Two authoritative books reveal Hong Kong’s role in reviving China’s economic fortunes and Beijing’s attempts to impose its will abroad
In celebration of the sixth plenum of the 19th central committee earlier this month, the Chinese Communist party published yet another history of its own glorious achievements. Many pages were devoted to the wise, indeed infallible leadership of the present incumbent, Xi Jinping. Chairman Xi sets considerable store by both territorial integrity and, as he might put it, the righting of past wrongs. In that catalogue, the unequal treaty by which Britain acquired what was seen in the 19th century as an unpromisingly barren rock just off the south coast of China loomed large.
The unappealing rock, lacking in almost every natural resource beyond a deep and safe harbour, was to grow into one of the world’s most dynamic and prosperous societies. That Hong Kong flourished as much as it did under British colonial rule was in no small measure thanks to China: proximity, of course, allowed Hong Kong to play its critical role as intermediary between China and the world of global trading, finance and investment. But proximity also allowed Hong Kong to benefit from the talent and energy of the millions of people who fled China, beginning in 1949, when the CCP’s victory in China’s civil war triggered the exodus of some 100,000 people a day. When, in 1950, numbers reached 3 million, the Hong Kong government reluctantly closed the border. The refugee flow continued through the catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward in the late 50s and of the Cultural Revolution in the 60s, despite the best efforts of Beijing to persuade its citizens that life was better in the People’s Republic.
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