Key changes, 1997-2002

Reported corruption up 47% (although overall number of prosecutions remains small)

Walt Disney signed up.

Personal bankruptcies up 14 times (from 639 to 9,151)

Reductions in civil service of 17,000 people (allegedly saving HK$5.8 billion per year)

Anson Chan, former head of British Civil Service pushed out.

Pay cuts up to 4.5% for 160,000 civil servants

Unemployment up from 2.4% to 7.4%

Budget surplus down to (HK$67 billion) versus HK$81 billion surplus in 1997

Hang Seng Index down from HK$16,400 to around HK$11,500

Taxpayers down from 66,000 to 10,000 (in a city of 7 million).

Even diehard fans of Chief Executive Tung (pictures opposite with Mickey Mouse) would describe July 1, 2002 as an uncomfortable milestone for Hong Kong and its new leader - at least in private.

The picture from local commentators left little doubt of a rather wobbly former British colony. The new leader of nearby Macau, Edmund Ho, felt jaunty enough to suggest that after five years Hong Kong could no longer hope for "a return of the good old days." The picture from inside Hong Kong was also frank. The leader of Hong Kong’s Democrats, Martin Lee, talked openly of a "parasite Hong Kong" that had appeared since the handover. The former Crown Colony was now surviving on scraps from China.

We can only speculate what Beijing elites thought of such comments as they were determined to distance themselves from Hong Kong Democrats. This is perhaps a little odd as the Democrats had the support of the majority of Hong Kong people and the Communists declared they wished "to get closer to Hong Kong people for the purposes of harmonious relations." But standing back from political digs had the reality of "one country two systems" really got that bad that quick? Had five years changed that much?

Tung v Patten
One of Mr Tung's biggest problems was that people inside Hong Kong and also outside naturally and repeatedly compared him with Chris Patten. Britain's Last Governor, Patten The Bulldog had a pedigree made in bruising British politics. Tung the Dictator, by contrast, was rooted in Chinese values that disliked democracy and loved respect-for-seniority and seemed happy with a city similar to others in China.

The opinion polls reinforced this division: Patten era surveys reflected a much broader confidence in leadership whereas nearly all Mr Tung’s polls reflected an increasing diminishment in confidence. The slide in ratings was one of the few consistencies in his first five years.

Analysts tended to say that Mr Tung’s preference for fudging was a distinctive difference. He certainly managed to contrast sharply with Mr Patten’s crisp and direc interpretations. Governor Patten was seen by Hong Kongers as especially clear in his commitment to democracy and the 1995 elections. The new Chief Executive by contrast looked almost surreal in his vagueness. It got to a stage  that people stopped taking seriously what Mr Tung said on democracy. There was particularly widespread disillusion with voting for the Chief Executive which was envisaged by the Basic Law in some form by 2007. Cartoonists started compared Mr Tung's position to impressionist paintings: lots of blurry lines and soft colours. 

Housing policy was a second and very glaring difference between Chief Executive Tung and Governor Patten. Mr Tung reckoned that he would build 85,000 public houses at cheap prices and this was announced with fanfare shortly after the handover. Later it was cancelled under embarrassing conditions that Patten would never have caused or tolerated. In the end fewer than 5,000 cheap houses reached the market in 2002/3. It was a tiny percent of the Chief Executive's original promise. 

Mr Tung’s appearances for questions in LegCo, the nearest Hong Kong had to a parliament, could also be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even when present he spoke loosely and imprecisely. Mr Tung preferred set-piece delivery over the back-and-forth of opposition politics and questions-and-answers that Mr Patten thrived upon. 

In this climate there was, and remain, fears that corruption would ramp to the old levels. In fairness, though, corruption did not trouble the community to the extent many feared. It turned out that the pre-1997 rather theatrical talk that Hong Kong would be consumed by Chinese corruption was exaggerated. However, in Mr tung's first five years there were still a few signs that suggested Mr Tung was not as hard-line on corruption as his predecessors. Between 1997-2002 reported cases of corruption did increase enough for some to murmur. The number of prosecuted cases amounted to only a few dozen each year but there were a lot more complaints. By the end of the five years there were some 4,500 complaints and these were overwhelmingly against government bodies. Mr Tung did not seem overly concerned. 

There was also a gradual build of awareness about cronyism. This was perhaps to be expected as cronyism was a perpetual feature of China’s landscape that Mr tung naturally gravitated towards. Mr Tung's political compass may have been correct in sensing the conspicuous favours for granting embarrassingly generous property deals for Cyberport, as one example, would be largely tolerated provided it could generate jobs. The avoidance of prosecution over corruption for a local media magnate also passed largely without incident. Interventionism, a sister disease much in common in the mainland, was evidenced when the financial secretary fought off currency and equity attackers in 1998. Mr Tung was content that people thought it acceptable to render Hong Kong immune rather than lower them to the ranks of countries like Thailand and Indonesia.

There was also a gradual sense that politics were to be conducted behind closed doors rather than in full view of the would-be electorate. At times legislators gave the impression that they had grown timid. Mr Tung cannot be blamed entirely that no coherent opposition developed. Significant opposition figures like Emily Lau (of Frontier Party), Christine Loh (Independent) and Martin Lee (Democrats) certainly seemed to agree that they opposed Mr Tung. But throughout the first five years they seemed unable to put aside their differences and create much of a united opposition. None of them individually or as a collective group developed an attractive alternative policy platform that sparked the imagination of Hong Kongers.

In a way the failure of the elites to mould an alternative to Tung reflected not only timid legislators but also timid grass-roots protest in Hong Kong. Weaned on years of colonial administration that more or less consistently delivered prosperity the only experience Hong Kongers had of feisty street protest was in 1967. But that year had very unique causes that were not of Hong Kong's making. China was embroiled in the Cultural Revolution and it is clear that some of their rather worrying and irrational psychology spilled over into Hong Kong. There were serious riots in Hong Kong, yes. In fact Britain considered the troubles as so serious that the police were afterwards awarded the designation "Royal" for their work in managing them. (Since 1997 the police have reverted to the simple "Hong Kong Police Force".) But in reality and by the standards of the street protests in Europe in 1968 or in later years in Tiananmen Square in 1989 Hong Kong's troubles were relatively small and also relatively brief. Protesting leaders was not in the Hong Kong psyche.  

This limited encounter with street troubles explains why protest since 1997 was a rather damp squib. This played into Mr Tung's hands. In fact he seemed pleased about it and to count upon it. Frequency and the growing numbers suggest that some bigger protests are building but, so far, Mr Tung’s administration seems scarcely worried. All that really ruffled their feathers was quirky protests by activists like "Long Hair" in the viewers gallery of LegCo. This was draamtic and entertaining but failed to do much more than generate publicity. There was certainly no legislative intent from this or other "alternative" sources.

Had a more mature climate of protest existed under the British one can speculate that Mr Tung’s ability to be haughty and distant to protestors would have been much more difficult. It was not without significance and also not without a tragic sense of theatre that when the car of one of Mr Tung's senior servants, the Secretary for Security, was surrounded by protestors she calmly and in full view of the cameras read a local gossip magazine whilst police cleared the protestors. There was a clear message there. It was a message that rather summarised everything of what Mr Tung liked about the social landscape: the government did not rate the power of protestors at all. 

Set against this atmosphere of muted protest Mr Tung deserves credit for a more or less steady hand on the economy. Although problems like over-priced property and resulting negative equity were falsely claimed to be a "structural relic" of the British Mr Tung was able to galvanise people to focus on the Asian financial turmoil that slammed into much of Asia in 1997 and 2000. This raised unemployment in Hong Kong from 2.4% to 7.4% without ever causing great protests at the tiny government support for the unemployed. September 11, 2001 further damaged the tourist revenue that Hong Kong depended on and many shops did have to close. But the retail trade rcovered within months.

In teh five years between 1997-2002 the Economist Intelligence Unit dropped Hong Kong several places down its Top 10. Only the American Heritage Foundation retained Hong Kong at number one and the "freest economy in the world". Few in Hong Kong seemed especially worried either way. The reserves Patten described as the "biggest dowry since Cleopatra" remained at serious proportions. With under 1% of China’s population Hong Kong held foreign reserves worth nearly half of China’s. The Hong Kong currency remained  tied to the US$ and the peg showed no signs of weakening. Perhaps related to this the predicted exodus of western companies based in Hong Kong did not happen though attrition to Shanghai or Singapore was notable.

Anti-race discrimination legislation was avoided on the grounds that education works better and western societies which have the legislation have not been immune from problems. Once again f ew Hong Kongers protested against this disingenuous thinking and whilst there was no obvious contentment at racism against Indians and south-east Asians working as domestic assistants there was no serious discontentment at the absence of protective laws either. Few questioned that other "world cities" like London, New York and Sydney have comprehensive anti-race discrimination legislation and Mr Tung was content to leave it at that.

Conclusion
Five years from now, ten years after the handover, Mr Tung will have had over 500 weeks to make a difference.  The Hong Kong of 2007 will look almost unrecognisable to those who left before 1997 but to others used to the ebb and flow of the city it will be much the same. Same, same, but different. Yet overall there are worrying signs of a government disdainful of the popular view. Unless people in Hong Kong start to protest more the legacy of Mr Tung is already starting to clarify, and it is not looking good at all. Hong Kongers need to protest more at Mr Tung, and protest with greater determination.