The Chinese in America - Iris Chang [171]
On June 5, 1989, President George H. W. Bush signed an executive order allowing all Chinese nationals to remain in the United States. On April 11, 1990, he issued another order giving Chinese immigrants who could prove they were in the country before that date the right to stay. Bush also combined domestic with international politics when he made clear that “individuals from any country who express fear of persecution ... related to their country’s policy of forced abortion or coerced sterilization” would be welcome to stay in the United States.
Many students felt little interest in returning to China. One law student from Beijing told an interviewer that it would be “political suicide” to go back: “It is a waste of life.” A Berkeley engineering student said the PRC would “make Chinese intellectuals as scapegoats, just like what they have always been doing in every political movement in the last forty years.” A few expressed interest in returning only after the ruling-class elite had passed away. Observed a Stanford doctoral candidate, “China will definitely change because it just cannot get worse. Political changes might come faster after the death of some old guys.” In 1992, in response to the plight of these pro-democracy student activists, the U.S. government passed the Chinese Student Protection Act, permitting more than fifty thousand students and scholars to gain permanent residence status in the United States.
The Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 had other consequences as well. It provoked fears of political instability across Asia, encouraging ethnic Chinese capitalists to establish second homes in North America. Perhaps no group was more concerned about its future than the people of Hong Kong, which by treaty the British were obligated to return to the People’s Republic of China on July 1, 1997. Could the freewheeling capitalist culture of Hong Kong survive under the Communist old guard? No one knew. To allay fears, the mainland Chinese government promised not to change the city’s social conditions for the next fifty years, but many Hong Kong residents did not fully trust them. “No sane person should have faith in the promises,” announced one Hong Kong skeptic. “Mao made the same pledge to Shanghai in 1949, but it lasted for just three months. My parents escaped to Hong Kong, giving up everything.” He pointed to the tragedy of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. “Shouldn’t we leave before it is too late?”
Many felt they could not afford to wait to find out. Not surprisingly, those who most wanted to leave were the ones with the most to lose under Communist rule—the capitalist and professional elite of Hong Kong. Late-1980s surveys found that 70 percent of Hong Kong’s government doctors, 60 percent of its lawyers, and 40 percent of its civil engineers intended to move out before 1997. According to a review of visa applications, between 1987 and 1991 some 15 to 19 percent of Hong Kong émigrés held college degrees, compared to only 4 percent of the general population. A 1989 telephone poll of 605 Hong Kong residents found that the wealthier the household, the stronger the desire to leave. Many emigres were, in fact, millionaires. In the 1990s, the typical household of a Hong Kong émigré investor in Canada was worth an estimated 1.5 million Canadian dollars, equivalent to about $1.2 million U.S.
Like the 1949 refugees from Hong Kong, most of those trying to leave in the 1990s found the logical destination—England—closed to them. Although Great Britain traditionally issued British passports to all those born on its territory, it refused to do so with the Chinese born on Hong Kong while it had been British. These passports would have ensured entry to England for those who chose that path. Many Hong Kong residents felt profoundly betrayed, convinced that Great Britain had shirked its responsibilities to avoid ruffling the feathers of the PRC. Even though the British had enjoyed