There is a known Chinese proverb: “When you drink water, think of its source.” If you understand Cantonese, you may hear Hong Kong officials saying jam seoi si jyun these days to stress that the city’s freshwater supply is mainly from mainland China. To be specific, Hong Kong has imported water from the Dongjiang River in Guangdong since 1965. Today, imported Dongjiang water meets up to eighty percent of the city’s total freshwater needs. Local rainwater makes up the remaining twenty percent.
When pro-independence radicals in Hong Kong burnt shops whose owners were alleged to be communist sympathizers, sprayed red paint on iconic HSBC lions, and vandalized public infrastructures, they called for boycott from everything deemed Chinese, but they may have forgotten the banking industry, the real estate industry, and even that the power and water in the city have long been tinted red. To boycott Chinese involvement in Hong Kong is class suicide.
It is shameful to politicalize natural resources on which human survival depend. But when it comes to water, governments, regardless of size, are looking for ways to claim sovereignty and make profits. China has the economic power to build dams, open canals, relocate factories to treat water pollution, and launch huge projects to transfer water from the water-abundant southern China to the draught-ridden northern plain.
China also has the might to pull the plug to stop power and water supply to Hong Kong. That’s unlikely to happen if Beijing wants to prove that Hong Kong still has a strong back from its master of “One Country.” In stressing the source of their drinking water, Beijing is making this point to Hong Kong people—do not forget your roots and be thankful for the one who feeds you.
Unless Hong Kong finds its way to diversify the city’s freshwater supplies, reducing reliance on Dongjiang water, Hong Kong protesters can’t boycott Chinese products entirely yet. As a matter of fact, after the 2019 havoc in Hong Kong, Beijing is speeding up the economic development of the Greater Bay Area. What used to be called the Pearl River Delta that created tens of millions of manufacturing jobs now has been expanded to the Greater Bay Area which includes Hong Kong and Macau. Urbanization and cooperation between mainland cities and Hong Kong and Macau will deepen water reliance on major rivers and hydropower energy in Guangdong. I’m talking about seventy million people and rising are competing for the same water resources in this region.
Pro-democracy Hong Kongers call for a more distinct “Two Systems” model in the city while Beijing interprets the call as too much emphasis on Western values but too little emphasis on patriotism by Hong Kong youths. Before “One Country, Two Systems” sets to expire in 2047, Hong Kong has lost at least two generations who are in despair and lost faith in government.
There is no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. I think this well-known principle in international relations also applies to China’s so-called domestic issue about Hong Kong democracy. Hong Kong may not appear to be as important to China as it was two decades ago. But there have been plenty of elites and princelings who successfully have obtained permanent resident status in Hong Kong or via Hong Kong to handle their assets in between two different financial systems—the government-controlled one and the free market.
When it comes to political differences, few Beijing-backed, new Hong Kongers would defend “Two Systems.” They know—without saying it out loud as a wise guy might do—that the “Two Systems” is conditional and one way—just like the flow of Dongjiang water from Jiangxi province to Guangdong to Hong Kong.
There are mega bridges, highways, high speed trains connecting major cities in the Greater Bay Area. There are relaxed rules of housing, education and retirement for residents of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan in mainland China, especially in the economic zones like the Greater Bay Area. Economic mobility is ensured in the decades to come. More economic successes only enlarge Beijing’s shadow in democratic cities like Hong Kong and Macau. Will Dongjiang water unite or divide Hong Kong? Only time can tell.
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