Australian Financial Review: An Old Chinese Prophecy Gains Ground

05/15/2001

It hasn't taken Donald Tsang Yam-kuen too long to figure out how Beijing's "one country, two systems" framework for governing Hong Kong works in practice.

Hong Kong's new secretary for administration, who took over from the highly respected Anson Chan Fang On-sang last month, was regurgitating his lines at last week's Fortune Global Forum.

Tsang's sycophantic performance was on par with those regularly given by his boss, Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa, in terms of pandering to the whims of the Chinese central government in Beijing.

The forum, with Chinese President Jiang Zemin as the keynote speaker and an array of American CEOs in attendance, was supposed to have showcased the success of Hong Kong since the handover to China in 1997.

Instead, the three-day extravaganza at the gargantuan Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Centre turned out to be an unmitigated public relations disaster.

For the 1,000-odd foreign journalists who travelled to Hong Kong to cover the conference, the only story of the week was the Hong Kong Government's determined efforts to ensure that members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement did not embarrass Jiang.

That meant more than 3,000 police officers were assigned to provide security for the forum, compared with just 2,000 who were on duty when the former British colony was handed back to the Chinese Government in June 1997.

It also meant as many as 100 Falun Gong members including some from Australia were denied entry to Hong Kong in the lead-up to the international talkfest.

Immigration officials were apparently working from a black list of Falun Gong members, despite the fact that the movement is not banned in Hong Kong like it is in mainland China.

Tsang went out of his way to defend the wholesale expulsion of Falun Gong members, declaring that the Hong Kong Government was entitled to weed out undesirable visitors.

"About 35,000 people enter Hong Kong every day from all around the world and it's the freest place to come and go out of. We have hardly any visa restrictions," Tsang said.

"But we do keep undesirable elements out. We have to make sure that a balance is struck and that the interests of the people here are not unnecessarily undermined by undesirable elements."

While Tsang's comments no doubt went down well in Beijing, they are a sad indictment of just how much the once-cherished rule of law has been undermined in Hong Kong since the handover.

"What message did we actually give to the foreign press and the foreign participants to this forum," asked the chairman of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, Martin Lee Chu-ming.

"I'm afraid it is a pretty negative one because I suspect that some, if not most, of them will go back to their respective countries thinking that perhaps the Hong Kong Government has been over-sensitive to dissent."

Tsang's defence of the Hong Kong Government's efforts to restrict the activities of a perfectly legal spiritual organisation contrasts sharply with the eloquent valedictory speech given by his predecessor less than a fortnight ago.

Chan, viewed by many as the conscience of Hong Kong, never really clicked with Tung Chee-hwa, the shipping tycoon hand-picked to run the city after the British handed it back to China.

Chan was not only a passionate defender of the rule of law in Hong Kong, but she believed that much more needed to be done to make its government accountable to the people.

"The tradition of a tolerant, cosmopolitan, internationally oriented and broad-minded society is a valuable part of our curious legacy," Chan said in her last address as the head of the Hong Kong civil service.

"So are our deeply entrenched institutions of a free society: the rule of law, an independent judiciary, a free press, a clean and accountable government and a civil service grounded in the traditions of meritocracy and political neutrality.

"We must preserve and enhance autonomy. There are many cities in the region which aspire to Hong Kong's place in the world.

"We maintain our competitive edge over them by emphasising our differences, not by trying to be like them."

Tsang had shown some promise as Hong Kong's finance secretary during the Asian financial crisis, but his actions at the forum suggest he is incapable of living up to the high standards and values established by his predecessor.

That's a real pity for the people of Hong Kong, who with the retirement of Chan lost the one government official courageous enough to stand up for their democratic rights.

The "one country, two systems" framework adopted for the governance of Hong Kong still has more than 45 years to run under the agreement reached with the British before the handover.

But Hong Kong's treatment of the Falun Gong members points to an administration increasingly willing to kow-tow to the whims of its ultimate political masters in Beijing.

It makes the claim by China's former paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, that Hong Kong would eventually become just another big southern Chinese city appear all the more prophetic.