Michael Bociurkiw is a global affairs analyst and former reporter with the South China Sunday Morning Post.
It was a surreal experience, to wander among a major protest in Hong Kong’s central district last summer. At one end, the city’s large Filipino community was holding an outdoor beauty pageant. On the fringes, tens of thousands of residents solemnly filed by on their way to the U.S. consulate in a show of support for Washington’s proposed Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
Under that proposed law, the U.S. administration would have to assess and declare, on an annual basis, whether the city has a largely distinct legal and economic system, or whether China has eroded Hong Kong’s civil liberties and rule of law as protected by the Basic Law – the miniconstitution negotiated by the United Kingdom and China prior to the 1997 handover, which had been intended to preserve Hong Kong’s capitalist systems and freedoms for 50 years.
Several months later, on Nov. 28, 2019, the protesters were granted their wish. U.S. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law, saying he was doing it “out of respect for President Xi [Jinping], China and the people of Hong Kong.”
The significance of that law cannot be underestimated. A negative assessment means Hong Kong’s coveted special trading status – which currently allows for visa-less travel for Americans going to Hong Kong; for goods to travel between the two entities without tariffs; and for the United States and Hong Kong to make trade deals independent of Beijing – could be withdrawn.
It was also meant as a measure to support confidence in Hong Kong, where the U.S. consulate general says more than 1,200 U.S. companies do business and some 85,000 Americans live. About 300,000 people with Canadian passports live and work in the territory.
Underpinning Hong Kong’s success as one of the world’s premier business hubs is investor confidence. The thinking went that as long as the rule of law existed, the wheels of commerce would continue to turn smoothly. But things started to go off the tracks last year when the administration of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam introduced a controversial piece of legislation – since withdrawn, after months of protest – that would have allowed criminal suspects to be tried in mainland China.
During those protests, those of us who have lived and worked in Hong Kong feared that the patience of mainland authorities would run out and their security services would arrive to put them down. While that never happened, there is little doubt that Beijing would not simply tolerate unchecked unrest on its doorstep – especially if there was a chance it could provoke protests in China proper.
So it came as little surprise that, on Thursday, the National People’s Congress in Beijing approved a national security bill that, when it’s implemented and its details ironed out, would outlaw acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference.
That, along with other signs of mainland meddling in the territory, opened the way for U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to declare to Congress this week that Hong Kong no longer maintains a “high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground.” This raises the spectre of punitive sanctions.
Opinion in Hong Kong and the region is divided on whether China’s national-security law and the U.S.'s potential sanctions spell the death of Hong Kong as we know it. But there are several indications that this is precisely what’s happening.
It’s not clear whether this law will mean offenders in Hong Kong will be sent to mainland China to face trial, but the prospect of Chinese security organs operating openly in the territory is cause for worry. So is the threat of arrest for showing disrespect toward mainland symbols.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan analysts have said that since the start of Hong Kong’s protests, investment has sharply ramped up in Singapore, which aspires to take over as the region’s financial hub.
Will the threat of U.S. sanctions cause Beijing to use a cautious approach with Hong Kong? Given its recent statements and track record with other trouble spots in its orbit, China now appears prepared to absorb the cost of a loss of business confidence in Hong Kong. Chinese authorities have good reason to believe that the protests will continue, and probably become more violent in reaction to the new security legislation. Better to tamp down the unrest now, no matter what the cost, and hope that relations with the U.S. recover the way they did in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
This is an extremely grim situation. Canada has joined a chorus of countries in condemning the new law, but the best thing that friends of Hong Kong can do at the moment is to continue applying pressure on Beijing and to offer something the Hong Kong people have long requested: right of abode elsewhere. For his part, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has proposed extending visa rights to some Hong Kong people. It’s the kind of sad but practical act that would allow them to stay home for as long as possible – and give them the option of leaving when two systems become one.
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