often more effective. John Cowperthwaite was a master of simplicities. Yeung Wai Hong, publisher of Hong Kong’s most popular Chinese language magazine, Next, has suggested erecting an heroic-scale statue of John Cowperthwaite. (To be paid for by private subscription, thank you.) In less than one lifetime, Hong Kong created the environment of comfort and hope that every place on earth has been trying to achieve since the days of homo erectus in the Olduvai Gorge. And Hong Kong’s reward? It has been made a “Special Administrative Region” of the People’s Republic of China. At midnight on June 30, 1997, the British sold six million five hundred thousand souls. No, gave them away. Nearly a Londonful of individuals, supposed citizens of the realm that invented rights, equity, and the rule of law, got Christmas-goosed in July. Hong Kong was on the cuffo, a gimme, an Annie Oakley for the mainland Communists. At the stroke of 12, I was watching TV in my Hong Kong hotel room. The handover ceremony was being broadcast from the hideous new convention center three-quarters of a mile away. A British military band wearing hats made from Yogi and Smokey and Poo played “God Save the Queen.” The Union Jack went south. Prince Charles had just given a little speech. “We shall not forget you, and we shall watch with closest interest as you embark on this new era of your remarkable history.” In other words, “Goodbye and bolt the door, bugger you.” Outside, on my hotel-room balcony, the floodlit convention center was all too visible on the harbor front, looking like somebody sat on the Sydney Opera House. Directly below the balcony, a couple thousand not very noisy protesters stood in the rain in Statue Square, looking like somebody was about to sit on them. They were listening to democracy advocate Martin Lee.§§§§ Mr. Lee was a member of the first freely elected legislature in the history of Hong Kong. And the last. It was unelected at midnight. Mr. Lee was speaking without a police permit. And speaking. And speaking. Every now and then a disconsolate chant of agreement rose from the crowd. Mr. Lee kept speaking. No one bothered to stop him. Back inside, on the TV, president of China Jiang Zemin was speaking, too— introducing himself to his instant, involuntary fellow countrymen with a poker- faced hollering of banalities in Mandarin. “We owe all our achievements most
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