fundamentally!!! To the road of building socialism!!! With Chinese characteristics!!! Which we have taken!!!” he said, interrupting his speech with episodes of self-applause, done in the official politburo manner by holding the hands sideways and moving the fingers and palms as if to make quacky-ducky shadow puppets. The big men on the convention-center podium—Jiang, Prime Minister Li Peng, and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen—seemed to have made their own suit jackets at home. Tung Chee-hwa, the Beijing-appointed chief executive of the new Hong Kong Special Administration Region, came to the microphone next, making pronouncements that combined a political-reeducation-camp lecture (“Our thoughts and remembrance go, with great reverence, to the late Deng Xiaoping”) with a Dick Gephardt¶¶¶¶ speech (“We respect minority views but also shoulder collective responsibility. . . . We value plurality but discourage open confrontation. We strive for liberty but not at the expense of blah, blah, blah.”). This also was said in Mandarin, which is not the native tongue in Hong Kong. In fact, no one uses it there, and having the HK chief executive lipping away in an alien lingo was like hearing an American politician speak meaningless, bizarre . . . it was like hearing an American politician speak. Outside on the balcony again (covering the Hong Kong handover required a journalist to give his utmost—what with AC-chilled binocs fogging in the tropical heat and a minibar running low on ice) I watched the HMS Britannia pull away from the convention-center dock. A nondescript, freighter-shaped vessel painted white, Britannia looked to be more an unfortunate cruise-ship choice than a royal yacht. It steamed through Victoria Harbor, hauling butt from now foreign waters. On board were the last British governor of Hong Kong, the aristocrat currently known as Prince of Wales, any number of other dignitaries, and, I hope, a large cargo of guilt. Would the limeys have skipped town if Hong Kong was full of 6.5 million big, pink, freckled, hay-haired, kipper-tucking, pint-sloshing, work-shy, layabout, Labour-voting . . . Well, in that case . . . Maybe Hong Kong just wasn’t one of those vital, strategic places worth fighting for—like the Falklands. Maybe the Poms only intervene militarily where there’s enough sheep to keep the troops entertained. Why didn’t the British give some other island to China. Britain, for instance. This would get the U.K. back on a capitalist course—Beijing being more
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