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The hard fact is that the crown colony of Hong Kong exists because and only because it is useful to both sides. It will continue to exist as long as it remains so. Hong Kong is worth its weight in hard currency to Red China. Last year Peking earned $180 million with sales of food and textiles to Hong Kong, and in 1960 sales are running 10% higher. Communist agents cross the border easily and legally and use the colony as a base for political intelligence, propaganda, commercial and financial operations. The imposing, 17-story Communist Bank of China throws its shadow on such relics of British imperialism as the Hong Kong Club and the Cricket Club. The Reds also operate a tourist office, trade outlets, and a huge department store selling everything from canned dumplings to baseball bats.
For the West, Hong Kong is in many ways a better listening post than China itself, since in Peking, non-Communist diplomats and newsmen must live in a ghetto for foreigners. U.S. and European businessmen find Hong Kong a comfortable, efficient community where the telephones work, taxes are low, and communications with the rest of Asia ideal. The Hong Kong attitude was best defined by its former governor, Sir Alexander Grantham, when he said, "We are just simple traders who want to get on with our daily round and common task. This may not be very noble, but at any rate it does not disturb others."
Money Back. But when the colony's lease on the New Territories expires in 1997 the Communists can legally swallow nine-tenths of Hong Kong without lifting an aggressive finger. As a result, British and Chinese businessmen specialize in quick turnovers, usually siphon a percentage of their profits overseas. "We always get our money back in five years," says a conservative British merchant.
For all its factories and air-conditioned offices, its marble banks and Western ways, Hong Kong is still the Orient. A Chinese accountant educated at the University of Wisconsin audits his ledgers on an abacus. A Hankow Road doctor who graduated from Queen's College treats his patients with powdered tiger bone and cobra bile instead of sulfanilamides. Chinese speculators discuss deals in Chicago wheat futures and Sahara oil while lunching on sea slugs and "beggar's chicken," rolled in lotus leaves and baked in mud.
Tired Work Horse. The rest of Asia is only slowly coming to grips with the tourist flood. For example, Cambodia's magnificent ruins at Angkor are serviced by a single ramshackle hotel. Pagan, in central Burma, is famed for its collection of 5,000 Buddhist temples but it has no hotel at all.
But Hong Kong is energetically expanding its facilities. Last week eight new hotels were either complete or under construction. Work has started on an air terminal equipped to handle 550 passengers an hour. There is so much on sale so inexpensively (even Japanese businessman complain that Japanese products sell for less in Hong Kong than they do at home) that many tourists go broke "saving money." Often they stagger away from Hong Kong with their stomachs full and their pocketbooks empty, gamely determined to see the other attractions of the Far East, but poorly equipped to do so. While Hong Kong lasts, its nimble businessmen and cool British governors are determined to see that the situation does not change.