I Mourn for Hong Kong, But I Mourn Even More for China

The new Hong Kong security law passed by the PRC went into effect today, and arrests under its jurisdiction have already begun. Though we are in its very early stages, a sea change in the politics and culture of the island city is clearly underway. How much of the vibrant and open civic culture that thrived in Hong Kong will survive is unknowable, but what is certain is that the city will not be the same for the foreseeable future.

I cannot help meeting this news with a profound sense of personal loss. For me, as for so many others, Hong Kong is a beloved place. Its civic life and dynamic culture were the setting of some of my most exciting and eye-opening experiences as a young student and traveler. Those memories made my returns in middle age with family and child sweetly nostalgic.

Of course, all such bittersweet impressions are profoundly selfish. The loss to the people of Hong Kong who are forced to live through this transition vastly outweighs any impact it has on people like me. Loss of freedom is certainly not a rare event in human history, but the recent global trend has arguably moved in the opposite direction. That the people of Hong Kong should suffer through this regressive moment is horrific. No one who has enjoyed freedom can experience its loss without terrible pain.

But as sad as I am for the people of Hong Kong, I am even sadder for the people of China more generally. I have spent much more time in the rest of mainland China than I have in Hong Kong, and the most hopeful development that I witnessed over the many decades that I returned to the PRC was the extent to which the differential gap between the larger PRC and Hong Kong closed as years and decades passed.

When I first traveled by train from Hong Kong to Beijing in 1987 (transiting between a fall semester program at Tunghai University in Taiwan to a spring term in the CET program at the Beijing Foreign Language Normal College 北京外国语师范学院), Beijing and Hong Kong were not recognizably "compatriot" cities. There were many aspects to this difference, but the most salient was the degree to which cultural and commercial life were still highly politicized in Beijing. Large billboards on Changan Boulevard in Beijing exhorted passersby to follow Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Non-conformity in all dimensions- sartorial, architectural, literary, etc.- was still dangerously controversial. Commerce was so politically charged that a dual currency system was in effect, relegating foreigners to a separate consumer economy.

That differential has not gone away, but it has narrowed drastically, to the benefit of all. The clothes one sees people wearing on the streets of Beijing today are as various as those in Hong Kong. Likewise other dimensions of cultural and commercial life have become much more diverse, vibrant, and dynamic, largely because aspects of cultural life that were once highly politicized (it was once "counterrevolutionary" to wear American bluejeans, for example) have become anodyne.  This has not merely brought abstract benefits such as "freedom of choice," but has materially improved the lives of millions by spurring the Chinese economy to realize long-latent potential for rapid growth.

Since so much of China's recent prosperity has been driven by a process that has made the larger PRC more and more like Hong Kong, it is tragic to see China's leaders try to strong-arm Hong Kong into becoming more like the rest of China. The CCP is shouting at the tide of history. The forces of dissent that Beijing is trying to stifle in Hong Kong are not absent in the rest of China, they merely lack safe avenues of expression.

The economic miracle that the CCP has overseen for the last four decades was laid on a political foundation: the de-politicization of economic and cultural life were the necessary conditions of China's rise. For that process to continue, China's leaders must follow the political logic intrinsic to the trajectory of reform upon which they embarked in 1980. Power-sharing and decentralization are key. Without such developments, corruption, waste, and ecological degradation will intensify to the point of choking off economic growth. Beyond this, questions of sovereignty like those persisting in Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang will continue to worsen.

Hong Kong should not become more like Wuhan or Tianjin. Rather, for the welfare and prosperity of all China's people, and for the stability and security of China as a whole, the cities of the mainland PRC should become, both in their municipal politics and in their relationship to Beijing, more like Hong Kong. This principle is the downhill slope of history. The fact that CCP leaders do not seem to understand that reality is tragic, in that it portends strife and suffering. But there is also hope, that perhaps the repression we are witnessing today in Hong Kong is a passing phase, and that the city will return to its true self in the fullness of time.