The Enemy Inside

THIRTY-THREE

Great Britain held possession of the island of Hong Kong and the southern portion of the Kowloon Peninsula since the mid-nineteenth century. They acquired the area known as the New Territories later. The British had seized them in two successive opium wars, first the Island and then Kowloon across the narrow waterway, the harbor they would later name for Queen Victoria.

Both wars were fought against fading Chinese dynasties by the British Empire, which at that time was at its zenith. It stood alone as a world power with the largest navy on earth.

The Opium Wars, while adorned by diplomacy with the trappings of state policy, were in fact little more than naked acts of economic aggression by a powerful nation against a weaker one.

Britain wanted Chinese goods, silks, spices, tea, and other valuable commodities. The problem was that it had nothing to trade in return, nothing that China wanted or needed. What they wanted was to be left alone.

British business interests struck upon the idea of selling opium to the Chinese, which was then abundant in the far-flung British Empire. They reasoned that the Chinese would become addicted, thereby feeding future demand for the product.

When the Chinese government resisted by seizing loads of opium entering their country on British ships, war followed.

The Chinese were quickly defeated. In 1842 Britain took as part of its prize the Island of Hong Kong. In 1860, following the Second Opium War, the English took Kowloon. By the terms of treaties signed under the muzzle of British cannons, Great Britain took and held both of these possessions in perpetuity.

Western historians would call it “the opening of China.” The Chinese would refer to it as the time of the “unequal treaties.” Regardless of the name, it marked the beginning of China’s colonization by Western nations, spheres of influence that would over time be seized for concessions by the world’s other major players.

During the early years of British administration, what had been a sleepy fishing village on the eastern shores of Hong Kong was transformed into a thriving center of British colonial commerce. The island’s population grew geometrically. It became a magnet for trade. Development and construction on the island spread. When Kowloon was added to the British possessions, it too prospered and grew. By the end of the nineteenth century the explosion of commercial growth and construction in what was a limited area had taken its toll. Economic success had its price. It placed a strain on the domestic water supply as well as the arable land available to grow food for what was becoming a densely populated British colony.

In 1898 Britain once again approached a fragile and increasingly unstable Chinese government. This time, rather than using force they used their diplomatic muscle to negotiate a ninety-nine-year lease for an area adjacent to Kowloon. The lease embraced 368 square miles of the mainland as well as numerous small islands.

What would become known as the New Territories would total more than eighty-six percent of the entire area of the Hong Kong colony. Its lease would also become the straw that broke the lion’s back. In time, with patience and changes in geopolitics, China would force Britain to surrender its infinite hold on the commercial prize, the skyscrapers of Hong Kong and Kowloon, and the bustling harbor that separated them.

The Creeping Dragon alighted from the small Chinese Army executive jet inside a military hangar at what most residents of the island still called the new airport-Hong Kong International. It has been built on reclaimed land not far from Kowloon in the New Territories and was considered by many to be a marvel of modern engineering.

Built under British administration, it took six years to complete, cost twenty billion dollars, and was turned over to the Chinese government one year after Britain ceded Hong Kong back to China in 1997.

Cheng considered it a coup. Icing on the cake. Into the early nineties the British had dragged their feet. They tried to negotiate a joint-sovereignty agreement, seeking to keep their hand in Hong Kong. They saw no rational reason why the Chinese government would want them out. British colonial administration was a model of efficiency. Besides, without the British government to ensure stability, might China not be killing the goose that laid the golden egg? What if foreign investment fled Hong Kong? China would be left holding a bag of bones.

The government in Beijing wasn’t buying any of it. What made the British think China couldn’t administer Hong Kong at least as well as they had? After all, most of the residents were Chinese. To them the argument was an insult.

Added to this was the fact that Chinese history was a bitter pill, fruit from a poisonous tree. They reminded the British of the inequitable treaties that allowed them to take Hong Kong and Kowloon in the first place. And of the wars that led up to them, wars that ultimately left a legacy of Chinese opium dens fostered by British mercantile interests.

Britain claimed an obligation to look after the interests of their Hong Kong subjects. Beijing told them that if they felt strongly about it they should give these people British passports. This was a prickly domestic issue back home in Britain, what to do if there was a panic. Millions of Chinese immigrants flooding into the British Isles.

There were many meetings over months and years between various leaders. Sometimes there were hostile words and threats. If China wanted to, it could simply have taken the colony. Geography was on its side. With the largest standing army in the world there would be little Britain could do to stop them. But why do it if it wasn’t necessary? Patience!

In the end, it was not threats but a practical argument that won the day. Beijing made it clear that on July 1, 1997, the ninety-nine-year lease would end. On that day, the New Territories would revert to China. Britain had no right under international law to extend the lease. Beijing wouldn’t hear of it. All access to the Chinese mainland beyond Kowloon would be cut off. If Britain wanted to remain on the island of Hong Kong or the tip of Kowloon, they did so at their own peril, because chaos would follow.

The unstated question was, Where were they going to get the food and water necessary to support the more than six million people then living in what was left of the British colony?

It was a question for which the British government had no answer. They had run out the string. They had no desire to leave China with feelings of open hostility between the two countries. The handwriting was on the wall. After one hundred and fifty-seven years, Britain would go as they had done from India a half century earlier. The difference being, Hong Kong was not going to become part of the British Commonwealth. It belonged to a sovereign country already, China.

Cheng was right, to those with patience came the fruits of victory. China established a Special Administrative Region for Hong Kong with assurances that it would remain that way for at least fifty years. It was business as usual. Unless you followed the news you might not even realize that the British had left except for the recent disruptions, which had already fallen off the front pages of most newspapers around the world. The democracy movement was dying largely because the lawyers and businessmen who made the island hum with commercial activity were so busy making money that they couldn’t be bothered to attend the protests.

The well-monied movers and shakers told the movement’s leaders, mostly disorganized college students and a few professors, that they would try to show up if the organizers could reschedule the “demonstrations” for a weekend. Such was the practical nature of the Chinese mercantile mind. As far as Cheng was concerned, any thought that this might evolve into a real revolution died of embarrassment.

This morning Cheng had his own business to attend to. The government limo whisked him along the highway and threaded through the crowded downtown streets. Twenty minutes later it dropped him under the portico at the entrance to the Intercontinental Hotel, overlooking the water at the tip of Kowloon.