Hong Kong leader Tung Chee-hwa makes a toast at a celebration banquet to mark the first anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to Chinese rule Wednesday. (Reuters)

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 1, 1998; Page A26

HONG KONG—With her English law degree, clipped British accent, successful career as a commodities trader, well-groomed Shih Tzu and tendency to call herself "earthling," Christine Loh stands for everything that is outward-looking, modern, hip and fast-paced about Hong Kong.

Her articulate patois is spiced with Internet slang, seasoned with New Age jargon. She's as at home in London as on Hong Kong's ritzy Peak.

But when she talks about patriotism and holding a Chinese passport, there's an uncomfortable pause. Her mouth screws up in a grimace. "Hmmm," she intones, "it's taking a while to sink in."

If Loh represents one side of this city, Tsang Yok-sing represents another. In 1947, his mother took an improbable journey from Hong Kong back to Canton in the midst of a civil war to give birth to her son. Mother and son returned to Hong Kong soon thereafter, but ever since it seems as if her boy has been trying to go home. In the 1960s, as a student in Hong Kong, he became enamored of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. He protested in the streets and turned down a chance to study in the United States to await a chance to live in China. When he looks at his new passport and sees the words "People's Republic of China," his heart beats with pride.

"When China does something splendid, I jump for joy, I share the glory. When China does something shameful, I suffer," he said. "I totally identify myself with my compatriots."

Loh and Tsang represent opposite poles of this schizophrenic city, a year after it changed from a British colony to a part of China. Each was elected to Hong Kong's Legislative Council on May 31 in the first multi-party elections held on Chinese soil.

President Clinton could meet both of them when he visits Hong Kong Thursday and Friday, and if he does, he will also encounter two very different perceptions about Hong Kong's future, its past and its identity.

The final outcome of these competing visions will have a great deal of influence on the future of Hong Kong as this outcropping of skyscrapers and trading houses seeks to navigate between its ambiguously Westernized shell and its ambivalent Chinese heart. At root, the fight is simple: Will Hong Kong be able to foster and maintain an identity that is fundamentally separate from that of China? Or will it shed the things that have made it less Chinese, slowly bonding with the ancient motherland, except with a better airport, more efficient port and a telephone system that works?

So far, Tsang's vision appears to have a leg up. Beijing has ensured that the current legislature is stacked in its favor; 40 out of 60 seats are occupied by pro-Chinese legislators, many of whom were elected with fewer than 200 votes. Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed chief executive, speaks out often against Hong Kong's Westernized culture and has proposed instead an alternative vision -- one he calls "Asian values" -- a respect for authority, a preference for stability over fast-paced change and, most important, a love of China.

Tung has moved to limit the teaching of English as a first language in Hong Kong's schools, a decision that has sparked much opposition. The Hong Kong police force, while publicly stating it wants the 400 foreign-born officers to remain with it, has begun moving them out of positions of authority.

But Loh's vision seems to have more resonance among the people of Hong Kong. More than 60 percent of the voters cast ballots in the May 13 election for people who, like Loh, pledged they would stand up to China and fight for Hong Kong. Many of their supporters are refugees from Communist rule. While there is widespread pride at being Chinese and general happiness that this is no longer a British colony, there is little enthusiasm for China's insistence that "Hong Kong people love the motherland."

Michael DeGolyer, an American political scientist who has lived in Hong Kong for the past five years studying its transition to Chinese rule, said he believes that the struggle between these two poles is important for the fate of Hong Kong and perhaps for the fate of China, which itself is struggling toward a new identity now that communism as an ideology has faded. "What Hong Kong people said in this election is that they want to have their voice listened to as Hong Kong people. We are witnessing the formation of a separate identity," he said.

The story of Loh's family reads like the plot of a Hong Kong romantic potboiler. Her great-great-grandfather on her mother's side was a comprador capitalist who helped form Swires, one of the great British-owned hongs, or trading networks, that sold opium in Asia and dominated China trade for decades. For five generations, the family lived in Hong Kong. In the tradition of many wealthy Chinese, her maternal grandfather had one wife and eight concubines. Several of them were Indians, and Loh still has several Indian aunts living in Hong Kong.

Her father's side hails from Shanghai, where they were educated at the prestigious, American-run St. John's University. The family was brought up speaking English and came to Hong Kong during China's civil war in the late 1940s when it became obvious that the Communist forces would win. Her father, a cotton merchant, was part of the "Shanghai gang" of textile merchants who helped make Hong Kong rich.

At home, Loh recalls, China was never discussed. The family spoke English. Loh has never learned to write Chinese, although over the last few years her spoken Cantonese and Mandarin have improved greatly. Her interest in China was piqued by a 1973 BBC documentary on President Richard Nixon's visit there. Since then, she has worked in Beijing and traded commodities in Hong Kong. In 1992, with her appointment to the Legislative Council by Chris Patten, the last British governor, she became a "professional politician."

Loh said she decided to give up her British passport 18 months ago because Chinese law prohibits foreign passport holders from holding public office in Hong Kong. "It was an evolving decision. That part of me which is British will always remain British. Here was easy," she said, pointing to her head. Touching her heart, she added, "Here was a different matter."

While Loh came upon China in a BBC documentary, Tsang grew up with it at home. His father was a clerk at the pro-Beijing Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and from an early age he was encouraged to read news from the motherland. His family was solidly middle class and pro-China. Tsang attended a school run by British teachers. "Nobody talked about China," he said. "We had very little Chinese history."

In 1964, when he was 18, Tsang met the editor of a pro-China magazine who introduced him to Chinese political tracts, including the works of Mao. Tsang went on to Hong Kong University. In his second year, he took a trip to his native city, Canton, and fell in love with China's revolution. "I was greatly impressed. Everything I saw I liked very much," he said. "Everyone was leading a simple life but they had lofty goals. I came back with a feeling that I had discovered my real country and found a new meaning in my studies and in my work."

Tsang settled into a job at the Puikiu Middle School, a center of Communist agitation during the pro-Chinese riots in 1960s Hong Kong. He ended up as its principal and retired to enter politics in 1992.

Observers in Hong Kong said Tsang is different from many of the current crop of pro-Chinese legislators who once backed Britain but switched sides to curry favor with Beijing. His feelings for China appear genuine. Still, the tension throughout Hong Kong between warm feelings for China and basic concerns about the future surface even in people like Tsang.

Several years ago, Tsang's wife and his daughter emigrated to Canada and now hold Canadian passports. Tsang, too, considered becoming a Canadian citizen but dropped the idea. His daughter has yet to move back home -- to Hong Kong, China.