The suspicion has long lingered that a key part of the Chinese Communist Party’s plan for Hong Kong involves replacing a large number of local people by Mainlanders.

Now, maybe inadvertently, Bernard Chan, the Convenor of the Executive Council, has let the cat out of the bag. In an interview with Bloomberg Television he said that he was not worried by the exodus of Hongkongers to overseas countries because they would be replaced by “well qualified” Mainlanders.

Bearing in mind that none of the Quislings in senior positions dare to offer an opinion that deviates even mildly from the official line, it can be confidently asserted that Mr. Chan was reflecting the Party’s thinking. And, in case, there was any doubt about this, Mainland official media quickly and approvingly reported this interview. ‘Mainland arrivals to offset any exodus to UK, top HK adviser says’ ran a headline in last Wednesday’s China Daily newspaper.

The interview also follows a now familiar pattern of shrugging off problems and answering them with bravado. On the one hand Chan said he believed that reports of people wanting to leave Hong Kong were exaggerated, while on the other saying that even if they go, it does not matter.

Chan was keen to emphasize that their replacements would be “well qualified” Mainlanders. In other words, they are the kind of people who could occupy leading roles in Hong Kong society. Only the seriously naïve will not understand that in part this also means that a great many of the incomers will be Communist Party members.

In terms of changing demographics China has form as in all its five so called ‘autonomous’ regions, the indigenous people have now been overwhelmed by Han Chinese, most of whom have been brought in as part of a deliberate policy to diminish their distinctive character. This has most aggressively been seen in Xinjiang and Tibet, where fear of rebellion has intensified the effort.

However, it has also been a characteristic of the new order in China’s other Special Administrative Region of Macau where Mainlanders occupy leading positions in the administration and first-generation incomers from across the border now outnumber the people who were born and brought up there.

Hong Kong remains an outlier and the one thing that always aggravates the Party is an exception to the rule. There is little doubt that the uprising of 2019/20 intensified the desire not just to assert greater control over the SAR but also to fundamentally change its character, not least by changing the composition of its population.

The wider cultural war against Hong Kong has only just got underway. Attacks on the use of Cantonese will mount, use of simplified Chinese characters will increase and the whole ethos of a distinctive Hong Kong culture will be under increasing attack. The Party demands uniformity and control at every level. And in Hong Kong there is a willing band of Quislings who will strain every sinew to make sure this happens.

This is also the context for understanding the profound political and social objectives of the Greater Bay Area. Not only is it aimed at reducing the physical barriers between Hong Kong and adjacent parts of Guangdong province but it is also part of a plan to ensure integration of Hong Kong at all levels into the Mainland.

The tattered remnants of the “one country, two systems” concept will only be tolerated in terms of the commercial and financial sectors, not least because this is where the fortunes of the Mainland’s ruling elite are housed and need to be protected by a system that is distinctive and, so they hope, provides a pathway for their money to make its way into the international arena.

Meanwhile Mr. Chan should be thanked for saying out in the open what many people have feared was the hidden plan for Hong Kong’s rapidly changing future.

(Stephen Vines is a Hong Kong-based journalist, writer and broadcaster and runs companies in the food sector. He was the founding editor of ‘Eastern Express’ and founding publisher of ‘Spike’. In London he was an editor at The Observer and in Asia has worked for international publications including, the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, BBC, Asia Times and The Independent and, during Hong Kong’s 2019/20 protests, for the Sunday Times. He hosts a weekly television current affairs programme: The Pulse”

Vines’ latest book Defying the Dragon – Hong Kong and the world’s largest dictatorship, will be published early next year by Hurst Publishing. He is the author of several books, including: Hong Kong: China’s New Colony, The Years of Living Dangerously - Asia from Crisis to the New Millennium, Market Panic and Food Gurus.)

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