Between Politics and Finance: Hong Kong's "Infinity War"?

Alessia Amighini

• Publisher: Ledizioni
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9788855262538
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Geopolitics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As the Covid-19 pandemic strikes hard, protests in Hong Kong appear to have abated. Distant seem the days when yellow umbrellas and balaclavas saturated global media. And yet, just like at the start of what has now come to be known as the 2019 "global protest wave", Hong Kong remains at the frontline of political contestation worldwide. The protests against the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition law unearthed one of the main points of contention between Hong Kong and mainland China. Through the protests, China's increasingly assertive stance has found a counterweight, revealing how important the city is to Beijing. China's actions towards Hong Kong might serve as a litmus test for Beijing's ability to mediate and pacify its neighbourhood. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 pandemic risks further heightening tensions between the Hong Kong and the mainland. What makes Hong Kong so special? To what extent have the protests exacerbated or eased over time? How will the city's role in mainland China's outward-looking plans change, if the protests continue?

1. Hong Kong and China:
A Controversial Historical Relationship

Guido Samarani

Looking back at the mid-nineteenth century – as the “Opium Wars” opened a century of Western aggression against China and the island of Hong Kong was ceded to the United Kingdom through the 1842 “Treaty of Nanjing” – it is impressive how that “barren island” (as then-British Foreign Secretary, Lord Henry John Temple Palmerston, used to refer to Hong Kong) managed to become East Asia’s financial hub in the twentieth century.

In less than two centuries, the island – together with the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories – experienced a long and complex period of colonisation and, after returning to China in July 1997, a stimulating yet contradictory relationship with Beijing.1

This chapter will provide a very essential overview of Hong Kong’s modern history, especially looking at relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) between 1949 and 1997 and focusing on major turning-points.

Introducing Colonial Hong Kong and
the Japanese Occupation

According to John M. Carroll (2007), the impact of British colonial rule should not be underestimated when attempting to understand Hong Kong, despite China’s influence. Indeed, colonialism changed Hong Kong’s historical development, shaped the encounters between China and the UK, as well as power relations between the two. Nowadays, small Chinese shops sit comfortably on streets named after British royalty or colonial administrators, while British law, Christianity, and modern Western medicine coexist with traditional Chinese medicine, several hundred Chinese temples, and a plethora of religious festivals and ceremonies. Such a relationship produced a Chinese community in Hong Kong that often considers itself “special” and different from its counterpart in Mainland China.

Hong Kong’s status as a British colony and a free port transformed it into a thriving commercial centre. Rule of law and political stability encouraged Chinese and foreign investments, while colonial status protected Hong Kong from the many issues that plagued China in nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As Carrol argues, any assessment of British colonial legacy must consider the entire colonial period rather than focus on the last decade of British rule, when last-minute political reforms were introduced, such as the so-called “1992 Constitutional Package” which Chris Patten revealed shortly after he took appointment as Governor of Hong Kong (lowering minimum voting age, abolition of all appointed seats in the Municipal Counsils and Districts Boards, introduction of new functional constituency seats, etc.).

Although colonial Hong Kong was theoretically administered through rule of law, some observers argue that common law never took root on the island because of considerable differences with China’s traditional legal system (for instance, independent judiciary, the influence of Confucianism’s moral behaviour concepts on the legal culture. Furthermore, the British government had enacted several anti-Chinese laws since the earliest years of colonial rule, and had passed various emergency and discriminatory ordinances as well as censored the Chinese press.2

Leo Goodstadt, who led the “Central Policy Unit” – a governemental institute established in 1989 with the aim of analyzing options and recommending solutions in particular for the chief executive – between 1989 and 1997, maintains that at the heart of the colonial system in Hong Kong was a strange paradox: British rulers were an alien racial and cultural group residing at the top of the social, economic, and political hierarchy. They were agents of a foreign power, whose presence was a constant reminder of China’s past humiliations at the hand of Western imperialists. A crucial question of Hong Kong’s colonial history was the fact that the colonial administration was nothing more than a UK agent, and colonial officials simply implemented instructions coming from London. Also, British rule was founded on an alliance between colonialism and capitalism throughout the colonial era. The British thus aimed to contain and control political participation. Instead of democratic elections, it was the colonial administration that selected the community’s representatives that almost exclusively came from business and professional sectors. During the first 120 years of British rule, corruption prevailed, and only in the last two decades of the colonial era, the British managed to rule the people of Hong Kong with an honest government.3

Generally speaking, historiographical debates are linked to the role played by the three main “schools” of Hong Kong’s historical experience. First, the “colonial school” stresses the leading role of “white people”, and considers the Chinese only as a homogenous mass, showing criminal tendencies. Second, the “post-1949 Marxist school”, which catched only after 1997, develops a narrative of colonial exploitation and oppression, where the Chinese are victims of European aggression. Post-1949 Marxists take the “Opium Wars” as a vital starting point, as a symbol of “National Humiliation”. Yet, the views, actions and feelings of Hong Kongers are barely mentioned. Finally, the “Hong Kong school” looks not only at growth and progress but also at conflict and change, raising issues of race, class, gender and the sensitive topic of a Hong Kong identity.4 The period spanning from December 1941 to August 1945 is usually described as “the darkest of Hong Kong’s history in the Second World War”, as it was marked by the Japanese imperial army’s occupation. In this period, Hong Kong suffered from the ravages of war, and fear and helplessness permeated everyday life. A large number of Mainlanders had come to Hong Kong during the “War of Resistance against Japan”, and Hong Kong’s population grew from 840,000 in 1936 to 1.6 million in 1941 right before the Japanese occupation. 270,000 refugees lived on the streets. Food, medical care, employment, and people’s daily lives were severely affected. The Hong Kong government accelerated the evacuation of foreign nationals and the formation of civilian defense forces such as the “Volunteer Defense Corps” and the “Police Reserve”. In December 1941, Japanese aircraft bombed Kai Tak Airport and other areas of the Kowloon Peninsula and the Hong Kong island. The Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories fell into the hands of the Japanese on 12 December, and on the 18th Japanese troops landed in Hong Kong island. The Governor surrendered to the Japanese shortly afterwards on Christmas day.

During the occupation, Japan intended to make Hong Kong its permanent domain. Then, the district administrative organization of Honk Kong was re-named using the Japanese system, and the Japanese Administration promoted the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”, a kind of supranational framework whose aim was to create in Asian countries a new order which would ensure Japanese political and industrial hegemony. Several streets, places, and buildings were given Japanese names, and the Japanese Administration tried to instill the ethics and values of the Japanese Empire among the Chinese in Hong Kong. In order to promote the “Yamato culture”, the Japanese language was used in organisations, institutes, and schools. Students attending primary and secondary school were forced to learn Japanese and Japan’s national history.

Three years and eight months into the “dark period”, Hong Kong’s population drastically dwindled from 1.6 million to 600,000. Over one quarter of all the houses were destroyed in the war. The city was devastated: industrial and commercial activities were curtailed, and time passed slowly for the citizens. As a response, the occupation generated resistance, which took two main forms: a) some Communist-inspired resistance, mainly in the New Territories; and b) the “Br...

Table of contents

• Between politics and finance: Hong Kong's "Infinity War"?
• Colophon
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• List of Acronyms
• 1. Hong Kong and China: A Controversial Historical Relationship
• 2. Political Contestation in Hong Kong: From Containment to Elimination
• 3. The Fatality of Dissent: Comparing the 2014 and 2019 Hong Kong Protests
• 4. "Today's Macau, Tomorrow's Hong Kong"? What Future for "One Country, Two Systems"?
• 5. Hong Kong: One Country, Two Systems, Three Challenges
• 6. Is the Greater Bay Area China's Future?
• 7. Hong Kong in China's Current "Opening-Up" Strategy
• Conclusions and Policy Recommendations for the EU
• About the Authors