Astute readers of this blog - er, there are some, surely! - will have noticed that I have remained rather quiet on the subject of the riots in Hong Kong. Slightly surprising in a full on, honker 'n' hooter like me but, dammit, whilst I detest the ghastly, Orwellian regime in China, nor do I much approve of ferocious, young dimwits rioting on the streets and smashing everything they can to bits. I don't like it here and I don't like it 'way round there'!
Also, as in so many other 'difficulties around the world, it is not easy to get to the heart of what is going on and why. Partly this is the fault of the 'meeja' who mostly concentrate on the 'shlock-horror' part of the story which provides excellent film footage and photos to keep the punters happy back home. However, eventually the better sort of publication will attempt to dig a little deeper and provide some background for us to judge matters. Needless to say, the world's best political weekly, The Spectator, does just that in an article by Dominic Green.
He starts with a quick kick in the shins to remind us all of our own weakness:
Western liberals assume that disorder is revolutionary and democratic, and that it tends towards liberal and egalitarian outcomes. These touching assumptions reflect the fading memory of twentieth-century American and British politics, and not the plentiful evidence that democratic revolutions usually tend towards tyranny — which is what happened in Russia in 1917, in Germany shortly afterwards, in Egypt more recently, and, pertinently, in China after 1949.
Exactly so! In a world conveniently, but not usefully, divided into 'heroes' and 'villains', we all tend to take sides instantly without the necessity thinking too deeply. I am guilty of this, many a time and oft', but so are you!
The British didn’t bother to democratize Hong Kong when China was weak, and they didn’t dare democratize Hong Kong as China grew stronger. As 1997 approached, the British didn’t even offer passports to their Chinese subjects, the people whose hard work and ingenuity have made Hong Kong what it is.
Instead, the British left a late colonial-style Legislative Council, with the rule of law, but not the rule of the people: an unrepresentative assembly with a free judiciary. The die was cast. Who believed that Hong Kong, whose own system had not been fully liberalized before 1997, would liberalize the People’s Republic after 1997? Only Western liberals, who were reaching peak triumphalism at the end of the Nineties.
Mr. Green reminds us - or rather, teaches us! - that Hong Kong isn't quite the thriving dynamo it once was. Apparently Shanghai has already outgrown it as a financial centre. Also, from what I hear, Singapore is roaring away - but quietly. Don't misunderstand me, I would not wish to live under the rule of Beijing for a milisecond but the young hotheads in Hong Kong need to remember that old Empire saying, "Softly, softly catchee monkey"! Or, as the witty Mr. Green puts it:
In their present frustration and their anxiety about the future, the Hong Kong protesters have much in common with the gilets jaunes in France and the Five Star Movement in Italy, but instead of demanding economic illiberalism in the name of democracy, they’re demanding democracy as the symbol of economic liberalism. So East is East, the Western media are the Western media, and never the twain shall meet, except at the G20.
Dammit, why can't I write like that?
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