From China and India to Britain and the US, how nationalists’ push for centralisation threatens to tear their countries apart

Hong Kong’s crisis is rooted in Beijing’s determination to assert central authority, to the chagrin of its peripheries. Ironically, the nationalism that stokes such urges threatens unity, in China and around the world

Philip Bowring

Published: 7:30am, 22 Dec 2019

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Perspective is a rare quality in journalism, particularly now that Twitter feeds the news and research is confined to googling. So, those English-readers who would like a long perspective on current Hong Kong events should pick up a just-published slim volume titled The Turbulent Times.

The author, Viswa Nathan, has been here for most of the last 54 years as a journalist – including fearless editor of the then serious broadsheet The Hong Kong Standard – through the turbulence and turning points marking the territory, from the 1965 banking crisis to today. Through it runs the thread of a search for accountable government – accountable to the people at large.

The book rightly sees the 1966 riots as seminal for rulers and the ruled. The former’s view, that the people should not complain because they were lucky to be in Hong Kong and not in China, was challenged by mass action. Likewise, it was mass opposition – not least by students – to the leftists’ Cultural Revolution campaign that further solidified Hong Kong’s sense of differentiation and enabled the city to escape the political fate of Macau.

And similarly, it was popular discontent at police corruption – and the anger of a senior official who resigned in frustration – that forced the government to appoint an independent commission of inquiry under a judge who concluded that “the public will never be convinced that government really intends to fight corruption unless the Anti-Corruption Office is separated from the police”.

This led to the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption in 1974, whose efforts led to a police riot and near mutiny which humiliated the then-governor into granting an amnesty. The power and innate thuggery of the police was plain to see – and this image has undoubtedly given Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor sleepless nights.

A rally of parents and teachers from the Precious Blood Golden Jubilee Secondary School proceeds towards Government House on May 11, 1978. More than 400 pupils, including current Chief Executive Carrie Lam (not pictured) were involved in the demonstrations, demanding the resignation of the school headmistress and the reinstatement of four suspended students. Photo: SCMP

In 1978, Nathan’s book reminds us, a young Lam was herself involved in a demonstration against the government in the case of the Precious Blood Golden Jubilee Secondary School. Middle-class fury concerning a cover-up and collusion between school management and education officials over a financial scandal laid further ground for local demands for political representation and accountability. Even former chief executive Leung Chun-ying was involved with the reform advocacy group the Hong Kong Observers.

Political consciousness grew slowly but, by 1986, there were calls for direct elections to the legislature and for the post-1997 chief executive. Then came June 4, 1989, and another good reason for Hong Kong to sense a difference, and its need for representative government to be enhanced.

Hong Kong rebellion a big boost to Chinese nationalism

Thirty years on, these remain the issues. Meanwhile, around the world there are ever more examples of nationalism becoming both a tool for authoritarians and so-called “populist” policies which threaten to fragment the very nations they claim to serve.

The Chinese government today is, in effect, making the extraordinary claim that the ruling Communist Party represents not just the government but the whole ideology of the Chinese people and the Han civilisation. The arrogance is mind-numbing. So, too, is the determination to ignore the actual history of regions, which include Hong Kong and Xinjiang, which have legitimate autonomy aspirations far short of independence.

Hong Kong sentiments today are the consequence not just of the legacy of British rule but of a reaction against how the Communist Party has ruled the mainland. As for Xinjiang (and Taiwan), this was Qing dynasty acquisition of a culture, and in this case a religion which deserves respect if it is not to demand independence or join its Turkic neighbours like Kazakhstan. The more Beijing emphasises Han identity and centralisation, the more difficult it will be to hold the state together.

If Hong Kong cannot survive as an autonomous entity, what chance in the longer run, too, for Singapore, a small majority Chinese state in a Malay sea, in a world of ethnic nationalism and deglobalisation?

What Indian and British nationalism have in common

Unwillingness to accommodate minorities is equally problematic in Narendra Modi’s India, where the Muslim 14 per cent is increasingly subject to official discrimination, endangering not merely national cohesion and relations with Muslim neighbours but encouraging thoughts of separatism in regions where local languages, customs and levels of education are more important than Hindu identity. India’s diversity demands levels of tolerance that Modi is eroding.

As for the US, nationalism embodied in Trump’s “America first” actions and rhetoric is counterproductive, as it irritates the friends – from Mexico to Japan via Germany and Korea – it needs if it sees its foes as China and Russia.

Scottish First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon (centre), along with other officials and party candidates for the recent general election, pose with an anti-Brexit sign on November 8. Photo: PA Wire/DPA

Britain is another example of how nationalism, in this case an inchoate English nationalism, now threatens the nation’s very existence. As the recent election showed, Brexit has galvanised the advocates of Scotland’s independence, and in Northern Ireland, which was always opposed to Brexit. The believers in the union are now a minority. It would be better off as part of the Irish republic than of a Britain out of the European Union.

Several countries have running sores which confuse centralisation with nationalism. Thailand is one example, unwilling to admit that its Malay/Muslim southern provinces need autonomy if they are to be satisfied to remain part of Buddhist/monarchist Thailand rather than regain the independence they once enjoyed, or join Malaysia.

Meanwhile, the continued inroads that Muslim intolerance and the imposition of Sharia laws are making into Malaysia’s once easy-going society will, sooner or later, lead to the defection of the east Malaysian states where Muslims are fewer and ethnic tolerance much greater.

Philip Bowring is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator

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