I read all these headlines, but when I then followup to read more about the text of the proposed laws [1], I have a hard time seeing that aside from freedom of speech infringements (and ability to imprison, fine based on those -- which are clearly a bit vague in terms of enforcement, but otherwise as bland as a lot of US legislation), these laws are not egregiously different from what exist in some other countries.
Aside from the symbolism, can someone enlighten me why they have practical, real worries that this is going to cause some massive political or social change over there? Or whether companies will really shy away from doing business when they already face laws like this elsewhere? Or that the economy there is going to dry up because of this?
I don't think the main problem Hongkongers have with this law is necessarily the content, but the fact it has been pushed on them by an external government which many Hongkongers expected to remain independent from for the next 27 years. From their perspective, having their own government taking marching orders from Beijing undermines the principle of "one country two systems".
Aside from the principle of it, there are also several aspects of the proposed law that go beyond what many people consider to be reasonable. Most notable for migrants and tourists is the emphasis on preventing and penalizing "foreign interference", which doesn't sit well in a city that is still the most multicultural in East Asia. Allowing the mainland security apparatus to set up offices in the city is also concerning, given mainland law enforcement is famous for disappearing and torturing people who do not support the single party dictatorship.
I think it's fairly clear that this is an opportunistic power-grab by the central government. The coronavirus has allowed them to dramatically increase the intensity of their security measures in the mainland, instituting Xinjiang-style movement tracking apps, "temporary" barricades and checkpoints all over the country. The state media has whipped up intense anti-American hatred, and the government is emboldened by the fact that America is dealing with the virus comparatively poorly. There is a widespread public support for cracking down on Hong Kong, which has been presented here in mainland as a city besieged by terrorists and American agents of chaos, all out to destroy China. I suspect from the point of view of the central government, being able to advance their timetable on the takeover of Hong Kong is the silver lining of this pandemic.
Essentially, yes. Besides China having sovereignty over the city, it has its own currency, government, different law system than China, a border with China, and different passport. In recent years on the rise of Chinese Nationalism, the Chinese government seems to downplay this a lot to eliminate the HKer's local identity and creates an image of HK = China. Culturally, it is also vastly different than China.
What i meant was it was under British rule prior to China. The British ruler was literally appointed by outsiders.
From an American perspective it’s more about losing a territory under Allied jurisdiction. From the local perspective it’s about losing independence rights—though they didn’t really have that right under British rule either.
Under the British, while it was true that the governor and many government officials were Brits, a surprising number of them were able to speak fluent Cantonese. They actually took the effort to understand the local culture. You can find many such clips on Youtube.
Nowadays, under Chinese rule, Hong Kongers often get told off by mainland Chinese officials for not speaking Mandarin, and hence Hong Kongers are unpatriotic and seditious. Schools must be forced to switch to teach in Mandarin, and so on.
If Trump started learning the local dialect (English), that doesn’t suddenly make him legitimately represent all English speakers.
And actually the last of the British governors tried to increase democracy. While the PRC blocked it because it was in their interest to do so, the HK people didn’t exactly fight for it or make it easy.
I can stand behind a Democracy movement, but find it harder to palate a political power grab.
A large part of the gay rights movement come from supporters of human rights, not just people trying to protect their self interests.
The problem is there are a lot of third parties in play in HK and if I'm going to support Democracy I want to be sure that's what I'm supporting. If it's poor governance, I want to be sure I'm supporting good governance. If it's poor housing policy, I want to support good housing policy movements. I don't want to be a pawn in a proxy political war between Eastern powers and Western powers while my own democratic rights are being eroded by the US senate.
> Although full universal suffrage was never granted by the British to its colony before the handover in 1997, some democratic reform began in 1984.
> ... but they stalled due to opposition from Beijing, local business interests as represented by Executive Council, and the British Foreign Office under the pretext that it would bring chaos to Hong Kong.
> In 1987, many surveys indicated that there was more than 60% popular support for direct elections. The government, under governor David Wilson, issued another green paper in 1987 proposing direct LegCo elections for 1988.
> However, the proposal was ruled out after a government consultation concluded that people were 'sharply divided' over its introduction that year.
The "vested interests" you refer to is "Patten's push for reform was strongly opposed at the time by vested interests within LegCo and by former ambassador to China Percy Cradock." However that was in response to "labour rights and collective bargaining" and not strictly democratic elections.
Local business interests, and a "sharply divided" public were the reasons democracy never came sooner. Of course I'm not sure how reliable those government consultations were. I do want to point out I fully support Democracy in Hong Kong. I'd just rather not be a pawn in an opportunistic power grab by business elites who decided Chinese rulers don't work out as well for them as their former British ones. Freedom of information and thought aside, the elites have more to lose from Chinese rule than the working class.
No, by "vested interests" I mean whoever had power at the time. In the 70s-80s it was the ExCo, which had on it a few business elites hand-picked by the British.
In the 80s-90s, as China opened up its markets and needed HK investment, many business elites cozied up with Beijing, gaining political power in the process; they became the vested interests today. But they are not exactly the same group as the vested interests in the 80s.
> > However, the proposal was ruled out after a government consultation concluded that people were 'sharply divided' over its introduction that year.
By that time the CCP was heavily involved. People feared that introducing direct elections would (and eventually did) antagonise Beijing.
> rather not be a pawn in an opportunistic power grab by business elites
This is an interesting take. Do you have anything to support this claim?
"American Columnist Blames China For British Decision"
In 1960, China was in the middle of the Great Leap Forward and like 40 million people were starving to death. The rest weren't doing great, either. Maybe the Brits were really worried, maybe it was a fig leaf. Maybe they were scared communists could win an election.
To be fair, China did almost invade in support of communist protestors in 1967 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Hong_Kong_riots -- but that was during the Cultural Revolution when they were a lot less starving and a lot more psycho. And they still thought better of it.
In any case, the UK still ought to own their decisions.
Hong Kong has a very complex history and culture about independence. To be brief, majority of Hong Kongers never wanted independence as a country. (It's weird but there was a split of people being pro-China and pro-UK) The thought of Hong Kong independence has been around for long but didn't become major topic and a significant opinion until recent years (after 2014-2016 with rise of figures like Edward Leung).
Historically, China has threaten to "liberate" HK if UK gave Hong Kong any form of independence/progressive democracy. UK also has no intention on instigating conflict with China, especially US was friendly with China in the 60s/70s/80s to fight Soviet. There was an unclassified UK government transcript that backs this information. Ultimately, HKers/Brits/China wanted to maintain the status quo and the final solution was to give HK back to China with some underlying promises (1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration - Basic Law - 1 Country 2 System).
I mean true Democracy and government and representation by the people.
There’s two way’s to characterize the protests: I don’t like China or I want Democracy.
PRC put strong pressure against Democracy in HK back during British rule, probably because it would set a precedent for after the handover. And despite the last few British governors pushing to increase Democratic processes many efforts for that were stalled by the HK people.
So now that a new governor is in place I fully support movements to increase Democracy, but anything that smells of just an anti-China motivation is just too politically tainted for me to get behind.
What started as "I want Democracy", which was promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984[1], slowly was pressured into something different.
As the CCP started to really apply pressure starting in 2014 after the umbrella revolution, HK people have been witnessing the erosion of their rights.
When the CCP labelled the protests as a separatist movement to justify to the West that these were simply "internal affairs/extremist movements", most in HK laughed at the idea of independence. It's CCP's narrative to align their online army and casual observers as anti-China/pro HK independence.
All HK wanted was to enjoy a high degree of autonomy and universal suffrage. Slowly HK people started to realize the CCP would never hold their end of the bargain and truly give democracy to the HK people. So what was CCP's fake news campaign became reality and it's now turning into a HK independence and anti-China campaign.
I see what you are saying. I think it is hard to separate anti-China and pro-democracy. After all, China is against democracy in the case of HK (Backed by example why universal suffrage legislation was crippled). The question comes down to, how to be pro-democratic but not anti-China, especially when CCP-backed media categorized the entire movement to be separatist....
Read up on Hong Kong history. The people of Hong Kong were under foreign rulers pretty much their entire history. This is one of the reasons why you should always fight for what’s right. Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. They just didn’t bother to begin fighting until they didn’t like their ruler.
Of course it was a colony since... whenever. Speaking as a brit, you're bang on.
But given that, what rectitude you suggest I (or they) fight for is unclear. It seems they prefer the UK legacy to the encroaching Chinese one. I'm unsure what you're saying (though I do agree with you about rights and justice, completely).
It is my understanding that the protests originally started over HK residents frustrated that they would never ever be able to afford decent housing inside of HK, and they blamed a couple of central figures in HK (who are not Chinese residents).
The protests seem to have become much more than that.
The final form of the protests don't address the frustration of HK residents over living costs.
The British rule was more successful because it was governing at arms length. London never flexed like Beijing by actively disqualifying publicly elected legislators and meddling with its internal affairs, eroding individuals freedom and rights.
Eg pressuring companies like Cathay Pacific, Big four accounting firms to take action against employees participating in lawful assemblies and protests.
There's a reason businesses use Hong Kong as a home base to access the Chinese market and that reason is the legal system. Hong Kong is like the Delaware of China - an established and reliable system that protects business interests. It's fair, it's transparent, and it's predictable. None of those things can be said about China's legal system.
First of all, the law has been used in China to persecute political dissident. (Political dissident in that case is anyone who expose any problems in the country or being vocal about particular problem in the society or government)
Second, CCP is planning to bypass Hong Kong Legislature to implement this law as an amendment to the Basic Law (Like an HK constitution). This is completely decided by the CCP government and Hong Kongers has no say over it.
Third, Hong Kong has no universal suffrage for its chief executives and Legislative Counsel. In this case, there is no checks and balances. With some draconian law (see National Security law and the previous public emergency ordinance) and lack of checks and balances, Hong Kongers are deeply concern about their freedom in all senses.
Lastly, police brutality and the mass persecution on pan-democratic individuals also spooked Hong Konger's confidence on the city itself and its autonomy. The HK HangSeng Index dropped 5% on the first day. Then massive influx of Chinese money came into the market the next day to prop the market up.
The special treatment that Hong Kong gets from various other nations, treatment different from mainland China, is dependent on Hong Kong being viewed as autonomous. The laws in the territory aren’t really the point, what matters is the source of those laws (Beijing as opposed to truly local efforts).
The ability to have their own laws, their own courts, and their own government is under ongoing and successful attack. Perhaps you're blissfully unaware of the tightening grip of Beijing over the last 20 years, of which this is just the latest incremental move? It's hard to know whether to read your posts as earnest ignorance or subtle propaganda.
It’s less the text of the law (though it’s vague and meant to function as a pretext for the CCP to take my action in the name of “national security “) and more that they’re inserting it into Article III, which they legally cannot do. It functionally kills HK’s Basic Law.
If you blindly trust what’s written, then they do look similar.
Much like the Constitution of the PRC stating “citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration.” [1]
One would be a fool to believe it’s similar to the US constitution.
OK, here’s my answer to your questions:
Jimmy Lai runs the biggest pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, in Hong Kong, and his Twitter account was recently named by Chinese state media Global Times as providing “evidence of subversion under new national security law”. [2] Pro-democracy newspaper will be the first to disappear after passing the national security law.
Infringement on freedom of press (and speech) would have drastic consequences. Just look at Covid-19. When no newspaper stands up to reveal the scale of a mysterious disease and doctors were forbidden to warn others, the government can cover it up for much longer than in an open society [3], ultimately costing hundreds of thousands more lives [4].
When short selling in China could be classified as “malicious” and “illegal” [5], or as the rumor goes, “a financial coup to overthrow Xi” [6], I doubt Hong Kong can remain an international financial hub under the new law.
Media companies also like to stay in Hong Kong [7]. That could change with the new law, and with the loss of free flow of information, financial industry will hurt, too.
This law, if implemented fully, will effectively demolish the “one country, two systems” agreement, which has been the basis of Hong Kong’s stability and success for the last 23 years. The Beijing government is pulling out of their side of the deal they made in 1997. What will happen next is not something I can predict, but history shows us some of the things that can happen when communist parties impose their rule onto a new territory. Usually it’s not good for business.
But as I understand it, the "2 systems" has to do with economic and political governance. I see nothing in those laws about changing the financial or economic systems of the country that would lead businesses to gulp and say no thank you?
That’s a good question, and it depends on how this line is implemented: “It shall also establish a sound legal system in the HKSAR to maintain national security.”
Under the Basic Law, Hong Kong has it’s own legal system, so there is no constitutionally acceptable way Beijing can “establish” new legal system to it’s liking. Perhaps the law is simply a threat, and they won’t take action, but if it is fully implemented, it means the end of the current legal system’s autonomy.
The vagueness of this law is a good example of how the PRC’s legal system is very open-ended compared to other countries, and allows for arbitrary action from China’s rulers.
I think GP comment about communist parties is not really what the heart of the matter is here: business owners are probably not excited to deal with the opaqueness of the mainland China legal system since it's apparently prone to disappear booksellers over the border and force confessions out of them.
That said, maybe the exodus is overhyped: a lot of businesses are already dealing with the mainland government and certainly that's where a lot of them see where the money is, so they might just be forced to play by these new rules whether they like it or not.
Aside from the symbolism, can someone enlighten me why they have practical, real worries that this is going to cause some massive political or social change over there? Or whether companies will really shy away from doing business when they already face laws like this elsewhere? Or that the economy there is going to dry up because of this?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_People%27s_Congress_D...