Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci
The One Thing That Will Bring China Down - Simon Elegant
14 May 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
There's 5.8 billion people that live under some form of totalitarianism or autocracy. Many of these people are super educated. 90, 100 million people in the Chinese Communist Party overseeing 1.3 billion people. China seems pretty entrenched. Am I missing that? What is unique about them? Where they can stay in power.
When I was talking to people down a mine in Shanxi or wherever it was, the one thing they always talked about, everybody loves their family and wants their kids to do well. It's a universal thing. And that's the one point where I thought the Chinese Communist Party might be vulnerable. And they're very, very conscious of it.
When you've got 30% of the population and 120 million people or something like that graduating every year, it's crazy difficult. That's an enormous thing, and that's the one place they're vulnerable. You can have all the maglev trains and the highways and all the high-speed trains that you want, but if you don't get jobs for the kids, you're going to be in trouble.
Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Simon Elegant. He's the China Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, but he's out with a new book, City on Fire, a novel of Hong Kong. Am I right in saying that Hong Kong, the name means fragrant harbor?
You are exactly right.
Yes. Okay. And why? What is fragrant about that harbor?
Well, that's the joke normally is that it used to be a stinking mess, but they reclaimed so much land that there's hardly any room left between the island of Hong Kong and the peninsula of Kowloon. And it used to be so if you fell into it by accident, you'd die of some weird disease. But so it was very unfragrant. I think they've cleaned it up a bit now.
All right. But that's an ancient word, Fragrant Harbor. Okay. You spent years covering Asia, some of the region's most consequential political and cultural shifts. So before we get into the novel, tell us about your background and what drew you to Asia. Why did you end up going there?
Sure. I was actually born in Hong Kong, and I grew up there partly because my dad was a reporter as well. He actually, believe it or not, seeing as how it's come full cycle, he opened the Newsweek Bureau there in Hong Kong to cover and covered the Cultural Revolution in China, a big mess, mostly by listening to the radio in those days. And it kind of comes full cycle when I...
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Chapter 2: Why is Hong Kong referred to as 'Fragrant Harbor'?
And I didn't want to leave China, so I did other things. I started a restaurant with a friend. I did some teaching, that kind of thing. But when I went back to these extraordinary protests, which is basically the city trying to throw off their fate. I mean, they were destined to be ruled by Beijing, and they didn't want to. They wanted to keep their rights and so on and so forth.
freedom of speech, stuff like that. They'd got used to it, and it was coming down. Basically, the city was crushed by the wheel of history, unfortunately for them, but they were resisting, and they knew it. Everybody I talked to was extraordinarily idealistic, and I just thought, yeah, it's just not going to fit in.
There's a different truth to be had and a different way of approaching that truth, and that, I think, benefits better through fiction. I hope to... I guess I could write a regular novel, but I love crime novels anyway, and I thought I could have a pretty great way of approaching it. I mean, the book is a mystery. There's a policeman who solves the crime, but there's also the whole dilemma.
His younger sister is deeply into the protests. I mean, I think that's a good half of the book is why the protests are happening, especially when they're basically futile. They know they can't win. So I just thought it was a much better way to get at the... But to me were fascinating and very moving, very emotional aspects of the situation for Hong Kong and its people.
Is this book available in Hong Kong?
No. Booksellers won't take it.
It's not available in Hong Kong because of the censorship laws in Hong Kong. Is that fair to say?
Absolutely. Well, as far as I know, I haven't checked officially. I did check with the booksellers. I mean, you know, unofficially to see if they take it and they just wouldn't stock it, basically. It hasn't even come up, actually. But, yeah, they're petrified. I mean, they just passed a law saying that restaurants have to comply with the national security law.
How exactly that's going to be put into effect, but, I mean, it's beyond farce.
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Chapter 3: What personal experiences influenced Simon Elegant's view of Asia?
I mean, I interviewed him. a gentleman, a film director who was speaking out. And it's one of these peculiar things. I don't know how many people you've run into who are dissidents and prominent dissidents. And you say to them, what is in the character of somebody like this? He's courting almost being arrested. He has not been arrested yet. The story never ran.
It's fascinating to me, but he's really the only one. And what other person was there was the head of the Hong Kong Journalist Association. And she's been speaking out a bit, but even she has been, it's just too extraordinary. You know, you'll be put in jail for a really long time. And that's probably the best result.
I feel like when I read the book and having known the city as well as I know the city, certainly not as well as you do. I feel like I was reading a crime novel and that was a great thriller and I would recommend anybody to pick this book up and read it. But it also felt like an elegy to a Hong Kong that no longer exists, Simon. Was that part of it?
Absolutely. I mean, I was born in the place. I lived there. My sister still lives there. I've got family there. I've got friends, obviously. And as I said, there is a very analogy. Yeah, I mean, a goodbye, you know, a sad and very emotional-filled goodbye to some extent that Hong Kong... for the foreseeable future is gone.
I mean, already people in, you know, 250,000 people have taken advantage of the British national overseas thing to emigrate to God knows where in Britain, Hull. And I mean, not that I have anything against Hull, but some of the, you know, where the places in Britain where even some Brits might acknowledge that the weather's pretty awful and, conditions are not anything like Hong Kong.
So often people with children, because they didn't want their kids raised to be brainwashed in the school and turn into little red pioneers. And so it is very, very sad. It had a great thing. I think I get into it in the book that they had an extraordinary arrangement
with this benign administration by the brits who did a pretty good job of just backing off you know milton friedman admired the economic arrangement a great deal um it just worked it worked for really well so they ended up with a fantastic corruption free civil service they have the longest lived people in the world longer lived than the japanese they had a great medical system medical insurance probably
It just was a place that worked and people were pretty happy and extremely, as you know, productive. Really good entrepreneurs. Yeah, so it is sad. Yes, I would say that's definitely accurate that there's an element of goodbye to that.
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Chapter 4: What significance does the 2019 protest movement hold in Hong Kong's history?
So give us a little summary, if you don't mind.
Sure. I mean, effectively, you're right. There's hardly any need to give more of a summary than what you just gave because it criminalizes anything and anything they want effectively. So even I myself am concerned. I'm a permanent resident in Hong Kong by virtue of having been born there. I've been there a couple of times recently. I'll be interested to see what happens the next time I go.
I don't think they'll pay attention to a piece of fiction because it's smart for them to ignore it. I mean, if it was a, you know, but in theory, I can, I guess, you know, come under the national security, anything and everything that they deem to be encouraging questioning of the government or the government in Beijing. And they are now almost... more royal than the king kind of thing.
They're more Chinese than Beijing because they're trying desperately to prove that they're loyal to Beijing, especially after they've spent 15 years mucking this up in the eyes of Beijing. And in the end, as I said, the national security law had to be passed in Beijing, not in Hong Kong because the LegCo there couldn't do it.
So yeah, it's really super broad and anything you do where you get out of line, I think I just mentioned that they've even said now restaurants are... I'm not sure how that applies to cooking skills, but anything they can designate as a violation of national security.
You think that a novel can preserve a place that a state is actively trying to erase?
Well, I can maybe, I hope, preserve a little chunk of the place, maybe. I mean, there are other older books in Hong Kong. Obviously, James Clavel and John le Carre wrote, I think, a very interesting book, although most of them have been more about the Brits. And I deliberately did talk to a lot of Hong Kong Chinese and tried to look at it from their side.
I mean, there's a TV series recently that was called The Expats, and I think that's one of the things that's happened often I mean, there'd be some brilliant nonfiction books that preserved a chunk of the town. A former reporter colleague of mine in Beijing called Louisa Lim wrote a wonderful book called The Improbable City.
There's a bunch of good ones, but I don't think there are so many in English that do that. And now you can't do, there's some very good movies, as you know, they have a wonderful movie industry. But yeah, I would hope to preserve something of it.
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