Hong Kong: Mao-Think v. the Stiff Upper Lip

For the past nine months, as Red China writhed in the grasp of Mao Tse-tung’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,Hong Kong has been the chief watching point for the outside world.

Last week the British Crown Colony suddenly lost its spectator status. From the colony’s teeming Kowloon district, thousands of pro-Maoist Chinese poured into the streets to harass Hong Kong’s British rulers with the same harsh tactics that Mao’s Red Guards have used on their enemies within Red China.

The trouble, which started at a plastic-flower plant in the northeastern part of Kowloon, quickly blossomed into the most prolonged disturbances in the colony’s postwar history. Mobs of three or four thousand teen-age boys, usually led by older youths who wore Mao Tse-tung emblems on their shirts and waved the little red book of Mao’s sayings, stoned hotels, overturned autos, set fire to a double-decker bus, and showered bottles on the police.

The British reacted with extraordinary cool. When 2,500 or so more orderly demonstrators headed on foot and by car to Government House, the residence of Governor Sir David Trench, 51, Hong Kong police politely waved the Red autos to a lot marked “Official Petitioners’ Car Park.” Sir David refused to receive any delegations from the demonstrators, ordered the gate left ajar so that petitions could be passed through. He reported that he was not a bit disturbed by the constant cacophony, but allowed that his poodle Peter had become so unnerved that he had to be packed off to an animal shelter.

Ominous Ultimatum. No one knew whether Peking had actually instigated the initial flare-up, or whether it had been started by overzealous local Communists. Once the trouble began, however, Red China helped to keep it going. The British chargé d’affaires in Peking was summoned to the Foreign Ministry for a dressing-down that was severe even by Peking’s hysterical standards. The British in Hong Kong, charged Red China, were committing “barbarous fascist atrocities,” and were in collusion with the “U.S. imperialists” to escalate the war in Viet Nam.

Red China then issued a five-point ultimatum ordering that Britain: 1) accept the demands put forward by the Chinese workers in Hong Kong, 2) stop all “fascist measures,” 3) free all who were arrested, 4) punish the police who made the arrests and compensate the “victims” for time in jail, and 5) pledge that similar incidents would not happen again. To keep the pressure on, crowds ransacked the home of the British consul in Shanghai; a “support Hong Kong” parade was held in Canton, and a monster rally of 100,000 turned out in Peking.

The demands were almost identical to the ones that Peking last December served on Lisbon to force the Portuguese to surrender de facto control of Macao to local Maoists. The British decided to be tough. Hong Kong’s 10,000 well-disciplined police kept the mass of the rioters confined to two areas in Kowloon, arrested more than 400. Whitehall refused to dignify the Red Chinese demands with an answer. Instead, the British Commonwealth Office pledged that law and order would be maintained in the colony. Faced with this determination, Peking seemed to back off a bit. At week’s end, though, mobs took to the streets again, roughing up newsmen, shouting Maoisms in front of the U.S. consulate, and painting pro-Communist slogans on buildings.

Mutual Dependence. Britain wants to hold onto Hong Kong to protect its vast investments and to retain a Far Eastern headquarters for British banking and trade interests. It also does not know how it could gracefully withdraw from Hong Kong under the present circumstances without totally losing face in the Orient. In recent years, Red China has been building up its influence in the Crown Colony, and Britain has been too afraid of offending its overpowering neighbor to do anything about it. As a result, about one-fifth of the colony’s Chinese, who make up 99% of the 4,000,000 population, are openly pro-Peking, and the rest play it safe. Red China commands the support of three of Hong Kong’s major daily newspapers, the most important labor unions, and a large number of schoolteachers, which is one reason a high proportion of young Chinese in Hong Kong are Maoists.

Even without Peking’s infiltration, the colony is at the mercy of the mainland. Hong Kong depends on Red China for 47% of its water and for nearly all its food and building materials. Red China, in turn, is considerably dependent on Hong Kong. Its sales to Hong Kong each year bring in the $500 million in hard currency that it needs to pay for its own imports of wheat from Australia and Canada. So far, the Red Chinese have been careful not to interfere with this golden flow; Hong Kong hoped last week that the riots were a reminder of its ties to Red China rather than a full-scale attack on the colony’s independence from it.