A brighter future than the computer will allow
David Willoughby de Broke
RED FLAG OVER HONG KONG by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, David Newman and Alvin Babushka Roundhouse, P.O. Box 140, Oxford, 0X2 7FF, £12.99, pp. 208
Hong Kong has every claim to be the most exhilarating city in the world as well as one of the most prosperous. So why are the books and articles on it so deeply and uniformly depressing? Red Flag over Hong Kong is no exception, presenting an appar- ently flawless point-by-point argument to show that Hong Kong's current freedoms and all that underpins those freedoms will wither in the years beyond 1997.
What makes this gloomy handbook so insidiously convincing at first sight is that the three American joint-authors have impeccable research credentials as well as a thorough knowledge of Hong Kong's histo- ry from a barren rock 130 years ago to one of the world's great cities today.
The avowed purpose of the book is to inform, to make it easier for decisions about where Hong Kong is heading after 1997 to be based on intelligent predictions. Everything that makes Hong Kong special is held up to the light, examined and invari-
ably found to have no future. The rule of law, freedom of the press, free elections, freedom of speech, the free market; all these, the foundations of Hong Kong's prosperity, will disappear or be watered down following the handover to China.
The authors argue that even if China has the will to implement its undertakings to Hong Kong it will be practically unable to do so, partly due to pressures from China's own internal politics, partly due to creeping corruption and cronyism and partly because Chinese officials just don't under- stand what makes Hong Kong tick. Add to this Hong Kong's perceived reluctance to upset its new masters and the sad conclu- sion is drawn that Hong Kong will end up as just another Chinese enterprise zone, another Shenzen or Shanghai — financially successful, politically supine.
This is all fairly predictable stuff. So what makes these authors stand out from the rest of the pack of gloomy pragmatists?
And I'd like my tortellini to look like it does in the Sunday supplements.' The ace up the book's sleeve apparently is the computer model of the territory's future, approved, we are told, by none other than the CIA. Given the CIA's track record this is about as valuable as a racquet endorsement by a Wimbledon first-round loser — but let that pass.
The 130 pages of the main text are embellished with the fruits of this computa- tion; but the resulting 19 graphs and pie charts confuse rather than clarify the argu- ment. The appendix is best avoided by the mathematically challenged; it attempts to demonstrate the accuracy of the computer model with brain-stretching algebraic for- mulae, and when the formulae run out jar- gon takes over: 'Banks's monotonicity result provides part of the theoretical basis for the introduction of coercion into spatial analysis'. Wake up at the back there.
Computer predictions have their place but they tend to write people out of the script; and as this book points out, the six million people in Hong Kong differ from their 1.2 billion cousins in China in one fundamental way; they are free, and they wish to remain free. They have shown this desire for freedom by whatever measure anyone cares to use: local elections, general elections or opinion polls. Those who have spoken up for Hong Kong's freedoms have been widely supported by its people, while those who advocate appeasement of China, whether with an eye to the bottom line or merely in the hope of a quiet life have come off second best.
Britain and China have jointly guaran- teed that Hong Kong's values and free- doms will continue for 50 years beyond 1997. The authors of Red Flag believe that this guarantee is being eroded, that it will be further eroded and is unenforceable. This conclusion is flawed, as it fails to take into account the spirit and determination of people in Hong Kong to ensure that Britain and China both live up to the promises they have made. Neither does it take adequately into account China's strong desire for a seat at the top table; a desire to join the World Trade Organisa- tion, to host the Olympic Games and to bring Taiwan back into the fold. These are all perfectly reasonable aims, but China must be made aware that a seat at the top table carries a price. Finally, we can be more optimistic about Hong Kong than this book allows because it is so overwhelmingly in Britain's and China's interests that things should go well after 1997. Hong Kong, with over £70 bil- lion of British investment, is our gateway to the world's fastest growing market; for China, Hong Kong is its richest city by far, its largest source of foreign investment. How China behaves in Hong Kong will Ir a litmus test which the rest of the world will. be closely watching; it will take a dim view, of failure. Hong Kong has a happy knack of confounding the pessimists; the lights are still burning there, and will continue to burn long after 1997.
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