Lines Between Hong Kong, China Blur but Don’t Fade

Yau Ying-ming waits in a snaking line of semitrucks at one of the world’s busiest border crossings to complete his daily trip from China to Hong Kong and back again. It’s perhaps the 4,000th time he has traveled this route in seven years of driving, and, over the days, he has watched the Chinese border city Shenzhen rise from the rice fields to become a whirling, chaotic bastion of anything-goes enterprise.

“It gets more like Hong Kong all the time,” says the 39-year-old, sipping a soft drink through a straw.

The spectacular growth of Shenzhen isn’t the only reminder of change in this area. Now there’s an electronic clock posted at the border that clicks off the days until, exactly one year from now, on July 1, 1997, Britain is scheduled to hand Hong Kong over to China.

And while the clock ticks, the lines that once divided the territory and the mainland are blurring as money and people flow between the two faster than ever before.

Even Yau has to think twice when asked where he’s from: He was born in China, became a Hong Kong resident but returned to China to live because it’s cheaper. “I have a foot in both places,” he says. “And some of these guys--not me--have a wife in both places too.”

But Yau is ever-conscious of the differences: “Hong Kong is rich. China is so poor. Hong Kong’s government is good. China’s government just wants to interfere.”

That a truck driver could afford the upkeep on two families shows the income gap--the average worker in Hong Kong made $23,400 last year, while in neighboring Guangdong, China’s richest province, the average salary was $915.

And there are cultural gaps too. “My Hong Kong wife doesn’t know” about the other woman, says another driver named Lin, who won’t give his full name. “My Chinese wife doesn’t care.”

The merger of China and Hong Kong--the world’s largest Communist country and one of the world’s most productive capitalist societies--will be an unusual marriage as well, one that will require optimism, tolerance and a good deal of improvisation.

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But can it work? Even as Hong Kong and China grow more and more economically integrated, the cultural and political differences are becoming sharper during the countdown to July 1997. People on both sides of the border still talk about “us” and “them.” Few people in Hong Kong can say the phrase “rejoining the motherland” with a straight face.

The idea behind the hand-over, officially, is supposed to be “one country, two systems” for 50 years. But pundits on both sides agree that it will be “one country, one system” far sooner.

The question is: Will the system be Hong Kong’s or China’s?

Hong Kong’s greatest fear is that China will try to change the territory’s pragmatic blend of Chinese and Western cultures, an unfettered combination of Chinese ingenuity, refugee ambition and the Victorian work ethic that has spawned an economic miracle in a crowded, noisy--and now democratic--metropolis.

“Hong Kong, for all its chaos, is a very delicately balanced machine,” said one businessman. “China is already trying to put its hand in to adjust things. That kind of interference would mean disaster for us, but I don’t think they can resist the urge to tinker.”

To allay such concerns, Beijing has made a hands-off pledge: Hong Kong’s “way of life,” reads the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s post-1997 mini-constitution, “shall remain unchanged for 50 years.”

But even Sanford Yung, who helped draft that law, doesn’t consider it an ironclad guarantee of Hong Kong’s liberties. “The words that are written down are fine,” he said. “What is important is how you ultimately interpret it. And the final interpretation is with the NPC,” China’s National People’s Congress.

Yung, an accountant, was one of 23 Hong Kong professionals selected to help draft the document with 33 Chinese counterparts in 1985. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, four people dropped off the committee in protest. Yung stayed on but didn’t shrink from dissent; on the final documents, he signed his name upside down. “It was a silent protest,” he said, “to show that I’m not a rubber stamp.”

Already, questions of interpretation have stalled the smooth transition. Hong Kong’s current colonial governor, Chris Patten, arrived here in 1992 and took advantage of the space between the lines in the Basic Law to expand democratic participation in the territory’s election.

China accused him of changing the rules: The leaders in Beijing wanted to receive Hong Kong in the same political form as when they signed the hand-over agreement in 1984.

As a result, Beijing has said it will reject anything Hong Kong has added without its approval--including a newly elected legislative council and all laws it has passed. Last week, the Preparatory Committee, which oversees the transition, even protested a law requiring bus drivers to wear seat belts; the measure would take effect the day of the hand-over, but the committee said the council had no authority to pass it.

Such squabbling has been anything but reassuring to the people of Hong Kong, who would just like life--and business--to continue as usual. After having 12 years to solve hand-over issues--from the nationality of non-Chinese Hong Kong-born people to who will be the next leader of Hong Kong--the territory is finding that many key points are still unsettled with 12 months to go. And with so much up in the air so soon before 1997, the people of Hong Kong are unsettled as well.

“In the 12 years given to us to interpret and clarify” the hand-over arrangements, said lawyer and legislator Margaret Ng, “every time, we’ve discovered our confidence has been excessive.”

David Chu, one of Beijing’s most vocal defenders in the territory, who traded his U.S. passport for a Chinese one, said: “After 1997, China will make mistakes. Hong Kong will make mistakes.” It is up to those who live here to show Chinese leaders that preserving Hong Kong’s interests will also help China. And if the message falls on deaf ears? Chu recommended “voting with our feet.”

It’s not an option available to everyone. But Hong Kong’s people, ever pragmatic, have made what preparations they can for the worst case.

The Hong Kong Transition Project, a long-term study of the hand-over by Baptist University social scientists, reports that about 1.1 million of Hong Kong’s 6.2 million people have a family member with a foreign passport; 3 million more residents have overseas relatives to help them out of Hong Kong.

Surveys show that a full third of the territory’s people would try to leave if they lost, for example, the freedom to vote, speak out or make money, or if a Tiananmen Square-like crackdown on public protests occurred.

Many of those people were present at Victoria Park on a balmy June night commemorating the students who died during the democracy protests in Beijing seven years ago. In a sea of shimmering candlelight, 20,000 people chanted “We remember” and soberly considered their future.

Oliver Wu, 35, was among them. He sat with his brother and shielded a candle from the wind. “I will stay in Hong Kong after 1997,” he said. “I’m a poor guy. We can’t go anywhere else.”

Many in the territory’s business community are optimistic. The source of two-thirds of all China’s foreign investment, Hong Kong’s taipans are Beijing’s most avid supporters and the most fierce critics of Patten’s “disruptive” political reforms.

Henry Cheng heads the Better Hong Kong Foundation, formed by a band of tycoons earlier this year to rebut notions that 1997 means the death of Hong Kong or that the pro-China business community has put short-term gains ahead of Hong Kong’s long-term interests. Chinese rule is nothing to fear, he said, adding, “We don’t only say we’re confident about Hong Kong’s future, we put hard cash on the table, in the form of investment.”

He conceded that his property investments in China--25% of his equity--haven’t made money yet. But he held that “China can be educated.”

And for the key question--Hong Kong’s litmus test of post-1997 confidence--does he hold a foreign passport? “I have a French passport,” he said. “But I hold it as a matter of confidence, er,” he hastily corrected himself, “convenience.”

But some, such as the taipan of taipans, real estate developer Li Ka-shing, known for his close ties to the Chinese government and his billions in mainland investment, seem to have faltered.

Last year, he moved $3 billion of Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd. shares to the Cayman Islands, citing tax reasons--and sparking a trend. His investment in a high-rise shopping center in Beijing has been delayed and scaled back while a top party official, who had blessed the project, is under investigation for corruption.

Li is building--gratis--a $100-million tower in Hong Kong to house China’s Foreign Ministry branch. Hong Kong wags whisper that perhaps if he builds this structure, his project in Beijing then will be allowed to proceed.

Meanwhile, corporations with business on the mainland are scrambling to take on well-connected Chinese partners to help them benefit from expected government favoritism rather than having to compete with it, analysts and critics say. They point, for example, to a May deal, in which Swire Pacific Ltd. sold large blocks of shares in its airline companies to a Chinese state-run organization that planned to set up a rival carrier on the most lucrative routes.

Business people worry about a future of sweetheart deals and shotgun marriages, which they see as an intolerable interference in Hong Kong’s beloved laissez-faire system. “It’s wrong to think they don’t understand Hong Kong,” Yung said of the Beijing leadership. “They do. But they don’t quite understand the system under which Hong Kong has become so successful.”

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The future, then, lies with the people of Hong Kong, most of whom are refugees from China and have proven successful at dealing with change. Despite differences and dislikes, there is the bond of being Chinese that may be the glue that holds this merger together.

Brian Ting Chun-mau, 18, moved to Hong Kong from Fujian province three years ago. He was called “peasant boy” at a Hong Kong school before he transferred to Piu Kui Middle School, where more than half of the students are from the mainland. Ting locked himself in his room and taught himself English while his classmates played video games. He’s now president of the student union and editor of the school English-language paper.

“It’s time for the British to leave,” he said. “We’re Chinese-- we can do it on our own.”