Stepping into the unknown in Hong Kong: democracy advocates outline fears, resolves as '97 deadline nears

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 4, 1996 by Arthur Jones

HONG KONG - "Pray for us," said lawyer Andrew K.F. Cheng in his air conditioned, ninth floor office in Hong Kong's downtown Central district. And when you come back, if I am in prison, please come to visit me."

That bleak remark was in stark contrast to the daily bustle outside on Li Yuen and Peddar streets in the tropical clime of crowded, commercial, colorful Hong Kong, where workers jammed the humid lunchtime streets and carried little terry cloth pieces to mop their brows and necks, and where life seemed concentrated on just getting through the day.

Cheng, who has photographs of his wife and two young daughters pinned to the wall behind his desk, was not being overly dramatic. This member of Hong Kong's Legislative Council, or Legco, is a protester for democracy, an advocate for openness. He and others are facing the fact that when mainland China resumes sovereignty over this former British colony at midnight on June 30, 1997, more than 5.5 million of Hong Kong's 6 million citizens, will step into the unknown. Most of the rest have foreign passports and can board the next plane out.

A century and a half ago, Britain forced a China it had weakened by flooding it with opium, into leasing Hong Kong Island to the when China was later obliged to lease additional land, Kowloon and the New. Territories.

When these leases - unequal treaties in Beijing's eyes - expire at midnight June 30, 1997, Hong Kong returns to mainland Chinese rule.

A hilly half-mile away from downtown, Peter Cheung calmly considers his own future. Chueng is a new occupant of the Kung Kao Po (Catholic) Weekly editor's office at 16 Caine Road, the Hong Kong Catholic diocesan center. His parents in Canada and his brothers and sisters outside Hong Kong have all urged this Catholic social activist and now newspaper editor to at least apply to leave Hong Kong as an "insurance policy" should things turn sour once China takes over. He would not.

East along the harbor, at the Bishop Peter Lei Formation Center in Sai Wan Ho, clinical psychologist Chan Siu-ching, who chairs the diocesan Justice and Peace Commission, said that while she sees "1997 as a crisis involving changes and stress," and while she could leave, "I prefer to stay to continue my vision. I don't think I could be cheerful if I left just because of my own personal safety or my career."

Lawyer Cheng is the only member of his family still in Hong Kong. "On a personal level I could have left," he said. "Why stay.? Hong Kong is my home, where I can get my sense of belonging., He admits to anxieties on behalf of his two daughters, and said the reason he is in front in the fight for democracy is I don't want my children and my later generations in Hong Kong to lose their freedom of speech and lose their democracy."

Remaining in Hong Kong, to editor Cheung, "is how I live out my commitment, my own life, my own humanity. It is important to how I live out my identity - as a Hong Kong person, as a Chinese, as a Christian."

As NCR discovered during a recent visit, everyone has hopes, but no one knows. And if, to explore the diversity and complexity, NCR mainly relied on Hong Kongs Catholic community as representative of the whole, in this Asian anomaly that is not such an odd approach.

Scratch Hong Kong, its government and its democrats, and its Catholic content is quickly revealed. The governor, Christopher Patten, is Catholic. So are the chief executive, the financial secretary, the attorney general and the head of Patten's think tank.

Hong Kong's Democratic Party chairman, Martin C.M. Lee, is Catholic. Even the party's executive officer, Minky Worden, a Presbyterian who laughingly refers to Hong Kong's Catholic old-boy and old-girl network as "the Catholic mafia," acknowledges the significant Catholic presence in the democratic movement.

More, in the, broader community, 25 percent of all, Hong Kong Chinese children are educated in Catholic, schools. Further, two generations of Hong Kong's citizens have benefited measurably from a widespread network of Catholic and other Christian social service agencies, from the refugee feeding programs set up when millions fled communist leader Mao-Zedongs advance in the late 1940s to today's youth work and counseling programs.

Haunting images

For people like the Chengs, Cheungs and Chans, the flickering television shadows and silent screams of the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989, in Beijing continue to haunt. Among democrats. Tiananmen Square frequently comes up in conversation. The unbidden nightmare: Will the same events occur one day in Hong Kong's favorite outdoor gathering place, Chater Garden.

Cheung and his wife - they have a 16 year-old son -,talked about whether we should emigrate," said Peter Cheung. But it was his wife who formulated their decision to stay.

He recalled that after Tiananmen Square, she said. If we were in Beijing we could do something. In Hong Kong all we can do is donate money or demonstrate, but it has very little effect." She continued, "If, after 1997, we were in Canada and something happened to Hong Kong, we would say, 'Oh, if we were in Hong Kong, we could do something.'"