What Chief Justice Hogan and the Committee have jointly accomplished is to raise an issue of critical importance in the survival of the colony government. Whether it will be resolved as decisively as it has been faced may require months and years to answer.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two Worlds in One House
“Care must be taken not to confound the habits and institutions of the Chinese with what prevails in other parts of the world.”
—British House of Lords (circa 1880)
Hong Kong has furnished the Sino-British answer to a universal question: What’s in it for me? Its progress from the earliest days has been more powerfully influenced by the lure of gold than by the Golden Rule, with its British and Chinese residents having little in common except their human nature and an equal dedication to the maximum profit in the minimum time.
“They don’t even speak the same language!” is a convenient expression of the ultimate separation between peoples, but while it is true that nine-tenths of Hong Kong’s Chinese do not speak English, the linguistic gap is only one of the many chasms that stand between them and their British rulers.
The British traders and fighting men who muscled their way into possession of Hong Kong Island in 1841 were looked upon with fear and loathing by the Chinese governing class, who considered them gun-toting barbarian brawlers. To the English, the Chinese seemed a docile subspecies of humanity. It has taken most of the intervening 121 years to convince a majority of both sides that the initial judgments may have been wrong.