HK ready for China's takeover

In the eighth of his series on Hong Kong's transition from British to Chinese sovereignty, our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin looks at some of the varied, less somber reactions to the changeover.

HONG KONG (JP): As Hong Kong prepares to become again, and forever, part of China, the Great Fixation on June 30, 1997 in this complex international city is finally coming to a head.

There is massive hype but little if any hysteria.

True as always to the commercial pragmatism which lies at the heart of its astonishing growth, Hong Kong is being Hong Kong -- trying very hard to make a profit out of the handover. Caps, watches, shirts, T-shirts, cups, hats, playing cards, postcards, plus all manner of other goods are emblazoned with the June 30- July 1, 1997 logos.

A rumor went around that using the flag of the People's Republic of China on commercial products would soon be an offense against the law. No problem. China's flag remains in place on many articles until midnight on Monday, when the plastic transfer of China's flag will be peeled off, just in case.

My personal prize for the biggest commercial scam in the consumer goods category goes to the gweilo (foreign devil) who has manufactured cans of "colonial air". The can is empty but the label assures the buyer that if you inhale the contents, you will acquire a stiff upper lip and quickly become arrogant.

Beyond the rank commercialism, Hong Kong is a mixture of circus, casino and party. In varying degrees, it always is -- but now the tendency is pronounced.

The circus aspect of the handover got going rather late -- a reflection, perhaps, that feeling joyous was considered an obligation rather than a duty. Too late it was realized that, since Hong Kong is an international city, it ought to attract some top personalities into the handover ring. World-famous tenors Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo were belatedly sounded out, but it was too late. Of course, they are booked years in advance.

I am told that Hong Kong is attracting some leading pop stars, both Chinese and Western, but since their world of weird and irritating sounds is totally alien to this correspondent, I cannot tell you who. But the mixed up Western-but-Chinese identity of Hong Kong was superbly illustrated by a poster that has been littering the walls near where I live. It hails the greatest pop concert in Hong Kong's and maybe the world's history.

In the middle of the poster there is a picture of a slightly younger Deng Xiaoping, China's former leader. Deng is waving his hand grandly much in the manner of a ringmaster in control of the show, with his hand hovering near the name of a British pop star Boy George. Almost without any doubt the name Boy George meant as little to Deng as it means to me.

The casino-like countenance of Hong Kong has been frequently on view of late -- and not just in the Stock Exchange. First there were, as carefully reported in the Times of India, the stampedes after stamps, as postage stamps bearing the head of Queen Elizabeth II quickly became an item of assumed stored value, for all those feeling the compulsion to try and get rich quickly. I am told that in China itself Queen Elizabeth II stamps have been anxiously sought as a colonial memento. But whether all those Hongkongers, who laid out thousands of dollars buying the stamps in anticipation of a bull market, actually made a financial killing remains to be seen.

Then there were the record 110,000 persons that turned up recently for the last day of the races for this season. The jackpot for the triple trio betting selection had not been paid out for weeks, and so had accrued to an unusual size. If someone guessed the winners for three selected races on the last day they stood to gain a little less than US 100 million. As it happened, no one made the triple selection. The jackpot could not be held over and so had to be awarded. A couple of hundred persons who guessed right for two of the three races all became millionaires overnight -- even if they had only made a hundred dollar bet.

But the greatest Hong Kong casino right now is the Stock Market itself. When the last British Governor Chris Patten arrived in 1992 the HKSE index stood at 5,200. Today it stands at a shade under a record high of 15,200. Patten, who modestly declines to claim credit for this growth, can safely assert that no other governor of this or any other colony had presided over such a bull run.

Mind you, rumor has it that China, currently flush with foreign funds, and desperately anxious to avoid the loss of face brought about by a sudden drop in the index, has been quietly backing the market in advance of the handover. The get-rich mania has been most clearly on view in the trading of so-called "red- chips". These are the shares of recently listed companies in China.

In this, the get-rich mania in both China and Hong Kong again comes more clearly into view. When one China firm called Beijing Enterprises put its shares on the market recently, the shares were oversubscribed by more than 1,200 times. A vast sum, between HK$200 billion and HK$300 billion, was briefly tied up in the subscription -- so much, that had any financial crisis struck at the same time, the whole banking system would have been in jeopardy. No one seemed to worry about this. No one seemed to worry about the questionable aspects of these share offerings.

The prevailing ethos is -- Let the good times roll, until, of course, there is an inevitable "correction". But right now part of the Hong Kong mood is that many players in the casino have kidded themselves, nor for the first or last time, that the HKSE index will go on rising forever.

Of course, the ultra-optimistic business mood is backed up by many "opinion polls" which claim, in varying degrees, that a clear majority of Hong Kong people are "confident" or "very confident" about the future. Since many of these polls are backed by businessmen whose motives I distrust, or by academics whose perspicacity I doubt, the results remind me that East Asians are exceedingly prone to tell pollsters what they think the pollsters want to hear.

But the more discerning polls by academics, who stay around long enough to check their own findings, clearly reveal the doubts and the anxieties that lurk just below the surface.

One indication of this is that the most determined efforts at making the handover into a party appear to be by the young foreigners (mostly British and American) in the yuppie-dominated Lan Kwai Fong area of Hong Kong island near my office. They are helped by the fact that Hong Kong is currently enjoying a five- or six-day holiday -- June 28, 29, 30, July 1 and 2, and for many businesses July 3 too. They intend to make the most of it.

But as I move around other districts of Hong Kong the partying seems less obvious among Hong Kong Chinese. Indications earlier this year, for example, were that the China-led united front in Hong Kong was having a little difficulty organizing the required degree of enthusiasm for the Big Event, and the resumption of Chinese sovereignty.

Two events are pretty certain to give everyone the party spirit even if an element of Sino-British rivalry has crept into the show.

On the last day of British sovereignty, June 30, there will be a 20-minute fireworks display in Hong Kong harbor, which promises to be the best ever.

On the first day of Chinese sovereignty, July 1, there will be an hour long fireworks display worth about US$ 14 million, funded by the businessmen who are already making it big in China's mythical market.

China's rule over Hong Kong is certain to start with a bang.

Window A: Of course, the ultra-optimistic business mood is backed up by many "opinion polls" which claim, in varying degrees, that a clear majority of Hong Kong people are "confident" or "very confident" about the future.