Why is the British Hong Kong government so much more responsive than the Chinese Hong Kong government? It’s because the existence of China was a positive factor before 1997 and a negative one after 1997. “It was also because the presence of a powerful and nationalistic regime in mainland China seeking the eventual retrocession of Hong Kong created in the colonial government what can be called an ‘inhibited political centre’. The colonial government increasingly exercised greater self-restraint domestically, despite its autocratic system, as it became aware that should it provoke a major anti-colonial movement it would risk its own existence, since the PRC would almost certainly intervene and Britain could not be sure of support from the outside world, including the USA. This was the beginning of a process that would slowly but steadily transform the Hong Kong government into one highly responsive to public opinions.” (p198, A Modern History of Hong Kong, Steve Tsang) “While it remained an essentially British colonial administration, it also fulfilled the basic conditions for such a government, namely, efficiency, fairness, honesty, benevolent paternalism, and non-intrusion into the lives of ordinary people. This was an achievement that had no match in over two thousand years of China’s history as a unified country, and could be rivaled only after Taiwan successfully transformed itself into a democracy in 1996.” (p197, Steven Tsang) After 1997, Hong Kong government abandoned all those five basic conditions of good governance: efficiency, fairness, honesty, benevolent paternalism an non-intrusion, because the PRC doesn’t have any of these qualities and there wasn’t any ‘inhibited political centre’ after 1997. The government doesn’t have the foresight to win popular support by upholding these five qualities but choose to win favours from Beijing at the cost of the livelihood of Hongkongers.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:24:35 +0000
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