Transcription
I knew that Hong Kong opinion, uh, was fairly divided, but about the handover because there was a sort of sentimental affection for the relationship with the UK and so on.
Um, and they didn't feel really Chinese and they looked down on the Chinese immigration and so on. They regarded themselves to be much superior. In fact, the general tenor, people don't speak about this nearly enough, but the general tenor in Hong Kong, it was a very racist, racist society, you know, basically because colonial countries produced this hierarchy with, you know, for 156 years, the government of Hong Kong was white. And unfortunately, the Chinese, as happens, you know, looked down on anyone they could look down upon because they were being looked down upon by the whites.
I had quite an analytical view of Hong Kong from that experience from living there as well as, uh, from outside. I hugely welcomed the, you know, the idea of, uh, two countries, one system. Um, and I thought I was hoping that it would work. Um, and up to a point it did work. Um, and it worked for a period, but eventually, I think for a very, I mean, I was critical in some ways of the way China handled Hong Kong because I thought that it was too hands-off. I thought that it needed, you couldn't do it by remote control and it felt a bit like this.
The Chinese presence in Hong Kong was never very visible. Yeah. I mean, I remember when I was in Hong Kong, basically there was only one Chinese flag and it was flying over the old British back troops barracks in central Hong Kong. Otherwise, you know, there wasn't very much visibility. Um, and I think that was there was an assumption. I think the initial assumption of the Chinese was that this is our first foreign policy victory probably since before this century of humiliation, the return of Hong Kong, return of one of the lost territories and so therefore they wanted to demonstrate to the West that they were be good guardians. I think this was very strong in the way the Chinese handled it. And I think that that was fine up to a point, but beyond that point, it was a mistake because what it meant was they didn't really tackle the underlying problems in Hong Kong, which were very deep.
You know, it's an economic success. I'm sorry, it wasn't an economic success. It was a free economy. It was not a free economy. It was a, it was a typically colonial oligopolistic economy. Yeah. And, uh, so, and they got the land question wrong because, you know, you needed to tackle the land. You needed to take on the tycoons. You couldn't just leave it as it was. So what was happening was problems were festering, particularly amongst young people. They couldn't afford any of this and so on. So there was a gathering discontent in China, uh, in Hong Kong, and eventually, you know, the umbrella movement and then, um, the riots and so on, brought these things to a head.
I think Hong Kong was always going to be a difficult challenge for the Chinese, but I didn't, I didn't think it was inevitable. But once, uh, it happened, then I think what the Chinese handled it in the best way they could. I mean, they, they rode back to some extent on, you know, one country, two systems, but they still, still Hong Kong is very different in it from, yeah. It's not the, it's not identical to the rest of China. Still very, very distinct in the way it is governed and administration and the laws and so on. It still bears the, uh, hallmarks of, you know, the colonial period, but not in a negative way. Some of those are very positive.
I was very critical of Hong Kong. I was extremely critical of British colonial rule. I had no sentiment which is very widespread in the UK that somehow Hong Kong was our responsibility and really it's still ours. This is a typical colonial powers mentality about lost colony. They think somehow that they could do it better. This was all absolute rubbish and nonsense, if you like, militantly strongly opposed to the sort of British general British mentality about it. I was also critical of the Chinese because I didn't think, you know, and I did express this in, and our program I did with General Wei and so on, strongly and wherever. I think probably for those who knew about, uh, Hong Kong, people understood and probably agreed with this, actually.
Um, but, you know, if you leave a problem long enough and don't tackle it, it festers and then you've got a problem. And it festered into quite an ugly beast because I, what I found was especially jarring about it was that the Hong, the people of Hong Kong, the rioters, they were holding up British flags, you know, or the or portraits of Queen Elizabeth and, you know, demanding to go back to the to British rule. And I remember distinctly that you always said Hong Kong under the British was never a democracy. And yet the rioters were yelling for democracy and yelling as if the British were the ones. Ridiculous to grant them that, completely ridiculous.
For 156 years, they had British colonial rule and there were never any democratic elections. What people did, they conflated a certain free press, free media, relatively free media, with democracy. That was what democracy was, you know, that was how it was defined. Forgetting completely that, you know, the kernel of democracy is you vote. In the Western tradition, it is that you vote for your government, your leaders, and so on. Yes. So they had absolutely no experience of this whatsoever.
But I think that, you know, it raises a lot. This is the Hong Kong question for its time raised a lot of very important questions, which was people in living in Hong Kong and this region more widely, still largely looked to the West for inspiration, even when they politically disagreed with it strongly on on questions, but they still looked West. So even in Malaysia, amongst my wife's friends and so on, they holidayed, if when they could afford it, they holidayed in the West. They didn't holiday in the region.
Now we're talking about mainland. No, I mean, the Chinese didn't particularly go to the mainland either. And there's a sizable population of Malaysians who are Chinese. So it was like a magnetic field, if you like. Okay. And the attraction was all in the direction of the West. Now, if you take the petition, now it's completely changed. I mean, there's been a profound change right across the region. People go now holiday, for example, in Southeast Asia. They holiday in Southeast Asia where they go to wherever they live. They go to this, it's a very fantastic area for going on holiday anyway. Um, a lot more Chinese now. Yes. Go, you are on those planes going from Beijing or Shanghai or wherever to Kuala Lumpur. So the whole, the sort of magnetic field is completely being rearranged. These are these are long-term trends. So they don't get commented on.
But and then people think, "Oh, it's always been like that." No, it wasn't that like that, you know, 15, 20 years ago. Yeah, you're right. I mean, that's such a really solid point because I think so everything is shifting.