Govt hands knock off special HK image

By Edward Neilan

HONG KONG (JP): The thought had never before crossed my mind to write that Hong Kong is becoming "just another Chinese city."

But day-by-day, at a pace we couldn't have imagined at the time of the 1997 July 1 handover, the image of the fabulous port city is being eroded by subtle change that is making it more like "another Tianjin" than the "pearl of the orient" that it used to be.

Putting Hong Kong under the microscope has become instantly fashionable with the announcement by Washington's Heritage Foundation last month that Singapore had now become No.1 in terms of economic freedom, replacing Hong Kong which had previously held that ranking.

Newsweek magazine, in its Asian edition, recently headlined "Singapore vs. Hong Kong" on its cover. Leading newspapers in Hong Kong (Population: 6.2 million; per capita wealth: US$23,000) and Singapore (Population: 3 million; per capita wealth: US$27,000) picked up the lead and presented several features and series on the competition.

Asiaweek magazine, owned by Time Inc., culminated a two-part series on the Singapore-Hong Kong rivalry by identifying Asia's 40 most-livable cities. Three Japanese cities led the list--Tokyo, Fukuoka, Osaka--followed by (4) Singapore, (5) Taipei, Taiwan, (6) Georgetown, Malaysia, and (7) Hong Kong. The next-rated "Chinese" cities were (10) Beijing, (11) Macau, and (12) Shanghai.

The Hong Kong's government's controversial intervention in the market was partly responsible for its toppling from the "most free" category. Other insidious moves include a tightening self- censorship of the press, notable effort to reduce expatriate salaries and even presence, and a distinct switch of preference from the English language to Mandarin and Cantonese in education.

The overall change is not directly on the orders of Communist Beijing, which was once feared. But rather it is a looking-over- the-shoulder sense; the Big Brother is watching syndrome. This is different from the government's "parental" image in Singapore.

When I told old friend Neville de Silva, columnist of the Hong Kong Standard, that I had just come from a week in Singapore, he bellowed "What are you, some kind of masochist?"

And writer Nick Walker, who has lived in both places, said "There's more buzz in Hong Kong than Singapore."

Such spirited competitiveness doesn't hide some selected stark facts pointing to Hong Kong's relative decline.

--Hong Kong's English-language South China Morning Post, for years the most profitable newspaper in the world, last year saw a 48.8 percent or US$53 million decline in profits. The other English-language paper, the Standard, is on the ropes and up for sale. By contrast the Straits Times and its sister papers Business Times and New Paper are booming in Singapore.

While Hong Kong is officially downgrading the English language in education, Singapore is stressing English.

Vijay Menon, Secretary-General of the region's premier communications organization, Asian Media Information and Communications Center (AMIC), located on an idyllic green campus in Singapore, told me "The future of the press, and Internet, in this multi-racial society is definitely tied to the English- language."

--The remaining expatriates in the Hong Kong civil service are being pressured to take pay cuts. This includes professors at Hong Kong University, whose academic salaries are no longer the world's highest.

British young people who didn't need visas under British rule, are finding renewal difficulties. Fewer and fewer upscale waiter jobs are going to expatriates. Next to go may be the 30,000 Filipina maids whose jobs could be handles by Chinese from the mainland. In Singapore, expatriates are welcomed in the drive for technological excellence.

--The outflow of expatriates is taking its toll on the trendy new Soho area (South of Hollywood Road) where the Bistro Manchu (run by a lady from Harbin in China's Heiloongjiang province), and a few Nepalese eateries run by discharged Gurkhas from Britain's departed garrison) may survive. The temporarily popular Yelts-Inn, a Russian pub, has a thinning clientele as do a couple of Cuban restaurants.

Hong Kong's drift is toward being a service center for interior China. It is behind Taiwan and Singapore in high tech manufacturing. The latter accounts for nearly 25 percent of Singapore's gross domestic product (GDP) and only 9.9 percent of Hong Kong's.

The old Hong Kong, the international city that was given its "difference" as a British colony, had its lifestyle guaranteed "for 50 years" by the Chinese Communists. But there will be a profound change before 50 months, let alone 50 years.

It is not necessarily negative but just a fact: the outward identities of Hong Kong and Shanghai will merge and become more and more alike in the coming years.

The writer is a Tokyo-based analyst of Northeast Asian affairs and a Media Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University.t