How sadly ironic that, in an era when country after country has slipped the yoke of Marxist tyranny and become free, Hong Kong - technically a British colony but with many democratic features - will be handed over to the last communist behemoth, China, in 1997.
Perhaps outsiders should follow the example of Hong Kong's 5.5 million people and keep their chins up. Even with the Chinese specter looming, Hong Kong's economic growth has outpaced that of most advanced countries throughout the 1990s. By some measures, the colony's living standard eclipses Great Britain's. Also, there is some comfort in China's promise, part of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, that Beijing will allow Hong Kong to remain fully capitalist for 50 years.Indeed, China would be foolish to tamper with a system that even now generates 40 percent of the mainland's hard currency earnings. Scripps Howard News Service report that investments from Hong Kong have seeded 4,000 manufacturing businesses in China, its top trading partner. Far from worrying that China will club the colony into some drab precinct of a police state, the West might fret that Hong Kong will become the Silverado that finances a new wave of Chinese imperialism.
But dictators are not rationalist philosophers; they are dictators. China could have saved itself international opprobrium and facilitated its global commerce by dealing with the protesters in Tiananmen Square. It slaughtered them. The same thing could happen in Hong Kong - particularly if the colony's residents fight to retain the rule of law. The most popular shows on Hong Kong television, notes Solicitor General Daniel Fung, "portray bewigged and begowned barristers cross-examining witnesses in court." China might abide Adam Smith. But Rumpole of the Bailey? Or Perry Mason?
When the Roman Empire fell, the barbarians that toppled it became, well, Romanesque. The very best outcome is that, as a moral force, Hong Kong will swallow the giant that soon will swallow it.