06-20-2007

HONG KONG — 10 YEARS ON
RULE OF LAW STILL APPLIES, BUT DEMOCRACY HAS NOT YET ARRIVED

Chris Patten, chancellor of Oxford University and the former EU commissioner for foreign affairs, was the last British governor of Hong Kong. The 10th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China is July 1.

By Chris Patten

OXFORD, England — Several years ago, Samuel Finer, a distinguished professor of politics at Oxford, wrote a three-volume history of government. He set out to describe every form of government that has ever been. There was one short chapter on societies that were liberal but not democratic. The only example he could think of was Hong Kong.

When I left Hong Kong 10 years ago, we were in the throes of introducing democracy in the territory. We were late in doing so. But what we set out to do was to give the citizens of Hong Kong what they had been promised in the agreement on the city’s handover to China, known as the Joint Declaration. It was also a development that was specifically allowed for in the Basic Law, Beijing’s constitution for Hong Kong.

Alas, this has not happened. Democratic development in Hong Kong has been blocked by Beijing. It has also intervened twice in the judicial process in Hong Kong. But otherwise, it is fair to say that Deng Xiaoping’s principle of “one country, two systems” has been upheld. Hong Kong remains an open society living under the rule of law — within China.

Fareed Zakaria, author of “The Future of Freedom,” warned a few years ago about the dangers of illiberal democracy — the way in which democracy could easily turn into populist majoritarianism or even authoritarianism. That is what happened in a couple of Balkan countries, and it is what appears to be recurring in Russia. To hold governments to account, while safeguarding pluralism, you need more than an occasional election. You need independent courts; due process; freedom of speech, religion and association; an honest civil service and good policing.

Hong Kong has all those institutions and rights. All that it lacks is the ability to choose its own government. That will ultimately come as the number of the territory’s citizens demanding it continues to increase. They know the relationship between their civil liberties and their quality of life. They have the self-confidence to assert their citizenship, in a way that is both forceful and moderate.

This sense of citizenship is one of the things that has most clearly flourished in recent years. It has not been at the expense of Hong Kong’s entrepreneurial energy. In 1997, at the time of the handover, Hong Kong with 6.5 million inhabitants accounted for 22 percent of China’s gross domestic product. For five successive years, the departing colonial government had been able to cut taxes, increase spending, put more money into the reserves, and build the new airport and its accompanying infrastructure out of income. All that was the result of 35 years of continuous growth.

That figure of 22 percent has fallen in the last 10 years. But that is not because of failure in Hong Kong. Spectacular economic growth in China has been the reason, as that country has turned itself into the workshop of the world.

Perhaps the best mark of Hong Kong’s success is the way that it has recovered from the SARS epidemic and the Asian financial crash. I was lucky that neither of these deeply disturbing events happened on my watch as governor. Hong Kong today is as buoyant and confident as ever, comfortable but not complacent in the knowledge that China’s growth is sufficient to help sustain both Hong Kong and Shanghai, and aware too that the rule of law gives Hong Kong some priceless advantages. Many Chinese companies come to Hong Kong to sign contracts precisely because of the rule of law there.

The quality of Hong Kong’s outstanding civil service, not always sufficiently appreciated by its business community, has been on public display in the last couple of years. The Doha trade discussions, held in Hong Kong, were superbly chaired and managed by Hong Kong civil servants, and the public order at the time was managed with tact and skill by the police service. Hong Kong’s former public health chief, Margaret Chan, has recently become head of the World Health Organization, a job she will do superbly.

The professions in Hong Kong have also lived up to their responsibilities, especially the lawyers. The Hong Kong Chinese chief justice, Andrew Li, has been an exemplary leader of the independent judiciary, and barristers have been prominent in defending civil liberties and fighting for democracy.

So where does Hong Kong go from here? That it will have a mature democracy sooner rather than later is beyond doubt. Beijing has to realize that Hong Kong is a very moderate community and that the only thing likely to stoke up immoderation is the lasting denial of its democratic aspirations. As China experiments with greater accountability, as it will be obliged to do, a good place for it to release the brakes safely would be Hong Kong.

No one who has ever spent any time in Hong Kong forgets it. It is one of the great exciting maritime cities, like Sydney or New York: beautiful, cluttered, rumbustious, lively. It brings together much of the best of China and much of the best of the West. The only downside is pollution — much of it blown in from the industrialization of the Pearl River Delta. That problem has to be tackled more vigorously; otherwise it will drive investors and jobs away.

Overall, Hong Kong remains a very special place 10 years after its proper and inevitable return to Chinese sovereignty. It used to be said that no one ever made any money out of betting against Hong Kong. That remains true today, and it will still be the case in 2017. It is not yet a democracy, but it is a lot more free and open than some Asian cities that are allegedly ruled by the ballot box

© Global Viewpoint
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC. (6/20/07)