Thursday, September 23, 2010

Long Since the Clock Struck Twelve

By Chip Tsao | published Sep 23, 2010

Tung Chee-hwa failed. Donald Tsang doesn’t seem to have much luck either. Air pollution is incurable. The most expensive railway in the world is going to be built here. There is no universal franchise as promised in the Basic Law, and people are pissed off with an amateurish administration. The harmony once longed for by both Beijing and Hong Kong people under British rule when nobody used to question the legitimacy of the total of 28 unelected colonial governments has evaporated like Cinderella’s dream. The implementation of “one country, two systems,” together with the fanciful notion of “Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong,” has gone pear-shaped.

Hong Kong is, following other examples such as Zimbabwe, Ghana and Nigera, becoming regrettable anthropological testimony to the grim social reality that after Robinson Crusoe departs, Friday is not sophisticated enough to cope. China couldn’t quite figure out why the little former colony, once so uniquely prosperous and successful, operating in a system tailor-made for the Chinese, consisting of a free market economy with minimal social welfare and virtually no democracy, stretched to the most extreme—miraculously worked. It’s too much of a mystery to explain why Hong Kong people were once so tamed and hypnotized by the British only to wake up rebellious and discontented under the Motherland’s sovereign rule. Most enigmatically, Hong Kong’s local civil servants, once branded the “world’s top-class administrative team” by the last governor as he handed them over to the Chinese, have turned into a bunch of dunderheads as quickly as the wife of Lot in the Book of Exodus petrifying into a pillar of salt in the blowing wind.

Venice has been frequently quoted as an example of past glory as a prosperous trading port. For those of us lucky enough to witness the decline of Hong Kong over the past 12 years, it’s been one of the most spectacular magic shows on a biblical scale in modern history. It’s a new academic research topic to study how the perfidious Fox of Albion duped the Chinese into believing that even without the Union Jack flying, Hong Kong would be a never-ending banquet after the clock struck 12 at midnight. It’s a very English feat to remain stoically patient and quiet when faced with the abuses of an arrogant enemy, keeping a stiff upper lip and reserving oneself the last laugh. A sweet revenge, perhaps, against China who was not even bothered to utter a “thank you” during the handover ceremony. After all the contributions of the colonial power to a land where everything reminiscent and nostalgic of it is now being dismantled, including even the colors of the police uniforms and the post office, except—so far—the rule of law.

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