Opinion | Hong Kong cannot do without influence from 'foreign forces'
Peter Kammerer says it is neither practical nor constructive for Hong Kong to shut out outside influences, as Beijing seems to want
The tube of Pringles my sister gave me when I was 13 was a thing of wonderment. She had brought it back from an overseas cruise and I noticed it in her suitcase as she was unpacking. I wondered what it was and she handed it over; anything foreign was a novelty in those pre-global trade days, so the taste and smell of food that was not locally produced was exotic. Almost four decades later, I am surrounded by shelves of things from elsewhere whenever I walk into a supermarket, but the first encounter with that potato chip still comes to mind whenever I linger in the snacks section.
Hong Kong's open and free trading system means that goods and produce from the world over abound. The array of foreign products available is astounding; a small grocery store near my North Point home has packed among its shelves peanut butter from Argentina, pickled cucumbers from Poland, olives from Turkey and snacks from every part of Southeast Asia. Many national cuisines are represented among our thousands of restaurants and, while Cantonese and Putonghua predominate on our streets, all manner of languages and accents can be heard in popular shopping districts. There are small, but vibrant, Norwegian, Austrian and Brazilian communities among the many present - from that perspective, we live in a truly international city.
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What, then, is this nonsense being spouted about "foreign forces" influencing and being involved in the pro-democracy protests? Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has mentioned it a few times and predecessor Tung Chee-hwa solemnly intoned it last Friday. Beijing has always used it as a catch-all to explain away bad things on the mainland and warned how destabilising those "outside influences" can be. Governments the world over have turned to the expression whenever they feel threatened or are losing control; most often, the officials making such claims are unelected, autocratic and unpopular.
Enter Kenny G, an American saxophonist described as the world's biggest-selling instrumentalist of the modern music era, who dropped by the Admiralty protest site last Wednesday. Whether it was out of curiosity or support for things democratic can't be said for sure as the mainland media quickly warned entertainers that they risked ostracisation for backing the students. I'm no fan of the music of Kenneth Gorelick (Kenny G's real name), but to be threatened with having concert tours in your biggest market switched off for simply having an opinion is too much. Take the anti-foreigner line further and it goes beyond entertainment to pulling goods off shelves; the endgame is barring foreigners themselves.
It is all rather baffling - how can a nation that has benefited so well financially from "foreign forces" through trade, partnerships and training then turn around and contend it is bad? Picking and choosing is not an option in a globalised world. The accusatory finger can be wagged repeatedly, but international schools, multinational corporations, the movies we watch and music we listen to and even what we buy at the supermarket influence how we think. Shut them out and we become like North Korea - no democracy, no economy and no future.