Hong Kong has always mesmerised and continues to mesmerise visitors to this day . The glorious skyline , the view of the harbour , steeply rising hills on each side of the island , continuous development in a limited space for the city and the food among other things . To the world a beguiling sense of chinese people so forward in their way of life yet in many ways living in a non democratic society is intriguing.
I was on a three day visit to the city on work and onward to mainland china . I was keen to take in the city which I was visiting after 6 years and I was looking forward to the changes and in it and also longing for something familiar.
The first noticeable change was general and is all pervasive across china – new infrastructure and the pace of development . As someone who has seen china add infrastructure and the share of world market rapidly in the last 15 years , it is still little astounding to see that an already developed principality like Hong Kong would continue to add roads , pass throughs , causeways , steel bridges across waterways , metro stations and endless infrastructure for tourists and business with fervour. old buildings were giving way to new shinier ones , land was being reclaimed from seemingly non existent places and things were on the move.The cause for my surprise was also the fact that there were murmurs about the Chinese government not being too happy with the people of Hong Kong for their continued demand for autonomy.Reports suggested efforts at the highest level to keep them Hong Kong at bay,so to speak and not pamper them too much.There was always an overt attempt by the Chinese disposition to develop shanghai in the mainland as the next big thing but to write off Hong Kong – that would not be wise and so perhaps they discovered.
The second change that I saw was in the ethnicity.It was obvious that more people from the mainland china had started arriving for work in Hong Kong and residing permanently.The younger ones were mostly from the mainland and from the bordering provinces of Guangdong . For people who have been to HK before , one dead giveaway is in the language . Everyone spoke English before as I knew it-No wonder since HK was under the British for 99 long years and intermittently even before that lease period with china. It was a trading port and a port of call for many european nations. The confluence of the cultures-traditional Chinese and others was the perfect potpourri for the later day tourist . The big piece in that was language and for most of us, the ability of the locals to understand the english speaking tourists gave us a sense of familiarity. It kind of was missing now. Nearly many of the people seemed new to the town and had no idea why HK was HK. The tradition and culture was being replaced by their very own means to transact and survive .To me it was a downer of some sorts.The nuance of HK as it existed was fading.
Politically HK is a hot potato for people’s republic of china . Both HK and Macau a gambling paradise for mainland Chinese are classified as ‘Special Administrative Regions’.Technically this means that both these provinces administered by China has the highest degree of autonomy and handles its own affairs under a chief executive.While the special administrative region (SAR) is allowed complete discretion in many areas like immigration , foreign policy ,trade and commerce to chart their own course and to even send its own contingent of athletes to the olympics yet it remains an integral part of china and draws military and strategic support from the mainland.Any disputes on governance or interpretation of law is referred and decided by the standing committee of National People’s Congress or NPC. NPC is a 150 member quasi legislative and its chairman is third highest ranking official in china after the secretary general of the communist party and the Premier.Therefore the NPC is a powerful body in the Chinese political system and it’s standing committee hold the key to the residents of HK’s choice to self govern a region which is traditionally Chinese ,yet tuned with the modern developed world in a different manner than the policy makers of PROC.
It was clear to me even in the past that the permanent residents of HK did not like China as they themselves were victims in a sense to the authority of the communist party which forced them to migrate in the first place . To them a taste of the western democracy in HK was an escape from an oppressive regime of the past . Now to have it all come back to haunt them and their children was not a comforting thought. Having said that the first decade and half after the 1997 handover of HK by the British to the Chinese went quite well .It saw job growth, business and commerce flourished in HK on the back of a strong Chinese economy.Slowly things started spiralling downwards and not all was china’s doing .HK residents wanted more of autonomy in governance and independence while china wanted more for the mainland residents and control over HK’s functioning.The trouble erupted in the form of the 2014 standoff popularly known as ‘central stand’ between china and the residents.Though the back of the movement was broken by the end of the year , it left more questions unanswered than resolved.
…………..To be continued
yogirb 