Will Hong Kong be the new Goa?

Despite claims by Boris Johnson that he is a “fervent Sinophile” at meetings in Downing Street with Chinese officials, there is no let up in the steady grinding away by Beijing at the remaining rights enjoyed by the citizens of Hong Kong. The latest move to check on the loyalty to the communist rulers of China of any Hong Kong citizen who wants to stand for elected office in the former UK colony, is reminiscent of the Soviet turning of the screw on east European countries into which the Red Army marched in 1945.

To begin with, minimal lip service was paid to the Yalta agreement between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, that free elections would be held. But quickly enough, anyone who spoke up for freedom and democracy found themselves in prison.  Or worse — as in the case of the Czech Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk, who “fell” to his death from a window at his Foreign Ministry in Prague.

The Beijing communists are being slightly less crude than their Soviet comrades of 75 years ago, but not much.

The model for a rising Asian power taking over a European colony took place in Goa in 1963.  Goa had been a Portuguese colony, technically an “Estado” of Portugal, since the early 16th century.

Two hundred years before the Royal Navy occupied the Falklands, and London declared the islands eternally British, Lisbon had legally made the small enclave south of Bombay fully part of Portugal. London accepted this during the years of the British Empire, but from 1950 independent India had other ideas. It was easy to whip up Indian nationalist passions in the 1950s to the profit of the then ruling Congress Party.

Beijing plays the nationalist card as well, these days — to generate support for the ruling Communist Party. Taiwan is the supreme prize, but, unlike Goa or Hong Kong, there are 100 miles of sea separating it from mainland China. Taiwan has support from the United States, as well as a strong economy and powerful  military forces.

Portugal lingered under a decaying 1930s Iberian semi-fascist regime until 1974. As India increased pressure in the 1950s to take back the Portuguese territory, Lisbon turned to its oldest ally, Britain, and asked for support.  It then turned to the UN claiming, as with Britain and the Falklands, that Goa had been linked to Portugal for centuries and long before India came into being as an independent state.

But might was right and neither London nor any other power was interested, as an isolated Portugal which had few links with the rest of Europe looked for support. India annexed Goa in 1961.

Britain is not Portugal, but is Hong Kong so very different from Goa? In fact, the Chinese army marched into Hong Kong as soon as the Union flag was lowered in 1997. Each erosion of Hong Kong democracy produces a protest from Britain and some other democracies, but nothing more. China is the profit centre for too many banks and firms in the West. Sadly, bit by bit, Hong Kong is becoming the new Goa of South-East Asia.

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