GIS Through The Years

Chapter 23: Trying to Read Tealeaves through Highly Discoloured Tea

The very success Hong Kong had achieved with its efforts to promote itself overseas came back to haunt it in the aftermath of the conclusion to the Sino-British negotiations. All its considerable achievements were now seen to be at risk in the years of 'countdown' to restoration of Chinese sovereignty.

Where cynical foreign media had once been at pains to undermine the magnitude of Hong Kong's accomplishment with stories of sweatshop labour, 'caged men' and the lack of organised labour, they now chose to emphasise its progress in order to illustrate how much it stood to lose. 'The great Chinese take-away' was typical of the facile phraseology they employed in allowing free rein to their forebodings.

Almost overnight, the task for ISD was no longer to say how well Hong Kong was doing but how well it could expect to continue doing after 1997. With little to go on other than the remarkable framework of the Sino-British agreement, the assurances given by China's leaders, the intrinsic belief that they stood by their word and Hong Kong's own past record of peaceful co-existence - through thick and thin - as next-door neighbour to the motherland, it was not an easy assignment.

Even if invested with clairvoyant powers, ISD veterans in the Overseas Public Relations Sub-division, including stalwarts such as Akber Khan and Mark Pinkstone, could hardly be expected to read tealeaves while they were still cooking in highly discoloured tea.

The more Hong Kong could demonstrate its increasing prosperity, the more it invited questions as to how long it would all last. Growing numbers of visiting correspondents were arriving, not as doctors examining a healthy patient but as undertakers measuring a coffin. Most had but one agenda, which was to portray Hong Kong as a fatted calf readied for the sacrificial altar.

It was decided that the time had come to reinforce Hong Kong's overseas representation, to extend its reach beyond superficially dismissive journalism in order to present the facts to those with the most need to know. Although the News and Public Affairs Division of the Hong Kong Government Office in London remained in close liaison with ISD, especially in the wake of increased interest on the part of UK politicians, the emphasis began to shift to other arenas, and particularly to the more recently established offices in Brussels and New York, both of which made their own calls on ISD staff.

The untimely death of Sir Edward Youde, on December 5, 1986, deprived Hong Kong of one of its most beloved governors and forced it to change horses in midstream. Sir Edward, who died, aged 62, at the British Embassy in Beijing, in the course of one of his frequent China visits, had hoped to see Hong Kong through the most difficult stages of the transition period, and would have been well qualified to do so. His role in the Sino-British negotiations had played no small part in securing the Joint Declaration.

Small and clerkish in appearance, with a disarmingly shy smile, Sir Edward possessed an astute intellect and a thorough understanding of the Chinese. The gentle despair of his public relations advisers in ISD, because he declined their image-building proposals to make him seem more visibly gubernatorial, he was nevertheless esteemed by the public as a tireless champion who literally risked his life in Hong Kong's cause.

Thousands of mourners streamed past his coffin in the hallway of Government House to pay their last respects prior to his funeral cortege. He was succeeded, after a brief interval when Sir David Akers-Jones held office as acting-governor, by Sir David Wilson, also from the Foreign Office, steeped in Chinese affairs and returning to Hong Kong after having served as political adviser to Youde's predecessor, Sir Murray MacLehose. Like Sir Murray, Sir David cut a stately figure in his formal attire, complete with plumed helmet.

Meanwhile, changes were also taking place in ISD, where Peter Tsao had been succeeded as DIS, on January 1, 1985, by Cheung Man-yee, who returned to RTHK as Director of Broadcasting the following year, when John Chan Cho-chak took her place. What had become a high-profile department, very much in the public eye, was seeing a rapid turnover in top management, as though its pressures were difficult to take.

Even John Chan remained at the helm for barely more than a year before handing over, on January 8, 1986, to Irene Yau. The first director since Bob Sun to have made it through the ranks of the information grade, Irene was to occupy the post right through the following decade, making her its longest-serving incumbent since the redoubtable Jock Murray left it some 23 years - and eight other directors - earlier.


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