The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.26           July 28, 1997 
 
 
Celebrations Greet Return Of Hong Kong To China  

BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
At the crack of dawn on June 30, a parade of 4,000 Chinese soldiers marched through the streets of Hong Kong, marking the end of 156 years of British colonial rule. Some 100,000 people jammed into Tiananmen Square in Beijing, 10,000 packed Shanghai's waterfront, and in the United States, 4,000 people in New York City joined in the celebrations of the former colony's return to Chinese sovereignty.

Thousands of Hong Kong residents waved and shouted welcome to the troops. On Possession Street, the site where the British colonizers first raised the Union Jack on Jan. 26, 1841, a 72-year-old Hong Kong resident declared, "It's a good thing we can finally get rid of the imperialists. We're all Chinese.. This land belongs to China."

"From Argentina, Britain took away the islands, but China is very powerful," said Mandy Li, a secretary who took the day off along with others from her job, including the boss, to participate in the celebrations in New York's Chinatown. Li was referring to the British seizure of the Malvinas in 1833, which London renamed the Falkland Islands.

Other participants in the Chinatown event included a contingent of 300 people from the Fuzhou United Friendship Association. There were also celebrations of the return of Hong Kong by more than 1,500 people in Atlanta, 1,000 in Boston, as well as in Los Angeles, London, and other cities around the world.

On July 6 another 10,000 people gathered in New York City to commemorate the hand over. "Chinese people felt humiliated about Hong Kong," asserted King Liu, president of the Chinese Student Association at City College of New York. He said the long British rule of Hong Kong was an international insult that dated back to the Opium Wars of 1839 to 1842, when British forces imposed opium trading and addiction on the Chinese people and annexed Hong Kong.

`Complete reunification of the country'
Chinese president Jiang Zemin spoke before a rally of 50,000 the day after declaring sovereignty over Honk Kong, where he called for Taiwan authorities to "take concrete steps" towards the "complete reunification of the country." He said the "one country two systems" formula "works for Hong Kong and can also work for Taiwan." Chinese capitalists and landlords fled to Taiwan after the workers and peasants overthrew the imperialist-backed regime of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949 and opened the door to establishing a workers state there.

Shipping magnate Tung Chee-hwa, recently chosen as Hong Kong's chief executive, is the son of one the tycoons who fled the mainland. Beijing also set up a new body of lawmakers after abolishing Hong Kong's old legislature, which was elected in 1995 under the supervision of the British government. Until 1991, the Hong Kong legislature was entirely appointed. Up to the transfer of power June 30, the British-appointed governor remained the chief executive and commander-in-chief of territory.

British prime minister Anthony Blair, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, and U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright refused to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Tung and the provincial legislature. No Chinese official attended the program where Hong Kong's last governor, Christopher Patten, delivered his final speech.

London failed to rally the rest of the governments of the European Union (EU) to support its boycott. The editors of the Wall Street Journal chastised Paris for "setting a new standard for kowtowing" after that regime backed down along with other capitalist governments in Europe from supporting the annual EU-sponsored UN resolution condemning alleged human rights violations in China. The financial daily also noted that the retreat came right before French president Jacques Chirac clinched a $1.2 billion deal for Airbus Industrie in Beijing.

With London's power on the wane, Washington has moved to assert a greater role in Hong Kong. "We're not seeking to replace Britain as the guardian of Hong Kong," the New York Times quoted a Clinton administration official as saying July 2. "But it's a role we cannot avoid."

"Our relationship with China is the most challenging issue we'll face over the next 25 years, and Hong Kong now becomes an important part of it," declared State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns.

With 6.3 million people, Hong Kong is the world's eighth-largest trading economy and the 11th-largest export market for U.S. capitalists. U.S. investments there total $14 billion and bilateral trade is more than $24 billion. Hong Kong business investments in China amount to more than $100 billion.

Albright met with Chinese government officials prior to the reunification, to push for policies protecting the U.S. rulers' economic interests. While there she criticized the deployment of Chinese soldiers in Hong Kong, stating, "I do not think this is the best way to start off, and I think we have to watch this very carefully."

Albright's trepidation over the Chinese military and nervousness around the turn of events in Hong Kong was echoed throughout the bourgeois media. A "First Impressions" editorial in the Wall Street Journal on the day after the hand over lamented that the entry of the 4,000 troops into Hong Kong was "a calculated decision to show everybody's who's the boss now." The article reiterates Zemin's pledge to "keep the previous socioeconomic system and way of life unchanged" in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, the big-business press and U.S. politicians are pressing a smear campaign alleging that high-level Chinese government officials contributed "substantial sums of money" to influence the U.S. elections. Without presenting any details, U.S. Senator Frederick Thompson claimed July 8 that investigators from his Government Affairs Committee found evidence of a Chinese plan subvert U.S. politicians.

Thompson's charge came as John Huang, a former Democratic National Committee official, offered to testify before the Senate in exchange for immunity from prosecution for election law violations. Huang was an executive at the Indonesian-based Lippo Group, which donated more than $700,000 to the Democratic Party since 1991.  
 
 
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