Dazzling achievement

For A Change, June-July, 1997 by James Hore-Ruthven

It was poignant, as an Englishman, to arrive in Hong Kong on the day that, in Beijing, they were celebrating `100 days until Hong Kong reverts to the motherland'.

I walked through the bustling streets, looking at the glittering skyscrapers, the expensive shops and the noodle sellers, which seem to co-exist side by side. I found myself feeling proud that my country had played some part in creating this dazzling monument to human enterprise and efficiency.

Later I watched as some 30 sailing ships made their stately way down the harbour to the starting line of this year's Tall Ships race--a beautiful sight against the backdrop of Kowloon's buildings and the Chinese mountains.

It was in just such ships that, throughout the last century, British merchants imported thousands of tons of opium from Bengal--and thus further weakened an already enfeebled China. It was as a result of the first opium war that the island of Hong Kong was ceded to Britain in 1842.

At the height of this trade, 60,000 chests of opium a year were being imported through this and other ports. The tax revenue alone represented 15 per cent of the cost of the British government of India. It was, according to one historian, `the longest running systematic international crime of modern times'. It opened the door to a century of Western exploitation of China.

Hong Kong's is a magnificent achievement from an evil start--of such paradoxes is history written.

As I was singing, `Jesus Christ is risen today', with hundreds of others in St John's Cathedral, I felt the overwhelming need to give all the pride and all the shame of past and present over to God and ask him for wisdom on how to build a better future.

Whither now the Sino-British relationship? I and some colleagues were invited to go to China for discussions with officials, scholars, teachers and others on `enhancing moral values in our respective societies'.

We and our hosts had our differences over how to achieve this--but I was moved at the warmth with which we were received. `People come to talk to us about business, technical matters or human rights,' said one professor. `But no one from the West has ever come to us before to talk about these issues.' Could our common need become the agent for the healing of the past?