[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 31 (Wednesday, March 12, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E447-E448]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HONG KONG REVERSION ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                       HON. GEORGE P. RADANOVICH

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 11, 1997

  Mr. RADANOVICH. Mr. Speaker, on July 1, 1997, Hong Kong concludes one 
challenging but prosperous chapter, and inaugurates another of equal 
potential. While continued prosperity marks Hong Kong's future, a 
thriving economic, and autonomous course is not guaranteed under the 
shadow of mainland China's stale political and economic policies. The 
United States must strive to assist Hong Kong and its people in 
preserving and pursuing economic and political values so close to our 
own.
  Thus, I support the objectives of H.R. 750, the Hong Kong Reversion 
Act. This bill reiterates an unyielding support for the autonomy of 
Hong Kong and future well-being of its people. The act is not 
insignificant. For the benefit of my colleagues in understanding the 
importance of this measure, I include for the record April Lynch's 
analytical account in today's San Francisco Chronicle. The author 
skillfully catalogs the concerns Californians have respecting Chinese 
rule over Hong Kong. Let us hope, Mr. Speaker, that our action today is 
clearly understood in Beijing. The Hong Kong people deserve no less 
than our unwavering support.

           [From the San Francisco Chronicle, Mar. 11, 1997]

  Bay Area's Big Stake in Hong Kong--Economic, Cultural Ties at Risk 
                            Under China Rule

                            (By April Lynch)

       When the flag of the People's Republic of China is raised 
     over Hong Kong this summer, few other places will have more 
     at stake than the Bay Area and California.
       A web of multimillion-dollar businesses, strong cultural 
     ties and 150 years of shared history link the Gold State and 
     the City on china's southern coast. Hong Kong and San 
     Francisco, founded about the same time, have long exchanged 
     money, people and plans for the future of the Pacific Rim.
       ``California and Hong Kong are like neighbors, even with an 
     ocean in the middle,'' said Richard So, 29, a computer 
     consultant who grew up in Hong Kong, went to school in this 
     country and now commutes to work between Sunnyvale and Hong 
     Kong. ``It is hard to imagine one without the other.'' The 
     Bay Area is a favorite destination for people leaving Hong 
     Kong for the United States--since 1993, 25 percent of them 
     settled in San Francisco, Oakland or San Jose.
       With only 6 million people, tiny Hong Kong is California's 
     ninth-largest export market, buying about $2.6 billion in 
     goods from the state in the first nine months of last year. 
     China, by comparison, has one-fifth of the world's population 
     but ranks 16th on California's list of export buyers. More 
     than 100 California companies--including Bank of America, 
     Walt Disney and Netscape--have offices or their Asia 
     headquarters in Hong Kong.
       Now, four months before Britain turns one of the world's 
     most lively capitalist hubs over to the world's biggest 
     communist country on July 1, those ties face an uncertain 
     future.
       People with business or family links to Hong Kong hope that 
     China will allow the territory to remain an economic 
     powerhouse, and many Chinese and Chinese Americans take pride 
     that Hong Kong's transition will all but end the Western 
     colonial presence in China. But those feelings are tempered 
     with caution.
       ``Hong Kong will continue to be of paramount importance,'' 
     said Jesus Arredondo, spokesman for the California Department 
     of Trade. ``It all depends on what the Chinese government 
     does.''


                         colony's establishment

       Since the mid-1800s, California and Hong Kong have never 
     been far apart. Once a few scattered fishing villages, Hong 
     Kong was seized by Great Britain in 1842, after the first 
     Opium War. The colony's establishment encouraged foreign 
     interests that wanted trade and influence in China, but it 
     was a humiliation China has never forgotten.
       Britain expanded the colony in 1860 with the Kowloon 
     Peninsula and the New Territories in 1898 and along the way 
     turned Hong Kong into a major international port. San 
     Francisco interests quickly looked to Hong Kong to recruit 
     laborers to work the state's gold mines and the railroads.
       Trade, travel and immigration between Hong Kong and 
     California grew--especially after the colony rebuilt from the 
     devastation of World War II and became Asia's financial hub. 
     Hong Kong now has about as many people and covers as much 
     territory as the Bay Area, but it boasts the world's eighth-
     largest trading economy and stock market, the world's busiest 
     container port and 9 million visitor-arrivals each year.
       The mix of Chinese and foreign residents--about 120,000 
     people in Hong Kong are from other parts of the world, 
     including the United States, England, India, the Philippines

[[Page E448]]

     and Vietnam--has created a striking cultural blend. A day in 
     Hong Kong can easily mean speaking more than one language at 
     work, choosing between Shanghai, Italian or Indian cuisine 
     for dinner, playing a mean game of billiards and finishing 
     the night with a plate of chow fun at a street-corner stall.
       The Chinese Communist party stopped short of seizing the 
     colony when it took control of China in 1949 but always made 
     it clear that it wanted Hong Kong back in 1997, when a key 
     lease that gave Britain most of the territory was to expire. 
     In 1984, the two countries reached a deal that would return 
     Hong Kong to China in 1997 but allow the territory remain a 
     ``special administrative region'' with its basic systems 
     intact for 50 years.


                          tiananmen crackdown

       Goodwill about that plan fell apart with the Tiananmen 
     Square crackdown in 1989. More than 1 million people filled 
     Hong Kong's streets to protest the bloodshed. Emigration from 
     the colony jumped, and many of Hong Kong's business leaders 
     began moving their holdings or strengthening ties overseas, 
     including in California.
       Take, for example, Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong founder of the 
     Giordano clothing chain and publisher of several popular 
     magazines and newspapers. Giordano recently followed many 
     Hong Kong companies in moving its incorporation to Bermuda, 
     and Lai has expressed interest in investing in Silicon 
     Valley. He has good reason to want to expand his business 
     overseas.
       After the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing, Giordano 
     printed up tens of thousands of bright red bumper stickers 
     decrying the bloodshed and distributed them for free. The 
     stickers became a must-wear item at the huge protests that 
     filled Hong Kong streets. In 1994, Chinese officials shut 
     down Giordano's Beijing store after Lai wrote a magazine 
     editorial describing Chinese premier Li Peng as a ``turtle's 
     egg with a zero IQ.'' Lai resigned as chairman of Giordano 
     shortly thereafter.
       Lawrence Chan, head of the Hong Kong-based Park Lane Hotels 
     International chain, owns both the Parc Fifty Five Hotel in 
     San Francisco and the Parc Oakland hotel. He said the 
     people who drive Hong Kong's economic machine will take a 
     constructive but cautious approach to the transition.
       ``As businessmen in Hong Kong, we don't listen much to 
     rhetoric,'' said Chan, who is also president of the Hong Kong 
     Association, a prominent local business group. ``We look for 
     what is going on. We look for actions. . . . Recently, we 
     have been seeing the Chinese government pouring huge amounts 
     of capital into Hong Kong, and that is encouraging. China has 
     a huge stake in Hong Kong's future.''


                           corruption worries

       Some China watchers are not so optimistic. There are 
     worries that the corruption that has accompanied China's 
     economic reforms will spill into Hong Kong and that the 
     Chinese government will be fundamentally uncomfortable with 
     having so much free enterprise and private property within 
     its borders.
       ``I can't see Hong Kong operating at its current level once 
     China takes over,'' said George Lee, professor of 
     international business at San Francisco State University. 
     ``The Communist officials are going to try to control 
     everything they can get their hands on.''
       Those worries go beyond big business and multinational 
     corporations to the crowded highrise neighborhoods and 
     outlaying islands where most of Hong Kong's people live. 
     Hundreds of thousands of Chinese emigrants have passed 
     through Hong Kong on their way to the United States since 
     1850, with a sharp increase after anti-Chinese immigration 
     restrictions were lifted after World War II.
       Thousands have chosen the Bay Area as their new home--about 
     20,000 in the past 10 years, according to U.S. immigration 
     statistics.
       For many Hong Kong immigrants, the coming changes bring 
     concern for friends and relatives still there.
       Underneath its fancy facade, Hong Kong is an expensive 
     place to live. A small flat in a crowded jumble of concrete 
     highrises can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many 
     families have worked for decades to buy a home or business. 
     Now, with the handover, people worry that their friends or 
     family see the life they have built slip away.
       ``There is a lot of apprehension and mixed feelings,'' said 
     Rose Pak, spokeswoman for San Francisco's Chinese Chamber of 
     Commerce, who was born in Hong Kong and moved here in 1967. 
     ``There is pride in reuniting with China. But no one wants to 
     see people there lose their property, or their freedom to 
     travel or speak their mind.''
       Still, people in California know there is not much they can 
     do. China's economic modernization in the past decade gives 
     some faith that the Chinese government will shore up Hong 
     Kong, not undermine it. Any unraveling of Hong Kong's 
     economic might would also be a huge loss of face for Beijing, 
     where many Chinese leaders want to show the world they can 
     improve on the way Great Britain ran the colony.
       ``There is so much there worth keeping and expanding on,'' 
     said So, the computer consultant. ``The big highrises with 
     their wild architecture that stand over little markets a few 
     streets away, and the harbor full of big tankers next to old 
     Chinese junks and fishing boats. It can be a crazy place, but 
     it is always exciting. I hope it will all survive.''


                         HONG KONG AT A GLANCE

       Hong Kong is about the same size and has about as many 
     people as the Bay Area--but the territory has become one of 
     the world's economic powerhouses. Its pivotal role in the 
     economies of Asia and the Pacific Rim, as well as Hong Kong's 
     long-standing cultural ties to California, give the Bay Area 
     a huge stake in Hong Kong's future.
       Population: 6.2 million.
       Origins: Once a group of quiet Chinese fishing villages, 
     Hong Kong was seized by Great Britain in 1842 following the 
     first Opium War. Great Britain expanded the size of the 
     colony in 1860 with the Kowloon Peninsula and the New 
     Territories in 1898.
       Economy: Hong Kong has thrived on unfettered capitalism, 
     with an import-export economy driven by its huge harbor, 
     powerful banks, many small factories and busy stock market. 
     The colony exported about $150 billion worth of goods all 
     over the world in 1994.
       Politics: Hong Kong is run by a British governor, a locally 
     elected legislature and a powerful civil service. China has 
     been increasing its influence behind the scenes in recent 
     years. Following the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, a 
     million Hong Kong people took to the streets to protest the 
     bloodshed and to call for greater democracy.
       Culture: Hong Kong's population has always been 
     predominately Chinese, but expatriates from all over the 
     world have long flocked to the colony. The mix has created a 
     blend of cultures and traditions that exists nowhere else. 
     Many of Asia's top artists, film-makers, chefs and designers 
     have come from Hong Kong.
       Dollars to California: Hong Kong is California's ninth-
     largest export market, importing $3.8 billion in California 
     goods in 1995. Top goods purchased included electronics and 
     industrial machinery. Exports to Hong Kong support more than 
     70,000 jobs in the state.
       California, a favorite destination: In recent years, about 
     25 percent of all immigrants from Hong Kong to the United 
     States settled in the Bay Area. Hong Kong has been a major 
     point of departure for hundreds of thousands of immigrants 
     headed to California for 150 years.
       The future: China will retake control of Hong Kong on July 
     1 under an agreement reached with Great Britain in 1984. The 
     plan called for making Hong Kong a special region within 
     China and leaving Hong Kong's systems in place for 50 years. 
     Since them, however, China has moved to replace the elected 
     legislature with one made up of representatives approved by 
     Beijing and will undo parts of a Bill of Rights passed four 
     years ago. Chinese leaders continue to say Hong Kong's 
     economy and other systems will be left untouched.

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