Forget the mask ban. Beijing can solve Hong Kong’s protests by letting a governor run the city

Taking a hard line won’t work, yet doing nothing is not an option. Why not amend the Basic Law, perhaps jointly with the UK, to bring in a tried-and-tested fix? A governor can rebalance the local vested interests and focus on improving people’s welfare

Richard Harris

Published: 12:00pm, 11 Oct 2019

Why you can trust SCMP

I think I may have committed a crime at the weekend. I found myself a willing participant at an illegal gathering, with the prospect of arrest. It is no excuse that the crowd were in fancy dress and the masks were pink and sparkly – the law is the law, and it is blind.

In August in these columns, I wrote a short speech for the chief executive that many kind readers suggested that she should have given – perhaps avoiding the current crisis point. Instead, the government has enacted policies that merely plaster over minor symptoms, which treat the patient as helpfully as a swarm of leeches.

The fatuous anti-mask law is as useful as a cat photo. It makes it illegal to perform The Phantom of the Opera. Otherwise it has, as forecast, been an abject failure. The police have got their arrest numbers up but (what a surprise) it transpires that journalists, paramedics and medical cases are hard to distinguish from rioters.

The Education Bureau looks cheap in asking schools to report on mask-wearing students – and, duh, we know what kids do if they are told to not do something. Barristers will have a field day pointing out that the government’s environmental policies have failed to clean the air to global standards, so masks are necessary. Surely, if you are an administration lacking in credibility, the last thing you need is to announce a policy that is largely unenforceable.

The people of Hong Kong believe that Beijing wants Hong Kong to be like the mainland. My conversations indicate that this is not correct. China wants and needs a calm, prosperous Hong Kong – or the army would already be running the city. It’s not a good look for Britain to build the special administrative region for 155 years, only for China to fail in 22.

More importantly, China needs Hong Kong’s six freedoms (labour, capital, goods, services, law and the press) somewhere within the country to act as a gateway to the world.

Beijing wants a Hong Kong as it was before former chief executive Leung Chun-ying mindlessly poked his big stick into the hornet’s nest. He should have sympathised with the Occupy Central students, saying “I feel your pain”. Instead the government’s continued hard line has stirred passions unthinkable five months ago.

Taking a hard line has proven to be weak and vacuous. The stick has consistently failed and the policy of “Keep Calm and Carrie On” means that Hong Kong has burned. The carrot remains largely untried.

My draft speech to the chief executive was carefully designed to solve the current issues in a politically acceptable manner but recent events mean that we now need to look past the immediate to permanent solutions.

The shocking core revelation about these Hong Kong disturbances is that the economy needs clarity on its future status, not by 2047, but today. It is this unknown that has caused the Hang Seng Index to underperform compared to both the S&P 500 and the Shanghai Composite Index by around 15 per cent; most of it since the beginning of May.

Our problems reflect of years of mismanagement, stubbornness and complacency. The police appear as paper tigers; too scared to issue parking tickets, let alone keep civil order, but brave enough to make a bus full of passengers stand in the rain to be searched.

Some unthinkingly argue for the internet to be cut; many argue for tough police action, even bloodshed. It may cause a temporary calm but the passions of the people will remain unrequited, only to bubble up in further extremism.

It seems unlikely that the government can change the entrenched vested interests, both within and without the public services. It needs too much intelligent root-and-branch reform. Doing nothing is not an option so the alternative must be some serious mainland interference in Hong Kong affairs. The city is at such an inflection point that this may not be such a bad thing.

There is a case for the mainland to install a governor, paid by Beijing and responsible for the stability, growth and prosperity of Hong Kong – which incorporates the welfare of the people. It would maintain the strikingly successful “one country, two systems” model. Relatively little would change, except to rebalance the local vested interests. A few clauses can be amended in the Basic Law and the rest remains as Hong Kong’s constitution. The existing Hong Kong administrative structure, using local people, the Legislative and Executive Councils stays, and the self-aggrandisement and patronage of the ministerial system goes. Hey, it worked pretty well for 155 years!

The icing on the cake would be for China to sacrifice a little face to amend the Basic Law together with the UK. Desperate Britain would agree to anything for a trade deal. It is a cheap, easy and effective political solution; and provides global diplomatic cover. The outcome is a peaceful city, needed change and the improved lives of Hongkongers without oppression. It’s a win-win.

Richard Harris is Chief Executive of Port Shelter Investment and is a veteran investment manager, banker, writer and broadcaster and financial expert witness

Post