In defence of every Hongkonger’s right to scold the chief executive

China’s promise to maintain Hong Kong’s status quo for 50 years must include a continuation of the freedoms enjoyed – including the right to take our leaders to task. Yes, one can be free and Chinese

Amy Ng

Published: 8:00am, 14 Jul 2019

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The hoisting of the colonial-era flag in the Legislative Council on July 1 has fanned every mainland Chinese suspicion about Hong Kong: that we have been irredeemably corrupted by British colonialism; that the people of Hong Kong long for the return of their British imperialist masters; that Hong Kong will always be a fifth column within China unless our intransigence is crushed.

But I do not think it is nostalgia for British rule that drives people to demonstrate en masse. Who, after all, wants a return to the time when white British expatriates monopolised the upper echelons of government and society, as was the case even well into the 1980s? Rather, the old Hong Kong flag is a reminder of happier times. Of safety. A place of sanctuary. A sense of well-being. Of freedom.

I am writing a play about the negotiations between Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping over Hong Kong, which has involved much rooting around in recently opened Foreign Office files. I discovered that the negotiations were even more acrimonious than people had suspected.

Even after the British grudgingly accepted that sovereignty over Hong Kong would revert to China after 1997, the diplomatic hostilities continued. British negotiators worked on what would be the first draft of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, based, as they thought, on the Chinese ideas of “one country, two systems”, that “Hong Kong will be ruled by Hong Kong people” and of ‘fifty years no change”.

However, their draft was met with fury from the Chinese side. “This document is preparing Hong Kong to be an independent political entity” was the Chinese verdict. Although the British protested that they were merely making concrete the promise of genuine autonomy for Hong Kong, it was soon clear that autonomy meant something vastly different to both parties. Thatcher threatened to put the question directly to the people of Hong Kong through a referendum.

Beijing threatened that if she did so, they would take back Hong Kong immediately: “The Chinese government understands the needs and desires of Hong Kong compatriots who are Chinese by blood and sentiment. And if Hong Kong’s desires diverge from Beijing’s, then the interests of 5 million people must bend to the interests of 1.1 billion people.”

Desperate to get out of an untenable situation with a fig leaf of a negotiated agreement, the British papered over the disagreements. But it is a fundamental disagreement that continues to haunt us, and which has exploded now.

What is the Sino-British Joint Declaration and what does it have to do with the extradition crisis?

What does it mean to preserve Hong Kong’s status quo for 50 years? To the Chinese side, that promise meant that Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity should be preserved, on the basis of the existing capitalist system. They reasoned that stability and prosperity were all that ultimately mattered to the people of Hong Kong.

They should have asked my grandmother, and millions like her.

My grandmother fled communism in the 1950s to come to Hong Kong. She worked in a handbag factory while raising four children. She only ever managed to learn five words of English – “yes”, “no”, “very good”, “supermarket”. Her path hardly ever crossed with the British overlords in Hong Kong.

They were them and we were us, and it was better to have nothing to do with the British. Yet she would also say that life in Hong Kong was “blessed”. “It is stable and peaceful. My sons are doing well. They have prospered.” So far, nothing that departs from the “stability and prosperity” mantra.

But then she would deliver her punchline: “In Hong Kong you can scold the governor and nothing will happen to you.” We would laugh. Scold? As if Chris Patten, David Wilson et al were so many naughty schoolboys! “Can you imagine scolding Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping?” she would retort indignantly. “You’d be shot.”

Still taboo in mainland China: the Cultural Revolution as seen through the lens of Li Zhensheng

The question that Beijing and increasingly even ordinary mainland Chinese citizens ask of us – “Are you patriotic enough? Are you Chinese enough? Are you really Chinese?” – seems to me a proxy question. The question they are really asking is this: Is freedom Chinese enough? Is freedom something foreign? Is freedom of expression and conscience too Western, imperialist, bourgeois decadent, or is it something universal and human? Can one be free and Chinese?

This question has been asked urgently at key moments of 20th century Chinese history – from the May Fourth Movement of 1919 right up to the Tiananmen protests of 1989, and will continue to be asked, in Hong Kong, and elsewhere in China.

My mainland Chinese friends tell me that as long as one stays clear of politics, life is mostly fine. But what happens, I ask, if life is suddenly not fine?

My mainland Chinese friends tell me that as long as one keeps one’s head down and stays clear of politics, life is mostly fine. But what happens, I ask, if life is suddenly not fine? What if local government officials seize your land without compensation; what if factories pollute the river on your doorstep; what if your baby’s milk formula is adulterated with melamine – where would you be if you did not have the right to seek redress?

They look away. Some get angry. “Hong Kong people are always so negative.” Perhaps. But we who grew up with the right to scold the governor – how can we fit our freedoms into a bonsai pot of self-censorship, the daily calibration of what is “acceptable” right now; the constant looking-over-our-shoulders?

So far we still have the right to “scold the chief executive” – until 2047, when our 50 years run out. But the extradition law would have eroded that right. It is 2046 now.

Amy Ng is a Hong Kong playwright based in London. She is under commission to the Royal Shakespeare Company, and is playwright in residence at SOAS, University of London

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