Hong Kong: g Britain out
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-09-29Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 13 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 13
THE article in last week's Socialist Organiser on Hong Kong had a major error in the first paragraph - the Chinese government's intention is not to take control of 9/10th of Hong Kong; they want the entire colony back!
The article, however, correctly analysed the British position of economic blackmail in this latest round of talks which has just finished. Their refusal to compromise on the demnd for a British administrative presence has created a deadlock in the talks, and sent the Hong Kong dollar and stock market plummeting still further.
The dominant economic interests since the war have really been Japanese and Us imperialism, as well as the powerful local Chinese bourgeoisie, rather than Britain. They are increasingly exasperated and alarmed while the war of nerves goes on between Britain and China. Each side is waiting for the other to crack first as the Hong Kong economy spirals downwards rapidly.
The urgent task for socialists in Britain is to campaign and demand that the British govern. ment withdraws from Hong Kong • totally (i.e. no British administrative presence after 1997). This is the best way for the British labour movement to help the Chinese working class in Hong Kong and in China to settle accounts with the Hong Kong bourgeoisie and with their own government.
Fraternally, CHEUNG SIU MING *Editor's note. The Chines government does want control of the whole of Hong Kong. But it is the nine tenths of it known as the New Territories, whose lease expires in 1997.