Hong Kong may be a little insecure, but it's no 'slave'
READ MORE: White worship in Hong Kong: you can't end it if you refuse to acknowledge it even exists
I don't much care to weigh in on the subject of Hong Kong remaining a place where non-Asians are able to prosper – if that's a problem, then it's not, surely, one of Hong Kong's most pressing. Whether it's colonialism to blame, or something else, though, I don't think Yonden was necessarily off the mark in identifying a certain pedestal-isation, if you will. Not of white people per se, but rather of aspects of western culture. Which ones? Well, this is where I think the dynamic gets more interesting than any gripes about recruitment in a global city.
Yonden, I note, is “no fan” of Britain. He does not make it clear which countries he is a fan of. No doubt, though, it will come as a great relief to his countless British readers that Britain's policies on equal opportunities win his seal of approval. And one supposes that such policies must extend as widely as possible – applying especially, perhaps, to Chinese billionaires. After all, they have long found their efforts to play golf in mainland China complicated by the fact that golf courses there are technically illegal. (Why, only last month, Xinhua included playing golf on a long list of violations, alongside “extravagant eating and drinking”, communications which “support bourgeois liberalisation” and – hell, who knows? – breathing too much in the vicinity Uncle Xi.)
You might well look at the Chinese firms and individuals aggressively buying up everything that comes on the market in Britain and elsewhere – cherished institutions, luxury manufacturing concerns, country homes, university places – and decide that the trend offers the very definition of reverse colonialism. That's sort of an argument for another day. In a Hong Kong context, what's more germane, I think, is to look at the things people tend to gain from the west, the things they export back to where they're from. And I would submit that more, possibly, than excitement at western ideas or culture, or heightened enthusiasm for democracy, one discovers a kind of recycled snobbery.
That is to say that well-to-do Hongkongers often seem most concerned by how their encounters with the west bestow prestige or membership of an elite: having been to an exclusive school, acquiring a taste for fine wine, joining expensive golf clubs. Wealthy mainlanders are perhaps little different, but in Hong Kong I have always been wary of the widespread condescension towards people from up the way. At the same time, I've met Hong Kong Chinese who were sent to boarding schools in England but must have skipped the lessons about affecting to hide their disdain for British regional accents. There's your pedestal-isation.