Spectator's Journal/Hong Kong: Before the Anschluss
Lee, Miriam London and Ta-ling
Vietnam, Watergate, and related attempts to manipulate the media changed the way in which the press corps reports the presidency . . . . Although the media have traditionally been...
...As one colony resident who learned of this speech expressed it, more than anything else, "Deng wants to go down in history as the reunifier of China...
...and the Caribbean, this startling account of the New JEWEL Movement's dramatic rise and fall graphically illustrates the geo-political challenge facing Western democracies in the Third World...
...Charles Peters, the "godfather" of the neoliberal movement, is Editor of The Washington Monthly...
...With the press as hard-charging adversary, manipulation is not a realistic goal for any President...
...It is thus possible that any perceived challenge to sovereignty may cause China to interfere in the internal affairs of Hong Kong before 1997...
...The White House (which forty years later perceives clearly the folly of Yalta) will place faith in Peking's promise to maintain a free and stable Hong Kong...
...Walter Mondale and 46 percent of Chicago public school teachers send their own children to private schools...
...What does it mean...
...The "breakthrough" episode has thus ended by raising even more disturbing questions not only about British weakness and dissemblance, but about the actual strength of the accord on 1997, which, on Chinese insistence, is to be ratified willy-nilly before the end of this year...
...It was primarily the many wishful seekers of firm assurances, ripe for self-delusion, who were swept into euphoria by British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe's August 1 statements to the international press, which were widely reported as a "breakthrough" in the talks, meaning the definite achievement of a "legally binding" agreement, preserving "all the rights and freedoms" now enjoyed by the people of Hong Kong...
...But their behavior reveals two themes that help explain our current education "troubles," First, in most large school districts teaching is no longer an avocation--it is a job...
...About one such proposed undertaking the Far Eastern Economic Review on June 28 raised the question: "Can [Peking] risk endorsing a political structure which, in practice, may prove more publicly critical of China than the diplomatically constrained British have ventured tO be...
...Once the accord has been initialed and made public, Hong Kong cannot amend it in any way, but rather, as Sir Geoffrey and the British Secretary for Home Affairs, Denis Bray, have euphemistically put it, must consider it as " a whole...
...Some people worry that our policies may change," Deng also told the industrialists...
...ECTATOR'S JOURNAL HONG KONG: BEFORE THE ANSCHLUSS by Miriam London and Ta-ling Lee A gloomy quip circulated in Hong Kong about the recent negotiations in Peking over that colony's future...
...In a conversation with Hong Kong University students, Mr...
...But China is not ruled by its own people and absolute power often undertakes the unthinkable...
...Consul General in Hong Kong, who recently declared that China had been "immunized" against a repetition of calamitous past errors "for a long time to come or even permanently," most Chinese are not so very sure about the future to which they, not Mr...
...Shocked observers around the world awoke that morning to reports that Bishop and several of his closest associates had been brutally murdered by a Communist faction within the government led by Deputy Prime Minister, Bernard Coard...
...For starters, they're Democrats...
...They'll vote against Reagan...
...Chicago school teachers who are residents of the city are more than twice as likely to send their children to private schools as the population in general...
...9 Front and Brown Streets Burlington County _9 Riverside, NJ 08075 ALL ORDERS MUST BE PREPAID...
...Lawler raises prow/cative questions about the television networks involvement with several of these organizations--ties that are little known and not well understood by the viewing public...
...If the last election is any guide about 42 percent will vote for Reagan...
...Xu pointedly warned, however, against possible riots and the emptying of coffers during the transitional period...
...Hans Bethe, Nobel laureate "A book for anyone who still values truth in an age of hypocrisy, superstition, witch hunts and mendacity...
...Although some observers of American education have long suspected that public school teachers send their children to private schools in disproportionately high numbers, until recently there were no good statistics to support the anecdotes...
...Based on a sample of 872 teachers in 35 districts throughout Michigan, it is believed to be accurate to within three and a half percentage points...
...What they see now is that his wouldbe successors, Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaohang~ l ~ k military suoport and could easily be swept away, that the "leftist" forces are by no means routed and that many of the middle and lower cadres, who even now frequently sabotage central policies that threaten their status, are waiting for Deng to die in the hope of making a comeback...
...I can say with a certainty that as long as our policies are correct, no one can change them...
...But surely this is the biggest pipe dream of all...
...It is a job in precisely the same way that being a policeman, motorman, clerk, or other public employee is...
...Indeed, they cannot look with any certainty at all beyond Deng's death...
...Levin, will be hostage...
...If Peking had really been concerned about the economic health of Hong Kong and the best interests of its populace, it would have agreed to a de facto extension of the British lease for fifty more years...
...They know that such guarantees are a pipe dream...
...The suspicion grows that the "pragmatic" Deng Xiaoping has instead given sovereignty unreserved priority over economic self-interest...
...His theme is deceptively simple: If an institution does not serve one's needs--if one's voice is ignored --loyalty is exhausted and the discerning individual or family changes institutional affiliations...
...Gregory W. Sandford is a career Foreign Service Officer with the U.S...
...Washington, D.C...
...THE NATION'S PULSE PUBLIC TEACHERS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS What do Walter Mondale and 46 percent of Chicago teachers have in common...
...The distinction between an avocation and a job is important, because for generations we took for granted the self-sacrifice and dedication of devoted 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984...
...At best, the "joint declaration" will provide a bit more time to review one's personal options before what one British conservative calls the "countdown to Communism" begins...
...Everything about nuclear power, including costs, bombs and oysters glowing in the dark...
...It will have slipped from its rock into the sea of China's uncertainty...
...Deng Xiaoping will beam his Cheshire-cat smile and turn his attention optimistically to Taiwan...
...But if he's lucky and good, he might achieve survival...
...At one level it means just what it appears to--it is the education analogue of the chef who refuses to eat at his own restaurant or the doctor who won't be treated at his own hospital...
...A new era of SinoBritish cooperation will begin, which will include ensuring the return of a "complete, stable, and prosperous Hong Kong" to China--the ripe plum to be dropped into the expectantly open mouth...
...It has yet to be impressed upon the honest councilors that the Wise Leader's decisions have the "enthusiastic support" of the "patriotic" masses in the colony and that this "fact" will in due time likely be "verified" by eminent experts in Britain and elsewhere...
...As University of Illinois professor Herbert Walberg commented: "Teachers are like auto workers who wisely buy Japanese cars...
...O u t s i d e r s who view Hong Kong as a sort of glittering capitalist excrescence, to be gauged only by i t s economic indicators, miss the point...
...Premier Zhao Ziyang will go, as planned, to London and Queen Elizabeth will dine in Peking...
...Department o f State...
...A similar Umelco mission had earlier been coolly received in London...
...Such a statement merely stabs the worriers of Hong Kong with another reminder that China's "correct" policies of today were the criminally incorrect ones of yesterday and may be so again tomorrow...
...So much for common knowledge...
...In line with a foreign policy similarly resting on faith and hope in Chinese continuities, Japan will stand aside like a jackal, reassessing its opportunities for profit, which may include using investment in Hong Kong--in one analyst's words--"as a stepping stone into China...
...Grenada: The Untold Story, the first book written with access to classified U.S...
...As the Far Eastern Economic Review further revealed on August 23, the British afterwards "meekly concurred" that this was so and "conceded that their original intention was to have the document called an 'agreement,' but they failed to sway the Chinese, who adamantly refused to enter into any 'agreement' with Britain which would dictate how Peking should administer Hong Kong, its own territory, after 1997...
...An ugly glimpse of Deng's fixity of purpose and imperial arrogance was recently afforded the people of the colony by his crude dismissal of two high Party officials' statements that People's Liberation Army troops would not be sent into Hong Kong and by his televised brusque reception of three unofficial members of Hong Kong's Executive and Legislative Councils (Umelco), who tried without success to convince him of an existent crisis of confidence...
...The story made headlines throughout the world, but ope question remained unanswered: Why ~lid Bishop, considered by many a democratic socialist or at worst a moderate Marxist, allow a group of hardline Marxist-Leninists to gain positions of such influence in his government and his political party, the New JEWEL Movement...
...The numbers the Reporter uncovered are extraordinary...
...16.75 cloth, $6.50 paper (plus $1 each shipping) Universit.~ ~ of Order from: America The Media Institute --~ 3017 M St., N.W...
...But the majority of its residents make clear in various ways their fear and distrust of Peking...
...One may well ponder whether a leadership that evidently sees no problem in defining what is "patriotic" or "sincere" can grasp, let alone uphold, the present spirit and practice of law in Hong Kong for the stipulated fifty years of grace after 1997...
...Limousine liberals, as they used to be called, are by now old stuff...
...If public'schOol teachers" who send their children to private schools were simply hypocrites there would not be much point to the story --what else is new...
...Foreign China-watchers who have persuaded themselves that the Deng leadership has reason to make Hong Kong an enticing model for the _9 future of Taiwan might also consider the effect of this model on China's internal malcontents, who yearn for unsocialist democracy and the rule of law...
...Such an alternative would be con:eNable only if the reigning "emperor" were less adamant and international pressure upon Peking con:erted and unrelenting...
...Xu Jiatun recently admitted that people in the colony "dread' 'the four binding principles of mainland rule--socialism, proletarian dictatorship, Chinese Communist party leadership, and Marxism-LeninismMaoism...
...The warning is ominous, given popular fears of the worst imaginable " s c e n a r i o " for the immediate future--that Peking might use the pretext of riots, spontaneous or instigated, to assert its authority before 1997...
...by Cohen at his Cohenest...
...At another level, one can cite the simple and elegant theory developed by A.E...
...Others do not deceive themselves...
...specific "guarantees" of a way of life now slipping away...
...Now they are further asked to have faith that Peking is "legally bound" to mean what it does not agree to say...
...Not only do Deng and his men fail to understand that they can smother Hong Kong's economy simply by embracing it, they may be ready, however regrettably, to sacrifice it...
...Access to Energy 0-306-41425-2/310pp.li11./19831516.95 PLENUM PUBLISltlNG CORPORATION 233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y...
...And he brings to light the curious web of relationships among certain politically motivated groups...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 31 demonstrate whether, indeed, its presmt policies are stable and worthy of :onfidence...
...It was to be called onThe Alternative Influence By Philip F. Lawler Their ranks are small, but alternative news organizations play a significant role in determining the news America reads and watches...
...That challenge could be seen to include any attempts within the 13-year transitional period to set up a truly representative political body in Hong Kong...
...The British, he strongly implied, understood very well that "the People's Republic of China is no Argentina and Hong Kong is no Malvinas...
...But, he asks, hasn't one of these four "things," the Party, established the benevolent policy of allowing two systems to coexist...
...Markets rbveal preferences in ways that monopolies cannot...
...10013 unions...
...The quality by Denis P. Doyle conscious consumer abandons one institution and patronizes another--if the first institution does not respond...
...The leaders in Peking clearly assume that they have gone the limit in giving lordly assurances that Hong Kong's separate system and lifestyle will be maintained, according to the formula of "one country--two systems...
...Only then can one talk about Chinese dignity...
...The results were striking--the poll found that 20 percent of Michigan public school teachers send their children to private schools while only 10 percent of Michiganders do...
...British attempts to gloss over the formal designation of the accord-what's in a name?--hardly reassure those in Hong Kong who remain coldly aware that, as it is, the colony's fate rests on words, and words alone, to be interpreted ultimately by whatever sovereign Chinese Communist regime happens to be in power...
...The essential point is that, as a future part of the People's Republic, Hong Kong will no longer be buffered, as before, against the possibility of erratic change...
...What these nationalistic students do not realize, an intellectual emigrant from the People's Republic said last summer in Hong Kong, is that "first there must be regard for human dignity...
...They believe in teachers Denis P. Doyle is director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Even now a murky struggle for power, linked with a potentially destabilizing factionalism, proceeds behind the scenes...
...Phil Keisling is a former editor of The Washington Monthly...
...For the burden of proof is an the Chinese Communist system, not an the system in Hong Kong, which has already brilliantly proved itself...
...A more fundamental question may be added: Can Peking risk the existence of a truly self-determining democratic entity within a police state...
...Well regarded for its accuracy and fairness, in addition to its advocacy of more harmonious race relations, the Chicago Reporter has no private school axe to grind...
...and Grenadian government documents, provides the+~hocking answers...
...From the start, Deng himself has decreed that Hong Kong residents who are to occupy the key governing posts in this future special "autonomous" zone of China must be "patriots," that is, people who "respect their own nation" and "sincerely support China's recovery of sovereign power...
...Published by Madison Books, a division of University Press of America...
...We do not like to see such a scenario . . . . " he said...
...Even more revealing is the comment by noted University of Chicago political analyst and proponent of school busing Gary Orfield: "This shows that the people who know the city's schools best know they are not functioning...
...They "believe" in public education as the symbol and expression of American democracy...
...Ta-ling Lee is professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University...
...Unlike Burton Levin, the U.S...
...Education, no less than other activities, responds to market forces, but because of the virtual public monopoly at the elementary and secondary level education market forces operate only at the margins...
...The Alternative Influence by Philip F. Lawler is the first book to probe the inner workings of nine such groups from across the political spectrum...
...Richard Vigilante, a Washington-based journalist and television producer, has written extensively on Central America and the Caribbean...
...Doubt has also attacked the assumption, which previously seemed to make good sense, that Peking has a vested interest in maintaining the prosperity of Hong Kong, from which China obtains at least 30 percent of its foreign exchange earnings...
...For the reality is that the very nations who should be most concerned about securing Hong Kong against the vagaries of Chinese Communism are themselves blindly scrambling to attach financial fortunes and geopolitical schemes to the swirling uncertainties of China's future...
...20007 202-298-7512 ly a "joint declaration...
...Paper, 250 pages, 4087-2 $8.95 Distributed by: The Scribner Book Companies Order Dept...
...Typically, however, a number of students at Hong Kong University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who generally graduate to become a high-salaried and influential elite,--are ~ left-leaning and naive...
...The people of Hong Kong have had no direct say in this accord, although both British and Chinese officials claim to have heeded public opinion and represented majority interests, as each side chooses to view them...
...The joint declaration will be generally acclaimed as the best possible document in the circumstances...
...Before the elation could settle, however, China made public a correction: The accord was not even to be termed an "agreement," as Sir Geoffrey had misled everyone at his Hong Kong press conference to believe, let alone that most binding of international contracts, a treaty...
...Forty-six percent as compared to 22 percent of Chicagoans at large...
...Deng instead showed his hand to them...
...For an old man's vainglory, more than five million people may go down the drain...
...And it wasn't offered up by dyspeptic aides from the Nixon Administration or by conservative zealots from Reagan's White House...
...Its ignorance is reinforced, many in the colony believe, by the characteristic tendency of subordinates like Xu Jiatun, head of the New China (Xinhua) News Agency and unofficial "boss" of Hong Kong, to report back mainly what Peking wants to hear...
...Dick Teresi, Executive Editor, OmniMagazine 0-306-41546-1/376pp./i11./19841517.95 BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE A Scientist's Case FOR Nudear Energy by Bernard L. Cohen "A most comprehensive analysis of the facts and fantasies about nuclear power...
...A professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong pointed out in an article last year that "the people of Hong Kong provide a living proof that a system of law and freedom is not one that the Chinese people cannot master...
...It is true that the present revisionist trend has strong popular backing and would seem difficult to reverse without plunging the country into chaos...
...In that time, China would have had a chance to Grenada: The Untold Story By Gregory Sandford & Richard Vigilante On October 19, 1983, a bloody coup brought down the four-year-old government of Grenada's charismatic ruler, Maurice Bishop...
...During the last 35 years, while the China mainland was swept arbitrarily from one state of disastrous turmoil to the next, Hong Kong became ~ stable Chinese city-state, a house on a rock...
...In Hong Kong, as in other places in the past about to be swallowed up by a totalitarian power, welcomers and optimists, both real and hypocritical, have already appeared and the first rustle of activity among accommodators and opportunists is plainly discernible...
...They share one other trait that few people know about, however...
...The phenomenon described by Hirschman is the political and social counterpart of the economic market and works precisely for that reason...
...In the real world everything will happen quite differently...
...So "what is wrong," he concludes, "with adherence to Communist party leadership...
...Six days later, U.S...
...Indeed, an internal speech by an official of the Foreign Ministry has reportedly alerted the higher Party cadres to be psychologically prepared to give up, if necessary, the considerable income from Hong Kong, in order to safeguard the principle of sovereignty...
...and Curtis A. Hessler, are young liberals who served in the Carter Administration...
...Many among them understand to the point of pain the difference between the two systems and find unbearable the prospect of being reabsorbed by a country where, as one of them put it, "people are less than human beings and where one word from Deng Xiaoping is stronger than law...
...Unfortunately, the survey results were not reported by race or place of residence: Had they been, the findings might have been even more striking, because urban parents are much more likely than suburban or rural parents to send their children to private schools...
...According to a press report, one British official has already indicated that "the political system to be developed in Hong Kong must be compatible with the overall structure and system of China...
...The more dramatic news was released this spring by the Chicago Reporter, a monthly information service that reports on racial issues in metropolitan Chicago...
...In the plainer English of the South China Morning Post, the people of Hong Kong have "two stark choices" - - " t a k e it or leave i t . " For the illusionless in the colony it matters little...
...In fact, Peking's basic decision to resume absolute sovereignty and administrative control over Hong Kong after the expiration of the British lease to the New Territories in 1997 seems never to have been negotiable...
...The word for "negotiate" in Mandarin is tan-pan, literally to "talk-decidei" According to the local wits, it was the British who were talking and the Chinese who were deciding...
...Thoroughly/ documented, carefully researched, and reinforced with extensive personal interviews with key decisionmakers in the U.S...
...Its principal purposes are the production of income and job security-if you enjoy the work, so much the better...
...A local financial daily, Hsin Pao, voiced the question underlying the unease: "Once Hong Kong becomes 'internal,' will Peking keep its p r o m i s e s . . . ? " 30 THE AMERICAN: SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 The Communist leadership does not understand the extent of this popular mood any more than it understands the workings of a capitalist economy or the well-springs of Hong Kong's success...
...Cloth, 220 pages, 4310-3 $13.95 A New Road for America: The Neo[iberai Movement Edited by Charles Peters & Phil Keisling Developed from a 1983 conference sponsored by' The Washington Monthly, this new work represents a broad-based manifesto for the neoliberal movement, including contributions from Ernest Hollings, Thomas Eagleton, James Fallows, Hendrik Hertzberg, Donald Burr, Victor Navasky, Michael Kinsley, Morton Kondracke, Daniel Yankelovich, Irving Kristol, and others...
...The authors, Ben W. Heineman, Jr...
...About half of Hong Kong's residents have in the past personally experienced and chosen to escape Chinese Communist rule...
...But it is still something of a surprise to learn that the rank and file are not buying their own product...
...Vietnam, Watergate, and related attempts to manipulate the media changed the way in which the press corps reports the presidency . . . . Although the media have traditionally been independent and critical of government, media attitudes now are unrelentingly adversarial...
...The replies of Peking's representatives to questions in Hong Kong about the reconcilability of the "two systems" in practice have been evasive, not to say casuistic...
...Some residents of the colony who cannot accept their own sense of doom and helplessness have become fixated on the details of the bilateral accord initialed on September 26, seeking more Miriam London is a researcher in Chinese and Soviet studies...
...They're opposed to tuition tax credits...
...Tough criticism of the press, huh...
...Thanks to the Chicago Reporter study we can now see how Chicago i ~5~151i~ n i~66"1 ~aqc]~il~ ( respond...
...As it now appears, Britain may cooperate with Peking to discourage the creation of such a political dilemma...
...That rock was ,the British system of law, which secured basic human rights for all and freedom in every sphere of life...
...and West Indian armed forces converged on the tiny Caribbean island and removed th~ short-lived Coard regime...
...We have said this on many occasions," Deng told a visiting group of Hong Kong industrialists, as though this were enough to lay all doubt to rest...
...Topics with Major Impact BEAM WEAPONS The Next Arms Race by Jeff Hecht "Hecht, who has written extensively on laser technology, presents the issues in a sober and evenhanded fashion . . . - The New York Times Book Review "In the aftermath of President Reagan's Star Wars speech, Beam Weapons is a welcome and eye-opening book...
...The example of the market permits one to escape Baudelaire's admonition in Fleurs du Mai: "hypocrit, lecteur, mon frere...
...The first numbers to surface came from a Detroit Free Press survey reported in the October 5, 1983 issue of Education Week...
...Hirschman more than a decade ago in a slender volume, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty...
...They are beguiled by the "logic" of Chinese nationalism, which requires that the role of the British as "colonial masters" must end and Hong Kong "return to the motherland...
...Unfortunately, it is precisely proof of such a potential outside the Communist system that Peking does not want...
Vol. 17 • November 1984 • No. 11
