Aug 1

Aug 1 Handover Weekend: A Memory Returns

By David Steffen

My first visit to Asia was in 1974. Dolly and I were living in Chicago and we decided to book a vacation trip to Japan and Hong Kong, affordable due to her benefits earned by working for United Airlines. The routing was on United from Chicago to San Francisco, then connecting with a Japan Airlines (JAL) flight to Tokyo.

Japan was almost overwhelming for these first-time visitors. We did typical tourist sightseeing, like a bus trip to Tokyo’s highlights—parks, Tokyo Tower, local shopping areas, and a train ride to Hakone and a closer view of Mount Fuji. The visit to Hong Kong was, surprisingly for me, more exciting. This was, after all, a time when Hong Kong was solidly a British Crown Colony. In those days it was still accurate to state (or claim) that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”.

The most senior local authorities—governor, police and general administration—were almost all British transplants. Any Hong Kong or Chinese staff and administration were trained and managed by the British authorities. I had been fascinated by Hong Kong since a 1960s TV broadcast of Clark Gable, Susan Hayward, and Michael Rennie in “Soldier of Fortune”. (Take a look some time. Shot in Hong Kong, the 1955 film holds up well: Hollywood drama, action and romance, with Hong Kong as a backdrop.) In all I probably made a dozen trips to Hong Kong over the next 20 years for pleasure or business and always marveled at the city and its people.

Universal Music—then parent company of GRP Records—hired me in 1996 to work with GRP label president Tommy LiPuma and perform a business turn-around. I quickly learned that regardless of the success of GRP Records during its first decade (beginning in 1982), by the early 1990s the profit disappeared and the label was sliding toward financial irrelevance. To put it another way, the glory days of the GRP label were in the rearview mirror.

I took the first month to meet the people and look through the financials, and I learned from the then head of finance that the label would likely lose in excess of $20 million that year. Meeting with LiPuma (whom I had known since his days at A&M and Blue Thumb, some 20+ years earlier,) it was obvious dramatic changes had to be made. By the spring, 1997 we had reduced our overhead, were focused on key artists—George Benson, Diana Krall, David Benoit, The Rippingtons, Tom Scott and others—and were on the right track.

With finances improved, I took time to visit GRP's affiliates around the world. I scheduled a 15-day international ‘road trip’ to meet with our key affiliates around the world and reassure them that GRP was not going to disappear. On that trip I visited Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, Hamburg and London. Hong Kong turned out to be a particularly memorable stop. This was June 1997, and Hong Kong was about to be transferred from British sovereignty to control by Beijing. It was dubbed “Handover Weekend”. Toward the end of my business meetings on Friday afternoon, June 27, I walked out of the offices and found the streets were filled with people. The restaurants and bars were overflowing, impromptu raves appeared on some streets, and the soon-to-be former British territory was about to become Chinese. Yes, people seemed on edge, but my sense was that everyone was hoping for the best and most opted to party until midnight—the official handover—and beyond. The official, politics-neutral transitional phrase was “one country, two systems” and, for a few years, it seemed to work.

After two years working 80-hour weeks, I left GRP in March 1998, and the timing was simple: the label was set to turn a profit when our fiscal year ended on June 30. Besides, Caitie was ten and I was determined to leave the music business and be home a lot more. So why am I telling you all of this?

On July 4, 2022, a story broke in the Washington Post. The paper’s editorial board wrote:

Think Democracy Isn’t Endangered?

Look What Happened In Hong Kong.

“It was no accident that Chinese leader Xi Jinping repeatedly used the word “chaos” to describe Hong Kong as he marked the July 1 [2022] anniversary of the 1997 handover of the former British colony. Mr. Xi vowed that Hong Kong would move “from chaos to control.” But what he was really affirming is that China’s leaders will not tolerate democracy and its discontents, and intend to finish off Hong Kong as a beacon of free thinking and openness.”

Here we are, 25 years—Not 50!—since my memorable visit to Hong Kong, and it appears now that Handover Weekend was the start of a fiction. In my dozen+ visits, I could always learn something, enjoy conversations, feel the vitality of the city and the people. To this American, Hong Kong was amazing. That piece in the Post added this:

“Once upon a time, Hong Kong earned respect for its rule of law and a lively public square. When China took over in 1997, it pledged “one country, two systems,” under which Hong Kong would retain many freedoms absent in mainland China, including free speech. The autonomy of Hong Kong was supposed to last 50 years, but at the halfway mark, China has brought Hong Kong much closer to the stifling unfreedom that rules the rest of the country.”

We are just 19 months since the January 6, 2021 attempted takeover of the American government by a discredited and disgraced former “leader”. The televised broadcast of the January 6 Commission hearings have given me some hope. The honesty and bravery of the witnesses who were testifying, who had a closer—although not really a better—seat to watch the attempted coup of America have pushed us to begin facing the reality of that day. However, there is still an unsettling time ahead.

The elections this fall are critical to stem the tide of the demagogues, the constant flow of lies, the desire to repress women, to force religion into the lives of people. I was raised as a midwest-born, parochial grade school, public high school child. Whatever the depth of my Christian beliefs, I have never felt compelled to force particular, religious beliefs on anyone else. Those who wish to “return” to something last seen in the earliest years of the United States may do so at their pleasure. But, they should not force anyone else to join them.

The aforementioned Post article concludes with this warning about Hong Kong:

“There’s a tendency to dismiss warnings that democracy is threatened around the world, to think that it just can’t happen. Take a look at Hong Kong under China’s rule. A once-vibrant freedom vanished in only a few years. That is alarmingly real.”

People have been quoting Ben Franklin lately, about “A republic if you can keep it”. What’s more appropriate, to me, is another Franklin quote: “The first man put at the helm [of the United States] will be a good one. Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards. The executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy.”

Instead of Franklin's concern of “monarchy” he might have said dictator, despot, authoritarian, absolute ruler, or as Orwell told us, Big Brother. China promised Hong Kong 50 years of freedom. It lasted 25. Barely. Why would an American dictator (or political party) not look at Hong Kong today and say, “Hey, why not here?”

Image (m middle): Movie Poster from “Soldier of Fortune”

Image (above): Protest message in Hong Kong, "We Shall Never Surrender" by Benjamin Davies on Pixabay.