Hong Kong's Reunion with China: The Global Dimensions

The Global Dimensions

Gerard A. Postiglione, James Tuck-Hong Tang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315503035
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Environmental Law
• Index: Law

The issues surrounding Hong Kong's global position and international links grow increasingly complex by the day as the process of Hong Kong's transformation from a British colony to a Chinese Special Administration Region unfolds. This volume addresses a number of questions relating to this process. How international is Hong Kong? What are its global and international dimensions? How important are these dimensions to its continued success? How will these dimensions change, especially beyond the sphere of economics? Is Hong Kong's internationalization, defined in terms of its willingness to embrace international values and its capacity to maintain its international presence, at risk? These questions are presented as they pertain to the changing situation; relations between mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong; the positions of Australia, Canada and the United States on Hong Kong; internalization of international legal values; Americanization vs. Asianization; linkages to the world through Guangdong; strategies to emigrate overseas, cultural internationalization; media internationalization and universities within the global economy.

1

Global Implications of Hong Kong’s Retrocession to Chinese Sovereignty

Ming K. Chan

Despite Beijing’s repeated insistence that Hong Kong’s retrocession to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997, after 155 years of British colonial rule, is strictly a “bilateral matter” between the governments of the two sovereign powers—the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK)—Hong Kong’s current transition toward 1997 is in many respects a serious matter of global concern. In fact, the current life and work, as well as the future prospects, of the six million residents in this highly internationalized, semi-autonomous city-state have already been profoundly shaped by this transitional process, which spans from 1984, when the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed, to 1997, when Hong Kong will become a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the PRC. This transitional process and Hong Kong’s 1997 SAR status naturally have direct and multifold bearings on the economic and strategic interests of Hong Kong’s many global partners.

From a global perspective, Hong Kong’s importance comes from its role as the eighth largest world trade entity; as the gateway to mainland China; as the busiest container port and fourth-ranking financial center in the world; as a rising star among the four Little Dragons of Asia; and as the international trade, service, and communications hub strategically located at the heart of the Pacific Rim. Hong Kong is a spectacularly successful example of free trade, market economy, and private enterprise, and an open, pluralistic, and dynamic society worthy of study and emulation by other developing communities and economies.

While maintaining extensive linkages in trade, transportation, communications, finance, investment, migration, tourism, education, cultural exchanges, and other spheres with the outside world, Hong Kong is also becoming increasingly integrated with the Chinese mainland. Hong Kong’s capital, entrepreneurial skills, extensive global links, and technological inputs are crucial for China’s modernization drive. During the past two decades, Hong Kong has served as a powerful catalyst and even locomotive for the remarkable economic transformation of South China, where over three million Chinese workers are now employed by Hong Kong-owned and -managed enterprises.

As such, Hong Kong’s incorporation into the PRC under the “one country, two systems” formula has not only already realigned Hong Kong–PRC relations, but it has also shaped and will continue to influence both Hong Kong’s global relations and, to some extent, the PRC’s own external orientations, especially its relationship with Hong Kong’s major international partners. In a more “local” context, linkages with and examples from the global village have also been important points of reference and stimulants in Hong Kong’s political and social development during the transitional era.

This chapter will aim at delineating some of the outstanding features and possible patterns of development in Hong Kong’s global linkages and external relations that have already been affected by or will likely be conditioned by Hong Kong’s transformation toward 1997 and beyond as part of China. Hopefully, these highlighted features and patterns will enhance the ongoing discourse, both academically and in realpolitik, on the “internationalization” and “international legal and functional status” of Hong Kong, not only as a nonindependent city-state but also as a vibrant economic entity and free society both before and after 1997. After July 1, 1997, the Hong Kong SAR may be caught between the competing claims of Chinese national interests as dictated by the PRC central authorities and the vital functional and other global links of its continuation as a world city. There are potential problems and even conflicts between the PRC’s desire to “de-internationalize” Hong Kong as a “political center” and its need to maintain and even further promote Hong Kong as an international “economic center,” especially as a bridge between China and the world market. In this sense, the global implications of Hong Kong’s reunion with China are far-reaching and of lasting consequence.

Basic International Concerns

Deng Xiaoping’s “one country, two systems” formula, which is Beijing’s guiding principle both for the December 1984 Sino-British accord settling the status of Hong Kong and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR promulgated in April 1990, has validity beyond Hong Kong. This formula was also applied by Beijing to effect the April 1987 settlement of Macau’s future status, with the current Portuguese administration to terminate on December 20, 1999, when Chinese sovereignty will be fully restored.¹ Thus, the end of both colonial Hong Kong, a creation of the first of a century of “unequal treaties” (the 1842 Treaty of Nanking) stemming from modern China’s first humiliation by Western imperialism in the Opium War of 1839–42, and colonial Macau, the oldest Western enclave established on the China coast in the 1550s, are regarded as two milestones in China’s quest for national reunification and international redemption. As such, one must appreciate the Hong Kong and Macau retrocession to PRC sovereignty before the turn of the twenty-first century as major accomplishments by the current Beijing leadership in both domestic affairs (national reunification) and foreign policy.²

The bilateral negotiations leading to the settlement and the more than decade-long transition to Chinese sovereignty of these two European colonies in South China have affected and will continue to shape the PRC’s relationship with both the UK and Portugal, with sharp turns and dramatic ups and downs, especially in the Beijing-London link. Of indirect, but no less international significance, is the fact that Beijing has also intended to extend this successful “Hong Kong model” to its long-standing and high-priority attempt at reunification with Taiwan. Several key developments—(1) the preservation of the status quo of Taiwan under Guomindang (GMD) rule, (2) the gradual détente between Beijing and the increasingly localized leadership in Taipei, and (3) the fast expanding intensive and extensive human, cultural, and economic exchanges across the Taiwan Strait—are of strategic concern to the United States, Japan, and their allies. These concerns are also of great consequence to the overall international power alignment in East Asia and the Pacific Rim.

Given the deep mutual mistrust across the Strait, it is unlikely that the GMD authorities, the Democratic Progressive Party elites, and the populace of Taiwan will ever accept the “one country, two systems” formula as the basis for their developing but uneasy relationship with the mainland. Still, Hong Kong’s political transition is being monitored closely in Taiwan.³ Admittedly, the similarities between the Hong Kong-Beijing relationship and the Taipei-Beijing linkage are limited: Taipei enjoys significantly stronger bargaining positions in military, economic, and political terms; and Taiwan is not a foreign colony, but is regarded by both the GMD and the CCP party/state leadership as a province of China. Nonetheless, the Hong Kong–Beijing linkage during the transition-reintegration process is definitely a matter of serious concern for Taipei and its external political and economic partners, many of whom are also Hong Kong’s major partners in trade and other functional areas.

As long as Beijing still insists on the applicability of the “one country, two systems” formula to the reunification with Taiwan, Hong Kong’s transition by the guidelines of the Basic Law in many senses reflects and reveals the PRC’s true intentions and actual handling of the reintegration with a Chinese community and economy hitherto under nonsocialist rule.⁴ To varying degrees, the economic and strategic interests in East Asia and the Pacific Rim regions, as well as the world prestige of three members of NATO (the United States, UK, and Portugal) and two members of the European Community, are linked directly and indirectly to Hong Kong’s transition. While London, and by extension Lisbon, has shouldered and is still carrying considerable administrative responsibilities and diplomatic obligations over transitional matters, the United States and its many allies have their own less visible but not less vital concern for strategic balance and trade/investment stakes vis-à-vis Hong Kong/Taiwan.

Viewed from a slightly different angle, the PRC’s relationship with the UK/Hong Kong governments during the 1984–97 transitional process, to a considerable extent reflects Beijing’s approach under the reformist mode to the global capitalism bloc in trade, economic cooperation, technology transfer, investment, migration, educational exchange, and other functional dealings. Of course, Hong Kong’s increasingly close ties with China, especially the Guangdong-Hong Kong economic integration, represents a very significant world-scale experiment in socialist-capitalist collaboration (and even absorption) that has much direct relevance to the PRC’s ongoing reform and modernization. Such developments directly affect Chinese foreign policy and its external orientation in which trade, technology, and economic matters are crucial components.

On the other hand, the “Hong Kong factor” has also shaped U.S. policy toward the PRC. A notable example in this case is the Bush administration’s post-Tiananmen renewal of Most Favored Nation (MFN) status for the PRC in 1990, 1991, and 1992, citing the possible disastrous effects of MFN denial on Hong Kong, which is often hailed as a paragon of free trade and market economy. In the first 1992 presidential election debate on October 12, President Bush defend his September 28, 1992, decision to veto the congressional amendment mandating human rights improvement as a condition for the continuation of the PRC’s MFN status, arguing that one should encourage China to move further in the course of reform and opening, and that he did not want to “isolate and ruin Hong Kong.”⁵

Just as the Taiwan question has been a major factor and still remains a troubling one in U.S.-PRC relations, the Hong Kong factor has the potential of developing into another important element in the U.S.-PRC relationship as well as other Sino-Western links. Following the March 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis (with the PRC’s military demonstration against the Taiwan presidential election and the U.S. naval counterpresence off Taiwan’s east coast), the PRC’s aggressive manifestation of its “politics of national reunification” has also prompted greater international concern for Hong Kong’s changing course after 1997. For instance, in mid-July 1996, U.S. assistant secretary of state Winston Lord pointed out in a congressional hearing that Beijing’s decision to install in July 1997 an “SAR provisional legislature” to replace the 1995 fully elected legislature would “complicate” U.S.-PRC relations.⁶ This would also affect the promised high degree of autonomy for the SAR, and by extension, international confidence in Beijing’s faithful implementation of the “one country, two systems,” which should supposedly enable Hong Kong to retain its vitality and functional autonomy.

International Response to Hong Kong’s Crisis of Confidence

Since the very beginning of the Hong Kong status negotiations in 1982, there has been a serious crisis of confidence among the local populace. While the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration mandated the sovereignty retrocession in 1997 with the PRC’s promise of a “high degree of autonomy” for the Hong Kong SAR and the preservation of existing rights and freedoms for its residents for “fifty years without change,” serious doubts remain about how these guarantees should be understood and upheld by Beijing after 1997. The PRC’s domestic record for the past four decades, often in disregard of the extensive rights and freedoms already guaranteed for Chinese living on the mainland by the PRC’s own constitution, is not conducive to confidence among Hong Kong people in this transition to Chinese sovereignty.

Even before the Tiananmen events of June 4, 1989, instead of contributing to Hong Kong’s “stability and prosperity,” the PRC’s undemocratic attitude and behavior during the drafting of the Basic Law undermined much of Hong Kong people’s guarded optimism about a post-1997 forced incorporation into an undemocratic Chinese polity under a communist dictatorship. Paralleling and responding to Beijing’s increasingly intrusive and visible hand in the affairs of transitional Hong Kong, there has been the obvious British retreat from earlier commitments to pre-1997 democratization and the colonial regime’s discernibly diminished will and capacity to administer Hong Kong effectively and democratically until June 30, 1997. This has led to the second crisis of confidence in Hong Kong over British colonial mismanagement and even betrayal of the true interests of Hong Kong people in the countdown to 1997.

This double crisis among Hong Kong people has been manifested in very strong and extensive human and institutional “internationalization” efforts. Resorting to the time-honored practice of “voting with one’s feet,” the substantial overseas emigration traffic from Hong Kong has reached fever pitch since the mid-1980s.⁷

Massive emigration to Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK reached a record high of 66,000 émigrés in 1992, more than 1 percent of Hong Kong’s total population.⁸ This overseas exit traffic definitely accelerated after, but did not start with, the June 4 events. Such a widespread, almost epidemic, search for safe asylum abroad, especially among middle-class and professional families, has already resulted in a keenly felt “brain drain” effect on Hong Kong’s government and private sectors. This was echoed by a parallel example of institutional “relocation” of major businesses, such as Jardine & Matheson (to Bermuda) and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (its headquarters transferred to London). There has also been a significant and continuous outflow of capital and investment (under the “diversification” category). Furthermore, another powerful trend has been the increasing number of Hong Kong students seeking high school and university education abroad, some of them with little intention of returning home upon completion of their studies.

These and other related overseas undertakings are the direct results of Hong Kong people’s continuous attempts, some at considerable sacrifice (in monetary, career, and family terms), to purchase some international insurance against the uncertainty of the 1997 China syndrome. Thus, the recent mushrooming of “Hong Kong Towns,” if not exactly “Honcouver” in Canada, elsewhere in North America and Australia can be regarded as the direct global by-product of Hong Kong’s problematic transition to 1997. Of course, in recent years, many Hong Kong people with foreign passports have returned to work in Hong Kong for better pay, often leaving families behind in the newly adopted country of settlement. This also enhances Hong Kong’s global links.

While some Western nations, particularly Canada, the United States, and Australia, have been quite eager (due to self-interest) to enlarge quotas for the acceptance of Hong Kong émigrés and capital into their domains, global governmental concern for Hong Kong’s transition and post-1997 prospects did not assume any significance or sense of urgency until after the Tiananmen events. During the mid- to late-1980s, international focus on Hong Kong mainly took the form of media coverage of its Little Dragon economy and its contribution to the South China economic takeoff, and academic proceedings on Hong Kong politics or Hong Kong-Beijing relations as a timely research issue.⁹ It was Beijing’s brutal suppression of the Tiananmen protesters and the subsequent international alarm over the Chinese communist approach to human rights and political dissent despite its economic reform and external opening, that helped to propel Hong Kong’s transition into international headlines and policy agendas.

In this sense, while the June 4 events were tragic for the Chinese nation as a whole, they have had unintended beneficial effects on Hong Kong’s democratization, especially in terms of the international support it has since received. The fierce and massive local mobilization backing the Beijing prodemocracy movement provided a windfall opportunity to galvanize popular sentiment that re-energized the faltering democratic lobby in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, the local leftist establishment was nearly ruined and its big business elite allies had to lay low. Externally, along with the Western world’s changed perception of the Chinese communist regime, the British government also changed course from appeasement to a firmer stance toward China over Hong Kong issues. Besides unilaterally suspending scheduled meetings of the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group until September 1989, Whitehall finally came to acknowledge Hong Kong’s very serious crisis of confidence. As salvage measures, London decided to (1) enact a Hong Kong Bill of Rights (along the lines of the International Covenant of Civi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword: Chinese Globalism in Hong Kong
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction: Transforming Hong Kong’s Global Identity
• 1. Global Implications of Hong Kong’s Retrocession to Chinese Sovereignty
• 2. Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as International Actors
• 3. Playing the International Card? The View from Australia, Canada, and the United States
• 4. Hong Kong and the Newly Industrializing Economies: From Americanization to Asianization
• 5. Links to and Through South China: Local, Regional, and Global Connections
• 6. The Internalization of International Law in Hong Kong
• 7. Labyrinth of Hybridization: The Cultural Internationalization of Hong Kong
• 8. Globalization of Hong Kong’s People: International Migration and the Family
• 9. Media Internationalization in Hong Kong: Patterns, Factors, and Tensions
• 10. Hong Kong’s Universities Within the Global Academy
• Appendix 1: Hong Kong’s Participation in Multilateral Forums up to March 31, 1996
• Appendix 2: U.S.–Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992
• Selected References
• Index