It has been the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return. Hong Kong's return was a very original political practice, and its logic can still be continued today.
Hong Kong’s prosperity did not begin in the early days of the British occupation, but truly began in the 1970s when the British needed to find a strategic pivot east of Suez under the British strategy of “evacuating east of Suez.” For this reason, Hong Kong has truly received a large amount of investment and support, and has gradually jumped into the " Asian Tigers " under the British system. However, as foreign colonizers, what the British did not want to do was to allow Hong Kong to obtain collective action capabilities sufficient to resist its rule. Therefore, they used Hong Kong's "nativism" to suppress the leftists who were closely related to the mainland. In addition, they did not allow Hong Kong to have the ability to The same voting rights as in the UK. The Political Division of the Royal Hong Kong Police is still carrying out repression, and Hong Kong’s education is obviously emasculated.
The changes came from the sovereignty return negotiations between the Chinese central government and the British. In this negotiation, China creatively proposed the separation of sovereignty and governance, which formed one of the foundations of the practice of , one country, two systems, and . On the surface, this kind of governance is Hong Kong's implementation of "Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong and a high degree of autonomy", but furthermore, it means maintaining Hong Kong's basic social system unchanged and becoming China's "institutional enclave" in the name of a "special administrative region." Hong Kong's status was confirmed and it was finally successfully returned to China on July 1, 1997.
This kind of institutional enclave positioning is very beneficial. Hong Kong is backed by the huge market of mainland China, and its sovereignty belongs to China, but its institutional environment is basically the same as that of the UK, and in many practices it can meet the somewhat contradictory goals of security and openness without too many political concerns. This means that Hong Kong can play the role of a gateway between the Chinese market and the international market. Hong Kong is a good place for foreign investment to come in and Chinese investment to go out. It should be said that Hong Kong's special role has also provided a good test platform for China's reform, development and overseas operations.
This positioning has two prerequisites. First, it is the rapid development and huge economic size of mainland China, and second, China has a huge need for overseas capital and overseas markets. If these two premises remain unchanged, Hong Kong's positioning will not change, and Hong Kong can continue to play a very unique role in the entire Chinese economic system. This role is the foundation of Hong Kong’s prosperity.
It is true that Hong Kong itself has problems. Because after the handover, Hong Kong's overall control lacked government autonomy. On the contrary, the Hong Kong SAR government was unable to push forward measures that were beneficial to Hong Kong's overall interests despite the opposition of social interest groups, and they had long been stigmatized by Hong Kong society against the mainland society. It has not taken a sufficient political position in the trend of globalization. This characteristic is related to the colonial political structure, especially since the Hong Kong SAR government itself was de facto absent in many areas after the British left. Hong Kong is also the focus of neoliberal pressure. In fact, the economic and social pressure is huge, and the inaction of the SAR government in this regard has actually allowed this pressure to continue to accumulate within Hong Kong.
There are a large number of spiritual British and agents in Hong Kong. The largest intelligence station in the Asia-Pacific region of the United States is the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong. These are actually secrets that everyone knows. The existence of these institutions is tolerated to some extent as long as they do not undermine China's basic security. However, after the Sino-US trade war broke out in 2018, the United States began to gradually take advantage of the characteristics of an enclave like Hong Kong to try to force China to take the initiative, taking the opportunity to try to make China suffer huge losses because of "Hong Kong is not free." Fortunately, the Hong Kong police force stood firmly on the side of the central government during the violent violence. This prevented the situation in Hong Kong from getting out of control in 2019, forcing the central government to take direct action and fall into political passivity according to the American script. In this regard, the Hong Kong police force is indispensable.
However, the fact that these agents exist or not will not affect the foundation of Hong Kong's prosperity. On the contrary, the continued creation of tension between Hong Kong and the mainland by these people will destroy the foundation of Hong Kong's prosperity.The core of Hong Kong's prosperity is economic freedom under a specific political order, and the economic freedom Hong Kong needs is completely compatible with a more China-centered political order. China's own development is enough to prove the feasibility of such parallelism. If the West tries to break this balance, they themselves will suffer losses first.
Of course, many conceited Westerners may choose to pretend not to understand this logic. And those spiritual British people in Hong Kong will also choose to pretend not to understand. The most typical example is Tao Jie, who actually saw the British colonial methods very clearly, but he still chose to be a spiritual British and regarded Britain as the only "civilization". The so-called "Hong Kong's most talented man" is expected to be severely abandoned by the course of history soon. If we can prevent this group of spiritual British people from affecting Hong Kong society, Hong Kong will be much more stable, moving forward with ease.
The Hong Kong SAR government’s policy line has now been clarified, and with the National Security Law taking effect, the political order of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has been basically guaranteed. Now, it depends on how the Hong Kong SAR government implements these.
