An important anniversary 25 Years ago the Union Jack was lowered over Hong Kong.
Theodore White’s classic memoir about growing up in New York, journalism and his experiences as a correspondent in China for Henry Luce’s Time Magazine carries the title: In Search of History.
It remains one of my favorites along with Edgar Snow's Journey to the Beginning, and Alan Moorehead’s various historical works, including his Gallipoli. The latter remains the best account of a disastrous episode in Australian military history.
Journalists today could pay a bit more attention to history for context.
White, or Snow, or Moorehead may not have been in my mind on June 30, 1997, but history weighed on that occasion.
After 156 years of British rule over Hong Kong since Britain prevailed in the First Opium War of 1842 the Union Jack was lowered over Hong Kong and a newly minted Hong Kong flag was raised.
Twenty five years later what did I think on that evening as the midnight hour approached on June 30?
This was clearly an event of great significance historically, not simply because it marked the end of an era, but because it signaled the beginning of a new one.
China’s relationship with Hong Kong would become a touchstone for its relations more generally with an international community troubled by Beijing’s disregard for agreements it reached over the future of the former British colony.
So, what did I think that evening as fireworks exploded over Tiananmen Square in Beijing in and lit up the Hong Kong waterfront?
I had arranged to watch the Tiananmen celebrations from a penthouse room in the Hyatt Hotel looking towards the Square so I would have a view and thus equipped to report on a late deadline to London.
A television in the hotel room conveyed events from Hong Kong where Prince Charles and Governor Chris Patten presided over the handover.
At the time, and with my own experience of the end of Empire in Singapore (I was a child of end end of British rule) in 1958 when that country gained its independence, I regarded the Hong Kong handover as settling a problem left over from history, as the Chinese themselves might say.
While I wondered what life might be like for the people of Hong Kong living in a newly-declared Special Administrative Region under a ‘one country, two systems’ formula, I saw little point in questioning China’s right to resume territory seized from it under what the Chinese themselves referred to as the ‘unequal treaties’.
The sun had been setting on the British empire for a very long time, and was close to disappearing below the horizon when the Suez Crisis of 1956 effectively put an end to Britain’s dominion east of Suez.
That is, apart from Hong Kong.
In 1956, not much thought would have been given to Hong Kong’s future.
China, sheltered as it was behind a Communist ‘bamboo curtain’, showed little sign of engaging with the West. The end of Britain’s lease on the colony was nearly a century away.
Fast forward to 1982 when then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Beijing for discussions with paramount Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping about Hong Kong’S future.
History’s hour glass was trickling towards the 2047 end of the British opium-era lease.
That meeting, between Thatcher and Deng, initiated a process of negotiations that resulted, after some fits and starts, in an agreement in 1984 for Britain to transfer sovereignty over Hong Kong.
I was in Beijing, reporting for Fairfax newspapers and the Financial Times, for Thatcher’s first visit (she returned for the 1984 signing).
What I remember from that occasion is that Thatcher stumbled on the steps of the Great Hall as she was attending discussions with Deng. She didn’t fall, she stumbled. This might be regarded, in hindsight, as a sign of trouble ahed.
Fast forward again, this time to 2012.
That was the year, Xi Jinping succeeded Hu Jintao as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and thus the most powerful figure in China.
Xi’s rule has become, progressively, more autocratic with implications for Hong Kong.
Rights of the people of Hong Kong have been whittled away, hopes of universal suffrage under which its leaders would be freely elected have been snuffed out, and a free press has been muzzled, and worse its journalists and proprietors jailed.
When Xi visited Hong Kong in 2017 for the 20th anniversary celebrations of the handover he delivered a speech that served as a warning.
Challenges to Chinese sovereignty and security in Hong Kong would not be tolerated and would “cross a red line’’.
The stage was set for an intensification of ‘color’ demonstrations by Hong Kongers (on one occasion 1.7 million took to the streets) and the inevitable push-back by Beijing.
The National Security Law of 2020 was rubber-stamped on June 30, 2020 by China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress. It specified four offences – separatism, subversion, terrorism and collusion.
In the process, China created a new security agency in Hong Kong to enforce its control. In effect, after 2020, Hong Kong ceased to be a relatively liberal ‘one country, two systems’ model envisaged in negotiations that were initiated in 1982.
The spirit, if not the letter, of the 1989 Basic Law governing Hong Kong post-1997, found its way into history’s dustbin.
Looking back, what history lessons might we derive from the Hong Kong experience, and what conclusions might a reporter reach about his own judgements?
In defence of anticipating whether China would honor its agreements under the Basic Law I had viewed China’s behavior historically through a Deng-era prism.
I have not much doubt Deng would’ve have honored his commitments to Britain and to Hong Kong. Xi has disregarded his various predecessors’ undertakings.
In all of this, what is sometimes overlooked and in no way justifies the deceit practiced by Beijing, the wider issue from the perspective of the Chinese leadership would’ve involved its primary concerns about domestic unrest and Taiwain.
China’s leaders will have worried about risks of contagion across its borders from protracted demonstrations in Hong Kong. And as far as Taiwan is concerned calls by leaders of Hong Kong’s demonstrations for independence from China would’ve been alarming to Beijing.
This is a complex story, but if there is a lesson from a journalist’s perspective it is that ‘things are not always what they seem’.
History beckons.