Quotes of the Day

It's a weird wrinkle of politics that the most important annual commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre takes place in a park in the center of Hong Kong. No remembrances are allowed in Beijing, of course: the brave souls who attempt to unfurl a banner or shout a slogan in the square are quickly bustled away by security patrols. But thanks to the liberties of "one country, two systems," Hong Kong's residents can assemble every June 4 to mourn the students and workers who died in Tiananmen, and condemn the Communist government that mowed them down. Last Friday, some 80,000 people came together to watch a graphic video of the events in Beijing 15 years ago and to sing protest anthems in Cantonese and Mandarin. On the surface, the mood was solemn, with whole families reverently cupping their hands around votive candles in the summer breeze. But if you scratched the surface you immediately found worry and anger. "We want to use our voices to show we are taking control of our city," said Eddie Ho, a 30-year-old engineer. Commercial photographer Alfred Ko, 50, agreed: "We are desperate about the future of Hong Kong. People are here to say no."

In truth, the rallies in Hong Kong's Victoria Park have always been more about Hong Kong than what happened some 2,000 kilometers away in Beijing. The first gathering, which took place hours after the killings and drew 1 million people, was dominated by shock and by fear for the future: Britain was going to surrender Hong Kong to China just eight years later. (One of the most prominent placards at that rally read: TODAY CHINA, TOMORROW HONG KONG.) But in the succeeding years, even after the 1997 handover, the June 4 vigil became a relaxed, almost festive exercise of the rights Hong Kong still enjoyed, though always tinged with a nervous use-it-or-lose-it undercurrent.

Last Friday's was the most anxious June 4 since 1989 because Hong Kong and Beijing are locked in a tense new relationship. At the time of the handover, the bond between the two was, if not comradely, at least symbiotic. Beijing would maintain Hong Kong's freewheeling capitalist ways and grant the territory some autonomy (and reap international goodwill for doing so). In return, Hong Kongers would quietly go about the business of moneymaking to the exclusion of all other interests, especially political ones. That equation has changed because Hong Kong is not the place it used to be. While the territory's residents realize they still live in the luckiest part of China, with an upright judicial system, a largely unrestrained press and almost no corruption in officialdom, a growing number of Hong Kongers find that is no longer enough. Hong Kong now is unwilling merely to be China's docile economic prize. Instead, these days the territory is characterized by its discontent—with the lackluster performance of its Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, with the considerable power that local, self-serving tycoons wield, and with the territory's shrinking freedoms. "Sure I'm angry," concludes Stephen Wong, a 36-year-old IT worker. "Hope for democracy in Hong Kong is getting narrower and narrower."

This sea change did not occur overnight. It has evolved over the past 15 months, which have been intensely difficult for Hong Kong. First came SARS, which turned one of the world's busiest cities into a skittish ghost town in which the simplest activity—such as going to school or touching an elevator button with an unprotected finger—was fraught with danger. A feeble economy got even weaker, unemployment rose to record highs, and Tung's bumbling government chose that moment to ram through stiff antisubversion legislation. Public outrage culminated in a mass rally on July 1 in which 500,000 of Hong Kong's supposedly apolitical inhabitants took part. That's 7% of the total population, and Hong Kong had never seen anything like it—or the developments that rapidly followed. The rally was a venting against Tung, his administration and his proposed security laws. But within weeks, a movement arose demanding that Hong Kong be given more democratic rights—specifically, to directly elect its Chief Executive (currently handpicked by a Beijing-appointed body) and all the seats in the territory's Legislative Council (Legco).

China's reaction was a stunned, months-long silence that many Hong Kongers considered ominous. They were right, for when Beijing finally roused, its anger was resolute and sustained. In April, mainland authorities announced that the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), its legislature, had "interpreted" the Basic Law, the closest thing Hong Kong has to a constitution, and decreed that any change in Hong Kong's electoral process would have to be initiated by the central government. That effectively slammed the door; then Beijing proceeded to nail it shut and brick it over. Three weeks later, China's leaders announced that direct elections would not happen in 2007 (for the Chief Executive) and 2008 (for Legco), the earliest the Basic Law says they can take place.

Beijing's actions were accompanied by a relentless campaign of contemptuous rhetoric by Communist Party functionaries. First, Hong Kong was instructed that only "patriots" would be allowed to run the territory. (A Hong Kong pro-Beijing newspaper printed the names of four pro-democracy legislators who purportedly failed to meet that description.) The democrats were denounced by Chinese officials as "clowns," "dreamers" and "traitors," and in May, Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the NPC's Standing Committee, sneered: "They are just like bananas: yellow outside but white inside." Last month, insult evolved into what may have been a more direct form of intimidation: three pro-democracy radio talk-show hosts abandoned their jobs, saying they had received veiled warnings from friends with high connections within mainland China. Allen Lee, a Hong Kong delegate to the NPC, said a middle-ranking Chinese functionary called him up at 10:30 p.m. and made disturbing references to the "virtuousness" of Lee's wife and to the beauty of Lee's daughter. The official has said he was merely being friendly and that he was misunderstood, but Lee quit both radio and the NPC the following day.

After years of considering itself China's favored offspring, Hong Kong now feels the harsh sting of stepchild treatment. "Beijing thinks: We've already given you so many freedoms, why is the situation not working, why are all these people complaining?" says Li Pang-kwong, director of the public-governance program at Hong Kong's Lingnan University. While China's leaders want the territory to flourish financially, they are out of step with Hong Kongers' mounting desire to have a say over everything in the city, from job creation to pollution to traffic congestion to the preservation of the harbor. But the surest way to get a responsive government, Hong Kongers are learning, is to have the power to vote for one, which Beijing will not countenance. Brushing off the call for direct elections, Chan Wing-kee, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the central government, tetchily reminded Hong Kong that it was "an economic city, not a political city." Says pro-democracy Legco member Lee Cheuk-yan: "Beijing has a two-pronged approach: giving Hong Kong economic autonomy but imposing direct political control. They're the boss. They insist one country is more important than two systems."

Hong Kong and china are indeed becoming more like one country. Despite the political differences that many Hong Kongers have with China, most of the territory's residents acknowledge that Hong Kong's future is tied to the mainland's. Jeff Ip, for example, like thousands of other local businessmen, makes his money on the mainland and enjoys it in Hong Kong. Ip, 26, works for an electrical accessories company founded by his grandfather. The manufacturing used to be done in Kowloon, once the pumping heart of the territory's industrial economy. They don't make much in Kowloon anymore. Ip's factories are in Malaysia and mainland China nowadays. Once or twice a week he takes a train and then a chauffeured car to his Shenzhen factories, arriving around lunchtime, to check that the plugs, extension cords and sockets are being made properly. He usually gets back to Kowloon in time for dinner. The mainland workers refer to him as "Small Mr. Ip," in deference to his father, who labors five days a week in Shenzhen and weekends in Hong Kong. "When I first came to China," Ip says, "I didn't like it. It's a totally different society, people were weird, the culture was weird, things just seemed messier [there]. But what's the point of complaining about something you have to do? It's a way of life for Hong Kong now."

At the time of the handover, there was widespread concern that Hong Kong would deteriorate into "just another Chinese city," becoming more crowded, dirtier and more corrupt. But it hasn't happened. Instead, large parts of mainland China have become more like Hong Kong—more prosperous and sophisticated—narrowing the gap between the two places. Today, no one fears that mainland hordes will descend and ruin Hong Kong; on the contrary, the territory's economic recovery this year is partly due to Beijing's opening the floodgate for mainland tourists to visit and spend money in Hong Kong. They have been welcomed heartily: the city's Mass Transit Railway started announcing stops in Mandarin in addition to Cantonese and English, and many shops now accept payments in renminbi. Christian Dior Couture's Hong Kong stores used to train their staff in Japanese; now they also get Mandarin lessons. "Our core business," says regional managing director Pierre Denis, "is now Chinese business."

Those tourists may be on the freest patch of Chinese soil, but you never read of a busload from Shanghai or Wuhan trying to defect. "Maybe 10 or 20 years ago people wanted to come to live here," says Pearl, who is on a weeklong holiday to Hong Kong from far-off Xian, "but not now. China has so much opportunity. Of course, it's not as open as Hong Kong, but you are free to enjoy life." Last year, 53,507 mainlanders were allowed to migrate to Hong Kong, while 61,800 Hong Kong residents relocated in the opposite direction—a 50% increase over 2001's total.

Yet there's still a big gulf between the two sides. After an afternoon at one of his Shenzhen factories, businessman Ip, born in Hong Kong and raised in Toronto—one of a whole generation of Hong Kong Chinese whose parents raised them abroad in case the handover didn't work out—breezes through immigration and then walks the bridge over the narrow creek that separates the mainland and Hong Kong. "Sometimes," he confesses, "you feel like you're going back to civilization when you cross this bridge [to Hong Kong]."

if mainland china more closely mirrors Hong Kong in the material sense, what does Hong Kong represent to its overlords in Beijing? To the Chinese, Hong Kong is a dynamic illustration of freedom-under-communism that will persuade Taiwan to reunite with the mainland. (That theory has taken a bruising since direct elections were nixed; Taiwan's people, after all, elect all their leaders.) It's also a proud showcase to the world as China's most modern and functional city. What Beijing never intended it to be was an experiment in democracy on Chinese soil. "China doesn't want to see any democratic progress in Hong Kong because that could be a big threat to the mainland itself," says political scientist Wu Guoguang, a professor of government at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who before 1989 was an aide to Party chief Zhao Ziyang, who was purged after Tiananmen. "Given the widespread social discontent among China's rural poor, Beijing wants to prevent Hong Kong from serving as a [democratic] model for the mainland."

To that end, Beijing first offered carrots. In addition to sending armies of shopping-obsessed tourists to Hong Kong, it has tried to buck up the territory's economy by signing an economic pact that gives Hong Kong-based businesses preferential treatment in mainland China over other foreign firms. Yet the central government has received little of the gratitude it might have expected. "They can't buy the people," says Emily Lau, one of Hong Kong's pro-democracy legislators pilloried by Beijing this spring. "Our goals are modest: Hong Kong people recognize we are part of China, but that it would be good to have a democracy under Chinese sovereignty."

Faced with such recalcitrance, Chinese officials have reached for the stick. There's the intimidating public rhetoric designed to scare voters from electing too many democrats in Legco's coming election in September, which promises to be a referendum on Tung and Beijing. And there's private pressure of the sort that persuaded the three talk-show hosts to quit their jobs. Albert Cheng, who abandoned his popular show in May, says he's learned the value of keeping his trap shut, eschewing his onetime reputation as Hong Kong's most outspoken man: "I go to the races, I wine and dine, but I won't say anything political. It is too dangerous. That should tell you enough about what I think about the present situation in Hong Kong." Many ordinary Hong Kongers also think it's now wise to lie low. In Victoria Park last Friday, retired business-management professor Paul Fang, 77, gathered with a bunch of fellow teachers, as they have for each of the past Tiananmen memorials. But several members of the group didn't show up: they had been warned by their employers not to go at the risk of being fired. Fang sympathized: "They have to keep their jobs."

Politicized Hong Kongers say their only choice is to keep pushing for democracy to show Beijing that its golden goose won't merely lay eggs without honking. They're hoping that hundreds of thousands will come out into the streets again on July 1 for the anniversary of last year's massive demonstration. The bigger test is in September, when the pro-democracy groups will try to capture as many seats as possible in the Legco election, although a majority is almost impossible: only half of the 60 places are voted for by geographic districts. The other half are voted for by industry and social groups, and usually go to conservative candidates. China will undoubtedly keep up the pressure, public and private. "Beijing is scared of an opposition legislature," Lingnan University's Li says, "an idea that is totally new to them." Though direct elections for the Chief Executive have been ruled out until 2012 at the earliest, some groups are pushing for an expansion of the body that appoints the territory's top dog to make it more representative of Hong Kong's different constituencies. But that's just a proposal—and maybe a pipe dream.

It's a strange place that Hong Kongers now occupy. Consider Wong Tak-wai, an idealistic 22-year-old who just graduated from Lingnan University with a political-science degree. Last week, Wong was in Victoria Park at the Tiananmen rally, standing up for Hong Kong. "We can't do anything to stop the central government except vote in the election in September," he says. But this week, Wong is doing charity work on the mainland: he and a few friends have flown to Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces on the mainland, to help teachers and students improve education for the poor. Classmate Elaine Leung, 23, a major in Chinese culture, is accompanying Wong into the distant boondocks, but with some trepidation. "I know China's our mother," says Leung, "but there are certain things I just don't agree with her about." Leung confesses that her own identity is "very complicated," and getting more so each day. "There's something scary," she says, "about mainland China."

• Anthony Spaeth | Hong Kong
• China warns the city to forget democracy and get back to business. But many Hong Kongers aren't listening