Some Hong Kong History for Cox

Re “Hong Kong Trek Won’t Make Cox a Happy Camper,” June 23:

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) protested too much with his boycott of the newly appointed Chinese government in Hong Kong when China resumed its sovereignty Tuesday.

The lease is up, Mr. Cox. The sun has set on this outpost of the once mighty British empire. While your condemnation of China’s human rights violations has its merit, walking out on them was congressional showboating, fueled by American hubris that does not recognize the intensity of Chinese nationalism.

China has a history of marked antagonism toward all foreign countries, and from 1925 to 1927 a Chinese boycott denied British shipping access to the ports of south China.

When China leased Hong Kong to Britain after the second Opium War in 1898 for 99 years, it never recognized British sovereignty, and only agreed to accept the arrangement as convenient to its international trade.

Cox frets about the British military general in Hong Kong being replaced by five Chinese generals, without understanding how deeply affected both China and Hong Kong were by the Sino-Japanese conflict. On Dec. 8, 1941, one day after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, nine Japanese aircraft bombed Kowloon. On Dec. 25, after a brief siege by Japanese ground forces, the British surrendered.

The British reoccupied Hong Kong following Japan’s demise when the war ended.

Cox is also quoted as saying the threat posed by China is not as much about communism as it is about “corruption,” i.e., “paying government officials for business.”

Corruption is not new to Hong Kong. Before the British occupation, Hong Kong was a fishing community that served as a haven for some notorious pirates and opium smugglers.

MIKE NALLY

Anaheim