Hong Kong SAR: In Pursuit of Domestic and International Order (review)

This is a collection of fourteen papers derived from a September 1996 conference on the future of Hong Kong. As this sort of book tends to be, it is a mixed bag in terms of both the quality of scholarship and the diversity of topics addressed. It is hard to make a coherent and integrated work out of conference papers, but this book is stronger than most in this genre.

The editors divide the contributions into two parts, "Domestic Order" and "International Order." In the first part there are seven essays: Cheung Chor-yung writes on political legitimacy, Michael Yahuda on mainland political relations, Lin Tzong-biau and Kan Chak-yuen on mainland-funded enterprises, Wong Hung on labor in Hong Kong, Beatrice Leung on the Roman Catholic Church in Hong Kong, Ren Yue on Hong Kong NGOs, and, in an excellent essay, Andrew Byrnes on Hong Kong's international obligations relating to human rights. In the second part, there are five essays: Roda Mushkat writes on the post-transition continuity of international treaty obligations, Jane C. Y. Lee and Gerald Chan on Hong Kong's international relations policy, Timothy Ka-ying Wong on Taiwan, Ting Wai on relations between Hong Kong and the United States, and Brian Bridges on relations between Hong Kong and Europe. These are followed by a general summary of issues in the 1997 transition by the distinguished political scientist, Joseph Y. S. Cheng. The essay by Wong on Taiwan is a superb introduction to contemporary Taiwan politics and international relations, but it is rather weakly connected to the Hong Kong theme of the book. Some of the contributions read like assigned topics that the authors have been hard-pressed to fill with some kind of insight. This leads to a certain amount of filler along the lines of "Hong Kong is of course important to China in a number of ways" (p. 260). Closer editing is called for, but this collection is not as rife with redundancies as other conference volumes.

In the years leading up to 1997, there were a number of scholarly meetings focused on the theme of what would happen to Hong Kong after the reversion to Chinese sovereignty (I edited such a collection myself, Politics and Society in Hong Kong Toward 1997 [Toronto: York University-University of Toronto Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 1992]). While we are now well past July 1997 and have a clearer idea of Hong Kong's future political and economic direction as a Special Autonomous Region of the People's Republic, it is nevertheless interesting to compare the concerns that were expressed about Hong Kong's fate in the years leading up to the reversion to Chinese sovereignty with the realities of Hong Kong under Chinese rule today. From this perspective, the book is still worth a read.

While Hong Kong was still under British colonial rule, people were worried that after 1997 a repressive political regime would emerge based on rule by the Central Committee in Beijing rather than the rule of British common law. The notion that the likes of Martin Lee, Szeto Wah, and Emily Lau could become "prisoners of conscience" did not seem entirely out of the question only a few years ago. Like one of the authors who contributed to this collection, many of us were worried that after 1997 "negative changes in Hong Kong like rampant corruption, [a] deteriorating business environment in which favouritism prevails over competition, and freedom of information becoming questionable, may lead to the withdrawal of American multinational companies from Hong Kong" (p. 243). Such fears led to a large-scale emigration of the Hong Kong middle class to the advanced Western nations, mostly to Canada. While one suspects that as the years go by Beijing will exert increasing influence on all areas of Hong Kong's social, political, and economic development, none of...