctions them off to the highest bidder from the property developers. Second, the powerful, rapacious developers who manipulate the market and influence government policy. Third, Mainlanders investing their ill-gotten wealth safely in Hong Kong, driving up prices. Most of the flats they own remain unoccupied.

Singapore, which is even smaller than Hong Kong in terms of area, has solved the housing problem by building family-friendly housing costing about 5 years’ income. In comparison, a typical Hong Konger could only afford 12 square feet per year, and even a car-sized flat would cost 10 years’ income. Carrie Lam, the current CE, has a proposal to solve the housing problem: instead of building public housing on available land, she plans to create an island at a cost of HK$500 billion (US$65 billion). Construction would likely be handled by Mainland companies, and private developers would build the flats. Pressure from the Mainland and property developers is obvious.

Growing Resentment

In 1997, when Hong Kong was handed over to China, the “One country, two systems” proposed by the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was put in place, ensuring Hong Kong a degree of autonomy for 49 years. Although defense and diplomacy came under the Mainland, Hong Kong continued to print its currency, to link the HK dollar to the US dollar, have its own flag, issue passports, and maintain immigration control. But, over the years, frustration with China has grown due to a number of reasons: covert pressure with the proposed security law of 2003 (which was withdrawn), attempts to change the school curriculum (which also failed), and coercion to invest in massive infrastructure projects, such as the 55 km sea bridge to Macau and Zhuhai, which don’t directly benefit Hong Kong. The “invasion” by millions of Mainland tourists, crowding public transport, shops, and streets, did not help matters. The influx of Mainland money into the property market, sending prices sky high, further exacerbated the situation. Hong Kong people’s resentment was palpable: street protests against the Mainlanders were held, and clashes occurred.

The Current Protests

The hated extradition bill would have subjected Hong Kong to the Chinese legal system. The government was warned by academics and legal experts to reconsider, but, perhaps under pressure from China, chose to ignore the advice.

I was in Hong Kong in June, when the two major protest marches occurred. Despite the blistering heat, one million took part in the first march, and a week later, an estimated two million marched. The protesters came from all ages and across the social and economic strata. University, secondary school and even middle school students were joined by their parents and grandparents. Working class people marched with civil servants, teachers, and airline staff. When the government did not respond by withdrawing the extradition bill, the second march ended with clashes between radical elements and the police. Waking up at last, Carrie Lam suspended the bill, but did not withdraw it. So the violent protests continued.

Violent protests

The Legislative Council building, Hong Kong’s parliament, was stormed. Police Headquarters was besieged. Roads were blocked. Finally, the Hong Kong airport, where nearly one thousand flights take off and land every day, was brought to a standstill. The Hong Kong government, and indirectly China, were humiliated.

Well-equipped protester

The attires of the protesters and the police offer a sharp contrast. The typical protester wears a black T-shirt, a helmet, goggles, and a gas mask, to protest from tear gas. A bottle of water is ubiquitous. In contrast, policemen in riot gear have the forbidding appearance of Darth Vader from Star Wars. Some baton charges have been violent.

Riot police

China Losing Face

I have traveled widely in China in the past 20 years, and have seen first-hand how much progress the country has made during this period. But, while material prosperity and living standards have improved, personal freedom appears to have declined.

Never having experienced it, Mainland officials have little understanding of democracy. They probably cannot comprehend the dissatisfaction of Hong Kongers, who are Chinese like themselves.

In Chinese societies, “face” is everything. The loss of face is intolerable, and these societies go to great lengths to “save face”.  What exacerbates the Chinese impatience with Hong Kong is the tremendous loss of face that China and its citizens are subjected to in Hong Kong. The Chinese shoppers are called “locusts”, and any type of errant behavior, such as a child peeing on the street, goes viral on social media and is condemned. But, the annual candlelight vigil held in Hong Kong on June 4 takes the cake for “loss of face” on a global level. Any mention of the Tiananmen incident of 1989 is taboo in China, but, for the past 30 years, Hong Kong has commemorated the incident with a vigil which draws massive crowds, 300,000 this year.

Candlelight vigil, 2019. Each light represents a person. 

During the current protests, the Chinese emblem was defaced, and the Chinese flag was twice ripped from a pole and thrown into the sea. In an open society, such acts would probably draw a mild rebuke (the US flag, for instance, is set fire to both within and outside the US on a regular basis), but China is incensed. The protests themselves, broadcast around the world, makes China appear weak.

In reaction, China has amassed a large, armored force on the Hong Kong border, and broadcast its tactics for riot control. It brought pressure on Cathay Pacific Airways, Hong Kong’s privately owned flag-carrier, to sack two pilots who had participated in the protests. Even Cathay’s CEO was forced to resign.

My Hong Kong

I have a deep, emotional attachment to Hong Kong. Prior to my arrival in 1995, I had studied and taught in the USA, where I couldn’t even live from paycheck to paycheck, being squeezed by high income taxes, state taxes, payments for health insurance and social security, in addition to monthly car payments and a mortgage. The sales taxes added a further 12% to every bill. Hong Kong, in contrast, had a flat 17% income tax, free health care, and did not require social security payments. No sales tax was added, because Hong Kong is tax free. When I bought a house, the government paid the substantial mortgage. My take home salary was three times what I earned in the USA. I could even afford a domestic helper, brought from Sri Lanka. And, as a permanent resident, I voted.

In other ways, too, Hong Kong has been good to me. The Hong Kong people are tolerant of foreigners, and the presence of a large expatriate population ensures a diverse lifestyle enriched by a cuisine that is truly international. Half of Hong Kong is reserved for country parks, which are easily accessed, and public transport is perhaps the world’s best, and affordable. The police and civil servants are courteous. At the well-endowed public university where I taught, academic freedom was guaranteed, and other forms of academic and research support were provided that was unthinkable at most cash strapped American universities. The generous travel grants enabled me to see the world. I made lifelong friends.

So, I want Hong Kong to be succeed, and the people to be happy. But, in recent years, I saw the smiles fade and gloom set in. Poor leadership, an unequal society, becoming “mortgage slaves”, has sapped the cheerfulness of the people. But, during my 20-year stay, Hong Kong weathered two sharp economic downturns, and the devastating SARS epidemic which killed more than 300 people. Each time, Hong Kong bounced back. I have lived in five countries, and nowhere else have I seen such a resilient society.

What can be done? Carrie Lam, the failed Chief Executive, already “the walking dead”, has to go. The hated extradition bill must be withdrawn. A crash program to build thousands of affordable public housing should be launched immediately. Finally, universal suffrage, one-person one-vote, must be implemented when the next election for the Chief Executive comes around.

As George Orwell said, knowing “that your children get a fair chance” are basic aspirations, all that Hong Kong people are asking for. The latest protests, held on Sunday 18, in pouring rain, went off peacefully, without any clashes. An estimated 1.7 million marched. Hong Kong is on the brink, but I have hope.