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Hong Kong's mainland influence
The arrogance has gone. A decade ago the rudeness to outsiders, directed mostly at mainland Chinese dressed in copy clothes rather than original brands, was as much a part of Hong Kong life as spitting in the street. But ten years of economic setbacks have tempered any airs of superiority.
- By Tom Clifford, Assistant Editor, International
- Published: 23:33 June 28, 2007
- Image Credit: Reuters
- Children hold up cutouts of the Hong Kong SAR flag for a photo at a school in Zaozhuang, east China's Shandong province yesterday to mark the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China.
Hong Kong: The arrogance has gone. A decade ago the rudeness to outsiders, directed mostly at mainland Chinese dressed in copy clothes rather than original brands, was as much a part of Hong Kong life as spitting in the street. But ten years of economic setbacks have tempered any airs of superiority.
Chinese mainlanders were once considered second or third class citizens by their fellow countrymen in Hong Kong who probably did not want to be reminded their own success had only been achieved since the 1970s.
Their ill-fitting clothes were a painful reminder to Hong Kong residents that economic success was the exception rather than the norm, and certainly not the birthright of anyone in Hong Kong.
That condescending attitude has evaporated like the steam from the streets after a summer downpour.
Change
There was even a name for it, Ah Chaan, the name of a country bumpkin created by television to represent the average mainlander. It used to be uttered frequently. Now it has been erased from the language. The tables have been turned.
Hong Kong people feel humiliated nowadays when they travel across the border to Shenzhen and find themselves being called "Kong Chaan" if they fail to spend money generously.
But there is a deeper reason for this change; the Hongkonger is on the way to becoming a mainlander. The journey began mere hours after the midnight handover on July 1, 1997.
Certainly neither Beijing nor anyone in Hong Kong expected or wanted it to begin so soon. In fact, some in this city never expected it to happen at all, in this or the next lifetime.
With timing that could not have been scripted, the Asian financial crisis broke out on July 2, 1997, with the collapse of the Thai baht, followed by a string of more painfully and deadly crises that knocked the swagger out of Hong Kong.
Try this for a list of blows; the financial crisis, bird flu, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), an unprecedented 8 per cent unemployment rate, negative equity, bird flu - Hong Kong people grabbed the only available option.
Casting aside face, pride, a deep sense of superiority once so typically Hong Kong, they went with begging bowl to Beijing.
Beijing played the white knight far sooner than it ever thought likely and threw out one lifeline after another.
Now the economy is beginning to head again for the sunlit uplands, there is a confidence here not seen since the Union Jack fluttered over Central, the capital of Hong Kong.
But these are good times with a difference.
Half a million Hong Kong people, mainly middle-class, tertiary-educated ones, are now working on the mainland. That's almost the same number of moneyed middle-class professionals who fled to Canada, Australia and the United States in the last few years of British rule.
Settled
Their places in Hong Kong have been taken over by an almost equal number of mainlanders, mainly poor, who have settled here for good. Most at the lower economic end are women who have married Hong Kong men.
The men for the less demanding mainland woman as wife or mistress is not likely to die out soon, leaving behind an ever-growing army of single Hong Kong women.
Hong Kong is no longer the second-busiest container port in Asia behind Singapore. Shanghai has superseded it and so will Shenzhen soon.
Night after night, in restaurants and nightclubs, the big spenders are mainlanders. Hong Kong people await their tips. Hong Kong's own big spenders are throwing their money left and right - in Beijing and Shanghai.
From spoilt child to teenager having to fend for itself, Hong Kong will always be a success but how that success is measured, not purely by financial criteria, will change in the coming decades.
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