Long-term Hong Kong resident Richard Cullen reflects on politics, friendships and the Tai Po fire.
I first arrived to live and work in Hong Kong over 30 years ago. More recently I began to reflect on the way expressing my own political views on Hong Kong and China has reshaped some long-standing friendships. The recent terrible fire in Tai Po helped sharpen this focus.
Introduction
Good friendships are a cherished aspect of every life sensibly lived. Some last a very long time. Others are more short-lived, but are still deeply valued. Such relationships regularly adjust as we grow older, when circumstances change or when we relocate geographically, for example.
At certain times, particular intervening experiences can significantly reshape friendships. A well-known customary, social guideline (sometimes attributed to Mark Twain) anticipates this possibility; it advises that we should “never discuss politics or religion in polite company”.
G. K. Chesterton, on the other hand, advised that he never discussed, “anything else except politics and religion” as, “there is nothing else to discuss” (link here.)
Long before reading Chesterton’s advice, I confess I found politics too absorbing to exclude it from regular conversation.
Politics in Hong Kong- before and after 1997
After arriving in Hong Kong, I discovered an abundance of politics available for discussion. I also discovered how convergence theory heavily shaped such debates.
Bill Clinton was the US President from January 1993 until January 2001. He was a highly influential, primary advocate of convergence theory, which argued that by integrating China into global systems, including the WTO, this would foster gradual political liberalization in China and an eventual convergence with Western-liberal political norms like those outlined in Francis Fukuyama audacious, 1989 “End of History” article (link here.)
In the 1990s, this concept framed most Western interaction with China – and Hong Kong. I was one of many who found this hypothesis persuasive.
When I spoke or participated in seminars and conferences focused on Hong Kong and Chinese politics locally and internationally, I discovered that speakers and participants were mostly in broad (convergence) agreement. Though I also recall thoughtful pushback from certain Chinese participants.
Perspective adjusted
Around 15 years ago, I began to grasp how convergence theory was, in truth, a robustly evangelized, Western crafted view of what the West believed the future held for China. While it prevailed, significant Western academic, government, regulatory and business operatives treated it as indicative of how China would develop, implicitly imagining that this was also how Beijing essentially envisaged China’s own future.
The more I read, the more I began to comprehend how this was an exceptionally curious way of fundamentally framing virtually all aspects of Sino-Western interaction.
I also began to realize how the dogmatic political prescriptions of the pan-democrat opposition in Hong Kong (maddened by the perceived lack of political convergence in the HKSAR) were not just insistently growing; they were also hindering rational discussion of possible political change.
This was particularly evident as the deeply disruptive, 2014 Occupy Central Movement unfolded. Then came the extended, very violent, massive social-upheaval in 2019.
The latter movement swiftly spun-off (in mid-2019) from a series of major, sanctioned political demonstrations. Those most implacably opposed to the HKSAR government – and Beijing – evolved into an openly violent, disloyal opposition, significantly supported by Western operatives (see here.) They sort to upend the prevailing constitutional order, if possible, as they insisted that only their view of correct political structures was admissible (see link.)
The China Threat narrative
As these events unfolded, another primary, Western geopolitical shift revealed itself.
In 2018, The Economist confirmed that wayward Beijing had never accepted the guiding wisdom of that Western convergence theory (see here.) The Global West thus found itself looking for a substitute (Western) grand theory of what China had in mind for its own future.
This new widely embraced Sino-explanatory-scheme, fervently incubated in the US, is the China Threat storyline, sharply summarized by one scholar as a disfiguring narrative that casts China as a “scheming and highly sophisticated hostile foreign entity aiming for global dominance” (see here.) Its most radical advocates favour extreme containment measures (see this link.)
Handily for the marketers of this alarming replacement theory, China acquired a new leader in 2013, Xi, Jinping. The new president was reserved, highly experienced, deeply thoughtful, equally forceful and visibly proficient. Here was someone ready-made to be cast by the Western mainstream media as the personalized embodiment of the China Threat. (see link.)
Most of the resulting, Sino-hostile, Western commentary has pivoted around the artfully marketed, binary choice between white-hatted democracy and black-hatted authoritarianism.
Recently, however, Kishore Mahbubani, a widely respected geopolitical commentator highlighted the way this briskly fashioned, heavily sold dichotomy actively camouflaged the primary, ongoing East-West contest: competence vs dysfunction. Mahbubani, a former President of the UN Security Council, argues that China’s competence confirming, extraordinary rise is based on what he calls its MPH formula (Meritocracy, Pragmatism and Honesty) (See link.)
The Tai Po Fire
The recent lethal, fearfully destructive high-rise fire in Tai Po prompted intense worldwide coverage It also provided a grim reminder of how, largely heedless of the visible personal anguish, many mainstream Western media outlets spotted a first-class, fresh opportunity to advance the bad-Hong-Kong-China storyline by brutally over-politicizing this tragedy (see link).
A central theme in such stories is that there is “mounting public fury” in Hong Kong and the “government is determined to suppress protest.” (see link.)
Talking of suppression, what is a lucidly evident within these same outlets, is a curbing of reports on how much Hong Kong is getting right, responding to the Tai Po fire, in exceptionally difficult circumstances (see link.)
This phenomenon – headlining flaws-in-the-glass – reminded me that, as the extended, massively destructive insurgent rioting unfolded in Hong Kong in 2019, a number of people told me how appalled they were at the response of the Hong Kong Police. Each time I asked them to name me a police force anywhere in the world that could have done better. Each time my question was typically answered with silence.
Of course, the HKSAR Government and institutional responses to the terrible Tai Po fire have not been perfect. But when, instead of comparing Hong Kong to some Perfect Government in the Sky, I tried, seriously (looking past the likes of Hurricane Katrina), to think of any contemporary Global West jurisdiction that had done a better job responding to a catastrophe on this scale, I drew a comprehensive blank.
The raw truth is that catastrophes on this scale present terrible, extraordinary challenges for governments worldwide. Including in Hong Kong.
Refocused writing and responses
The events and realizations outlined above have all steadily influenced my writing. Moreover, there has been so much feverish, sometimes risible China-thumping evident since the elevation of the China Threat storyline, that the allure of responding is almost irresistible. Consider, for example: Western media almost cheering on a projected possible collapse of the Three Gorges Dam (didn’t happen); or keenly anticipated catastrophes at the Beijing Winter Olympics (also didn’t happen) (See link.)
Next, I can see now, how subsequent reactions to this writing have reshaped a number of long-standing friendships.
Around a decade ago, a good friend in the antipodes thoughtfully suggested we should stop corresponding as they disagreed at a basic level with aspects of my writing. Later, another long-time friend told me (rather conclusively) after I began publishing articles in the China Daily, that I was “writing for Pravda” (the leading paper of the Communist Party in the former USSR) – an enterprise which was plainly held in low regard. A series of similar examples followed.
More recently, a good friend was robustly disturbed by an article I shared, written by the pre-eminent Australian Sinologist, Colin Mackerras, that explained the benefits, for Australia, to be found by developing an informed and measured view of China (see link).
The fact that mainstream Western media outlets rarely give space or time to distinguished international commentators like Chas Freeman, Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer is, in my view, an excellent reason to pay more attention to their perspectives. Professor Mearsheimer is particularly convincing when he argues why the Western-dominated unipolar world, led by the US, has come to an end. About two years ago he put it this way: “It’s very important to understand that what’s happened is that the unipolar moment is in the rearview mirror. It’s gone. We are now in a multipolar world” (see link).
Most of the nations comprising the Global West are either still in denial about what Mearsheimer argues or choose not to listen. America is the exemplar in this regard but many other anxious, obedient allies share this outlook.
The pattern I have outlined above, where friendships have been significantly reshaped and sometimes put into cold storage, has certainly not been a source of any pleasure but neither has it been too unsettling (see further below). It did, however, set me thinking about what may link these experiences.
I believe that most of these friends who have moved along share, to a significant degree, an instinctive, sometimes considered view that the best answers as to how the world should be ordered should still predominantly come from the West as they have done for so long (see link). Yet, many sense that the number sharing this view globally is unfortunately shrinking (see link).
The apparent, broad move away from a unipolar world (visible whenever you look beyond the Global West) is heightening apprehension, at an individual level, about the shift from a world plainly dominated by Western jurisdictions for several hundred years to one where this sort of certainty is evidently wobbling. The fact that the chief-wobbler is China, a hugely successful, distinctly non-white and non-Western civilization with thousands of years of continuous history, adds to the sense of alarm (see link.)
My hypothesis, thus, is that some friends find they disagree – often strongly – with aspects of what I have argued over the last decade, because what I write tends to reinforce existing apprehensions. Let me add, that: (a) I clearly believe in what I have written; but (b) it also clearly remains possible that friends who disagree could be right.
Conclusion
As it happens, I can only think of one case where someone was measurably bitter in their parting criticism. In all other cases, personally harsh words have never arisen. Indeed, even where friendships are no longer active, clear memories of those friendships remain exceptionally appreciated.
I should add that in many cases, I have had robust China-related exchanges where disagreements with long-time friends were plain but we remain in regular contact. Moreover, I have established various, very good, new friendships over the period under discussion.
Finally, Thomas Jefferson put it remarkably well, over 200 years ago: “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend” (see link).
Richard Cullen is an adjunct law professor at the University of Hong Kong and a popular writer on current affairs.
To see a list of articles he has written for this outlet, click this phrase.
Image at the top by fridayeveryday.