Hong Kong’s 2nd-Biggest Problem

HONG KONG — Sure, if I were a Hong Konger, I would hope and pray like mad that Beijing will handle the takeover of my homeland with kid gloves. But I would also hope and pray, as the necessary compromises of transition are made, not to be mauled by too-quick-to-judge Western media coverage. Are both of these hopes too much to wish for?

While I can’t speak for Beijing, I am certain that much of the Western news media, especially the TV news crews planning to parachute in for the hand-over festivities, will find Hong Kong as difficult to understand overnight as the People’s Republic of China will find it to manage overnight. Even now, before the July 1 event, I almost think it’s the Westerners living here who are having the worst adjustment problems. Some 37,000 Americans live here, many of them working for 1,200 U.S.-based businesses, among them Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, which have drawn up just-in-case evacuation plans. A lawyer from a top Los Angeles firm worries about his wife, who can’t sleep at night and who telephones family back in the States constantly. Real estate outfits in England and Australia exploit the fears from far off with splashy ads in the local papers offering “second homes.” But if average Hong Kongers are all that concerned, they appear to be too busy making money to show it. “Walking around,” agrees one local journalist, “you don’t feel an overriding fear.” Even departing British officials believe these doughty residents will be able to handle anything Beijing throws their way. “They are not exactly shivering in their boots,” says veteran British diplomat Hugh Davies, London’s key man on the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group.

In truth, a lot of Hong Kongers are happy to shed British rule, however rapidly enlightened it may have become as the curtain started to come down. The legacy of a humming economy, a first- class underground mass transit system, a renowned civil service and an independent judiciary notwithstanding, the British are not, after all, Chinese. And the government of the People’s Republic of China, for all its faults, is. Westerners must never underestimate the appeal of original ethnicity to a colonized populace. Moreover, Beijing really hasn’t screwed up yet, in Hong Kong’s eyes. Says Nellie K.M. Fong, a partner in the Hong Kong office of Arthur Andersen & Co., who was named by China to the influential Beijing transition committee: “My confidence in the future of Hong Kong is high. It grew from working for four years with the Chinese government. I have very few doubts.”

Many in the West have the image of a territory teeming with would-be Patrick Henrys who are virtually gasping for breath as Beijing starts to put a choke-hold on their throats. Indeed, many Chinese here are politically conservative and, in the words of South China Morning Post columnist Chris Yeung, “prefer the earlier style of British authoritarianism.” True, many admire the spunk of Martin Lee, that outspoken democracy advocate whose party won the most votes in the quasi-election organized by the British in their waning moments of empire. They respect this lawyer’s transcendent idealism. But others here see in him a narrow-gauged self-righteousness, an unwillingness to view issues through other than a black-and-white lens. And they absolutely shudder at his call for the world community to station international forces here. “The key to Hong Kong’s autonomy,” says one long-time resident, “is a relaxed attitude by Beijing.” Many support Tung Chee-hwa, the incoming chief executive selected through a process approved by Beijing. “Six and a half million people want Tung to succeed,” explains Yeung. “Everyone is taking a conciliatory attitude. They don’t want to corner or embarrass him in front of Beijing. Even the democracy advocates are training their fire on Beijing and leaving him alone.”

Everyone respects the task before Tung. A big current worry is that mainland businesses will invade Hong Kong and weigh down the territory’s fast-footed economy with China’s long-established system of extended family, friendships and subtle networks of gift-giving (in the West, it’s called corruption). But such behind-the-scenes problems do not make for dramatic TV footage.

As CNN Hong Kong bureau chief Mike Chinoy put it during a Freedom Forum luncheon here for his book, “China Live,” the hand-over may prove “far more complex and multifaceted than we can report.” Westerners, he says, have been getting “a picture of contemporary China that is distorted, one-dimensional and simplistic.” He worries about TV’s potential to overplay a trivial street demonstration: “If there are 700 demonstrators and 7,000 journalists here for the hand-over, how can we make our viewers and readers understand that fact? Images are simple and easy to report. It’s so difficult to convey complexity on TV.” Concludes Chinoy: “How journalists are covering these stories is sometimes the big issue here.”

So, yes, many Hong Kongers may be as worried about the Western media as they are about Beijing. That’s another thing, of course, that’s not being reported back to America and the West.