Great Britain bids farewell to Hong Kong in style

Great Britain bids farewell to Hong Kong in style

Following is the second of three articles by The Jakarta
Post's Asia correspondent, Harvey Stockwin, dealing with the
return of Hong Kong to China on June 27th. The first in the
series appeared on Saturday.

HONG KONG (JP): So, precisely at midnight on June 30, 1997,
Hong Kong returned to China after being under British sovereignty
for 156 years.

The handover ceremony brought to a close a complex day in
which the British said goodbye to its last colony in Asia in
style and with pageantry, despite inclement weather.

Late Monday afternoon (June 30) President Jiang and Chinese
Prime Minister Li Peng arrived at Hong Kong's Kaitak Airport in a
Boeing 747 of the national flag carrier Air China. Security was
tight as Jiang and Li were quickly whisked away to a Kowloon
hotel owned by one of Hong Kong wealthiest billionaires, Li Ka
Shing.

The first event of the day had been when the three remaining
Hong Kong-based patrol ships of the Royal Navy, HMS Starling, HMS
Plover and HMS Peacock did a farewell patrol around the coast of
Hong Kong island.

It had been the British Navy which first landed troops on Hong
Kong island in 1841, a day before the island officially became a
colony. The three ships have been hard at work, until June 30th,
assisting the much larger fleet of Hong Kong's maritime police
patrol boats, trying to suppress illegal Chinese immigration into
Hong Kong. That task continues after the creation of the HKSAR.
On the Hong Kong side of the border the future patrols will be
done by the Hong Kong police while the PLA patrol boats are due
to try and prevent illegal emigration from China on the other
side of the sea border.

After the handover, these three Navy patrol boats accompanied
the royal yacht Britannia, together with the frigate HMS Chatham,
to Manila, where they have been sold to the Philippine Navy --
wherein their duty is likely to be preventing what Filipinos see
as illegal Chinese encroachments into their offshore islands.

Soon after the farewell Royal Navy patrol, at roughly the same
time in the morning, in the Chinese capital Beijing, around
20,000 police peacefully cleared Tiananmen Square of hundreds of
thousands of ordinary citizens who had packed it during the
previous 36 hours, amidst the aroused patriotic fervor over the
return of Hong Kong to the motherland.

The huge crowds, the largest to gather there since the
demonstrations of May and June 1989, must have worried the
communist party leadership. But there were no visible untoward
incidents. However the police cleared the crowd away because, on
the night of June 30, the Square was only open to 100,000 guests
carefully selected by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They
were the only ones allowed to see the Hong Kong clock, which for
the last twelve months, has been ticking off the seconds until
Hong Kong returned to the embrace of the motherland, finally
reach the number zero.

Early in the afternoon on June 30, back in Hong Kong, outgoing
Governor Chris Patten and British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave
Hong Kong residents one final display of the kind of populist
politics which CCP leaders always avoid. A huge crowd quickly
gathered in one of Hong Kong's best shopping malls, Pacific
Place, when word leaked out that Patten and Blair and their wives
were ostensibly shopping inside.

As the Prime Minister and the former Conservative leader
enthusiastically worked the crowd of Chinese and foreign
residents, shaking hands with as many people as they could, they
were warmly applauded and cheered. Patten, the political
professional, brought a completely new style to a colonial
Governorship -- I doubt if any of his predecessors anywhere in
the Empire ever behaved like this -- and he simply could not
resist having one final walkabout. The Blair-Patten politicking
contained a probably unintended message for those very few with
the eyes to see it: had Chinese leaders been able to mix as
freely and as happily with the crowds in Tiananmen Square in
1989, that whole episode need never have ended in tragedy.

Patten then returned to Government House, the longtime home of
British Governors of Hong Kong, for a solemn farewell ceremony
which concluded with the first of three formal descents of the
Union Jack amidst the playing of the Last Post. There was some
picture-perfect, completely synchronized ceremonial marching by
an honor guard of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, which was to
lose its title "Royal" in just over seven hours time.

Many of Patten's staff, high or lowly, both Chinese and
British, were in tears, or close to it. So was Patten. The
ceremony concluded with Patten and his wife circling the front of
the house three times in the Governor's Rolls Royce -- a sign in
Chinese of an intention to return.

Government House will not be used by the incoming Chief
Executive of Hong Kong Tung Chee Hwa, as he says the building has
"bad fengshui" (adverse spirits), and he in any case prefers his
own home. But it will be used for government guests and formal
HKSAR functions.

Next on the agenda was the arrival at the airport of the top
Chinese leaders, quickly followed by Britain's unilateral
farewell ceremony. It was very different and far more extravagant
than the sister ceremony held almost 50 years ago in New Delhi,
when the Empire in Asia first began to dissolve.

This was because it was, in part at least, an extravaganza
produced for television -- and was just like similar productions
for, say, recent Olympic Games opening ceremonies. The farewell
began with Chinese lion dances singing and dancing by Hong Kong
school children and it ended with massed children spelling out
"Hong Kong" in English and Chinese on the parade ground.

In between there were moving goodbye speeches by both Governor
Patten and Prince Charles. The prince read a message from his
mother, Queen Elizabeth, notable for the fact that she pointedly
mentioned that 3.5 million Hong Kong residents who were still
"British nationals". Most of the 3.5 million do not now possess
full British passports granting residence in the UK, but the
Queen's remark did convey a sense of continuing obligation,
probable intentional on her part.

The most stirring part of the farewell was inevitably the five
British military bands and the drill by small contingents from
the army, navy and air force. Part of the naval detachment was
from the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious -- but Illustrious has
not paid a call at Hong Kong during its current deployment in
East and Southeast Asia. This is mainly because the British did
not want to further deteriorate Sino-British relations with
anything that smacked of gunboat diplomacy in 1997.

The last part of the British farewell ceremony took place
amidst a tropical downpour but the ceremony continued as both
soldiers and Hong Kong children, Governor Patten and Prime
Minister Blair all got soaking wet. As the Union Jack came down
for the second time at the end of that ceremony it was impossible
to see who was just wet and who was crying -- but that there was
a good deal of sadness at the British departure in many Hong Kong
Chinese hearts today, there can be no doubt.

But -- in complete contradiction -- there is also great joy
that China is making a major move towards reunification. The joy
would be greater if China was also moving along the path of
political reform but of course, under the current CCP leadership,
it is not.

After getting drenched, Blair quickly crossed the harbor to
meet Jiang and Li in their Kowloon hotel.

At 9 p.m. 509 members of the Chinese navy, army, and air
force, many of them sitting stiffly in open lorries, crossed the
land border from China into Hongkong so that they could take up
their garrison duties immediately upon the actual start of
Chinese sovereignty at midnight. The last British troops flew out
of Hong Kong at 3.30 a.m. on special charter flights.

Meanwhile in both Beijing and Hong Kong there were galas
celebrating the handover. There was a pop concert of Hong Kong
racecourse. A massive half hour British-sponsored fireworks
display in the harbor followed their farewell ceremony. Prior to
the handover at midnight, there was the banquet for 4,000
dignitaries at the new Convention Center. The highest ranking
Chinese official at the banquet was the Foreign Minister Qian
Qichen.

The midnight ceremony transferring power from Britain to China
was austere and brief -- and unlike any of its predecessors in
other parts of Britain's Asian Empire. The two languages used
were Mandarin and English, much to the distaste of the Cantonese
majority in Hong Kong. Surprisingly, the three PLA flag carriers
goose-stepped their way to the dais in the company of the three
British flag carriers marching in the normal manner. It was just
one more failure of the Chinese to be either conciliatory or
shrewdly political -- goose-stepping by troops forcibly reminds
spectators of communist or dictatorial regimes.

There was a little silent Hong Kong input into the ceremony,
however. Three Hong Kong Police guards, strikingly dressed in
immaculate white uniforms, took down the Hong Kong British flag,
while another three put up the new Hong Kong flag under China.
As earlier reported, for the purposes of the midnight ceremony
Tung Chee Hwa was only a member of the Chinese delegation.

As anticipated, the two brief speeches at the handover did not
grace the midnight moment with any memorable phrases. Prince
Charles did at least make some relatively pointed references on
the need for the concept of "one country, two systems" to work,
and be seen to work. President Jiang merely reiterated the
commitments made by China in the 1984 Sino-British Joint
Declaration.

Naturally, after having been approved by the Standing
Committee of the CCP politburo, Jiang's unexceptional speech
contained no relevant or fresh words of reassurance for Hong Kong
compatriots. It could hardly be otherwise since China's
propaganda has endlessly stressed that Hong Kong people are
patriotically yearning for the embrace of the motherland. From a
CCP viewpoint, who needs reassurance?

Similarly it was probably the first time in the history of
Britain's decolonization in Asia that the successor power could
not say, at the all-important midnight moment when sovereignty
returns to Asia, any friendly or appreciative words about some
positive aspect of Britain's role. Again, this was
understandable. China's government-controlled press, plays, films
and ballets have all recently portrayed Britain as Hong Kong's
evil oppressor. There has been absolutely no mention of the ways
in which Britain has helped the Hong Kong dynamo to tick so
productively.

This omission is the more noteworthy given that, in Hong Kong
with its population of six million, British administration has
presided over the creation of an economy one-fifth the size of
China's. Outgoing Governor Chris Patten in his farewell speech
called Hong Kong "a Chinese city with British characteristics".
A spontaneous Chinese leader, aware of public moods, and with
some awareness of populist politics, could have played with this
phrase to send a signal to the Hong Kong compatriots.

But that, of course, is not the way politics are played in
Beijing.