Deng's Death
Could Liberate Hong Kong
By JONATHAN POWER
LONDON-- The world has much to be thankful for that Deng
Xiaoping died when he did, just four and a half months
before the Union Jack is run down in Hong Kong.
Britain and China, until last week, were set on what
seemed an unavoidable collision course. If Beijing was
holding the whip hand of divine power to do as it pleases,
commencing July 1st., London, or in effect its audacious
governor, Chris Patten, held the trumps of the electorate's
will. Against every brutish blandishment--"a serpent, a
whore and a sinner for all millenia" Beijing's foreign
ministry called him at one time--he has over the last five
years engineered Hong Kong's entry into the democratic
community.
If Hong Kong's citizens could fill the streets for days
after the Tiananmen Square massacre then one can reasonably
surmise that any move to take away their own new-found
liberties after July 1st.will meet with enormous resistance.
Martin Lee and his United Democrats, the largest party in
the reformed legislature, are not going to kowtow when
Beijing tells them to. Neither is Chris Patten. He may no
longer be governor but the airwaves will be his.
London and Washington may squirm and attempt to fudge and
soften the edges of confrontation. Neither side wants a
showdown that could throw to the wind all the
bridge-building diplomacy of the last two years. But they
are not free agents; public opinion will impose its
constraints. When the truncheons start to flay and the
bullets fly against dissenting members of the legislature,
student protestors and the like, public opinion in many
parts of the world will not sit still and watch it quietly
on television. Only the business community in the
democracies buys wholesale the Kissingerian argument of
"leave well alone", that over time economic development in
China will produce a more benign environment for human
rights. Most politically engaged people understand
instinctively that while economic growth may contribute to
political liberalisation, it does only if there is a
built-in dialectic between the pragmatists and the would-be
democrats. That didn't exist in Hitler's Germany and it
hasn't existed in China since Tiananmen Square.
Before Deng died the betting in Hong Kong was that China
would go to the line--even if it meant unsettling, even
sacrificing Hong Kong as the economic power house of
southern China. So unyielding was Deng in his later years on
the political dominance of the communist party, Beijing's
leadership would have felt duty bound to play chicken right
up, and beyond, the moment of collision. Only as the Hong
Kong elite fled to their refuges in Canada, Australia and
the U.S. and as the great investment flood faltered would
the regime have started to count the cost and make some
compromises.
With Deng dead the Chinese leadership is already
beginning to look different. Tomorrow IS another day.
This, I suspect, is what Patten always gambled on. It was
why Margaret Thatcher and John Major wanted a wily,
risk-taking, politician to be the last governor of Hong Kong
rather than, as before, a tradition-bound civil servant.
Patten has navigated Hong Kong policy almost single-handed,
often against Foreign Office advice in London and over the
protests of his predecessors. He has not had much help or
support from Bill Clinton and even less from European
capitals. But his vision of the era of flexibility that
would be ushered in once Deng was dead (now shared
increasingly by the U.S. State Department's top China
policy-maker, Winston Lord), together with his Catholic
antipathy to communism and sensitivity to human rights,
drove him forward.
The next 4 months will be telling. There will be much
jostling for power in Beijing and there will be an attempt
by the conservatives to neutralize any attempt to liberalise
either at home or abroad. But the dominant trend in Beijing
policy is towards economic and political pragmatism. The
pragmatists do not want to do anything that might kill or
maim the Hong Kong goose that lays the golden eggs.
Moreover, they can now demonstrate unequivocally what many
Chinese never quite believed until rather recently, that the
British are indeed going to hand over Hong Kong on July
1st.--and with its treasure undepleted.
The pragmatists can also play the Taiwan card. A
reunified Taiwan is a prize even greater than Hong Kong.
Taiwan too is democratic, even more so than Hong Kong. If
there is ever to be unity it will have to be on terms that
keeps Taiwanese democracy intact. Thus the pragmatists know
that they have no choice but to accept democracy will be
practised in some of their provinces. (Interestingly, and
too often under- reported, democracy is now being introduced
in many rural areas in China itself.)
Washington's role is going to be crucial over the next
few months. Will Clinton like Patten be seen to have the
courage of his convictions? Any faltering will be used by
Beijing's conservatives to drive a wedge between themselves
and the pragmatists and between Washington and Patten. Stand
firm and Beijing will probably capitulate, at least on the
crucial issues of preserving Hong Kong's elected legislative
council and the Bill of Rights.
February 26,
1997, LONDON
Copyright © 1997 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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