Hong Kong's first election holds a message for China

By Jonathan Power

LONDON (JP): After Hong Kong's first full-scale legislative election, do the Chinese communists still think the Hong Kong story is going to end when, at midnight on June 30, 1997, they run down the union jack and humble the same white men who humbled China in the Opium Wars? Does Beijing really think that, at that moment, Hong Kong's political vitality is going to simply drain away into the dark?

No, they will get the keys of the city, but they won't get the soul of Hong Kong. This election, with the rout of the pro- Beijing candidates, has made that obvious.

The election turn-out may have been only 36 percent, but it was who turned out that counts. It was, in the soon-to-be workers' paradise, the more educated, the more worldly, the more successful and, most important, the younger members, of Hong Kong's up-and-up society. Whatever the weaknesses in Hong Kong -- its money grubbing and the tardiness of its British rulers in getting round to building democratic structures -- its strengths are formidable. The Chinese are not going to find it an easy roll.

Here's a society that scores higher than Britain in the world competitiveness league table just published by the World Economic Forum. Its longevity, infant mortality rate, standards of health care, education and all the other essential indicators of social progress are now at North American and west European levels. The news media is alert and informed. Standards of justice are high. Its business world has outgrown its cowboy days and depends as much on regulatory institutions, the stock exchange, a code of private property rights and courts as it does on simple economic brawn. Democracy and human rights, at home and abroad, are part of the staple diet of serious conversation and have been since Tiananmen Square, when Hong Kong students found themselves, somewhat to their own surprise, out on the streets in support of their fellows in Beijing.

Are six million Hong Kong citizens going to roll over just because the union jack is down and the hammer and sickle are up? Even if most seem not to care too much to vote, there are a good million who seriously do. Moreover, many of these voters have their hands on most of the day-to-day levers of power that affect much of ordinary life -- business, the hospitals, the press, the courts and education. They have made it clear that they are not the types to fall into line just because Beijing cracks its whip. If Beijing acts on its word and disbands the newly-elected legislature, it will find this will not be as simple as closing down the University of Beijing after Tiananmen Square.

What leverage does Beijing have, short of sending in the army and firing into the crowd -- which would be totally self- destructive -- in effect blowing up the economic generator that powers the whole of the giant southern China economy?

Ironically, the take-over accomplished, China will have less leverage than it does at present. Now it can threaten noncooperation, as it did a couple of years ago with the construction of a new airport, if it does not get its way on political matters. After July 1977 such posturing will be moot. The Chinese will only have themselves to threaten.

The Chinese authorities are set to soon discover one of the eternal mysteries of government in advanced societies -- you may be in office, but it doesn't always follow that you're in power.

If Deng Xiaoping dies, as is probable, before July 1, 1997, it is doubtful that a new leadership will have either the cohesion or the willpower to face what could easily become a hurricane of confrontation with Hong Kong. If, however, Deng lingers on, the present leadership is clearly programed to dismantle the legislature. But at the same time, paradoxically, the leadership would be anxious to avoid upping the ante if it led to events spinning so out of control that it would demand complex and difficult new decisions. They know that they are not united enough to make them. There were divisions enough over Tiananmen Square; there would be rather more today.

This election is Hong Kong's historic opportunity -- the first public defiance right across the board of Chinese totalitarianism. For China, July 1, 1997, will not be the end, only the beginning of the end.