Neal Donnelly, formerly a high school teacher in Buffato, New York, was a rare American phenomenon, a diplomat who could speak Mandarin and Cantonese fluently. A longtime U.S. Information Agency officer in Vietnam, Taiwan and Hong Kong (as well as being chief for several years of the Voice of America China branch in Washington D.C.). Donnelly told me that to him Hong Kong seemed more American than British, partly because of the Vietnam War era traffic of ships and military personnel through Hong Kong. Although it was against U.S. regulations, many wives of American pilots, army and naval officers set up residence in Hong Kong to be near their spouses during schedule leave.
There have been various U.S Congressional attempts to legislate some American watchdog status over Hong Kong, similar to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, but these have faltered because the US. has no specific scrutiny leverage in Hong Kong.
Continued presence of Americans (nearly 30,000), an American Chamber of Commerce that rivals the Tokyo American Chamber in membership numbers if not business clout, some 1,200 American businesses with affiliations, employing 250,000 workers, including 198 regional headquarters and nearly US$15 billion in investments means that there will be continued American attention on issues like freedom of the press.
The tale was making the rounds in the 1960s that Hong Kong was so overloaded with intelligence listening devices that if one more electronic snoop were to be added, the island would sink into the South China Sea.
The fears, if they were legitimate and not apocryphal, were proved empty by the literally millions of mobile phones, beepers and pagers--not to mention computers--added in later years.
There was always a way to find things out in Hong Kong.
Because one of the papers in the Copley chain for which was reporting during the Vietnam War was the San Diego Union, near great naval and marine bases in California, there was interest in warship movements.
Hearing from my home office that a major U.S. Seventh Fleet task force was nearing Hong Kong in a few days or sooner I checked at the press office of the American Consulate on Garden Road, in those days staffed with more personnel (mainly China watchers) than any American installation--embassies included-- in the world.
"We can't give out such information. Ship movements are classified," said a clerk from Nebraska.
Whereupon the intrepid foreign correspondent heads for the Wanchai waterfront. There, from their own sources, bars with names like China Moon, OK Corral, and Paradise Cafe flaunted blackboard signs with such information as:
