Capitalist Hong Kong: China’s New Forbidden City?

In the depths of the Forbidden City, the Chinese emperor and his top official are plotting a painful but necessary murder.

It is 1840, and opium introduced by British traders has become China’s scourge, reducing mandarins and common people alike to ruined addicts. Even the emperor’s beloved teacher has started to “chase the dragon.” The ruler reluctantly decides that to show his resolve to eradicate opium, the scholar must be killed and the British expelled.

Xie Jin, 72, one of China’s top movie directors, claps his palms together, pleased with the scene he has just shot for his epic “The Opium War.” The film is about the clash that begat Hong Kong’s history as a British colony and, as Beijing’s leaders say, China’s century and a half of humiliation.

But history is a mirror, Xie says, so the movie is also about the day next year when China will reclaim Hong Kong and, in the act, salve a wounded national pride. “The Opium War” will have its premiere in both China and Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, the day of the hand-over.

“That was a period of shame and tragedy for China,” says Xie, perched on a folding chair near the movie set’s yellow silk throne. “In Hong Kong, the textbooks simply describe the Opium War as a trade conflict. . . . China lost Hong Kong because it was weak and isolated. China is open and strong now, and all Chinese should have pride.”

Many in Hong Kong, however, may identify more with his movie’s doomed teacher than with the proud emperor; there is fear that if China finds Hong Kong too corrupted by foreign influences, the territory’s unique spirit could be sacrificed to protect China’s stability.

Therein lies the paradox of the new China.

Although the 1997 hand-over is billed by China as a glorious reunification, the motherland and the territory are still divided in their attitudes toward it. In just a few generations, the separation that started with the Opium War has bred a culture in the territory that is not Chinese, not British, but distinctly Hong Kong. Although both sides celebrate their common bonds and increasing economic integration, they also harbor strains of mutual distrust that may set the stage for conflict.

“The attitude of Chinese citizens and Hong Kong citizens is opposite,” says Bai Jilu, an employee of an American company in Beijing. “Chinese citizens think it is a historical inevitability, so they don’t ask what will happen after 1997. Hong Kong people question it all the time.”

For China, which built the world’s longest wall to isolate itself from the rest of the region, Hong Kong has always been a potentially troublesome door to the outside world. Since China lost the territory to Britain in 1840, the motherland has watched the colony rapidly transform from “a plutonic island of uninviting sterility,” as a guidebook of the day put it, to a booming commercial center.

When China reclaims Hong Kong a year from now, it must deal with the age-old problem of how to keep the door open and the flies out.

Director Xie marvels at the way history has come full circle. While his movie crew reenacted the famous bonfire of opium chests that sparked the war 156 years ago, Guangzhou police nearby were burning parcels of heroin confiscated from gangs linked to Hong Kong. “China must be strong now and resist those bad elements,” he says. “The future will be different.”

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As well as keeping bad elements out, China will face the challenge of keeping the mainland’s people in. Hong Kong has been an oasis for Chinese refugees over the ages, fleeing civil war in 1949, famine in the 1950s and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution in the following decades. Now, with its bright lights, tall buildings and bustling traffic, it remains a kind of Emerald City to people across China.

Many mistakenly believe that after 1997 the border will be opened, and they are making plans to go seek their fortune.

“All I want is to earn more money and live better,” says Wu Liang, 37, a bus driver in Beijing. “It would be terrific if I could drive a taxi in Hong Kong.”

He says China should keep things the way they are under the British system, except “cars should drive on the right,” he jokes.

The music on his radio is a Hong Kong hit, and he sings along in Cantonese, although he says he only understands a few of the words. Hong Kong pop culture is indeed infectious: Young women at a shoe factory in Guangdong uniformly adorn their crowded dorms with posters of “the four heavenly kings of Canto-pop music.”

In Beijing, diners call for the bill, or maidan, using a term picked up from Hong Kong high rollers. They make calls on their mobile phones, dubbed dageda, or “Big Brother phones,” after Hong Kong gangsters who always seem to have one on hand.

Adopting Hong Kong slang shows a reverence for the colony’s wealth--and in some cases a subversive slant, says Zhou Yimin, a professor of modern Chinese in Beijing who has compiled a slang dictionary.

Beijingers, for example, have adopted the Hong Kong habit of using Communist terms with an ironic twist--tongzhi no longer means “comrade” but has become slang for “homosexual.”

“When Shanghai was in its heyday in the ‘20s and ‘30s, Shanghai dialect was extremely popular,” Zhou says. “Now, you can see . . . words from Hong Kong spreading through China’s cities.”

Excitement about 1997 is trickling through the Chinese countryside as well. The countdown to the hand-over has given rise to “1997” restaurants, liquor, commemorative coins and stamps. Last week, the Chinese government decreed that no one should profit from the reversion or go to Hong Kong without special permission.

But to Chinese leaders, even more worrisome than linguistic infection and commercial exploitation is political pollution. Chinese soldiers stationed in Hong Kong after 1997 will not be allowed to read local newspapers or go out on the town without an escort lest they be influenced by Hong Kong’s more open media and political system.

Beijing has promised to dismantle the legislature that was elected under rules it did not approve, and when Hong Kong lawmakers flew to the Chinese capital last month to protest, armed officers would not let them off the plane.

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“China is concerned about two things,” says David Chu, a pro-China legislator in Hong Kong who is expected to survive the post-1997 purge. “They fear political groups not only using Hong Kong as a base, but also using Hong Kong people as a force to put pressure on China to change faster than it wants.”

Chu is one of a handful of Hong Kong leaders selected by the Chinese government to guide a smooth transition next year. He has proved his patriotism by trading his American passport for a Chinese one. In Beijing for a meeting with Chinese leaders about how to select Hong Kong’s next chief, he explains Beijing’s fears that Hong Kong could be a Trojan Horse.

“While China is more open than ever before, China is in a very vulnerable position right now because of the side effects of the open-door policy,” he says, ticking problems off on his fingers: “corruption, crime, gangs, income disparity, unemployment.”

He pauses. “There are a few dissident groups who are very successful at getting media attention,” he continues. “Many of them have international help. Not only are they cunning, but they have a lot to criticize. If they use this as a lever to put pressure on China, there will be trouble. This is China’s greatest fear.”

Concern about losing control is heightened by the imbalance of power and wealth. Hong Kong is like a son who left home, became a playboy and made a million bucks. Although mainland officials don’t want China to follow Hong Kong’s freewheeling path, many can’t help admiring its economic success.

And although Hong Kong fears China’s power, it considers itself more sophisticated. These perceptions foreshadow frictions large and small. For Huang Jun, a mainlander who worked in a Hong Kong trading company for three years, his Beijing background meant no respect from shop clerks and trouble finding a date.

“Hong Kong people treat us like country bumpkins,” says the 33-year-old, sipping cappuccino at a cafe. He is not, like some of his countrymen, wearing white socks with his dark suit. “But next year--hah!--those bumpkins will be in charge of Hong Kong.”

The government is doing its best to remind people that Hong Kong may be the Pearl of the Orient, but it is a mere bauble in the Chinese crown. In Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, middle school students throng the entrance to an exhibition about Hong Kong’s history that puts the territory in official perspective.

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Inside, pigtailed girls meticulously copy the display’s explanatory text for an assigned essay on the reversion. Hong Kong has bars, drugs and gangs “which poison the social atmosphere,” says the caption of a photo showing Hong Kong workers dismantling the sign of the “The Pussycat” nightclub.

Dang Yu, 21, whose name means “party education,” says he has indeed learned about Hong Kong from the Communist Party, which holds study sessions at his university about the reversion. “Although there are some differences between Hong Kong and China, after the return, I think Hong Kong will become more and more like China,” he says.

Another college student, Chen Xing, 19, has never been to the territory but thinks she has something in common with her Hong Kong counterparts.

“Even though they are British citizens, they still have yellow skin,” she says touching a hand to her cheek. “They still have black hair and brown eyes. I think they must feel Chinese and feel happy to come back to their homeland.”