MCLC: HK identity and democratic values

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: christoph steinhardt (hcsteinhardt at gmail.com)
Subject: HK identity and democratic values
***********************************************************

Source: China Beat (3/20/12): http://www.thechinabeat.org/?p=4192

Hong Kong Identity and Democratic Values
By Sebastian Veg

When Peking University Professor Kong Qingdong's diatribe on Hongkongers
and their lingering colonial infatuation swept over the Internet in late
January, the widespread and growing uneasiness about mainland Chinese in
Hong Kong suddenly had a face. Triggered by a viral video of a Hongkonger
telling off a mainland family in the subway because their daughter was
eating dry instant noodles, Kong's interview sparked a wave of predictable
but nonetheless justified outrage in Hong Kong. It took place against the
background of the annual mainland shopping spree over Chinese New Year (in
a previous episode, Dolce and Gabbana staff in Tsim Sha Tsui sparked
protests by telling passers-by that only mainlanders were allowed to take
pictures of the shop) as well as growingly acrimonious debates over
mainland women giving birth in the emergency rooms of Hong Kong hospitals
in order to secure permanent residency for their children, and over
Guangdong registered vehicles' right to drive freely in Hong Kong. It was
followed by a counter-campaign in Apple Daily and other Hong Kong
newspapers depicting mainlanders as locusts looting Hong Kong, pushing up
property prices and free-riding on the-albeit minimal-welfare provided by
the SAR government.

Professor Kong, in a true cadre-style tirade with a thin varnish of May
Fourth anti-colonialism, referred to Lu Xun's 1927 critique of colonial
Hong Kong and his denunciation of xizai ??, the fake-foreign devils
populating Shanghai's concessions, chastised by Lu Xun for being "dogs to
the foreigners but wolves to their fellow Chinese." He conceded that Hong
Kong had some advantages, "for example the legal system" or fazhi ??, but,
he hastened to add, this was only necessary because Hongkongers' suzhi, or
"human quality" was so low. In China, he went on, there is no need for the
rule of law because social harmony is achieved by raising the people's
moral qualities, an echo of teachings of his 73th generation forefather,
Confucius. Suzhi is one of the terms popularized by the CCP that has come
to feel natural on the mainland (the more traditional term would be
pinzhi, or "moral fibre") and served to legitimize the quasi-apartheid
system instituted by Mao and based on the distinction between urban and
rural residence permits (hukou). In this logic, urban residents are
commonly associated with high suzhi, as opposed to peasants and-according
to Kong-Hongkongers. Interestingly, and regrettably, many Hong Kongers
have phrased their resistance to the mainlanders' "invasion" in very
similar terms. The anti-"locust" and anti-pregnant mother campaign,
vocally relayed by the local democrats, has not focused on the values that
make Hong Kong unique and different from China, but on the insufficiently
"civilized" habits of mainlanders.

While a December poll suggested that the feeling of Chinese identity among
Hong Kong citizens was at an all-time low (immediately provoking a furious
denial on the private blog of a Central liaison office employee who
protested that the questions had been asked in an "unscientific" way: as
Hong Kong is not a country, it has no identity attached to it), there has
been little reflection about what makes the current waves of immigration
from China different from the many previous ones that were, over time,
Fused into the distinctive culture that has made Hong Kong unique. Not all
the people leaving Guangdong or Shanghai throughout the 1950s, 1960s and
1970s were, after all, political refugees; many were simply relatives from
across the border hoping for a better life. Yet it seems that Hong Kong is
now more apprehensive about losing its difference. The question is what
exactly that difference is. Formulating it in the discourse of suzhi means
that mainlanders are derided for failing to form orderly queues, for
speaking loudly in public places, and for flouting established social
rules, like eating or drinking in the MTR. Rarely in this debate have Hong
Kong's distinctive values been characterized by critics of mainland
presence as "democratic," based on freedom of expression, mutual respect
and equality not only before the law but also in social interactions. The
ever observant Chinese political commentator Chang Ping, whose work-visa
application to Hong Kong has been placed indefinitely on hold by the SAR
government, noted in the South China Morning Post op-ed "Brothers in arms"
that what Hongkongers might legitimately resent is not the presence of
mainlanders in Hong Kong as much as what we might call the "cadre culture"
that characterizes many of the compulsive Chinese shoppers on the New Year
spree: a type of behavior by a very specific type of person underlining
that they are powerful and somehow above the law-a type of behavior
resented by many ordinary citizens on the mainland. But Hong Kong's
democrats in particular have failed to provide any kind of political
reading of the population's uneasiness: instead they have indulged in
populist escalation, calling to revise the Basic Law to deprive Hong
Kong-born children of mainland mothers of the right to permanent
residency. The democrats are often criticized for having no political
program beyond democracy, but perhaps it would be more
exact to say that their understanding of democracy oftentimes seems
limited to an orderly queue of people lining up-in front of a ballot box
they may never reach.

More generally, fifteen years after the handover, the relationship between
China and Hong Kong is as complex as ever. The Dengist calculation,
according to which the "decolonization of minds," as enforced through
"patriotic education," would produce "patriotic" citizens (i.e. Beijing
loyalists) in Hong Kong and therefore lay the foundation for "safe"
universal suffrage, has not translated into reality. On the contrary, it
Has produced a group of young, vocal anti-Beijing activists, who seem to
speak for the entire post-80s generation, aggravated by rising housing
prices and growing social inequality which the handover has entailed. In
the larger picture, however, this group remains a minority, squeezed
between a super-elite of tycoons and businessmen with interests in China,
and a large working class, steadily growing by the effect of immigration
from the mainland, which has no particular feeling of cultural identity in
Hong Kong. As it already did in colonial times, this working class sees
itself to a strong extent as part of a larger Cantonese culture, totally
disconnected from the lifestyle of the English-speaking elite. The
democrats try to cater to this part of the population by framing the issue
of mainlanders in Hong Kong in populist terms ("they will take your
hospital spots"), while seeming to ignore that this part of the population
massively votes for the pro-Beijing DAB (Democratic Alliance for the
Betterment of Hong Kong). Contrary to what has happened in Taiwan,
however, the sense of a Hong Kong identity that is both local and
democratic has little or no grassroots base in the larger population.
Those commentators who have recently engaged in colonial nostalgia might
do well to remember that this division of society is exactly the product
of the colonial regime.

This is the context in which the two elections of 2012, the chief executive
on March 25 and the LegCo elections in September, will take place.
Interestingly, the profiles of the three candidates competing for Chief
Executive seem to tally almost exactly with the three social groups
Outlined above. Henry Tang represents the pro-Beijing elite of tycoons and
businessmen; Albert Ho, the pan-democrat with no chance of winning, the
squeezed middle class; and Leung Chun-ying the pro-Beijing populist who
scares the tycoons, the loosely pro-Chinese working class. In this context,
in which a political definition of democracy seem to have largely
disappeared from the values deemed to define Hong Kong, and even from the
entire campaign debate, one may wonder, with a pinch of nostalgia, whether
"Hong Kong identity" has not simply become a stand-in for what in another
context has been called the déjà disparu-Hong Kong's democratic culture.

Sebastian Veg is the director of the French Centre for Research on
Contemporary China (Hong Kong). He has published a monography on Lu Xun and
European modernism, and his current research interests are in the area of
literature and intellectuals in modern and contemporary China.