For decades, Hong Kong has served as a refuge for those fleeing political repression in China and as a window to China for those seeking to influence or change events on the mainland.
Now China is coming to them.
Much uncertainty remains about how Chinese rule will affect Hong Kong after Britain surrenders the colony July 1, but few seriously doubt that Hong Kong’s role as a refuge and political outlet for those challenging Beijing will come to an end.
Han Dongfang understands better than most other Hong Kong residents the risks of standing up to China’s Communist Party.
A mainland-born Chinese who works as a labor-rights activist, he was in Tiananmen Square when Chinese troops opened fire on student democracy activists eight years ago Wednesday.
He spent 22 months in prison for his role in the uprising.
After his release in 1992, he went to the U.S. to seek medical treatment, intending to return to China after he was cured of the tuberculosis he contracted in prison. When he tried to go home in 1993, Chinese authorities sent him across the border to Hong Kong.
So Han, now 34, made Hong Kong his home, taking advantage of the territory’s liberal laws and proximity to China to become one of the most prominent of the Tiananmen Square-era dissidents still able to speak out and campaign for freedom in China.
Though at the time he regretted being sent to the colony, he is glad now because he feels has been more effective in Hong Kong.
“Before 1993, all I wanted was to go back to China,” he said. “But with the situation as it is now in China, I could do nothing.”
In less than a month, Hong Kong will be a part of China once again, and Han finds it inconceivable that its new rulers will allow him to continue speaking out for dissident causes and gathering and disseminating information on human-rights abuses on the mainland.
Such fears have not stopped Hong Kong’s defiant democracy movement from scheduling mass rallies for Wednesday, the anniversary of the bloody crackdown.
In Hong Kong island’s biggest park, activists have erected a “Pillar of Shame,” a sculpture of twisted bodies symbolizing oppression. Up to 40,000 people were expected to gather for a candlelight vigil Wednesday to remember those who perished in 1989 in Tiananmen Square.
Han predicts it could be his last demonstration.
“I don’t know what I’ll do when they come for me,” Han says. “It depends when they come and what they say. But I am sure they will come. They won’t let me work freely like I do now.”
Throughout history, Hong Kong has served as a beacon and refuge for China’s dissidents.
China’s first revolutionary, Sun Yat-sen, plotted the overthrow of China’s imperial regime here. After Mao Tse-tung’s Communist victory in 1949, more than a million Chinese fled to Hong Kong, where many of them built business empires to become the new generation of leaders who will take over when the British leave.
More recently, in the wake of Beijing’s crackdown against students in Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong served as a funnel for those seeking to escape imprisonment on the mainland. Some 300 of the “most wanted” activists were smuggled out of China by an underground network code-named Operation Yellowbird, most of them to Western countries.
The bloody repression in Beijing, in fact, provided much of the inspiration for Hong Kong’s British rulers to implement civil liberties laws that allowed freer public expression in the colony.
After July 1, under China’s “one country, two systems” commitment to allow Hong Kong’s capitalist way of life to continue for 50 years, Hong Kong will have an autonomous government run by local leaders, supposedly without interference from Beijing.
Hong Kong’s future ruler, tycoon Tung Chee-hwa, has said that political demonstrations will be permitted, though under greater restrictions, and that politicians and parties advocating democracy in Hong Kong will be allowed to participate in partially democratic elections scheduled for next year.
China already has served notice that this unorthodox arrangement does not mean Beijing will permit political activities promoting democratic reform inside China, and Tung has lent his support to that.
“China is very concerned that Hong Kong will not become a subversive base,” Tung said last week. “We do not want to see that happen as well.”
Though life under Chinese rule is unlikely to change much for the majority of Hong Kong’s 6.2 million residents, the tiny minority involved in Chinese political causes may see the beginning of the end of their activities and the revival of the threat of incarceration for political crimes.
“We will face a much harsher political presence, and some very sophisticated spies,” said Lau San Ching, a Hong Kong-born activist who was imprisoned in China for 10 years, 6 1/2 of them in solitary confinement, for “counterrevolutionary” activities.
Lau, who began traveling to China regularly in the late 1970s in support of the Democracy Wall movement, was arrested in 1981 while visiting a dissident’s family in southern China.
“Although we are Hong Kong people, we are Chinese. We participate in their movement. We don’t think we are outsiders,” said Lau, who also does not expect Beijing to draw a distinction between mainland and Hong Kong activists once Hong Kong reverts to Chinese control. “They will say we are all Chinese,” he said.
Whether Beijing will be able to curtail their activities is not clear, however. Hong Kong’s role as a refuge for mainland dissidents will definitely end. Once Hong Kong is part of China, it will not be possible for the territory to offer asylum to other Chinese, as happened under British rule.
It is less clear whether China will be able to suppress or even detain those already in Hong Kong. Under terms of the Basic Law, which will serve as Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, China retains the right to have the final say on matters pertaining to “national security.”
Because the final right to interpret the Basic Law rests with the National People’s Congress in Beijing, legal experts and human rights groups fear China will insist on a broad definition of national security that would outlaw all political activity perceived as anti-Beijing.
“There’s a good chance they’ll use national security, and if they do, there may be cases where they extradite us back to China,” said Lau.
That would put at risk not only local activists but a whole range of groups including international human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, which maintain offices in Hong Kong to monitor events in China and publish reports critical of China.
It also would undermine China’s guarantees to uphold freedom of speech and the rule of law, provoking international censure, Han says. That is why he is optimistic that prison is an unlikely option.
“Of course, after July, Tung won’t allow anything China doesn’t want,” he said. “The question is, technically, can they achieve it? If anybody tries to change Hong Kong immediately there will be a big reaction. That’s why I think I and many other people here will still be able to protect ourselves under the law.”
There are only a handful of mainland Chinese dissidents still in Hong Kong, most of whom have abandoned politics, adopted new lives and are keeping a low profile.
A group of 40 who had been politically active have quietly been flown out of Hong Kong to Western countries in recent weeks; because they fled China illegally, they would have immediately been targets of arrest after July 1 simply for being in Hong Kong.
Han says his situation is different. Because he was ejected by China into Hong Kong, the authorities cannot accuse him of illegally escaping China, and he says he has broken no law in Hong Kong.
“I’m a Chinese citizen, and this is part of China. I’ve got a right to stay in my country,” he says.
Staying is what he plans to do–at least until his work permit expires next year.
“I don’t want to go back to prison, of course. The experience was enough for me,” he says.
“But I am prepared for the worst. I couldn’t give up my work. If anyone asks me to stop, I will say no.”
