China's famed Palace Museum began displaying artifacts in Hong Kong on Sunday amid a drive to build loyalty to Beijing in the former British colony that reverted to Chinese rule 25 years ago.
China President Xi Jinping made his first trip outside of mainland China since the pandemic began on Thursday, traveling across the semiclosed border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong to commemorate 25 years since the former British colony returned to Chinese sovereignty.
When the president last visited Hong Kong, five years ago,
one of the few stops on his tour was the West Kowloon Cultural District, a
nascent arts center built within a park on the water’s edge, that served as the
proving ground for the Special Administrative Region’s outgoing chief
executive, Carrie Lam.
Lam served as the chairman of the board overseeing the
development of the cultural district from 2012 to 2017, when she was elected
chief executive of the city. But her bid for chief executive was briefly
derailed over her decision in 2016 to designate the West Kowloon Cultural
District home to the Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM), a cultural project whose
exhibits borrow items from Beijing’s museum of the same name.
At the time, critics denounced the unilateral nature of
Lam’s decision, accusing her of bypassing local legislature and forcing through
plans for the museum under direct order from Beijing, and pro-democracy
advocates depicted the museum as a symbol of the central government’s growing
influence over Hong Kong’s local affairs. Five years later, as Xi returns to
mark the end of Lam’s term in office, those early criticisms that Beijing had
grown increasingly assertive of its authority in Hong Kong have proven
prophetic.
Hong Kong’s $450 million Palace Museum was designed by Rocco
Design Architects, a local firm, and is built roughly in the shape of a ding—a
traditional Chinese cauldron. Rising five stories high and slanting outward as
it climbs, the golden structure houses nine gallery spaces displaying 914
artifacts on loan from the Palace Museum in Beijing, otherwise known as the
Forbidden City.
According to the HKPM, its collection is “the largest and
finest the Palace Museum has ever lent to another cultural institution since
its establishment in 1925.”
The museum, now complete and set to open to the public on
Saturday, was financed by the Hong Kong Jockey Club—Hong Kong’s largest
taxpayer and one of its largest charities, which also holds a monopoly on
gambling licenses in the city. The government will foot the bill for half of
the venue’s operating expenses; ticket sales will cover the rest. The museum
can welcome 5,000 visitors per day and, as of last week, had already sold
70,000 at a price of roughly $6.
On Wednesday, during a VIP preview of the museum, the Hong
Kong Palace Museum deputy director Brian Yuen said he didn’t know whether Xi
would visit the landmark project during his trip to Hong Kong.
“The government hasn’t told us yet,” Yuen said, although the
museum appears to have rushed to open in time for Xi’s visit. One large blank
wall awaits delivery of a tapestry from the Louvre, which is co-curating one of
the exhibitions at the HKPM. A few empty display cases line a gallery space
otherwise decked with intricate carvings and luxurious lacquer works.
The governments—both local and national—have kept details of
Xi’s trip closely guarded. Hong Kong police only confirmed Xi was coming at all
on Tuesday, arriving by train from China’s southern city of Shenzhen on
Thursday, and leaving again the same day, only to return to Hong Kong once more
on Friday July 1, the actual anniversary date of Hong Kong’s handover.
The high-speed rail line between Hong Kong and Shenzhen that
will transport Xi back and forth was another controversial project opposed by
activists, who denounced the $10.8 billion rail link as a waste of public funds
and a marker of the city’s creeping integration with mainland China. Opponents
said the same thing of the $18.8 billion Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge that Xi
personally opened in 2018, providing a 34-mile road route connecting the three
cities.
The Hong Kong Palace Museum was initially controversial
because of how Lam pursued its development, bypassing the local legislature and
allegedly signing a cooperation agreement with the museum in Beijing and
appointing Rocco as the site’s architect before gaining legislative approval in
Hong Kong.
Opponents accused Lam of violating rules that require
proposed developments in the Cultural District to go through a period of public
consultation. Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC)
opened an investigation into the incident in March 2017, at the request of
lawmaker Claudia Mo, but dropped the case that June, days before Lam’s
inauguration.
“Of course, some will say what a coincidence in timing this
is—it seems—like a celebration for Lam who is ready to take office. But
personally, I choose to believe in the ICAC,” Mo said at the time.
The rail link, the bridge, and the Palace Museum are all
part of Xi Jinping’s vision for Hong Kong’s future as one node along an
integrated economic region dubbed the Greater Bay Area—a constellation of 11
cities that collectively produce $1.5 trillion in GDP each year, or roughly the
same economic output as all of South Korea.
“[The Hong Kong and Beijing] museums will work closely
together to integrate into the development of the Greater Bay Area and draw on
Hong Kong’s position as an international arts and cultural exchange hub to
broaden the international influence of Chinese culture,” Wang Xudong, director
of the Palace Museum in Beijing, said during the official opening of the Hong
Kong Palace Museum last Saturday.
Critics who see the museum as a symbol of mainland China’s
creeping assimilation of Hong Kong are, therefore, not entirely wrong. The
concept of the Greater Bay Area expressly calls for China’s two Special
Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau (both former colonies that
currently enjoy a level of administrative independence from the national
government in Beijing) to integrate with mainland China’s Guangdong province.
The central government has tasked Hong Kong with serving as
the financial hub for the economic zone. Developments at the West Kowloon
Cultural Center—where Hong Kong also opened the M+ contemporary Asia arts
gallery last November—show that officials are angling to position Hong Kong as
the Bay Area’s leading cultural hub as well.
But opponents in Hong Kong say the Hong Kong Palace Museum
is also a propaganda tool, designed to counter the localist streak inherent to
Hong Kong identity and instill Hong Kongers with a sense of Chinese national
pride.
When Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the
national government agreed the city could maintain its judicial and legislative
autonomy under a framework called One Country, Two Systems. But since 2014,
when pro-democracy demonstrators occupied large areas of Hong Kong for several
months, the national government has placed greater emphasis on enforcing the
“One Country” aspect of its cross-border relationship.
In 2016, the Hong Kong government disqualified several
elected lawmakers because they refused to comply with a new rule from Beijing
that required all lawmakers to “solemnly” pledge an oath of allegiance to the
People’s Republic of China when taking office.
In 2020, following months of antigovernment protests in Hong
Kong, the government in Beijing bypassed Hong Kong’s legislative autonomy and
imposed a National Security Law in the city, criminalizing acts of treason,
secession, sedition, and subversion against the central government. Dozens of
pro-democracy politicians and advocates have been arrested under the law,
including Mo, who urged the ICAC to investigate Lam over the Hong Kong Palace
Museum in 2017.
Last year, Beijing lawmakers also revised the rules on
elections in Hong Kong, redesigning the election process so that “patriots
only” can run the city. Lam is ending her five-year reign as chief executive on
Thursday, leaving former police chief John Lee as her successor, after he won a
local election in May.
Lee ran unopposed and secured victory with just 0.02% of the
population eligible to vote under the new rules. Xi is due to attend Lee’s
swearing-in ceremony on July 1, where analysts will pick over details in the
president’s speech for indications of how Beijing expects Hong Kong to develop
over the next five years.
“On the one hand, Beijing wants to incorporate Hong Kong
into the Greater Bay Area development plan,” Vivan Zhan, an associate professor
specializing in Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong told
Bloomberg. “But at the same time, it needs to allow Hong Kong to maintain a
certain degree of autonomy to strengthen its credibility for an international
audience.”
The difficulty of maintaining that balance is literally
written on the walls of the Hong Kong Palace Museum. In the first gallery of
the first floor, an information point informs readers that the Hong Kong Palace
Museum is “a partner of the Beijing Palace Museum, rather than its branch.” The
note is a reminder to visitors that the display is one collection, two museums.
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