Modern China is the most misunderstood country in the world, and Hong Kong is the best China explainer.
Never before in the history of humankind have 1.4 billion people and their beloved government been so grossly and unfairly misunderstood. That is strange, given that across the Western world, countless number of “China watchers” are observing and studying China through both the microscope and the telescope. “China watching” has become a profession in its own right, commanding a halo like rocket science.
Across the Western world, all good universities have a center of China studies. Even here in Hong Kong as part of China, our universities have centers of China studies, but none has a center of United States studies. The US, as the world’s dominant superpower with infinite complexity, deserves far more “watching”, but there is no “US watching” as a profession. China is the most “studied” country in the world, and yet the most misunderstood, out of ignorance or willfulness.
Hong Kong is different. The West has an accurate understanding of Hong Kong because it shaped Hong Kong. Through 150 years of British administration, Hong Kong has been shaped according to Western values, attitudes, systems, and institutions, using such means as communication, education, language and culture.
We have our Hong Kong spirit, the ingenuity, creativity, resourcefulness, the multifacetedness that have captured the imagination of the West. We are brought up on Western values, we can speak the language of the West. Our ability to explain China to the world is second to none
Hong Kong has been so Western-shaped that Beijing finds it hard to understand the city. Indeed, the first director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Jiang Enzhu, who was also a former Chinese ambassador to Britain, famously said 20 years ago: Hong Kong is a difficult book to read.
At that time, Hong Kong people shrugged off his remark. Hong Kong people thought: No, we are easy to read. We are a simple society of simple people. All that we want is to live a simple, happy life.
But do Hong Kong people themselves understand Hong Kong? As the Chinese saying goes: When you are in a mountain, you cannot get a true overview of the mountain.
Over the past 20-plus years, Hong Kong has changed so much that Hong Kong people didn’t understand it. They thought they did. They didn’t, until now. Now we know: Half of our population couldn’t have imagined that so many Hong Kong people could be so violent, so lawless, and that even well-educated professionals could be so gullible as to honestly believe in blatant fakes news such as “the police killed many protesters inside MTR station”, “protesters were raped at the San Uk Ling Holding Centre”, and “gang rape happened at Tsuen Wan Police Station”, etc.
The other half couldn’t have imagined other Hong Kong people could be “so heartless” to the authorities’ “brutal crackdown”, “so shamelessly indifferent” to the “erosion” of freedom and democracy.
We are in a post-trauma state. Half of our people are soul-searching what are facts and what are fake news or disinformation stunts; the other half are soul-searching and trying to find out what is black and what is white.
Soul-searching lets us see things through a less-tinted glass. It will dawn on us that despite the political rift, the millions of people among the other half are motivated by the same love of Hong Kong as we are, except for a small number of hired guns who willfully ignore the facts and twist the truth. The majority of our population want to see our country going from good to better to best, although our preferred routes of achieving national greatness differ.
This is what binds us together, the love of Hong Kong and the country. As the first director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, the late Liao Chengzhi, said in a letter to Taiwan: Despite all the fights, we are all brothers.
So we have this bond. And we have our Hong Kong spirit, the ingenuity, creativity, resourcefulness, the multifacetedness that have captured the imagination of the West. We are brought up on Western values, we can speak the language of the West. Our ability to explain China to the world is second to none.
Plus we have the best system in the world, combining the best of China’s system and the Western system. Hong Kong’s success is unstoppable — if only all our people can rally behind our shared goal of making this city shine more brilliantly than ever. Hong Kong’s success will in itself be a best-seller on “China explained”.
The author is an associate vice-president of Hong Kong Baptist University and a former professor of practice at the School of Journalism and Communication, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.