No mandate ten years on

Hong Kong: The greatest Chinese take-away in history occurred ten years ago. The heavens opened over Hong Kong on June 30, 1997 but the mandate of heaven was missing. For the next two weeks the deluge caused flooding, landslides and widescale traffic disruption only eased by a week-long holiday.

The atrocious stay-at-home weather made people brood. The mandate, a natural omen or piece of good fortune that every Chinese leader, emperor or communist, seeks to show he is the favourite of the gods, was absent. Surely with the Union Jack lowered, the Governor Chris Patten sailing away fighting the battle of the bulge as he resisted Britannia's dessert tray, and the Empire's last sunset, the gods should have been kinder? Ten years on, the rain has stopped but the mandate has still not been granted.

Just what to call Hong Kong had been a problem in the politically sensitive 1990s. Officially, it was a colony, with its own governor's mansion where Beijing insisted the new Bank of China should be located to cast a towering shadow (China's commercial influence over Hong Kong commenced long before that rainy June night).

Embarrassment

The Chinese found referring to any part of their land as a colony deeply humiliating and the British were, frankly old chap, a bit embarrassed by being the colonial masters.

As London was formulating its East of Suez withdrawal, the government of Harold Wilson increasingly allowed the colony to manage its own affairs. The Cultural Revolution in China helped as well. With its teeming slums, Hong Kong was hardly a showcase for the benefits of living in the free west.

A systematic slum clearance programme began in the late 1960s, and in it were the seeds of Hong Kong's infatuation with property. 'Made in Hong Kong' is no longer a code for cheap produce simply because the factories have closed and moved across the border where the banks and financial institutions that dominate the Hong Kong economy extend them credit.

This benevolence from London extended to dropping the word colony and referring to it as a territory or region. Hence the term the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, or SAR, which the former colony was called on July 1, 1997. Old China hands said it had always been a SAR, the Scottish Administrative Region in recognition of the Scots, the merchant masters of empire.

In 1997, Tung Chee-hwa replaced Patten as Hong Kong's leader. He had inherited his father's shipping company, ran it aground and was bailed out by Beijing to the tune of more than $100 million (Dh367.2 million).

Tung was not a man upon whom the gods bestowed their favours and just why Beijing picked him is still a cause of puzzlement. At least he stayed true to form. His years in office coincided with the Asian economic crisis which was followed by the bursting of the dot.com bubble and an outbreak of the SARS respiratory disease. Bird flu and property prices slumped 70 per cent in the six years to mid-2003. Prices have since recovered but there is a sense of opportunity lost.

A proposed security law brought thousands onto the streets in protest in a place where political demonstrations were almost unheard of. Beijing, like Victoria, was not amused. The security law was dropped but the stand-off rattled Beijing's nerves.

The Basic Law, which the Cantonese call the Basic Flaw, was meant to guarantee 50 years of legislative independence from Beijing's diktats.

Public unrest

From Beijing's point of view, backing down was not meant to be part of the plan. Beijing's elite are not democrats but neither are they immune to public opinion. Hong Kong had lost its vibrancy, there was public unrest. Tung was replaced in 2005 by Sir Donald Tsang. Nicknamed Sir Generous because of his giveaway budgets under Patten, the bow-tied leader is not a great helmsman but he has kept Hong Kong on an even keel.

But now the Basic Law is more apparent. In 1997 Britain kept insisting it played a poor hand well. "After all we had to give it back, it wasn't ours" civil servants never tired of saying to TV camera crews strategically placed to capture the sinking Victoria Harbour sun setting on 150 years of colonial rule.

In other words, old chap, London was saying cheerio, best of luck but if you think for one moment sentimental attachments to Hong Kong are going to hinder trade with China, then well, sorry to disappoint old boy, you have the wrong end of the stick.

The trams still trundle, the ferry still ploughs across the harbour and tourists are still offered copy watches down Nathan Road. All the same then? Nothing changed since the handover.

Not exactly. There is an anniversary but is it an anniversary of Hong Kong maintaining its identity or surrendering it? The mandate has still to be claimed.