The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its reunification with China, and I was there on June 30, 1997, partying the night away with friends.We had grown up here during colonial rule, and sometimes now, we reminisce fondly about 1997. Especially the nightlife atmosphere. We recall how there was a palpable buzz around Soho, Lan Kwai Fong, Discovery Bay, and other places where expats and overseas-Chinese congregated. Everyone knew how lucky we were to watch history literally unfold before our eyes.
Perhaps as 20-somethings, the political implications of Hong Kong’s handover were lost on us, but we were still adult enough to sense the optimism or fear in those older. Some, in hindsight, aligned their business and social interests well and profited; and some didn’t. To say, however, the feelings about China were mixed equally between fearful and nonfearful is inaccurate. There was much more optimism than not, and anyone who was around back then, if they’re honest, will agree.
The China of 1997 was also a far different entity from the China of 2022. While the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region had the infectious charm and energy as a nexus of East and West, Shanghai, one of the most Westernized and culturally diverse cities in China today, was then just starting its re-ascension to the cultural iconoclasm of its early-1900s past. The infrastructural development that China would come to accomplish far exceeded anyone’s expectations in 1997, which has served to only further boost the Hong Kong SAR’s economy from every direction, and by extension the Chinese mainland’s too.
To the collective West, led by the US, which just six years after 1997 would start the longest ground war of the last 150 years — which coincidentally, is the exact same amount of time Hong Kong was under British rule and perhaps a wink from whatever power granting or rescinding Mandate of Heaven to rising or falling civilizations — the promise of China’s ascension in 1997 came with mixed feelings. On the one hand, China’s ascension meant a boost to the West’s economies as well, and on the other hand, the geopolitical fear of a stronger China in general.
And at the center of that stood (and stands) Hong Kong, sandwiched between East and West with a proven adroitness at accommodation, embracing and soliciting the best from both worlds. A city of legend-makers considered the Pearl of the East, jointly made by wise minds with diversified ethnic and cultural backgrounds. That said, the right-minded residents with a sincere love for the city could stand the sabotage wreaked by the often-blindly hostile “China-bashers” in a willful attempt to advance their own political agenda at the expense of Hong Kong’s people. Even some Westerners who had lived and prospered in the city stood with their malignant-minded home-country folks who indulged themselves in politicking and externalizing Hong Kong affairs for no other reason than arresting the rise of China.
Back in 1997, everyone had their own prediction of Hong Kong’s future, most of which were, unfortunately, negative. But today, we have facts, and those facts paint the outlines of a picture the collective West, if they’re honest, is, quite frankly, scared of. It’s a picture of a future where their past pretexts like “rights of conquest” and “manifest destinies” around the globe are revealed for the blatant resource-stealing and human rights abuses they truly turned into.
Much like China, the collective West has also changed a lot in a short amount of time, but it has allowed itself to stray much farther away from an earlier, yet forward-thinking and genuinely benevolent ethos. But unlike China, the definitions of what it means to be “Western” these days grows vaguer, while for China, it is the opposite. The picture of a China-led future being painted by China and her allies is clearly one without the willful ignorance that in the West is fueled by odd, ever-shifting theories of social justice, gender identity, critical race theory, problematic personalities, alternative facts, Russian-bots, wumao (I have yet to actually meet one, but I would love to) and others. It is a picture, that when completed, will highlight this tiny, former fishing village of Hong Kong and her adjacent city, Shenzhen, which transformed, dramatically at times, into legitimate rivals of any culturally iconic city of the world.
Hong Kong is a place where the China of the 1800s had the foresight to see would become a natural meeting ground between East and West and be so obviously regarded as such, that this reputation would form the very DNA of that future city’s culture. The protests of 2019 in the HKSAR were an attempt to drastically alter that DNA and showed us that outside Western forces were not above reverting to the darker sides of their pasts to achieve their ends. To the curious Westerner, like myself, the question was, Why? And more importantly, Why so suddenly in June of 2019?
To any other curious Westerners unafraid to look at the West’s past with a critical, objective and unflinching eye, the answer is clear. A powerful China threatens American global hegemony, and what better way to slow China’s rise than to cripple Hong Kong by turning it against itself. Hopefully though, that same curious Westerner will not fall prey to the mental mirage caused by the subtle power of national-self-projection. That just because Western hegemony was achieved through mostly violent methods, so too China plans the same. Unfortunately for the “China-always-bad” crowd, the evidence of a powerful China violently enforcing its will upon any country it chooses is simply not there. For America, we only need to look at the last 20 years.
As a scholar of Western history and American-led geopolitics in particular, it’s clear that what the West, mainly America, views as being the cause of its decline — a rising China or a China-led future — is, in fact, a willful ignorance of the better parts of its own past ethos. A past ethos that contains legitimately benevolent elements being completely cast away. Even a totaled car will be salvaged for its working parts, but to the objective observer of particularly American social dogmas, it’s as if America has decided every past ethos is contaminated and must be thrown away. Thrown away much like the naive Hong Kong youths who, in 2019, thought America’s help in their grievance was out of pure altruism. A past ethos that the China of 1984 and 1990 was happy to enshrine in the signing of the Basic Law.
Perhaps the collective West or curious Hong Kong-loving Westerner might like to revisit some of our past writers like Oswald Spengler who said, in his 1932 magnum opus, The Decline of the West:
“I see, long after AD 2000, cities laid out for 10 (million) to 20 million inhabitants, spread over enormous areas of countryside, with buildings that will dwarf the biggest of today’s and notions of traffic and communication that we should regard as fantastic.”
Then we can see if we can relearn what inspired us to make hospitals; contribute to literary traditions; or work with other cultures to build cities like Hong Kong.
The author is a writer, columnist and historian based in Hong Kong.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.