Opinion | 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

Reading Time:4 minutes

On July 1, protesters stormed the Legislative Council chamber and put up Hong Kong’s colonial-era flag underneath a banner saying, “Forced to the point of no return”. Photo: Antony Dickson

Published: 8:00am, 14 Jul 2019Updated: 4:20pm, 14 Jul 2019

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.”