Technically, nothing changed in America’s policy toward Hong Kong last week. But Lee’s visit to Washington, which included a half-hour chat with President Bill Clinton at the White House, may be remembered as the moment that the United States threw itself squarely–and very publicly–behind Hong Kong democracy. Lee and Clinton agreed that China’s takeover of Hong Kong is an international issue. Beijing, of course, views Hong Kong as a domestic matter–and wants the world to butt out. The Clinton administration is hoping its public support for Hong Kong democracy won’t mean an inevitable collision with Beijing over human rights. But since China has already announced plans to abolish Hong Kong’s legislature, and the new local government wants to restrict street demonstrations, it’s hard to see how such confrontations can be avoided. “They’ve got all the buttons in Beijing to enable them to control Hong Kong,” Lee told NEWSWEEK. “And we can only hope that they won’t press these buttons.”
U.S.-China relations have been better lately than at any other time during the Clinton presidency, and Beijing is eager to keep it that way. The Chinese are particularly keen to hold a couple of presidential summits, later this year and early the next. But the U.S. posture on Hong Kong clearly rubs a raw nerve. A magazine published by the official Xinhua news agency wrote this month: “The U.S. intention to lay its hands on Hong Kong after 1997 and to replace the British when they leave is being unveiled day by day.”
China’s highest-ranking defector to the United States predicts that Washington and Beijing may be on a collision course over the issue. In his first interview with the American press, Xu Jiatun, the former head of Xinhua in Hong Kong, told NEWSWEEK that “China does not want Hong Kong to become an international political card. But the possibility of the U.S. playing this card gets bigger and bigger.” Xu, who was China’s top representative in Hong Kong from 1983 to 1990, fled not long after the 1989 democracy protests were crushed. He says he’s “relatively optimistic” about Hong Kong’s future, but his biggest worry is how Beijing “deals with Hong Kong’s various political groups, the democratic groups.”
If Beijing’s treatment of Martin Lee is any indication, things don’t look too good. The man China anointed to run Hong Kong, chief-executive-in-waiting C. H. Tung, has accused Lee of “bad-mouthing” Hong Kong on overseas trips, and pronounced himself “disappointed” with Lee’s performance in the United States last week. Tung recently canceled his own trip to the States this spring. To get a cooler reception in Washington than Martin Lee would have been embarrassing. Tung says he’ll reschedule for after July 1, but things may not get much warmer then.
