Hong Kong: Prepare to Be Assimilated
John Derbyshire has a neat post at The Corner describing the Hong Kong of his younger days that sounds a lot more human than the caricatures that can arise from a more academic view of the place. I wrote this quick response:
John,
I’m having the interesting experience of reading your post, and writing this one, while actually in Hong Kong. I lived out here in the 1990s, and your portrait seems a lot more true to life to me than the idea of some mythical city-state of yeoman entrepreneurs fiercely guarding their personal economic independence.
Fifteen years ago, when I was here, things seemed to have become a lot more civilized than they were 40 years ago, mostly, I presume, because Hong Kong had gotten so much wealthier. Part of Hong Kong’s continued evolution of a welfare state since then has presumably been driven by further increases in wealth (as I look around right now, it’s irrefutably wealthier and more Chinese / less “colonial” than it was in the prior decade). Economic security provided by the state appears to be a luxury good that the vast majority of societies want as they become wealthier.
The biggest change over time, however, has obviously been the partial absorption of Hong Kong by PRC China after the handover in 1997. But I think this has shaped Hong Kong’s self-image in ways that are not necessarily obvious from a distance.
First, Hong Kong has lost its special role as entrepot for China. Hong Kong and Shanghai are not huge commercial cities by accident. They sit on the two natural harbors with the best access to China’s massive population belts. The fear in Hong Kong since the handover has been that Hong Kong will become a backwater, and once again have to play second fiddle to Shanghai. This creates huge pressure on Hong Kong to get along with the national government and not be seen as a trouble-maker.
Even deeper is the change in Hong Kong’s self-image. A lot of the spirit of the city in earlier decades was driven by a contrast with PRC China that is no longer nearly so severe. The “to-get-rich-is-glorious” China of 2009 is an authoritarian country, but it is nothing like the totalitarian nightmare of the Cultural Revolution. Hong Kong for a long period was defined by the frisson of dancing on the edge of a volcano, much as I suspect West Berlin was during the Cold War. It was a tiny island of freedom on the edge of a vast empire populated by people who were otherwise identical to those trapped on the other side of a border.
In the early 1990s I had negotiated a transaction with a fabulously wealthy Hong Kong property entrepreneur. After the deal was closed, we were out on his yacht in the harbor, and he began to grow a little wistful – which, in my limited experience, is a pretty rare state of mind for a Chinese magnate. He told me the story of coming to Hong Kong as a child. His family was travelling illegally by foot through southern China in the attempt to get to Hong Kong and freedom. They had to travel at night to avoid arrest. That part of China in those days was mostly dark at night, because so little of it was electrified. So they navigated by looking for the glow on the horizon and walking toward it, knowing that it had to be Hong Kong.
Hong Kong was once a light in the darkness. Increasingly, it’s just another city in a rapidly-developing China.
Well, there aren’t lots of people fleeing China nowadays, which means that China has changed as well. I suspect that’s the more important part of the story.
Hong Kong feels completely different that Beijing or Shanghai, it is a very different experience living there – far, far easier for Westerners, for example; I imagine that Hong Kong will continue to capitalize on that for many years to come; it’s not going to be just another Chinese city.
— Danny · Apr 18, 08:44 AM · #
Danny:
Yes, I was trying to make the point that China has changed a whole lot, so that the contrast is not nearly so drastic; sorry if that wasn’t clearer. I agree that HK remains an easier place for Westerners, by far, than Shanghai or Beijing, though that gap is closing too.
— Jim Manzi · Apr 18, 06:42 PM · #
Although I am not a magnate of any sort, I am wistful about the darkness as well.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 18, 08:35 PM · #
China has an unofficial nude negro policy where blacks are regularly strip searched coming out of stores. That wouldnt fly in Hong Kong.
— Vito · Apr 19, 04:16 PM · #
Great post. It seems as though a lot of HKers are feeling their identity slip away and they really fear this. It comes out in resentment to Margaret Thatcher, nostalgia for Chris Patten, or refusal to associate with the PRC. Fellow students and Professors all seem to rankle at the notion that they are in China. I have been really amazed at this during my time here.
Maybe the symbol for this was the shift from an airport where you fly by the seat of your pants into the city, toward this tame, but beautiful and distant airport…
— Admiral · Apr 19, 04:30 PM · #
Good post. HK experienced hyper-growth during its heydays driven mostly by finance, real-estate, logistics and trade. That type of growth was not sustainable. HK will remain as a megacity in China just fine for years to come. However, people in HK do feel some anxiety these days. It is up to the people and HK authority to find new growth points.
— Shane · Apr 19, 05:12 PM · #
Nice post, Mr. Manzi.
One quibble: from the standpoint of those in the agrarian countryside, no doubt all city lights shine alike. But after living in Shanghai and visiting Hong Kong on multiple occasions, the difference remains palpable.
I would argue that China’s cities are not becoming more like Hong Kong, but becoming more like a kind of abstract idea of Hong Kong, filtered through the mainland Chinese consciousness, which doesn’t really have a concept of a livable urban space.
If they do grow more similar, it will be at least in part because Hong Kong becomes more like mainland Chinese cities (especially if the plans to combine Hong Kong and Shenzhen into one metropolis go through). This would be a great loss not wholly overshadowed by the genuine achievement of mainland Chinese urbanization over the past decades.
— David Polansky · Apr 19, 06:51 PM · #
Beginning around 1994 and for the following 14 years, I was traveling to china two sometimes three times a year for 4 to 6 weeks each time. I will never forget the need to come back to Hong Kong each weekend to feel sane and to again get in touch with civilization as I new it.
My travel took me each time from Shenzen to DonGuan to Guangzhou to Xiaman to Beijing to Shanghai and north, then back to Hong Kong.
There was a palpable difference one felt between any of the above mentioned locations and Hong Kong.
I would agree that in time, due to migration of people from the mainland into Hong Kong, The Pearl of Asia will loose its shine and become closer to the others. A Pity.
Ben Mendoza
— Ben Mendoza · Apr 19, 09:03 PM · #
This person has obviously not known a lot of Chinese magnates. I have met a few and a whole part of the Honk Kong Tycoon schtick is, remembering one’s humble origins with this sort of story. I have heard this one before, and also the stand in the street market, the gun that misfired and the escape, the learning to sew before learning to read, and my all time favorite about being sent to the movies by the lady who hired his mother as a maid. All of them are probably one hundred percent true, but I have found the Chinese tycoon more overtky sentimental than any other variety. Remember traditionally these people run their businesses as family operations complete with hereditary retainers and calling people uncle.
Just because it is a cliche doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Cliches exist for a reason.
— Roy · Apr 20, 02:13 AM · #