In reaction to massive protests in Hong Kong against Beijing’s bloody military crackdown on the student-led pro-democracy movement of 1989, Jiang Zemin – the president at the time – quoted the Chinese idiom that “the well water does not mix with the river water”. Jiang’s point was that Hong Kong should not interfere in the affairs of mainland China and that, likewise, mainland China should not interfere in Hong Kong’s.
But since the handover of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from Britain to mainland China in 1997 – under the formula of “one country, two systems” – the two types of water have, increasingly, mixed together as economic integration between the two communities has grown.
