Afterword to the Sovereignty Game

Afterword to the Sovereignty Game Considering Hong Kong Independence in the Digital Age The cover of this book has Hong Kong on it for a reason. It is an emblem of the sovereignty game. The writer has lived in both China and Hong Kong at different times over 25 years, including during the 1997 handover from the UK on a humid, rainy summer evening. The recent 2019 protests in Hong Kong have exposed intense generational conflict between those older people who identify themselves as Chinese, beholden to the political entity of the communist government in Bei- jing, and younger, technically adept and adroit, who identify themselves as Hong Kongers, or Hong Kong Chinese, who do not know Beijing or its communist party, except as negative history, from the Great Leap Forward, to the cultural revolution, and Tiananmen square. Their trust is lacking, and patriotism to any Communist identity non-existent. This is similar to many young Taiwanese who consider their identity separate from mainland China. If one visits Hong Kong, or its neighbor, Macau, today, it is as if entering countries very separate from Mainland China. The thinking is different, the processes different, as are the lan- guages. They are all de facto sovereign entities. The one country, two systems concept put in place by Chinese Communist premier leader Deng Xiaoping in a different century is outdated and flawed. Condominium (or co-sovereignty) has never successfully existed in the world, outside of a few islands and water areas split by bigger sovereign powers. In short © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 161 license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 W. Hickey, The Sovereignty Game, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1888-1 162 AFTERWORD TO THE SOVEREIGNTY GAME Hong Kong people have an identity problem caught between British colonialism and communist encroachment. However, this is not unprece- dented, a way forward may still exist. Singapore Independence Singapore, a longstanding British commonwealth colony similar to Hong Kong, attained its independence from Malaysia in August 1965, under the misgivings, now revisionist history as “determinations”, of Lee Kuan Yew. Lee did not want Singapore to leave the grand union with Malaysia, but was forced out due to economic imbalance, a Malaysian Cold War filter, and Malaysian/Chinese ethnic tension with Kuala Lumpur. No amount of revision today can change Lee’s original lament over the then expulsion, “I have believed in merger and the unity of the two territo- ries”. The economic success of Singapore’s to a “then go it alone” versus today’s ASEANS financial hub has changed the conversation from regret to mountain apex in 50 years. The Goa Rationale Goa and India may be more of a proper comparison to China and Hong Kong with ongoing realpolitik. Goa was the crown jewel of Por- tugal’sAsian Empire for over 450 years, only later to be taken back by force from India in 1961. The Portuguese twofold argument with Goa, now consigned to the dustbin of history, or more plausibly, the fact that Portugal is a tiny country without overseas enforcement might, like the British with the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar, was that when Goa was established by them in the early sixteenth century it was with acquiescence by tribes in today’s Gujarat state. In the seventeenth century, when West- phalia was established India did not exist as a coherent nation-state. Thus Goa and Portugal’s claim, predated India as a political entity, though not a cultural one of course, and that Goa, since the 16th century was a longstanding metropolitan province of Portugal. Similar reasoning today is also held with French Guiana and the Span- ish enclave in North Africa of Ceuta and Mellila. That is, when these provinces or states were created by European colonial powers, there was no countervailing claim with an established nation-state on the other side. Nation-states as in today’s definition, simply did not exist. Africa and South America were largely tribal areas, with vast swaths laying unclaimed. AFTERWORD TO THE SOVEREIGNTY GAME 163 Today, these areas are considered as integral parts of Europe, not merely colonial possessions, even though far away, as in the case of Guiana. Unfortunately, even though Goa claimed the same status as a metropolitan department of Portugal, India would have none of it and launched a military invasion in 1961. Goa had also been hollowed out by pro-Indian, anti-Portuguese forces for many years, and since tiny Portugal could not defend its far-flung province, it fell in three weeks. The 1841 Treaty of Nanking and the Qing Dynasty In 1841, the treaty of Nanking for Hong Kong island was between the Qing Dynasty and the British, in order to force open a foreign concession port. The Chinese Qing dynasty wanted it that way. If dynastic China was going to deal with imperialists, better to be in a port faraway from Peking. The founding of the modern Republic of China was not until January 1912 under Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and further, the founding of Communist China would not be until October 1949. Hong Kong predates both these events as a British trade colony in the mid-nineteenth century, bargained with the then Qing dynasty. No one would ever argue that Hong Kong is not culturally and ethnically Chinese, but is that identity ascription in itself enough to justify its assimilation into Communist China as just “another Chinese city” in 2047, when Hong Kong’s status fully reverts fully back to the mainland? Namely, and similar to India with Goa, a country that did not exist as a nation-state later laid claim to, invaded, and absorbed another entity into its territory. Abstract theory? No. A reaffirmation of might makes right? Yes. Culturally relevant? Maybe. The Bond Double Standard Communist China today contends to usurp an agreement as its own that the British Empire made under a very different ruling body in 1841, when Communism did not exist. Karl Marx was still in graduate school in 1841, his manifesto would not yet be written for another seven years, in 1848. However, China is not consistent then in its handling of other agreements if this is the case with its sovereign absorption. We are talking specifi- cally then about sovereign bonds issued during the Qing dynasty before 1911, later defaulted on, and which today’s communist Chinese government (still) refuses to honor. In theory then, as the communist Chinese government in Beijing claims sovereignty over the whole of “China”, it 164 AFTERWORD TO THE SOVEREIGNTY GAME stands now as the inheritor of that debt issued pre-1911 also. In 1912, the Republic of China, China’s first nation-state post its many dynasties, was founded under Sun Yat-sen. The Republic of China lasted until 1949, when it was ousted by the Communist Chinese and fled to Taiwan, where it is labeled as the Kuomingtan (KMT) party today. Nonetheless, paying the bonds, about $1 trillion worth today, when considering inflation, currency translation, and interest, would strengthen Communist China’s legitimacy on superseding both the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, in 1949. (Taiwan was recognized as the legit- imate Chinese government until 1979, then unceremoniously kicked out of the UN.) Communist China’s answer of course is that when the Com- munists took control of Beijing in 1949, the new government abolished all unequal treaties including canceling any foreign debts. The Peoples Republic of China stated officially that it does not have an obligation to pay back any outstanding debts after Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT fled to Taiwan in 1949 with a number of loans in hand. This is not a frivolous argument made here. Consider that lesser countries, such as Argentina, have been forced to pay back bond issuance by the world markets long after governments have changed from socialist to military dictatorship to conservative. The markets (that is bond issues enforced through the US legal system in regard to any denominated in US dollars) demanded and doggedly pursued payouts, no matter who was in charge. Considering the amount of trade with China in dollars, and the fact that the Chinese yuan is pegged to the dollar, enforcing payment of these bonds is very possible. Could that be the price then offered to cement claims to Hong Kong? As a footnote, bonds issued under Tsarist Russia, which was overthrown by the Bolsheviks and Lenin in 1918, are still in limbo waiting to be repaid. The USSR ignored them as does Putin today, but the issue still smolders. Nonetheless, Russia unlike China, is not laying claim to a former British capitalist colony. The point is, China wants it both ways, they want to absorb Hong Kong, but ignore debt instruments generated from the same era. Revisionist History Versus the Digital Age Nation-states have had to consistently change the narrative, and why they did what they did, over time. All this worked fine while feeding a script to captive audiences inside tightly controlled or isolated borders. Whether it be communist, dynastic, feudal, or capitalist, leading and inoculating a AFTERWORD TO THE SOVEREIGNTY GAME 165 local populace again “dangerous ideas” and “foreign influence” became a du jour saying. Might makes right, such as with Goa in 1961 may have worked then, however instantaneous digital communication alongside social media forums with group discussion, has fractured this old playbook of forc- ing things from politics to economics to human rights to even culture. The digital age shows us that underpinning political power on culture, religion, or ethnicity is shaky ground., and that the “might makes right” argument of years ago only encourages more dissidence.

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