Why tycoons should trust the people
Why are Hong Kong's businessmen so afraid of democracy, so reluctant to trust Chinese people to rule themselves?
Ever since the handover to China in 1997, quite a few prominent tycoons have been voicing their fears about self-government in Hong Kong, despite the Basic Law's assurances of a high degree of autonomy. They claim that we are not ready to plan our political future. They try to frighten us by warning of 'unrest', 'decreased investments', 'a welfare state' and similar bugbears.
Don't these tycoons realise that they are repeating the same insults used by former colonial rulers and their sycophants? Is making money more important than respecting one's fellow countrymen and citizens?
The people of Hong Kong are perhaps the most educated and sophisticated Chinese population in the world, certainly more knowledgeable about world finances and governance than the apparatchiks in the north. Our people are well-travelled and well-read, self-disciplined and industrious. They can certainly devise a political system which will benefit themselves and greater China if they are free of ill-informed party decisions and ideological pressures. Any local businessman who prefers to toe the central party line rather than support our moves towards universal suffrage is guilty of colonial attitudes that should have died on July 1, 1997. Modern societies are not family firms to be managed like dictatorships, or like armies manipulated by distant generals.
Hong Kong needs to be governed by those who know it well, love its people and who are ready to receive their mandate.
Please keep your old corporate management styles where they belong - in your tradition-soaked boardrooms, not in the halls of political power where every citizen has an equal right to speak and be heard.
The people of Hong Kong, whether Chinese or expatriate permanent residents, are entitled to self-governance in co-operation with the central government, not in subservience. Electing our own officials will ensure our prosperity and social harmony more than any top-down decisions by business leaders with pre-1997 political preferences.
J. GARNER, Kowloon
