Hong Kong. Deng Xiaoping's main mistake
Former Red But Chinese District
The other day in communist China, the anti-communist opposition won an impressive victory in the elections to local district councils. This is by no means a sensation, since everything happened in Hong Kong: the opposition got a total of 347 from 452 seats. Beijing-loyal candidates only got 60 seats.
It is characteristic that back in 2015, the results of the same elections were recorded exactly the opposite. Now, once the “red Hong Kong” has changed its political orientation, which can be seen even on the electoral map.
In such a situation, it is reasonable to assume a further intensification of the domestic political crisis in Hong Kong with a view to promoting the idea of separating it from the PRC. And Beijing’s reaction to such a scenario is unlikely to be long in coming, with all the geopolitical consequences that follow from here ...
The People's Republic of China, in essence, has been held hostage by its own political and ideological pragmatism. In the Celestial Empire, at the end of the 1970's, Deng Xiaoping's slogan “One country - two systems” was put forward with an eye on Taiwan. Then Hong Kong was still British, Aomen - Portuguese, and in relation to them the slogan in 1978-81. sounded only a little different: "One state - two systems."
But in view of the obvious, to put it mildly, debatable coexistence of different political and economic systems within the framework of one state at the XII Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1982, this was corrected in a less politicized form with the mention of "One Country", and not the state.
For the East, these are two big differences, and besides, it made it possible to more respectably announce the same thesis regarding Taiwan. The local authorities, as is known, still do not respond to such a “project” and invariably challenge the sovereignty of China throughout China.
Why does China need a second Taiwan?
"The reorientation of China to market rails in the economy, with its active involvement in the international financial market, on the one hand, brought together the economic systems of Hong Kong and China."
This, according to Taiwanese political scientist and economist Lun Wei, “facilitated the proclamation of Hong Kong as a special administrative region, but on the other hand, maintaining the leading role of the Communist Party and pro-communist government in China became the main factor in the growing incompatibility of both systems.”
Therefore, according to the expert, the principle of "One country - two systems" is capable, except in a short period. After which "the aggravation of political and economic contradictions between the two systems is inevitable."
This conclusion, which many analysts share, is fully confirmed by the current situation in Hong Kong, which is fraught with a further intensification of separatist tendencies in the region. What are the internal and geopolitical consequences for China is not easy to say. The Chinese Communists have considerable experience in suppressing all kinds of centrifugal tendencies.
Beijing is unlikely to put up with the “Taiwanization” of Hong Kong and has already officially accused the United States and Great Britain of escalating the anti-Chinese vector in the political crisis in Hong Kong (Riots in Hong Kong. Will China use the army and what will the West do).
Indeed, it was through British Hong Kong and Portuguese Macau (Macau) from the mid-1950 years that investments in China from the United States, other NATO countries and even Japan were directed up and down. And this happened, despite their sanctioned economic regime against China, compared with which the current sanctions against Russia are children's toys.
Since the beginning of the 80's, investments from Taiwan also began to flow through Hong Kong and Aomen. Their flow does not stop today, and although the expected explosive growth did not happen, the trend is important. In addition, through Hong Kong with Macau, the PRC has been building up trade relations with the West almost from the first years of its existence.
To date, the volume of transit (export-import and reverse) trade operations of the PRC with foreign countries through Hong Kong with Aomin is estimated at more than 20 billion dollars annually. This decade has been at the heart of such a transit - China’s procurement of dual-use and military equipment, financing of arms export and military-industrial technology transactions, as well as trade with countries under US or even UN sanctions.
In such a "Chinese list" of the DPRK, Iran, Cuba, Sudan, Somaliland and Yemen comfortably coexisted with South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. By the way, tacit financing and supplies weapons from the PRC, the rebel pro-Chinese groups in more than 30 countries of the world are also being implemented, as before, through all kinds of schemes through Hong Kong and Macau.
Communist China's capitalist enclave
The special role and importance of Aomin and especially Hong Kong in global financial and economic relations have especially grown since the second half of the 19th century - when the world powers took up the colonization of Southeast Asia. For a long time, these enclaves have preferential conditions for almost any business, regardless of the regional and world political conditions.
Business in Hong Kong is not only IT, banks, exchanges and transit
It is no coincidence that over one third of the total volume of its securities on the world stock market, the PRC has been selling through Hong Kong and Macau for more than a quarter of a century. Until the beginning of the 80's, this figure exceeded 65%. For the refusal of the PRC from the struggle for decolonization of the same enclaves, there were enough reasons.
Back in November 1952, the then head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Zhou Enlai, explained to foreign media that "the decolonization of the areas remaining colonial territories in China will be decided on the basis of emerging relations with these metropolises, with these areas and taking into account economic circumstances." Subsequently, the PRC authorities constantly confirmed the same approach.
And the first external signal to such a policy was the official recognition of the PRC by Great Britain in January 1950. This, of course, was associated with the Hong Kong factor. But British-Chinese relations (both countries were represented by charge d'affaires) reached the ambassadorial level only in May 1972.
13 March 1972 Chinese Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua and British Charge d'Affaires John Addis signed a communiqué on behalf of the governments of both countries proclaiming diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level, recognizing Taiwan as the PRC province and transferring Hong Kong to the PRC in connection with the upcoming expiration of the British lease term this area (in 1997 g.).
Moreover, in a separate ("Hong Kong") protocol to this document, it was noted that "the economic system in this area will not be subject to change within 50 years." The reasons for this position of Beijing are quite obvious, but was it not here that the root cause of the inevitable political and economic, or rather, systemic imbalances, was laid down within the framework of the aforementioned PRC course "One country - two systems."
Despite radical changes in China’s state economic policy since the beginning of the 80’s, Hong Kong remains a special enclave. Its financial and economic system and the domestic political, one might say semi-state system is a classic embodiment of Western capitalism with all its modifications.
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Red China is still so far from this that it is not even worth talking about any unity with the enclave. Whatever the results of local elections. Is it any wonder that in the course of protests in Hong Kong that have not stopped, the participants use a full range of "revolutionary" arguments, starting with Trotskyist, and ending with the slogans of the Polish "Solidarity".
According to Russian Sinologist Alexei Gryazev, the dynamics of events in the region after the 1997 year were quite consistent:
“Hong Kong’s economic strength was not shaken by mainland China. It was preceded by the jurisdiction of the PRC in this area since the 1 July 1997 region, the Sino-British declaration of 18 December 1984 signed in Beijing by the prime ministers of both countries - Zhao Ziyang and Margaret Thatcher.”
The British "iron lady" exchanged signatures with a Chinese colleague with a light hand Deng Xiaoping, the actual successor to Chairman Mao
The territory of Hong Kong received, as you know, the official status of the "Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong". With the official guarantee of Beijing to maintain financial and economic autonomy there for 50 years. However, "the British flags were replaced by Chinese, and the Scottish Guards by the troops of the People's Liberation Army of China."
However, no matter how hard they tried in Hong Kong to maintain "political freedoms at the same level, a conflict between two completely different systems was inevitable. Because" then there are two completely different people with a completely different way of life, political views, although they are territorially adjacent to each other. "
In short, the principle of "One country - two systems" served Beijing poorly. The convergence of socialism into capitalism and vice versa is always more reliable within the framework of a single state.
Incidentally, this is precisely what is testified, for example, by the not so long-standing "experience" of Poland. There, as you know, back in the second half of the 70-s, when even the security agencies did not know about Solidarity, the ports of Gdansk and Gdynia with adjacent areas were declared special port economic zones.
It was a capitalist, in fact, enclave disguised either as self-financing or as a zone of cooperative movement, with a customs and overall economic regime that was significantly different from the general Polish one. But it was in that region that the notorious Solidarity movement arose, which subsequently eliminated the power of the Polish Communist Party.
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