Do British Sail Away With the Key to Success?

As Hong Kong’s last British governor and the Prince of Wales sailed away on the royal yacht Britannia to the other side of midnight, this Cinderella colony was already beginning its transformation. Many things British were being scorned and swept away.

And, as people worry about how to preserve Hong Kong’s success, the question remains: How much was colonialism part of the winning formula? On that question, everybody has an opinion.

“Hong Kong has flourished because it has been a free and competitive society,” said Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s new chief executive, in a recent speech. “We provide the rule of law, free enterprise, free trade, minimal corruption and a level playing field--all supported by an efficient civil service.”

But from Beijing’s perspective, the credit goes to the region’s indigenous energy and China’s double-digit economic growth that carried Hong Kong along in the last decade.

“Hong Kong’s prosperity . . . cannot be attributed, as some have suggested, to an independent judiciary and a free system of the press,” said Chinese President Jiang Zemin recently, “but mainly to the creativity of the Hong Kong people themselves.”

Even former Hong Kong Gov. Chris Patten seemed to agree Monday when, during the British farewell ceremony, he said: “Hong Kong’s story is not solely that of a century and a half of British responsibility. . . . What we celebrate this evening is the restless energy, the hard work, the audacity of the men and women who have written Hong Kong’s success story--mostly Chinese men and Chinese women.”

David Dodwell, coauthor of a new study of Hong Kong’s competitiveness, says Hong Kong owes a debt not so much to the British colonial system as to “Britain’s benign neglect. Britain provided a stable framework, then turned its back and let it grow.”

And grow it did. Today, Hong Kong’s per capita income, at nearly $25,000, surpasses not only its old colonial master’s but also Germany’s and Canada’s.

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That freedom to make money dates to the beginning of British rule. When British merchants settled on Hong Kong’s shores more than a century and a half ago, among the first imports were courts and jails, to keep the peace in the wild territory and to enforce the contracts that the traders depended on. A civil service followed, though local residents were excluded from it at first.

The officials, in their plumed pith helmets, acted like mainland mandarins. They presided, paternalistically, over everything from inheritance disputes to marital clashes. Officers in rural areas were actually called fumukan, or “father-mother-officer.”

“If it weren’t for the imminent change in Chinese sovereignty,” said legislator Leong Che-hung, “Hong Kong may still be in the era of ‘Father Knows Best.’ ”

Today, by contrast, in Hong Kong’s courts most of the faces framed by powdered horsehair wigs are Chinese; many of the pinstriped presidents of the old British trading houses were born in Hong Kong and are looking over their shoulders at new arrivals from China. All of the top posts in the civil service now belong to local officials, and the most popular leader in Hong Kong is Anson Chan, Hong Kong’s top civil servant and the first Chinese woman to hold the post.

Along with the retiring British civil servants will go some of the colonial perks, such as the lengthy summer holidays once required by the long passage back to Britain by ship, and two-tiered pay scales for expatriate and local employees.

“I expect expatriates will have to justify their presence and provide real value added,” said economist Dodwell. “You can’t just swan in and get a job anymore, unless you’re providing distinctive skills.”

When people praise the British legacy, however, most of the institutions they mean are bureaucratic or economic. Political freedoms, some critics say, came “too little, too late.”

“In one great respect, the British in Hong Kong have failed to honor their own best values,” wrote the great chronicler of the empire, British author Jan Morris. “They have consistently declined to give political power to the people, or even to keep them properly informed.”

Almost everywhere else in the world, Morris added, the British surrendered their colonies with the structure of a fully working parliamentary democracy intact, “even if its electorate could only recognize pictures of frogs or crocodiles as emblems of the contesting parties.”

The British government briefly considered political reforms immediately after World War II, but then-Gov. Mark Young’s plan to introduce a degree of democracy was quickly quashed. The animosity of China’s civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists had spilled over into Hong Kong; the British government and local Chinese leaders feared that elections pitting the two sides’ supporters against each other might spark riots--or Communist intervention, said political scientist Norman Miners.

The danger was real, but the essential reason for the long delay in democratic development was British officials’ own discomfort, said Miners, a British citizen who taught history and political science at Hong Kong University for 28 years. “There was an attitude in the old British administration that Chinese were unsuited to democracy.”

As a result, successive governors retained sweeping powers with no local council to check or balance them. During the chaotic post-war influx of 1 million refugees from China in the 1950s and a spillover of Cultural Revolution rioting in the 1960s, the colonial government instituted draconian laws to keep public order, as well as to harass and monitor Communist sympathizers.

Although the government rarely invoked the restrictions in the more peaceful decades that followed, they were kept on the books until a few years ago. When the legislature repealed or amended most of the rules so they wouldn’t be used by a China-backed administration against democratic leaders, Chinese leaders objected.

“Britain thought they were necessary to govern Hong Kong,” argued one pro-China leader. “Why shouldn’t China have them?”

It wasn’t until 1991, after Beijing’s bloody suppression of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, that London allowed direct elections for part of the legislature to give Hong Kong a mechanism for protecting its freedoms. Even then, only 18 of the 60 seats were chosen by a direct vote. In 1995, that number was raised to 20, with a blueprint to reach the halfway mark by 2007.

When Patten arrived in 1992, he made a last-ditch effort to remedy Britain’s negligence, he said, and instill a greater sense of democracy. By filling in the spaces between the vaguely worded lines of Hong Kong’s post-hand-over Constitution, he expanded the electorate from a handful of Hong Kong’s elite to nearly every working person. He rolled back most of the old colonial restrictions, and he showed that government could be open and answerable by staging frequent “walkabouts” in crowded neighborhoods, weekly question-and-answer sessions in the legislature and even by hosting radio music programs.

The changes flew in the face of China’s expectations and launched nearly five years of attacks on Patten from Beijing. In Hong Kong, arguments went nonstop over whether his reforms helped or hurt the territory. “Patten damaged Hong Kong,” said billionaire property developer Ronnie Chan. “He split society and ruined the peace.”

But even his critics acknowledge his intended legacy. “He made government more accountable, and more transparent to the public,” said Tsang Yok-sing, the head of Hong Kong’s largest pro-China political party. “I doubt very much that we’ll see Tung Chee-hwa continue the Q-and-As and the walkabouts.”

Patten’s hope for a more democratic Hong Kong is a legacy that was derailed by the hand-over. As promised, as soon as Patten sailed, Beijing scrapped the legislature elected under his reforms and replaced it with a temporary body until new elections next May. One of the new body’s first actions was to undo some of the laws protecting Hong Kong’s civil liberties.

“Hong Kong,” lamented outgoing elected legislator Leung Yiu-chung, “is losing one colonial master and gaining another.”

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HONG KONG HAND-OVER

Economic Snapshot

Hong Kong’s per capita gross domestic product far exceeds China’s, yet China’s economy is growing faster.

Annual % growth in GDP in 1996

Hong Kong: 4.7

China: 9.7

Per capita GDP in thousands

Hong Kong $27,109

China: $793

Sources: Hong Kong Trade Development Council; International Monetary Fund; Goldman, Sachs & Co.

The Black Watch

The pipes and drums of the Black Watch, nicknamed the “Highland Furies” by the French, sounded the end of more than 150 years of British colonial rule, but the Scottish regiment’s work is not done. The unit will stay on for more than 130 days, assisting the Hong Kong police with anti-smuggling patrols, conducting border observation duties and helping guard key installations. The regiment has 511 soldiers. It’s motto: “Nobody provokes me without being hurt.”

THE FINAL WORDS

“I have relinquished the administration of this government. God save the queen.”--Cable from Hong Kong Gov. Chris Patten to Londn, sent at midnight as sovereignty changed