October 2009

Adam Smith noted in The Theory of Moral Sentiments: ‘Society cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another…’
   In other words, when people form a society, a bottom-up spontaneous order naturally arises, rather than anarchistic lawlessness. It is to no one’s advantage to wreak havoc on each other and trash available resources if there is ample for everyone to enjoy the most comfortable existence possible. We can
see this in the way that historians have demonstrated that the so-called ‘Wild West’ of 19th-century America was a relatively ordered society in which ranchers, farmers and miners concocted their own rules and institutions for conflict resolution a long time before federal law reached them. Anarchy is not the natural conclusion of human society, despite the protests of the nihilists. One might conclude that if anarchism had been the inevitable culmination of any human interaction humankind would have become extinct millennia ago.
   Hong Kong is prime example of a place that needs no ‘top down’ control. It has in place a sound legal system, a law-abiding, hardworking and well educated populace, a good infrastructure, a functioning education and administration system and a well codified legal system. It just needs tweaking from appropriate, competent high-ranking administrators. And this is what really spooks the commies.
   Beijing would dearly love to install as Chief Executive one of their finger-wagging, arrogant, high-handed officials of the type that run the China-Hong Kong liaison office to crack the whip over the city. These cadres with their frequent admonitory and patriotic exhortations and pro-Party party lines demonstrate that their mechanical devotion to the Chinese Communist Party matches their level of ignorance of Hong Kong. The only ‘communication’ they deem necessary to the populace is frequent airings of variations on ‘Your motherland loves you and she knows best.’ Beijing must be fully aware that if such a person were inducted as a Chief Executive the citizenry would soon take to the streets in demonstrations that would be beamed around the world causing huge loss of face for the motherland. This presents a dilemma as the idea of people taking care of themselves flies in the face of and is antithetical to the central concepts of the modern communist state with its obsessive need for complete control.
   It is not a widely promulgated fact but the reason the city functions as well as it does is partly because of the underlying structure put in place by colonial aggressors. The legal system is of particular annoyance to the pro-Beijing stalwarts as it is manifestly superior, fairer more accessible and transparent than anything on the mainland. Coinciding with an occasion supposed to celebrate the triumph of the Chinese nation, came a couple of letters angrily denouncing ‘feudal’ and ‘colonial legacies’ in the courts and law in Hong Kong. These letters betray a conscience smarting from the fact that instead of the type of system that exists on the mainland where the judiciary is effectively under control of a single entity and therefore can become tyrannical and is often corrupt, the Hong Kong legal system serves the individual and is not a tool of the state. The amount of indignation the letter writers showed about the trappings of wigs, gowns and use of ‘lordship’ was inversely proportional to the importance that our outgoing Chief Justice Andrew Li attached to an independent judiciary when he said ‘The independent judiciary has vital constitutional role to ensure the executive and legislature fully comply with the Basic Law and the law that our fundamental rights and freedoms, which are at the heart of the Hong Kong system, are fully safeguarded.’
   Again the complaints about the outdated ‘feudal’ traditions divulge the deeper concern of entities falling outside of the sphere of influence of the all-powerful, omniscient and totalitarian influence of the Communist Party.The notion of an independent judiciary is highly disturbing to one whose psychological weakness causes them to find comfort in having an all-powerful, unaccountable, all-controlling government; in other words a substitute for a parent figure to watch over people who have not emotionally matured.
   So on the first of October the celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the PRC began. The vast, choreographed displays of pyrotechnics and dancing were symbolic of the love of complete control gave scant acknowledgement to China’s vast history but paid most of their attention to the history of the nation since 1949. When the giant portraits of Mao Zedong, Jiang Zemin, Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao were wheeled out it was clear that the festivities primarily celebrated the Party, more than the country.
   In Hong Kong televised coverage of the party went on for four hours, completely uninterrupted by advertisements. The only break in the tightly choreographed observance of elevating the state and the party above all else was when the cameras lingered on the painfully uncomfortable officials in the banqueting hall, whose red faces revealed they had been at the rice wine.
   Then it was time for the leaders to go out and meet the people on Tiananmen Square. Effort was made to cultivate an image of spontaneity and festivity, but foreign visitors said that no one was allowed within a kilometre of the Great Hall of the People without security clearance. The pictures of the leaders apparently mingling with the populace, especially children, were strongly redolent of Mao’s propaganda pictures of the sixties.