Dubious Recognition

It is, as we know, the mark of a civilised nation to be able to face honestly the less salubrious aspects of its own history. On this score the conscience of the English-speaking peoples is as white as ever, as witness the quantity of statues and memorials throughout the realms of the master race which are dedicated to the victims rather than the perpetrators of our various colonial embarrassments. The Heathen Chinee, being inhibited by no such scruples, have dared to remove a statue in Hong Kong which commemorated the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. So appalled was the British colonial administration by the killing and imprisonment of protesters that it waited a mere eight years before commissioning the piece and installing it just before Hong Kong was handed back to its rightful owners. By coincidence, 1997 was approximately the point at which the master race began to demonstrate serious concern about democracy in Hong Kong, having absent-mindedly tolerated the régime of a governor by royal appointment rather than an elected leader, let alone a leader afflicted with the slanted moral vision of the natives.