But as the handover approached, many expats who had worked in the civil service for decades, married locals and had children whose loyalties and culture are much more a part of Hong Kong than their expat parent's home country, found they wanted to stay. Some, especially those who left the civil service in the boom years leading up to the handover, found jobs in the private sector.
Harris noted that Rowan Callick, The Australian Financial Review's correspondent in Hong Kong, spent months trying to convince the Immigration Department to allow him to continue working in Hong Kong. "Although employed by one of Australia's largest media organizations, he had to ask me to act as his official sponsor in order to satisfy the exacting requirements laid out by the Immigration Department."
Willy Wo-lap Lam alone is worth the price of admission to any anthology in which he appears and this one is no exception. Lam is probably the most readable and well informed China Watcher writing in the English-language. He is Associate Editor and China Editor of the South China Morning Post and his China after Deng Xiaoping: The Power Struggle in Beijing Since Tiananmen, (John Wiley & Sons, Singapore, 1995) is a classic. His The Era of Zao Ziyang (1989) is likewise an excellent work. Lam is an up-front type of gentlemen. I once sent a note to him in Hong Kong from Taipei, where I was on a teaching fellowship at National Chengchi University. On receiving the note, Lam picked up the telephone and called me right away in Taipei so we could talk while the issue was still hot.
That was my personal introduction to Lam, after reading his China-watching pieces for years.
A Hong Kong native and graduate of the University of Minnesota, Lam tells about the Xinhua News Agency role in Hong Kong in his chapter "Beijing's Hong Kong Policy in the First Year of Transition."
In the political arena, the policy of qualified non-interference could be better understood in the context of the strategy of zhuada fangxiao (taking a firm grip of the major things and letting the minor ones to free). This game plan, which was originally conceived for the reform of the country's intractable state-owned enterprises (SOEs), was confirmed at the pivotal 15th party Congress of September 1997.
Zhuada fangxiao has applications galore for Chinese - and particularly SAR - politics. The bottom line is control. It is no accident that while to the casual visitor nothing has changed in Hong Kong, deep-seated alterations have taken place in the power structure. The facade of tranqulity has been achieved thanks to the fact that, contrary to some doomsday scenarios, Chinese organs in Hong Kong such as the Hong Kong anti Macao Work Committee (HKMWC) and Xinhua--respectively the underground CCP master-cell and Beijing's mission in Hong Kong--have assumed a generally low profile since July 1, 1997. Yet there is little doubt that a new elite is running the show. And Beijing will remain reassured--and its interventionist instincts diluted--so long as this new power structure remains in the hands of politicians trusted to toe Beijing's line.
