tim's experiment

One of the easy ways of writing a column or a think-piece is to announce that some people are pursuing a new idea, and then spend a few hundred words explaining why the idea is crazy. If nobody happens to have announced a crazy idea recently, you can make one up.

This explains the recent rash of writings explaining why agitating for independence for Hong Kong is a bad idea. Actually, nobody has been agitating for independence for Hong Kong. This obstacle can be overcome by combining some academic musings on the distinctive qualities of Hong Kong culture with the fact that some people wave the old colonial flag, or even the Union Jack, at demonstrations. Neither of the two groups involved in these phenomena have any connection with each other. The academics do not demonstrate, the demonstrators do not read learned journals. But taken together they can launch a thousand words.

Now let us take the flags first. People do not wave British or colonial flags because they wish Hong Kong were independent, or because they wish it was a colony again. They wave them because the flags symbolise Hong Kong’s distinctive history, values and traditions. What other flag could you use for this purpose? The Bauhinia eyesore was designed in Beijing.  No doubt the old colonial flag is better for this than the flag which still symbolises Britain. But the Union Jack is much easier to get hold of.

Now let us take the cultural thing. Hong Kong people do not want Hong Kong to become just another mainland city. This is not because they are unpatriotic but because mainland cities, on the whole, are squalid, corrupt and lawless. This does not amount to a wish for independence. The whole point of “one country two systems” is that Hong Kong can be different. The local problem is that the left-wing fraternity, having brainwashed themselves into believing there is a “China model”, now want to brainwash the rest of us into believing it too.

The point which is lost in this talk of independence is that there is a great deal of variation in the way relationships between regions and central governments are handled. In federal countries the regional governments have their own legislatures, elections and leaders. In more centralised ones they may have an appointed representative of the central government. In some places there are calls for these arrangements to be changed. A region, or some people in it, may look for independence, as in Catalonia and Scotland. Or they may have no aspirations to statehood, but wish to preserve a characteristic language and culture, as in Wales and Brittany. There is a continuous spectrum between direct rule from the capital and outright or virtual independence. People may legitimately hope to move along it in one direction or the other, without automatically being accused of wishing to go to the extreme.

The problem for Hong Kong is that we were promised a high degree of autonomy. There are too many people around who would like to see that promise broken, for one reason or another. So Hong Kong people are sensitive. They do not like to see mainland officials turn up at the scene of local disasters. When top national leaders instruct the Hong Kong government to pull all the stops out in rescue operations, people do not think “how nice of national leaders to worry about us”. They think “this has nothing to do with defence or foreign affairs; mind your own business”.

Of course (platitudes, platitudes) Hong Kong cannot wish the mainland away and sail off by itself. On the other hand there is no need for us to delude ourselves into thinking that the benefits of interaction with the mainland are a benevolent gift for which we should be grateful. Chinese citizens are allowed to visit Hong Kong and do business here. That’s a favour? Chinese citizens in Hong Kong are allowed to do business in other parts of their own country. Thanks very much.

The increasingly frantic efforts to persuade Hong Kong people to love their leaders are no doubt in preparation for another big disappointment when the next instalment of electoral reform comes along. I do not accept that the democrats were punished in the polls for doing a deal with the liaison office over the last electoral changes. They were punished because they did a bad deal. They were so excited to be doing a deal at all that they left vital details up in the air. So instead of a great step forward we got another variation on elections designed by people who don’t like elections.

In the end China is an authoritarian state which tries, despite its size, to be centralised. Under these circumstances one cannot hope, as one can in a federal state, that the central government will control itself because it knows its place and accepts the limits on its powers. A region which wishes to remain autonomous to any extent will have to be constantly alert to infringements. Those who are alert will be accused of all sorts of things by political purveyors of the “did you enjoy it?” school of rape counselling. But still. The price of freedom is constant vigilance, as a great man once said. Or as another great man said, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.