It is about time Hong Kong officials take some ‘Chinese lessons’
On 6 November, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam spoke to the media in Beijing on concluding her whirlwind official visit during which she met with Vice Premier Han Zheng and other senior officials responsible for Hong Kong and Macau affairs. Lam brought with her a large official delegation comprising senior officials responsible for transport and housing, food and health, innovation and technology, financial services, and constitutional and mainland affairs.
During her press conference, Lam explained that, on personal instruction from Vice Premier Han Zheng, Mr. Xia Baolong, Vice Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and head of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, and Mr. Ding Xuedong, the Deputy Secretary General of the State Council, held a series of meetings with the relevant ministries and departments of the Central Government, and the leaders of the Guangdong Provincial Government, to study the proposals from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, and provided very useful advice. Lam further explained that her proposals focused on strengthening Hong Kong’s position as an international financial centre, international aviation hub and international innovation and technology centre and, of course, development of the Greater Bay Area.
For this purpose, in three days the Hong Kong delegation called on six ministries in Beijing, namely, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and National Health Commission, and the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
For readers unfamiliar with Hong Kong’s situation, our Chief Executive was supposed to deliver her annual Policy Address — a speech that lays out her agenda and work objectives for the coming year on the opening of our 2020–21 legislative session on 14 October. However, Mrs. Lam made an unprecedented announcement on 12 October that delivery of her policy address would be put back until she had visited Beijing to discuss her proposals with Beijing authorities.
This sort of last-minute deferment is unheard of in Hong Kong’s history, but entirely understandable. Hong Kong has always been dependent on mainland China for its essential supplies — water, food, energy; immigration control, overall security, environmental improvement, business for our financial services sector and last but not least tourism. At this difficult time, when Hong Kong is suffering triple-whammy blows from the US-China trade war, the economic fallout of the prolonged anti-government protests last year and now Covid-19, the need for support from Beijing is more critical than ever.
Where the Hong Kong community is concerned, the top priority must be early re-opening our our borders with the mainland, so that families can be re-united and a wide range of cross-border activities could be resumed. Our ailing tourism, hospitality, retail and restaurant sectors badly need a boost in demand from mainland visitors.
Otherwise, when the government’s Employment Support Scheme (under which the government has provided wage support worth over HK$80b to businesses) expires end of November, large numbers of small businesses are likely to fail and people put out of work.
And how did Beijing officials respond?
According to the official statement issued by the Central Government’s Liaison Office recording Vice Premier Han’s statement during his meeting with Lam on 6 November, Han praised Lam for making significant achievement in “trying her utmost to get Covid-19 under control, stabilizing the economy, alleviating livelihood problems, firmly implementing The Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and upholding overall stability”. Han also urged Lam to “strengthen co-ordination and planning, meet immediate needs and set clear targets and directions, overcome the bottlenecks in Hong Kong’s long-term development”. Also, Lam must “grasp new opportunities arising from the nation’s new phase of development; fully realize Hong Kong’s unique advantages in the nation’s new development plan, and take active measures to integrate Hong Kong into the nation’s overall developmental scheme.”
It appears from some media reports that the official version released by the Liaison Office omitted verbal comments made by Han that Lam managed to lead the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government to overcome myriad challenges under “the firm leadership of the Central Government ”.
The role played by the leadership of the Central Government in guiding Hong Kong was never mentioned in past statements. Perhaps those words were omitted to avoid unnecessary speculation.
Well, all such official statements may sound a mouthful to those unfamiliar with China’s official-speak, but in China’s official statements, every word is pregnant with meaning.
In actual fact, the top leadership has issued Lam with a very tall order, urging transformative measures that would better integrate Hong Kong into the social and economic fabric of the nation, while retaining Hong Kong’s distinct characteristics and advantages.
This is not something that any Hong Kong Chief Executive thus far has achieved.
Critics might say that such exhortation runs counter to Beijing’s promised arrangement of “One Country, Two System”. The truth is, Hong Kong can only retain its separate economic, financial, social, political systems and so on provided that the region does not pose any threat to the nation’s “sovereignty, security and developmental interests”. If it needs help from the mainland, it has to take advice from mainland leaders, respect the mainland’s ways and complies with its requirements.
For example, where the most pressing plea from Hong Kong people — the re-opening of the mainland borders — is concerned, Lam’s response to the media indicates that she has not been able to make much headway. Lam admitted that waiving the 14-day quarantine requirement hinges on whether Hong Kong could adopt more stringent measures to get Covid-19 under control. She was not able to say when such waiver could be secured.
When pressed, she further explained that the mainland’s 14-day quarantine requirement was installed ‘to protect the health of the people”; and that “she could not ignore the health of the people in the mainland because of Hong Kong’s economic interests or demands from Hong Kong people”.
Reading between the lines, it is apparent that Lam and her team have been given serious tutorials on the mainland’s way of doing things and their requirements, especially in fighting Covid and reviving the economy,
The mainland authorities are correct, of course, in considering Hong Kong’s anti-Covid measures not sufficiently stringent. Although large numbers of our 5,362 cases thus far are imported, we continue to have clusters of cases of unidentified and untraceable origins.
I have always suspected such cases to be related to illicit activities which people would not admit — underground gambling, vice, smuggling, drug trafficking, and other criminal or clandestine activities.
On 2 November, an illegal entrant from mainland China was found to be infected with Covid. Before she was caught in a hotel in Mongkok, the Police found that she had already worked as a prostitute in Shatin and served over 100 customers.
Without more stringent measures mandating more widespread and cheaper community testing, it is uncertain when Hong Kong could achieve “nil infections”, to satisfy mainland authorities’ requirements.
A University of Chicago scholar James L Hevia wrote a book entitled English Lessons, exploring how Great Britain gave Qing China ‘lessons’ about ‘proper behavior’ in the western imperial power-dominated world during Qing China’s first collision with western civilization in the mid-nineteenth century.
China does not need any more lessons about western imperialism, but it is about time Hong Kong officials take some lessons about ‘proper behavior” in working with their mainland compatriots and blending into the Chinese family of 1.4 billion people.
