The Hong Kong government’s failure to publicly acknowledge the platinum jubilee of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth smacks of ignorance. Across the city are the vestiges of royal links, from building, street and place names to commemorative plaques. Globally, the monarch is praised for her dignity, poise and diplomacy. The connections run deep and we should be celebrating the legacy of one of the world’s most recognisable women, not pretending we don’t know her.
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President Xi Jinping congratulated the British monarch on February 7 for having been on the throne for 70 years, an anniversary that fell on the previous day. While he used the occasion for political means, saying it was an opportunity “to deepen friendship and mutual trust, expand exchanges and cooperation and work together to promote international solidarity”, Xi also recognised that she had long cared about and supported close relations between the two countries.
In 1986, Queen Elizabeth became the first British monarch to visit China, a trip that was combined with her second visit to Hong Kong, a British colony until reverting to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.
But the Chinese leader’s wishes were four months early, the official celebration being set for June 2-5 to enable a four-day long weekend of revelry in better weather and to avoid coinciding with the event that enabled the then princess to become queen – the death of her father, George VI.
Etiquette aside, Xi at least overcame an issue of historic pain for China, Britain’s imperial humiliation during the Qing dynasty that led to a “lost century” of development. The enforced free trade, wars over opium, looting and burning with French soldiers of the Emperor’s Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860, and territorial grabs in treaties that put Hong Kong under London’s rule for 156 years – all have cut deep scars in the Chinese psyche.
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Yet Queen Elizabeth is praised by many in China and elsewhere for being gracious, and President Xi was equally so for acknowledging her achievements. Hong Kong officials, products of the British colonial system, are caught in the middle; proving how uncomfortable they feel, their silence has been deafening.
The statue of Queen Victoria was commissioned in 1887 by the Hong Kong government and completed in 1890. In 1955, it was relocated to Victoria Park, where it now stands. Photo: Dickson Lee
