The word ‘Orwellian’ does a lot of heavy lifting these days. It is rolled out every time the state is seen to encroach on our lives, curtail free speech, track our movements and try to control our lives. But this comes from Hong Kong, and what I have seen here this week is nothing other than purely Orwellian.
In case you had not noticed, Paris is hosting the Olympic Games. Hong Kong have taken notice in a big way fielding one of the three teams from ‘greater China’ along with Chinese Taipei (aka Taiwan) and the big boy itself, Mainland China.
The fact that Taiwan can only be included if it refers to and demeans its athletes by calling itself Chinese Taipei tells you all you need to know about the International Olympic Committee. It cravenly bowed long ago to Chinese pressure, presumably with the threat of pulling out itself, if Taiwan turned up calling itself Taiwan.
No such problems with Hong Kong which is increasingly being taken over politically and socially by China. It is getting harder these days to tell where the Hong Kong Legislative Council ends, and the Chinese Communist Party begins.
As for the Olympics, I was in China when they kicked off with their spectacularly offensive testicle waving and blasphemous washout of an opening ceremony. The fact that the Olympics had started was not mentioned to me once in that week. But I landed in Hong Kong to a city gone Olympics mad amidst hysterical levels of confected enthusiasm. At one event I attended on the accreditation of a health-related degree the Olympics got several mentions suggesting a degree of brainwashing, or possibly compulsion.
The controversy over the opening ceremony, which was shown in full here, seems to have washed over the Hong Kongers. There is certainly not a word about it in the legacy newspaper, the South China Morning Post. The fact that a woman was nearly beaten senseless by a bloke has not had a column inch. In fact, any sport not involving Chinese or Hong Kong athletes, especially ones they are not winning, is not reported.
Thus, there is nothing about athletics or field events. Instead, all the things Chinese people are good at are reported and these include fake sword fighting, miniature tennis, and falling from a great height into water, with style. These cover the front and sports pages.
The only outlier is swimming, not something Chinese athletes normally excel at. And they still don’t. The Hong Kong swimmer who is taking medals is, in fact a gweilo (white devil) with an Irish name. But that seems not to be noticed or remarked on. A mark of how inclusive Hong Kong society is, perhaps? Well, I wonder – hypothetically of course – if the same would apply to someone who was black. Just saying.
So where does Orwell fit in? Well, the spirit of 1984 is alive and well in the giant screens erected all over the city at strategic points such as busy pedestrianised areas and shopping malls (of which Hong Kong has many). These are supplied with bean bags and boxes of oversized hands for people to wave at the screen.
And the screen transmits a non-stop diet of Olympics. But you could be forgiven for thinking that these are the Chinese Olympic games as, in the same vein as the newspaper, only Chinese (including Hong Kong) athletes are shown and only those likely to win.
It is so reminiscent of the Oceania doing well in the war with Eurasia and Eastasia message that the population were constantly fed in 1984. People sit mesmerised by some kind of combat or ping-pong match and, even though they will all have TVs at home, they come out to sit together in the hundreds. However, they may cheer, but one chorus of ‘Hong Kong Forever’ – the banned anthem – and they’ll swiftly find themselves in the back of a police van.
Then there is the thorny problem, which could arise, of a mainland Chinese athlete in a final involving a Hong Kong athlete. I was unable to confirm but sources plugged into the Cantonese speaking community say that word has gone out that under no circumstances must Hong Kongers show their support for the Hong Kong athlete, or the back of that police van is going to get very crowded.
Roger Watson is a retired academic nurse who lives in the UK.
He is currently engaged in a range of professional consultancies in the UK, Europe and China. He writes regularly for several outlets including The Daily Sceptic, The European Conservative, Country Squire Magazine and The New Conservative.
