Socialist view on Hong Kong

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No.28 WOMEN'S -tonthack FIGHTBACK.

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HONG Kong is probably the most mportant remaining colony 1l he capitalist world: 5½ millior people (more than Ireland); more toreign trade than China proper or Brazil, and much more than India; a major financial centre for East Asia.

Yet the issue of Hong Kong has hardly been discussed at all in the British labour movement. Only the fact that Britain's lease on the greater part of the colony's territory expires in 1997 has sparked any concern.

Gregor Benton's book attempts to establish a socialist view.

Hong Kong under British rule, he reports, is run as a not-veryenlightened despotism. It "is a society of several thousand multimillionaires and tycoons - and of millions who live from hand to mouth, with only the barest security."

Three-quarters of a million people live in shanty towns. Workers are paid by the piece, with no minimum wage and practically no unemployment benefit.

Medical services are "cheap but appallingly bad" for the majority. "The proportion of Hong Kong's 'national income devoted to education is still among the world's lowest."

There is no form of elected self-government. The language of 98% of Hong Kong people Chinese - has been • an official language only since 1974, and is still rarely used in government councils or in courts of law.

Despite all this, most Hong Kong people are "inclined to compromise with British rule in December 1963 Paper of the women's Movement New Won len's Fightback now out. 10g age from lOb Landseer Road, London the colony and to oppose a return to mainland administration.

It was not always so. In 19256, the workers of Hong Kong fought a tremendous general strike against their British rulers. After World War 2, "there was widespread support for the communists (Maoists) . . . and for a while sections of workers became very militant...

Sympathy for the mainland regime remained even up to the early 1960s. It began to vanish as starving refugees and desperate appeals for food came out of the mainland in the wake of the crash collectivisation drive of the Great Leap Forward. It drained away as the chaos of the 1970s was followed by the suppression of the democracy movement in the early 1980s.

At the price of a few meagre reforms, the colonial administration has been able to win social peace and a decline of trade union membership and activity in the Hong Kong working class since 1977.

So what should socialists argue? Gregor Benton reports that the Hong Kong Trotskyists are campaigning for a democratically elected sovereign assembly in Hong Kong. The people of Hong Kong should decide their own future. British rule should be ended. Reunification with the mainland should be linked with the fight for socialist democracy (i.e. for an anti-bureaucratic revolution - though Benton does not use the word revolution).

Benton also describes the policies of the mainland Chinese government and of different sections of the Hong Kong bourgeoisie. Beijing's line is that Hong Kong should be brought under its sovereignty, but with local autonomy so that "absolutely nothing" will change there socially and economically.

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Gregor Benton, 'The Hong Kong Crisis'. Pluto

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