Breathing sweet freedom

What distinguishes Hong Kong from the rest of China is that here you can breathe in lungfuls of freedom with every breath you take. (Cynics might say that it’s far more likely that you’ll breathe in lungfuls of toxic fumes from the factories in southern China, but that’s another story...) Under the “one country, two systems” principle that applies to this former British colony that reverted to China in 1997, Hong Kong people enjoy levels of freedom of expression that are unimaginable in mainland China.

Indicatively in Hong Kong bookstores, you can buy books that are proscribed in mainland China: just the other day, I picked up The Open Road, Pico Iyer’s book on the Dalai Lama, which would be confiscated at the border into mainland China if customs authorities caught me with it.

And at the iconic Star Ferry pier in Tsim Sha Tsui, Falun Gong activists frequently stage  demonstrations, and put up gory posters chronicling the torture of the sect’s followers in mainland China and denouncing former President Jiang Zemin. If the same followers so much as unfurled a Falun Gong poster in any city in mainland China, they would be thrown into the slammer in an instant and subjected to some inventive interrogation procedures.

That sense of openness puts Hong Kong in a unique situation when it comes to looking at contentious issues such as the Tibet unrest or the protests against the Olympics torch relay overseas. Its population is, like in mainland China, predominantly ethnic Chinese; but unlike mainland Chinese citizens, whose worldview is (largely) blinkered by the Chinese government’s propaganda machine, Hong Kong Chinese can see all sides of the issues. 

Yet, in my interactions with Chinese friends and acquaintances here, I often sense an unease or an unwillingness to engage in any serious discussion on these subjects. When they do articulate a tentative viewpoint on Tibet or the Olympics torch, it more often mirrors the views of mainland Chinese citizens (“The West is interfering in China’s affairs”; “The Western media is distorting the Tibet situation”; “the protests against the Olympics torch relay amount to politicisation of sports”).  

Opinion polls conducted by various universities show that nearly 85% of Hong Kong’s population is “displeased” or “infuriated” by the protests against the torch relay; and just as many people think that such protests hurt the Olympic spirit.

Media commentators often dismiss Chinese hysteria against Tibetan protesters and the Olympics torch relay protests as the response of a brain-washed, indoctrinated populace. The response of Hong Kong’s population, which isn’t subject to that “indoctrination” and yet mirrors the mainland Chinese outlook, shows that such reductionist observations may be somewhat off the mark...