Opinion | To Beijing: don’t hold Hong Kong too tight if you want ‘one country, two systems’ to succeed

Tom Plate says Hong Kong is so precious to China that it tends to overreact to anyone who adds to societal tension in the city

However, China needs to remember the importance of ‘one country, two systems’ to its other hopes of unification

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Published: 7:15am, 23 Oct 2018Updated: 3:19pm, 23 Oct 2018

Hong Kong is exceptional, of course. It is an object of desire worldwide – a known global gem, a gold-medal metropolis. It attracts not just businesspeople but also holiday-seekers. It is glamorous and still has an amazing film industry. It probably has more raging shopaholics per square metre than anywhere outside Dubai. Its history is almost as rich as its property tycoons.

The government of China always wanted it – politically as well as economically – in no small part because for more than 150 years, it couldn’t have it. The British wanted to keep it – and would take it back at the drop of an umbrella. Empires, British or otherwise, tend to bow out ungraciously: having been compelled to return Hong Kong to China in 1997, London still can’t stop yapping – about freedom and autonomy and so on, which it did precious little to foster while Hong Kong was in its back pocket.

Alas, Hong Kong residents these days feel a significant squeeze on both private space, where they live, and public space, what they discuss and how they interact: the former due to real-estate economics and the latter due to Beijing, which, in its mimetic desire, tends to take excessive note of London’s possessive avidity.

Why? It’s as if the mainland, irrationally enough, fears Hong Kong will be snatched away and needs to press its thumb on it more than ever, reacting with official ire no matter how trivial the provocation.

“The British?” Tung Chee-hwa said to me shortly before the 1997 handover. “They’re anti-Chinese and they have a total mistrust of China.” Recently, a high-level British journalist, stationed by his London-headquartered newspaper in Hong Kong, had his work visa tied up in Zhongnanhai’s knots following a panel-hosting gig at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

The event co-starred the mainly harmless 27-year-old leader of the local independence party. Because Hong Kong is so desired, no time and effort can be spared to scapegoat anyone who even slightly adds to tension, however short it falls of a credible threat to societal breakdown. The FCC, widely beloved for its colourful history and iconic importance, suddenly became ground zero for retaliation.