Chinese tea and the pursuit of democracy 🍵
How Hong Kong became a litmus test for democracy between the East and the West.
Congratulations on making it to another Tuesday, folks!
This week, I want to shift our political conversation abroad, specifically to Hong Kong, a special autonomous territory under China. Unless you’ve been living inside a cave for the last year (which, no, is not the same as living in quarantine at home!), you’ll know that Hong Kong has been plagued by civil unrest in what many observers have dubbed as its “fight for democracy.”
But what exactly is democracy? And how would a formerly colonized port with a unique status like Hong Kong achieve such a thing?
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, you need to know Hong Kong’s history and how it became a special territory with its own laws, culture, and judiciary system that are *independent* yet still *under* China, known as the “one country, two systems” rule.
It all started long ago with tea. This comfort beverage, now synonymous with the Brits, is actually a cultural crop that was first cultivated by the Chinese thousands of years ago. The Chinese were so good at growing and making tea that China began exporting it, turning it into a popular global commodity.
Since China was the only place in the world where tea was grown and produced back then, China had a monopoly on tea. By the 19th century, tea made up about 62 percent of China’s exports, making it a major commodity for the Chinese economy.
Tea was incredibly popular in Britain and became one of its most significant imports. But Britain was hella broke because of all the wars and colonizing, so the Brits convinced the Chinese to trade tea in exchange for opium which the British Empire had begun cultivating in its Indian colony.
The popularity of opium gave way to an addiction epidemic in China which caused Chinese officials to stop their opium trade with Britain; they refused to trade tea with Britain for anything less than silver, which the British obviously couldn’t afford. After repeated confrontations between Chinese officials and British opium traffickers, the two nations became embroiled in the decades-long Opium Wars.
The wars ultimately led to China’s defeat and its ceding of Hong Kong island as part of the Treaty of Nanjing, turning Hong Kong into a British colony. Much later, when Britain sought to fortify its vulnerable Hong Kong port, China agreed to “lease” its Kowloon territory, which includes the southern tip of the Chinese mainland and a spattering of islands around Hong Kong island, to the British Empire for 99 years (much like the hit Jay-Z song, why the lease was for “99 years” remains a mystery.)
In the late 1980s, as the end of the “lease” approached, Britain agreed to “return” Hong Kong to China along with the rest of its Kowloon territory, which is how the island came back under Chinese rule. The agreement hinged on one condition: China would allow the former British colony its own judiciary authority and not touch its blossoming capitalist system for 50 years after its return. The Washington Post reported on the awkward “handing-over” of Hong Kong between the two governments in 1997.
Fast forward to 2021, Hong Kong has been gripped by tumultuous protests for nearly two years now. ABC Australia has a great interactive summary of the protests developments if you want to have a look.
At its core, protests first erupted in March 2019 as a response against a new law known as the Hong Kong Extradition Bill which would’ve allowed the government to transfer fugitives in its territory (a.k.a extradite) to countries with which it had no extradition agreements before like Taiwan, which also has a weird relationship with China.
Hong Kong lawmakers insisted the bill was proposed to make sure that “legal loopholes” wouldn’t prevent criminal suspects in the region to escape prosecution. But experts pointed out the bill allowed for extradition to China, too. This meant Hong Kong officials could potentially send political dissidents to China, where they would be unlikely to receive a fair trial given China’s terrible track record with dissidents.
Protests over the bill reached a peak in June 2019 when 1 million protesters took to the streets (Hong Kong’s total population is only about 7.5 million.) The bill ultimately died but the chain reaction it started has morphed into a wider anti-government movement with many viewing the killed bill as China’s growing arm to pull the special territory back under its authority, despite the “one country, two systems” rule.
Western media outlets have portrayed the protests as a battle for Hong Kong’s “westernized” democratic soul. Of course, we know that western countries are not the sole arbiters of democracy (um, just look at what’s happening in the U.S.) but how the western media has covered Hong Kong is an interesting exercise in media bias, especially when it comes to international politics.
FAIR, the media watchdog, analyzed coverage of Hong Kong protests by the New York Times and CNN and compared it to their coverage on similar unrest in Haiti, Chile, and Ecuador. FAIR found a clear bias in reporting. Not only did NYT and CNN cover Hong Kong waaay more often (300-400 articles on Hong Kong compared to < 25 articles on other countries’ protests), the language they used was also totally different.
Hong Kong protesters were typically referred to as “pro-democracy protesters” and were rarely described using disparaging language while unrest in other countries was labeled as “violent protests” and “riots.”
“The ‘wrath of labor and transport unions,’ CNN (10/9/19) told us, was ‘unleashed’ as ‘violent protests have raged’ in Quito (Ecuador), and protesters held military members hostage. This sort of language is rarely used with regards to the Hong Kong protesters, even when it is arguably more applicable. In addition to widespread property damage and the aforementioned bricking of a retiree, protestors recently doused another elderly man in flammable liquid and set fire to him on camera.” — FAIR
This bias in western media’s gaze on Hong Kong is likely brought on by the geopolitics against China as a dominant world power. The idea is that if Hong Kong is shaken up, Beijing will be, too. In other words, what’s bad for China is good for western powers.
There is rightful criticism against the Chinese government’s atrocious record on human rights, especially when it comes to ethnic minorities, and its treatment of dissenters. The far-reaching national security law that Beijing just implemented for Hong Kong doesn’t make a great argument for its right over the island state, either.
However, it’s naive to assume imperialist powers like the U.S. and Britain, which colonized Hong Kong for 156 years, are backing the protests because of some higher moral standing. It’s also a gross whitewashing of Hong Kong’s colonial history to paint the people’s pursuit of democracy as some sort of “gift” from the west when the British took Hong Kong by force and applied archaic laws during its rule over the island.
In 1967, Hong Kong — then largely known as a “sweatshop colony” to westerners — was swept up in violent protests sparked by a factory labor dispute. Protesters clashed with police forces and the British military while voicing pro-communist and anti-British slogans, inspired by the Cultural Revolution in China at the time.
Scholars consider the 1967 protests a watershed moment for the island. It wasn’t much later that the British government began enacting social reforms in Hong Kong. These social reforms, combined with what some scholars view as a weird mix between imperialism and capitalist free trade by the British, turned the colony prosperous. By the time Hong Kong was “returned” to China in 1997, the 400-square-mile island had developed into the eighth-largest economy in the world.
Like any mass movement, there are mixed sentiments among Hong Kongers about the protests, which is to say there is no single view that represents the entire movement.
Some Hong Kongers welcome international intervention over its complicated status while others believe the island should return to its parent country China. There are also those who claim that Hong Kong was better off as a British colony, a warped sentiment that comes from the romanticization of its last years before returning to China.
But are those the only options for Hong Kong’s people, either go back to being controlled by Britain — which is in an economic mess over BREXIT — or endure an uncertain fate under China’s Communist Party? Neither seems like a good look for a democratic state. The only way Hong Kong would even come close to a semblance of real democracy is if it gained full independence, making it free of any influence from the East or the West.
If you haven't been paying attention over the last week, I’m here to let you know that Wallstreet observers are in absolute disarray over hedge fund meltdowns thanks to Game Stop, an old video game retailer that nearly went out of business before its stock value abruptly bloated like crazy. The situation has become so concerning that Congress is keeping a close eye on Wallstreet which it hasn’t done since the 2008 financial crash.
The situation is chaotic and confusing for many folks who don’t spend their days thinking about shorts and bonds (me, I am folks). Luckily, The Verge has a pretty good breakdown about how and why the Game Stop price explosion happened.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
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Stay warm y’all,
Natasha