Dealing with the Dragon - A Year in the New Hong Kong - Softcover

Jonathan Fenby, a journalist with a high-profile track-record as a former editor of the South China Morning Post, monitored the metamorphosis of Hong Kong, globalisation's Far Eastern cash point, from British colony to Beijing constituency. The transformation was beset with inevitable traumas and in his book he chronicles, with his customary flair for the crisply tailored pen-portrait and the telling anecdote, the events of the year 1999. It is a diary about diplomacy and discord, the filthy rich and the filthy conditions of the less fortunate. Cash collides with a cultural past as those in power jockey for position and those without it jostle for survival. In Fenby's revealing account the motivation of material advancement triumphed over what he sees as missed opportunities. Hong Kong heads into the new millennium leaving behind what he describes as challenges that have been ducked, corners that have been cut, bulwarks demolished and coherence abandoned. Why this is so, Fenby sets out in descriptive and factual detail, penetrating the power politics, the legal wrangles and corruption. His monthly journal takes him from the Peoples' Palace in the former Peking down to the Crazy Horse Saloon in Hong Kong. In the process he produces an exhilarating portrait of a vibrant city having to invest itself in new beginnings whose outcome will be as relevant to the Occidental West as to the Orient.--Michael Hatfield.

Early praise for DEALING WITH THE DRAGON
'It is three years since Hong Kong metamorphosed from a British Crown Colony into a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. After all the razzmatazz of the last days of Empire, the spotlight has switched away from the territory as the world's media has looked elsewhere for millennial stories. It is almost as if, once the flags changed, Hong Kong ceased to exist -- or at least contain anything newsworthy. True, there has been no Tiananmen Square, no rioting in the streets, no tanks on the Peak: Nathan Road has not been renamed Mao Boulevard nor the Tuen Mun Highway the People's Freeway, and Queen Victoria's statue has not been removed, Lenin-style. Yet there has been considerable change but, because it has been gradual, it has been regretfully disregarded. Jonathan Fenby, the former editor of the SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, Hong Kong's leading English-language newspaper, goes a long way to addressing this oversight . . . Fenby's fascinating and often disturbing book documents all this and more, not from the bar of the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Ice House Street, but from the pavements of Kowloon and the corridors of power. His is a unique and balanced outsider's viewpoint, given with a highly informed insider's knowledge. His warnings are apposite and his sympathies for Hong Kong heartfelt and genuine. The trouble is, of course, his sentiments are roundly ignored in both London and Beijing' --MARTIN BOOTH in the SUNDAY TIMES

'In DEALING WITH THE DRAGON Jonathan Fenby paints a colourful picture of the former British colony. His chatty style belies his ability to pack a lot of information and analysis in his recounting of one year in the life of the city. His book explains the relationship it has with the mainland, and is filled with stories that help explain how Hong Kong is coping under Chinese rule . . . You will come away from reading this book sensing that Hong Kong is noisy, bright, dirty, bustling, has bad air, and that the locals can be rude although they know a thing or two about food. While you wonder why anyone would want to live there, Fenby tells you that it is a wonderful city, full of guts, blood, courage, humanity, contradictions and hope. Written in diary format, the book also reminds us that many important things can happen in a short space of time. It is only when we look back with the benefit of hindsight, and see how events unfolded, that we can begin to understand the complexity of human affairs' --CHRISTINE LOH in THE TIMES