By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
I looked down on “Boundary Street” from my apartment in the Hong Kong peninsula of Kowloon in 1975. As my young son watched the jetliners scream past our window to land at Kai Tak airport, I was looking down at a street that could one day separate Hong Kong from the China Mainland. As a high school teacher at the international school, I knew the history of this last British colony.
The 1800s were the British century; they “ruled the waves.” Their navy won the “Opium War” and forced China to accept Western drug-running. Americans, including a family named Delano, participated in this drug trade as well. One part of the wartime settlement was that Hong Kong Island and a part of the Kowloon peninsula would belong to England in perpetuity. They soon realized they needed more farmland and leased the New Territories for 99 years. That lease would end in 1997. If Hong Kong was to remain a colony, they would have to build a Berlin-style wall down Boundary Street–not an option.
England appointed Chris Patton as Hong Kong’s last British Governor. Hong Kong was a very limited “democracy.” Their legal system sent court appeals to London. Patton and his Foreign Service wanted to negotiate a more democratic system before it was handed over at midnight on June 31, 1997. It was not an easy negotiation. Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady,” had just come off of waging war in the Falkland Islands. On the China side was an equally dogmatic Chinese Foreign Service. The revolutionary leader Deng Xiao-ping had brought economic communism to an end and opened up a market system.
He proposed a “One Country, Two Systems” and negotiated an arrangement where China would provide national protection. Hong Kong would run its own internal affairs on its own “Basic Law.”
That Basic Law is based on the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed between China and the British government on December 19, 1984. It is easily accessed online. The limited socialism practiced in the rest of China does not extend to Hong Kong. Hong Kong will continue its capitalist system for 50 years after 1997. That has not changed. Nor have the fundamental rights of Hong Kong residents, the function of the branches of local government, or their ability to amend or interpret the Basic Law. The courts of Hong Kong were now the final arbiter. Appeals no longer went to London. But the governor of Hong Kong is vetted by Beijing, to ensure that no attempt is made too secede.
So what changed in Hong Kong? The case of a Taiwan husband who murdered his wife and fled to Hong Kong revealed a gap in extradition laws in the Basic Law. The extradition loophole would make it possible for Hong Kong to become a haven for criminals fleeing from certain regions. But a proposed extradition law also made it possible for mainland China to request extradition of persons for political crimes. Protests erupted. The extradition bill was withdrawn. But the protests continued, because they were really about promoting secession. The protests did not remain peaceful. Windows were shattered. Fire bombs were thrown. Hong Kong’s well-trained police were assaulted as they attempted to curtail the violence. On July 1 of 2019, protesters broke into and occupied the Legislative Council Complex, ransacking and vandalizing the facility.
Then in late November of 2019, the protests came to a halt as Hong Kong citizens went to the polls. While many pro-Beijing candidates lost, the Legislative Council still remained with its general duties to legislate and manage for Hong Kong.
Beijing passed the Hong Kong national security law on June 30, 2020. Inciting for secession became a crime, just as it is in the United States. Along with coercion with foreign governments, these crimes can now result in extradition to the mainland. Otherwise, Hong Kong continues to manage its own affairs with considerably more independence than U.S. states have from our federal government. By 2047, both Hong Kong and the Beijing governments and economies will have continued to evolve.
Nevertheless, the Western press continually referred to the demonstrators as “democracy demonstrators.” And the Western public swallowed this label even while the demonstrators stopped to go to the polls for elections! This propaganda labeling occurred without Western government directive. It demonstrates how easy it is for a press to follow political stereotypes and begin a drumbeat to war.
I listened closely to reporters for any evidence that any had read Hong Kong’s “Basic Law” or Deng Xiao-ping’s rationale “On the Question of Hong Kong.” None had done their homework.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.