Tip of the Spear

It must be something to lose a country. Let alone twice in living memory. Hong Kong always served as a fascinating place for me, a cultural bridge between East and West. I harken back to the best summer of my life: I was reading in a USA Today that on July 1, 1997, this British colony would be transferred back to China after their 99-year lease expired, a borrowed trophy from a mostly forgotten war. Being a relatively precocious teenager, I understood that I was living in history. However, little did any of us know how far-reaching this effect would be.

I arrived in Hong Kong 22 years after the turnover. There was a collective apprehension as thick as the humidity regarding precisely what the Communists were going to do. Since it came back under the Chinese sphere of influence, many Mainland businesses were listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, and many Mainland businessmen sought to invest in a place more friendly to their ambitions. Macau, the former Portuguese colony, served as a place where the Middle Kingdom’s nouveau riche could blow their earnings in casinos more opulent than any I had seen in the West.

Yet, there is still yet another looming deadline. In 2047, the idea of a Special Administrative Region, the designation of both Hong Kong and Macau, is slated to die as well as the concept of “One Country, Two Systems.” The Communists know that they need both soft and hard power to keep the freedom-loving people of Hong Kong in check. So, they allow only a set list of people to run for office, which the Party approves. If that doesn’t work, there are elite garrisons of the People’s Liberation Army quartered in Central Hong Kong, ready to suppress any dissent. 

Due to this, there was disquiet, especially on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour. The ravenous purchase of property by Communist oligarchs serves as a way to protect their newly acquired wealth, both in an investment sense and also from the clutches of the Communist horde at home. Like any profit and loss statement, while the oligarchs profit, the people of the poorer districts of Hong Kong lose. Many are forced to leave their homes, moving their families to Cage Houses, illegal (and sweltering) top floor shed apartments, or the street. I have long said that the Communist Chinese are more Capitalist than even the West, as there are even things the most ruthless conglomerate would not do. Coupled with an expedient existential morality, the most profitable of ends justify the evilest of means.   

Hong Kong will serve as the canary in this coal mine of global politics. And they know it. There is an ominous foreboding odium that the tip of the spear of the Chinese Communist Party will first pass through this last beating heart of freedom in the region to strike the rest of the world; in due time.