Remarks by Frank Ching

Frank Ching

Asia Society
Hong Kong One Year After Transition:
Business Opportunities and Policy Challenges
Asia Society Policy and Business Conference
Seattle, June15–16, 1998

Thank you very much Eden for that introduction. You may be hearing about politics in Hong Kong later on from other people but, not from me. I am not going to be talking about politics in Hong Kong. I am going to be talking about the media here in Hong Kong briefly and then I’ll talk about how the U.S. media has been depicting Hong Kong. What the American public has been reading about Hong Kong in the newspapers.

A year ago, in June 1997, the Hong Kong Journalist Association put out its annual report. The title of that was, “The Dye is Cast.” Let me read it out to you what it said at that time. It said, “So far the signs are not good. Having already installed a hand-picked provisional legislature to replace the existing legislative council, the most democratic institution of government to yet exist in Hong Kong. The new authorities have reviewed their determination to roll back some of the most vital reforms of recent years. Retrograde legal changes will take place on July 1st, and more may yet follow. The message seems clear. The freedom of expression that exists today and is used to articulate public concerns and attitudes must be reigned in.” Clearly, the Journalist Association was very concerned at that time that the press would be reigned in. Newspapers might be shut down. Reporters and editors might be put in prison. All kinds of dire things would happen. This was depicted not only in the press in Hong Kong, it was depicted very much in the press in the U.S. The New York Times as early as December 1996, December 20, 1996, ran an editorial with a headline that said, “Farewell to Hong Kong’s Freedom.” It made no attempt to disguise the fact that it was sure that after July 1, 1997, Hong Kong would have no freedom.

The Times reporter repeated this in another editorial on January 30, 1997, in which it said Beijing has left little doubt that it will strip Hong Kong of its liberties even if that diminishes the economic benefits of the transfer to China. This was not peculiar to the New York Times. Similar things were said in almost all the establishment newspapers in the U.S. The picture created was that Hong Kong was headed for doom and perdition. The prophecies have not come true. But, I am not aware of any newspaper that has published an apology or retraction or said that it was wrong. This is not something newspapers usually do. They don’t ever admit that they are wrong.

The New York Times, however, after the Hong Kong elections on May 24, ran another editorial. In that, they said, “Mr. Tung has so far managed to preserve more autonomy than many outsiders (it didn’t say the New York Times, it said “many outsiders”) imagined possible. For the most part, Hong Kong’s judiciary and free press have survived the transition.” Well, that is good news. But then, it went on to describe the elections that had been held in rather negative terms.

The Washington Post was less optimistic than the New York Times in its description of the situation in Hong Kong. It said so far the outlook was not encouraging. The New York Times referred to increasing self-censorship of the press on issues like Tibet and Taiwan and it accused the Hong Kong government of selective failure to pursue cases against China’s allies or interests. I don’t know what I was referring to when it talked about increasing self-censorship of the press. I live in Hong Kong and I look at the Hong Kong press every day. I can’t say that I read everything very closely. But, certainly the impression within Hong Kong among journalists is that there has been no increase in self-censorship. If you look at Hong Kong’s newspapers, you certainly don’t get the feeling that you are reading a censored newspaper or that things are happening that are not being reported or that newspapers are holding back on comments or criticisms of either the SAR government or the Chinese government. I certainly don’t get that impression. There is at least one journalist professor in Hong Kong who has said that he thinks self-censorship is becoming better, that is, people are no longer as fearful of reprisals from the Chinese government as they have been in the past. In terms of self-censorship, I don’t think that is a worsening situation.

I’d like to talk about several things that I think, you often read about in the U.S. press. I think that they are really myths. One is that when China took over sovereignty on July 1, the democrats were kicked out, expelled, booted out of the legislature. Because the impression you get is that there was a selective process that certain people were kicked out and other people were kept. This is not the situation yet, this is the situation that is always depicted. What happened was that the legislature elected in 1995 was dissolved on July 1, 1997. The people were told by the British colonial government in 1995 that these elections were for a four year term but, the British knew full well at least a year before that that was not going to be the case. Because China announced in 1994 that if Britain went ahead and held elections without Chinese agreement, then the term of those people elected would end on July 1. The British having to lose sovereignty on June 30, 1997, had no right to hold elections to a term that extended beyond their period of sovereignty. They couldn’t very well say okay we are going to hold elections and these people will be in office for 10 years and China will be forced to keep them for 10 years. I think that the British colonial government misled the people of Hong Kong, misled the candidates running for elections, misled the international public when they said these people were being elected for a four year term. China made it quite clear from 1994 on that that would not be the case. That term would end on June 30 so, the entire legislature was dissolved.

Another myth that you often hear is that there is not a single democrat in the provisional legislature. The impression given was that China wouldn’t let any of them in. The reality is that they boycotted the provisional legislature and you heard Christine Loh say earlier that she decided not to take part in the provisional legislature. Yet, in the U.S. press you constantly read about the provisional legislature having been hand picked by China. And that they were people who were all pro-Beijing and appointed to the provisional legislature. In fact, however, the majority of the members of the provisional legislature were members of the legislature elected in 1995 under Chris Patten. Those who chose to boycott the legislature were not in it. But, it is not right and not accurate to say that they were kept out.

I was going to talk about another myth that the elections held on May 24 were breaking in a certain way but I think Tsang Yok-sing has already gone into that at some length so I don’t need to do that.

I think that part of the reason the U.S. press has been so negative about Hong Kong is that a lot of people were involved in making dire predictions about the future. In the period leading up to the handover, you saw books about Hong Kong coming out. Books of names such as The End of Hong Kong, The Fall of Hong Kong, The Death of Hong Kong, The Last Days of Hong Kong. Anybody who wrote about Hong Kong, was predicting gloom and doom and the sky was going to fall down. I think that some people now have a vested interest in seeing to it that they were right. That terrible things, if they haven’t happened yet, they will happen in the future. So, after the handover, when nobody was arrested, no newspapers were shut down, people said well, that is because President Jiang Zemin is going to Washington in October. After the October summit, then they will crack down. Of course, after the October summit, there was no crack down. And now, I suppose they can say, well they are holding back because Clinton is going to go to China at the end of the month.

But, all these pre-supposes that China wants to crack down on Hong Kong and that they are just waiting for the right time. I think that this is a mis-judgment of the situation because the idea of one country, two systems, of Hong Kong people running Hong Kong was not something imposed on China by the U.S. or by Britain. This was China’s own idea. It came up with this idea on its own even before the negotiations started with Britain. China is adhering to this policy because it recognizes the value of Hong Kong to China. China could have taken back Hong Kong in 1949 when the PLA took over the rest of the country. They marched south and they stopped at the border of Hong Kong. They didn’t want to take Hong Kong. During the Cultural Revolution, the Red guards burned down the British legation in Beijing and called for the British to leave Hong Kong. The Chinese government would not allow Red guards into Hong Kong. The Chinese government wanted to keep Hong Kong British.

The question of the free treaties came in. In 1997, the lease over 92% of Hong Kong had run out. The Chinese government had taken the position that all these treaties were unequal because they were imposed on China through gun boat diplomacy and that therefore, they were null and void. The expiration of a null and void treaty should have no legal effect so, China was totally prepared to have the British continue to run Hong Kong regardless of the expiration of the lease. But, to Britain, their right to run Hong Kong rested on these treaties and if one treaty were to lapse, they would lose the right to run 92% of Hong Kong. It was the British who pressed China on Hong Kong and being pressed the British wanted China to sign a new treaty extending British colonial rule in Hong Kong for 30 years or so.

While China is prepared to turn a blind eye to the fact that the British were running part of China as a legacy of history, they Chinese leadership was not willing to sit down and sign a new treaty extending colonialism in China into the 21st century. They were in a sense forced to take back Hong Kong and still they waited until the last day, until the expiration of the treaty on June 30, before doing so. To maintain Hong Kong’s value to China, both political and economic value, they devised this system of one country, two systems. This policy whereby the British would leave but nothing else would change. That is Hong Kong people would run Hong Kong. All the existing systems would remain. I think, therefore, that it is a basic misreading of the situation to think that China is waiting for the right moment to crack down on Hong Kong.

Thank you.