tim's experiment

I do not claim that the Joint Declaration on Hong Kong’s Future and the ensuing Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR are my daily reading. Still I assert with some confidence that the division of labour in the running of Hong Kong affairs was very clear on one point: foreign policy is a matrter for the Central People’s Government. So what on earth did C.Y. Leung think he was up to when he summoned the Japanese Consul to his office for an earful about Those Islands?  If Hong Kong’s Chief Executive wishes to express concern about the plight of Hong Kong citizens detained in other countries, fine. The Japanese Consul has a telephone. It might be more to the point to call his head office anyway. Summoning a diplomat personally to your office is technologically obsolete. It is preserved as a signal-sending gesture in international diplomacy. But Hong Kong has no role in international diplomacy. So there is no excuse for Mr Leung masquerading as Metternich or Castlereagh and a good reason for not doing it: it looks pompous and ridiculous.

I have some sympathy for the people who say we should give Mr Leung a little while to show what he can do before we all start throwing fruit. But the fact is that he has already shown what he can do. The new administration seems to have two themes. One is a strong pong caused by the reluctance of so many members of the new team — led regrettably by Mr Leung himself — to be forthcoming about their financial interests, and the discovery that some of them did indeed have something to hide. The resulting whiff of sleeze is, no doubt, partly a result of score-settling by people who wanted a Chief Executive with a large basement. Still, standards do not seem to be high. Anyone who cannot remember what was going on in his property because he left such matters up to his wife should be out on his ear.

The other theme of the new bunch is lurid nationalism. The trip to the Daoyius was a spectacular piece of self-dramatisation. I particularly enjoyed the report that the intrepid voyagers might starve because half of their food had been swept overboard. People have been fishing from Hong Kong for decades with no reports of food being washed overboard. Floating kitchens are much like land-based ones: indoors with food cupboards. Only on political voyages do monster waves catch the food sunbathing on deck.  This trip was a prime example of the classic agitation techniques: propaganda by deed and provocations. Propaganda by deed involves performing a conspicuous and preferably illegal action which dramatizes the political situation to which you object. Provocation meens trying to trigger an act of repression which will put your antagonist in the wrong. Having dabbled in this sort of thing myself I do not like to see it wasted. Anyone who thinks the ownership of a few uninhabited rocks is an important political issue needs to get a sense of proportion.

But it seems Mr Leung and several well-known fellow-travellers actually helped to finance the expedition. I do not buy the line that the whole thing was a surrogate job on behalf of the People’s Government. The PRC does not need to go to such elaborate lengths to start a shoving match with the Japanese Coast Guard. It  has plenty of fishing boats. I am afraid this is just another instalment in the attempt to play the nationalism card by a team which sees no other plausible route to popularity. Personally I do not like nationalism. This is a widespread sentiment in Europe where we have seen the movie and know how it ends.

Island activists who want to start a war should first take a trip to the north of France, where there are still more than 2,000 British war cemeteries. There is a similar number of French war cemeteries, among which I particularly recommend the Ossuary at Verdun. This large building contains the battlefield debris left by soldiers who were not only no longer identifiable by name but had been so dismembered that they could no longer be assembled into complete sets of parts. Obviously a certain amount of guesswork is involved in working out how many people may have contributed to the collection but the figure usually given is 130,000. Taking provocative trips to disputed islands is not conducive to a peaceful solution to the problem. It is conducive to a violent solution. We may have had criticisms of the first two Chief Executives but at least they did not try to start a war on our behalf.