Beijing? HongKong? Who Is the Monkey?

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

There is a hiatus in politics and economic activity as China celebrates the beginning of the Year of the Monkey. While international attention has been focused on Taiwan where Pres. Chen Shui-Bian and his political opponents have dragged Washington and Beijing into their local hard fought political campaigns, Hong Kong’s promised “one country, two systems” is going by the boards.

Beijing has turned tough, no longer hiding behind the vapid – and increasingly unpopular — Special Administrative Region [SAR] Chief Executive Tung Chee-wha. What has provoked Beijing to move is a demonstration of some hundred thousand people on January First calling for more representative government. That, of course, was a replay of an unprecedently half million people demonstrating last July in opposition to Tung’s proposed new “security” laws [obviously dictated by Beijing]. There was no masking their intent – to move in on Hong Kong’s freedoms of press and assembly not tolerated next door on the Mainland. Tung [after hurried consultations with Beijing] backed off, apparently because the new Beijing team of Communist Party General Secretary and President Hu Jiatao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao were not willing then to tarnish their image as a new pragmatic leadership.

Now, Hu and Wen – after successful overseas visits to Southeast Asia, Australia, the US and France and with a bustling economy – are ready to rein in Hong Kong. Beijing emissaries publicly proclaimed there will be no expansion of Hong Kong’s popularly elected legislature – now half appointed by the government. That couldn’t come for 30 years, the messengers said, even though Hong Kong’s “constitution” – the Basic Law, the negotiated basis for the return of the former British Colony – promised just that possibility after 2007. Henceforth Tung said Hong Kong would have to consult Beijing on any important issue. That’s precisely what the autonomous Hong Kong was not supposed to have to do. And Beijing also ruled out any further “judicial supremacy” of Hong Kong’s courts, that is, their right to decide whether SAR government actions were contravention of the Basic Law. That question was dramatized when Hong Kong lost control of immigration and citizenship, one of the levers which has been basic to the former Colony’s prosperity.

All this comes when Hong Kong’s economy is foundering with record unemployment. Beijing, buying into the conventional wisdom Hong Kongers don’t really care about anything but their economic prosperity, has come up with some irrelevant fixes. It has removed trade restrictions for Hong Kong manufactures entering China; not much of a sop given the flight of manufacturing to the nearby Pearl River Delta cities. It is lowering restrictions on using Chinese currency credit cards in Hong Kong, to encourage Mainland tourism which has become substantial, again not much given the limited use of credit cards in China. Meanwhile, a grey market in flight capital into Hong Kong — despite the prospect Beijing may have to bend to demands from its trading partners to revalue its undervalued currency and end its export subsidies — has developed. All this may be creating a bubble in Hong Kong’s stock market.

Beijing may have a tiger by the tail. Hong Kong’s opposition leadership is trying to decide whether to continue to flaunt their new found ability to mobilize public opinion, or bow to the inevitable diktat. Just who is bluffing isn’t certain. A resort to any kind of repression in Hong Kong would not only threaten its economic position as an island of the rule of law in the Chinese sea of corruption and legal ambiguity. But it would also feed Taiwan resistance to any accommodation with the Mainland, belying “the Hong Kong model” and Beijing’s promises that such an agreement would not threaten the Island’s freedoms.

Yet Hong Kong’s present situation – for example, its freedom of religion [even the Falun Gong cult which has been so bitterly repressed on the Mainland], various human rights groups, an independent press – is an affront to Beijing.. Beijing’s rulers see a need for strict political conformity. That is bound to be a growing concern for China’s rulers with growing economic and political problems, and the constant threat in a volatile world of unexpected new disasters [like last year’s outbreak of SARS] which could challenge the leadership.

Good luck can supposedly be found in the Year of the Monkey. But the monkey climbing the tree, a symbol of growth, advancement and prosperity, is after all, known for its cleverness and ability to wiggle its way out of a situation even in the most auspicious years. But the soothsayers say the monkey can become impatient with those who hesitate or choose a different route. The question, then, may be who is the monkey – Beijing or Hong Kong – in this difficult situation.