Bertie Ahern and top government officials flew from Shanghai to Hong Kong on Thursday by government jet. But the rest of us, the media and business people on the Irish trade mission, had to take a commercial flight, and we got a taste of the problems which have been plaguing the new airport since it opened in July. The Dragon Air aircraft taxied up to the state-of-the-art terminal an hour late, and we were kept waiting another 20 minutes as it could not be connected to the terminal gate. "They should never have closed Kai Tak," grumbled an irate Hong Kong Chinese businessman, referring to the territory's much-loved old airport. At least it worked.
The airport has become a metaphor for Hong Kong itself, the open, ultra modern, prosperous Asian city which has been hit by misfortunes and setbacks since the handover to China and the departure of the last Governor, Chris Patten, whose just-published memoirs, East and West, is piled high in the book shops. If Patten had stayed, history would not have taken a different course. The Asian economic crisis, the plunging stock market, the currency attacks, the record rains, the bird flu, the pink tides, these were all acts of God or mammon over which his unfortunate successor, Mr Tung Cheehwa, has had little control.
But at a lunch for the Taoiseach given by the Irish business community on Friday, there was palpable nostalgia for the Patten days, not least among those free marketeers who believe he would never have intervened in the stock market as financial secretary, Donald Tsang, did last month, spending $14 billion to thwart speculators. Mr Tsang justified his action as necessary to fend off speculation, but the US federal reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, said it would undermine Hong Kong's credibility. The Tsang-Greenspan dispute in its way reflects the Asian resentment at being lectured by outsiders. Some expatriates feel the climate in Hong Kong is now tinged with xenophobia. They point to the recent use of the derisive Cantonese word guilo, or foreign dog, for outsiders by one member of the legislative council. Indeed, on the day the Taoiseach arrived in the former British colony, the Association of Expatriate Civil Servants was accusing the government of following a racist policy by encouraging a mindset similar to that fostered in Australia by the politician, Pauline Hanson. The number of overseas officers in the civil service has dipped 56 per cent to just over 1,000 in the past eight years, and it could be "ethnically cleansed" in another five, the association complained to the council.
The Hong Kong Home Affairs bureau insists that racial discrimination is insignificant and that the Chinese language test now imposed on foreign officers seeking promotions and permanent positions is just as reasonable a requirement as is bilingualism in the Canadian civil service. Nevertheless, anti-foreign sentiment usually rises with the unemployment rate anywhere in the world. And in Hong Kong, where for so many years there were jobs to spare, about 500 people a day are losing their jobs and there are now 25,000 people, or 5 per cent of the workforce, out of work, the highest since the mid-1980s. The splash headline in the newspapers on Friday morning told of a 10 per cent across-the-board pay cut at Hong Kong Telecom, one of the former colony's biggest employers, and an avalanche of similar pay cuts is now anticipated. As it is, many Hong Kong people are suffering severe hardship, with home owners enduring negative equity because of the slump in property values, and are unable to pay their mortgages.
Suicides have increased and social workers are unable to cope with their increased caseload. Perhaps the biggest sensation recently was the attack on broadcaster Albert Cheng, who hosted the territory's most popular radio show in which he lambasted government officials, property tycoons and Beijing's leaders.
He was a symbol of free speech in Hong Kong, whose liberties are guaranteed under China's "one country-two systems" policy. Two men repeatedly stabbed the 52-year-old Cheng in the street as he arrived for work.
In hospital last week he blamed the triads but said they had been hired by someone or some organisation he had offended. He recalled that when his family worried about him, he would reassure them that Hong Kong was a civilised place and people would not attack him for what he said. Some 14 triad members were arrested at the weekend, and Cheng's belief in Hong Kong as a place where the law triumphs may yet be justified. Despite all the bad news, Hong Kong is, like the new airport, a dazzling place, and it continues to have more freedoms than any other Asian city.
Most guilos intend to stay, especially those who are prospering in Hong Kong - people like Brian O'Connor from Belfast. His new company, Quality HealthCare Asia, has in little over a year become the biggest private provider of private health care in the territory, and is bucking the Asian trend by expanding and making a profit. And truth to tell, the new airport isn't all that bad. I had two hours to kill there when returning to Beijing on Saturday and found the departure lounge clean and airy, with no queues at immigration, two good book shops to browse in and little self-service restaurants with every kind of Asian food. And the aircraft left on time.