The Chinese Strike Back

Democracy activists Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Andy Chan are arrested in Hong Kong
By Shibani Mahtani and Gerry Shih

Democracy activist Joshua Wong addresses crowds outside Hong Kong’s legislature during a demonstration against the extradition bill on June 17.

HONG KONG — Authorities widened a crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong with the arrests of prominent activists, underscoring Beijing’s growing intolerance of sustained street protests that have convulsed the Chinese territory and revived calls for universal suffrage.
Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow, who rose to eminence as the student leaders of pro-democracy demonstrations five years ago, were detained early Friday, ahead of what was expected to be another weekend of clashes in the city.
Police said the pair would face charges of participating in an unauthorized assembly and inciting others to participate in an unapproved assembly, while Wong would face an additional charge of organizing an unapproved assembly.
The charges relate to a June 21 protest where demonstrators surrounded police headquarters.
A third activist, Andy Chan, the leader of a banned pro-independence party, was arrested at the city’s airport late Thursday while trying to board a plane.
Police said he was detained on suspicion of rioting and assaulting a police officer.
The arrests come at a tense time in the semiautonomous Chinese territory, where an official proposal to allow extraditions to mainland China triggered months of protests that have descended into street battles with police.
As demonstrations have turned violent, and grown to encompass a broader push for democracy in Hong Kong, authorities have stepped up arrests and the use of force.
The dissent coincides with a politically sensitive moment for the ruling Communist Party, as the clock ticks down to the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in October.
China’s government has issued increasingly strident threats in an effort to quell the unrest.
A day earlier, it sent a new batch of troops in to Hong Kong to reinforce the People’s Liberation Army garrison in the city.

Agnes Chow, right, and Joshua Wong outside government offices in Hong Kong in June. The pair were arrested Friday in a widening crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.

Friday’s arrests, combined with the Hong Kong garrison rotation and rumors that Hong Kong may invoke emergency laws, were “extremely alarming,” said Samantha Hoffman, a fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute who studies Chinese politics.
“At the very least, it is clear that Beijing is attempting to intimidate the people of Hong Kong. The Chinese Communist Party places political protests very high on its list of threat perceptions,” she said.
“The party will protect itself before it defends the objective interests of China, the Chinese people, and Hong Kong and its people. Therefore, it is hard to imagine a solution where the party backs down in any meaningful way.”
In a report after the roundup of the Hong Kong activists, China’s official Xinhua news agency said more arrests were expected.
Hours later, Xinhua posted a picture on its social media account with a pair of handcuffs and images of the detained trio with the caption “What goes around comes around.”
A local pro-democracy councilor, Rick Hui, was also arrested Friday, his office said.
Charges against him were not immediately known.
With Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, unwilling to compromise on demonstrators’ demands, the continued unrest is taking a toll on the economy.
Police have arrested more than 800 people in connection with protests that have rocked the city since June, some of them on riot charges that can attract a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
Organizers of a planned march in Hong Kong this weekend called off the rally on Friday after police refused to authorize it.
“Our first principle is always to protect all the participants and make sure that no one could bear legal consequences for participating in the protest,” said Bonnie Leung, a convener of the Civil Human Rights Front.
Wong, 22 years old, became known as the face of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, a 79-day street occupation aimed at securing universal suffrage for Hong Kong.
He was charged and sentenced several times in connection with those protests, and served three stints in jail.
Most recently, on May 16, Wong was sentenced to two months in prison after losing an appeal against a prison term for contempt of court.
He was released in June.

Policemen pull out their guns after a confrontation with protesters in Hong Kong on Aug. 25. Police have escalated their use of force in trying to quell demonstrations. 

Along with Chow and another activist, Nathan Law, Wong went on to found political group Demosistō, which advocates self-determination for Hong Kong.
The three were arrested in 2017 ahead of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s visit to the city.
This time, the protest movement in Hong Kong has taken a leaderless form — in part to avoid arrests and detentions that plagued its leaders in the past, and to empower a broader base of participants. Unlike in 2014, members of Demosistō have not delivered speeches at rallies, nor have they been prominent faces on the front lines, but have used the group’s social media presence to promote their cause globally.
“We’ll use our influence and connections with the international community to tell the world about what’s happening,” Chow said in an earlier interview with The Washington Post. 
“It’s still very important.”
On Friday, Wong was seized at roughly 7:30 a.m. “when he was suddenly pushed into a private car on the street,” Demosistō, said.
Chow was arrested a short time later at her home, Demosistō added.
Both are being held in the Hong Kong police headquarters in the Wan Chai district.
The group has sought help from its lawyers.
Wong and Chow were due to travel to Washington next month, where they were to meet with lawmakers and participate in a congressional Executive Committee on China hearing on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. 
The bill, which has bipartisan support, including from House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), seeks to punish those who suppress freedoms in Hong Kong including through the use of sanctions and visa bans to the U.S.

Anti-extradition bill protesters take cover from tear gas canisters as they clash with riot police on Aug. 25. 

Chan, who founded a party that advocates for Hong Kong independence, was also arrested in August on suspicion of possessing offensive weapons and bombmaking materials.
Hong Kong operates under a “one country, two systems” arrangement within China, under which the city is supposed to enjoy a high degree of autonomy for 50 years following its return to Chinese rule in 1997.
In recent years, concerns have grown that Beijing is tightening control over the territory and working to erode the freedoms and autonomy that distinguish Hong Kong from mainland China.
In a tweet the night before his arrest, Wong wrote that “Being born in uncertain times carries certain responsibilities.” 
He linked to a website outlining protesters’ demands.

Oriental Despotism

China's terrifying moves on Hong Kong

By Michael Bociurkiw

When the last British governor of Hong Kong sailed out of Victoria Harbor on July 1,1997, many expected the Chinese government to honor pledges to maintain the colony's basic freedoms, enshrined in the so-called Basic Law -- in effect, the territory's mini-Constitution.
After all, the thinking went, Beijing would have nothing to gain by tinkering with the rule of law in one of the world's premier trade and business hubs. 

It wouldn't dare pluck the feathers of what had traditionally been known as the goose that lays China's golden eggs -- a freewheeling, capitalist enclave that served as China's gateway to the world for trade and investment. 

And freedom of the press would be tolerated on the assumption that the Chinese understood the need for business to have unfettered access to information.
Moreover, the British had installed a world class legal and physical infrastructure that was expected to endure far into the future. 

That included such institutional safeguards as the powerful and feared Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), designed to keep the noses of the civil service squeaky clean.
But almost half way into the mandate of the "one country, two systems" experiment, Beijing appears to be accelerating Hong Kong's absorption into China at a pace no British foreign office official might have expected in the heady run-up to the handover.
That includes a hard crackdown on dissent, especially on anyone who advocates independence of Hong Kong from the mainland. 

The situation was brought into focus Monday when three of the territory's most high-profile pro-democracy protesters appeared in court on charges of fomenting unrest during 2014 street protests that brought the central business district to a standstill for almost three months. (They have pleaded not guilty but face up to seven years in prison if convicted.)
Local pro-democracy protesters are not the only ones to feel the clampdown on freedom of expression. 

Last month, the Asia editor of the Financial Times, Victor Mallet, was declared persona non grata in Hong Kong after chairing a talk at the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) with Hong Kong independence advocate Andy Chan. 

A few weeks ago, Mallet, who was also the correspondents club's vice president, was denied entry into Hong Kong as a tourist -- a move of such severity it would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
While Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed chief executive, Carrie Lam, has refused to comment on the reasoning behind the expulsion, it is widely seen to be a signal to others of a red line that should not be crossed. 

It may also foreshadow more troubles ahead for the FCC: in 2023, its lease comes up for renewal by the Hong Kong government. 

And, with a three-month cancellation clause, which allows the government to terminate the lease even sooner, more missteps could shutter an institution that has traditionally served as not only a venue for free speech, but as a haven, exhibit space and workplace for foreign journalists and diplomats.
Even before the exclusion of Mallet, there has been creeping self-censorship in Hong Kong. 

The territory's major English language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, owned since 2015 by Alibaba's Jack Ma, tends to give Chinese authorities velvet glove treatment. 

The Chinese-language media in the territory has long-since fallen into line and stays clear of criticism of Beijing.
Some, such as the FT's Hong Kong correspondent, Ben Bland, say that those who speak out face a hard knock because Lam and her administration have to be seen delivering on the hardline policies of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. 

Xi warned during a visit to Hong Kong last year that any challenge to the regime is "absolutely impermissible" and not to cross the "red line" of undermining Chinese sovereignty. 

As China aggressively widens its military and economic footprint in the region, Hong Kong officials find themselves under even more pressure to be delivering positive returns for Xi.
Francis Moriarty, a former senior political correspondent for Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), tells me that the harsh actions against Mallet, pro-democracy leaders and others indicate that "the legal protection of free press and free speech, guaranteed under the Basic Law, are being steadily eroded by pressures from Beijing and its Hong Kong acolytes, who are becoming emboldened."
While local business tycoons are not kicking up a public fuss on the erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong, representatives of foreign businesses, many with regional bases in the territory, are. 

In a stunning blow to Hong Kong, the US-China Economic and Security Review Committee, which advises the US Congress, said this month that Beijing's "encroachment" on the territory's freedoms could tarnish its status as a global business hub. 

"The ongoing decline in rule of law and freedom of expression is a troubling trend," the report said.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong said reining in press freedom could damage the territory's competitiveness as a leading financial and trading center and termed Mallet's visa denial "a worrying signal." 

After initially playing down Mallet's visa woes, AmCham President Tara Joseph, a former Reuters journalist and FCC president, said: "Without a free press, capital markets cannot properly function, and business and trade cannot be reliably conducted."
Whether pro-democracy advocates like it or not, China's embrace of Hong Kong is proceeding apace, and in more ways than one. 

In recent months, the territory has become much more physically integrated, with multi-billion-dollar bridge and high-speed rail links.
When people say there really is no place like Hong Kong, they aren't exaggerating. 

With a world-class infrastructure, enviable geographic location and an educated and entrepreneurial population, British officials might now be expressing regret at handing it back to China on such liberal terms. 

It's just too bad they didn't do more to shield this golden goose from China's poison arrows.

Oriental Despotism

Coming soon to a Hong Kong near you: creeping totalitarianism Chinese style

By Hemlock

Ten years ago in Hong Kong, any citizen could run for legislative elections with minimum fuss. 

It didn’t matter if new lawmakers added radical slogans to their oath of office. 

Activists and protesters generally accepted that law enforcement was impartial. 

Immigration officers allowed overseas human-rights activists into the city with no problem.
While some self-censorship was apparent in media and entertainment, the press was free, and no-one seriously claimed that expression of a mere opinion might be illegal.
Today in 2018, this is all changing. 

Hong Kong people are gradually losing rights they once took for granted. 

Another way of looking at it is that the sovereign power – the People’s Republic of China under the Chinese Communist Party – is reasserting and resuming its rights.

2014 – a turn for the worse
In retrospect, the rights situation for the first 15 years after the 1997 handover was fairly stable: Hong Kong made no meaningful progress towards democracy, but nor did it see its freedoms seriously deteriorate.
This changed in June 2014 when Beijing issued a ‘white paper’ on Hong Kong concerning the concepts of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ and ‘high degree of autonomy’. 

Ever since the 1980s, Hong Kong officials had encouraged the notion that these phrases meant free and pluralistic Hong Kong would be insulated from the tightly controlled mainland system of government.
The white paper explained the correct understanding: that they were not fixed, absolute guarantees of Hong Kong’s constitutional status, but optional add-ons that China could adjust or remove at will. 

This was a restrictive new definition of their meaning (and local officials modified their use of the slogans accordingly).
This was followed up a few months later by an edict that Hong Kong could elect its chief executive only if Beijing chose who was on the ballot.
Pro-democracy opposition figures bitterly complained that Beijing was breaking past promises enshrined in the Basic Law. 

They missed the whole point of these imperial proclamations: that Hong Kong ultimately comes under and within the mainland system.
Indeed, when “interpreting” the Basic Law on several occasions since 1997, the Chinese government had established the principle that it could change the meaning of the law on a whim. 

Hong Kong had been under Communist-style “rule by law” all along, though Beijing had applied it sparingly.

A woman protests Beijing’s White Paper on Hong Kong at the July 1st pro-democracy march, 2014. 

Since 2014, the trend of “mainlandisation” has been unmistakable, though incremental. 

While the local administration implements the process (and insists nothing is really changing), it is obviously following directions from Beijing officials.
Some moves, like promoting patriotism in schools or banning disrespect for the national anthem, have been controversial but are arguably compatible with Hong Kong’s freedoms. 

The weakening of lawmakers’ powers (which were being “abused by troublemakers”), has even been popular.
But other measures clearly point to creeping authoritarianism. 

The once-impartial police and prosecutions services have started to arrest and prosecute opposition activists on protest-related charges that would not have been brought in earlier years. 

Radicals are disqualified from the legislative council and the ballot on political-test grounds.
By picking on radicals in ones or twos for apparently isolated transgressions, Beijing has chipped away at rights without creating much stir among the general public.
The Andy Chan/Hong Kong National Party affair is another step on this road, using the same tactic – attacking rights and freedoms by demonising and suppressing a “public menace” that uses them. 

But this specific case looks likely to represent a milestone.

The ‘Hong Kong independence’ scare
No-one doubts Chinese leaders’ phobia about separatism, but the HKNP issue is so contrived as to be visibly embarrassing to local officials.

By picking this particular target, Beijing’s Liaison Office and other officials are in the awkward position of trying to convince us that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is genuinely petrified of this geeky not-very-inspiring Hong Kong kid.
Assuming we don’t buy that, we must conclude that the whole exercise (extensive police surveillance, faux outrage from top officials) is a pretext for measures to curtail freedom of expression for everyone – an unprecedented step.
Most local media blandly echo the official rationale about “red lines” and national security threats. But by attacking the Foreign Correspondents Club for hosting Chan, Beijing’s people have made it an international story.
For the first time, the wider world perceives a threat to Hong Kong as a free society with rule of law – an image the local administration tries hard to protect.
The decision to create a panic out of the HKNP looks misjudged and potentially humiliating for the Hong Kong authorities. 

However, if we look at the wider context, we can see why Beijing is prepared to use the Andy Chan independence issue to tighten control over Hong Kong.

It’s not about Hong Kong
The year 2014 is associated with Hong Kong’s Occupy/Umbrella protest movement, and many observers see Beijing’s subsequent clampdown in the city as a response to that. 

This confuses – or at least oversimplifies – cause and effect
The prime mover here is Xi Jinping, who became general secretary of the CCP in 2012 and head of state and of the military in 2013. 

Foreign analysts initially welcomed the new leader as a likely moderniser and reformer (glamorous wife, and family suffered Cultural Revolution purging).
But as a son of a senior revolutionary and Mao-era figure, Xi is self-consciously of the CCP aristocracy. 

His policies since assuming power suggest that he sees himself as the saviour of a party that had become stagnant and lax and must now reassert far tighter control across an unruly society or fall from power. 

He can be seen as a counter-reformist.
Xi grew up in an era when there was essentially one newspaper, one radio station, and the whole Chinese population stayed put and were assigned jobs, homes and rations.
He seems to believe that he can restore that ideologically purer and regimented order and take China forward in terms of economic and technological progress and emergence as an Asian – if not global – superpower.
Xi has purged political rivals and tamed China’s murky uber-tycoons. 

The country is now several years into an ongoing clampdown on religion, the media, academia, civil society, independent lawyers, and other centres of power and incorrect thought and identity.
Hong Kong is a relatively small item on the list of Things to Rectify. 

But judging from policies like the East Turkestan re-education camps and hubristic propaganda efforts, Xi and his underlings are comfortable erring on the side of overkill. 

We can assume that the campaign against Hong Kong dissidents and the legal and constitutional rights that protect them will continue.

What next for Hong Kong?
The main player in Hong Kong is the Chinese government’s Liaison Office, which manages local United Front activities and guides the local administration of Carrie Lam. 

Its current priority is to use the ‘independence’ scare to restrict freedom of expression.

The China Liaison Office. 

The local administration, which must do the dirty work, comprises bureaucrats hand-picked by Beijing for their lack of ideas. 

While smugly indifferent to the city’s social problems, they take on the air of frightened hostages when reciting the Beijing line on sensitive issues. 

It may be that behind the scenes they urge their mainland overseers to go easy, but to no end.
The structure does not accommodate meaningful opposition. 

Interestingly, a few business and other pro-establishment figures are voicing concerns about overseas “misconceptions” that Hong Kong’s freedoms and rule of law are in decline – a coded warning that CCP heavy-handedness could harm business confidence.
Local representative politics is increasingly just ceremonial – Beijing obviously aims to make the legislative council a mainland-style rubber-stamp body. 

Older pro-democracy figures who work within this system are powerless. 

Radicals who are outside it face increasingly harsh treatment.
Some “moderates” are hinting that Hong Kong can have universal suffrage if it also finally passes the overdue national security laws required under Article 23 of the Basic Law. 

This linkage is absurd: Beijing has left no doubt that it cannot allow anything other than a phony election in Hong Kong.
The government could float the idea to entertain the mainstream pan-democrats, who can’t resist bickering over constitutional small-print, and to distract media attention.
But given Beijing’s apparent impatience, it is more likely that the government will just move ahead within a year or so to ban pro-independence talk and other thought-crimes. 

It could be via an Article 23 national security law, though this branding is toxic.
In practice, Beijing can impose whatever it wants by fiat – through Basic Law ‘interpretation’ or the sort of National People’s Congress edict used to legitimise the extension of mainland jurisdiction at the West Kowloon rail terminus. 

It makes little difference.

The idea that the courts can be a bulwark of local freedoms is sadly mistaken. 

If necessary, Beijing can use the interpretation loophole to override the judiciary. 

From Xi Jinping’s point of view, there is no reason why CCP-style “rule by law” should stop at the Shenzhen border. 

There is only one source of power in the PRC.
So this points to the banning of organisations for their views and formal curbs on freedom of expression in Hong Kong. 

The initial targets will no doubt be young radicals like Andy Chan. 

But once Beijing’s officials start declaring dangerous ideas off-limits, they will surely see redefining “red lines” as a necessary tool of control over the city.

There’s more to come
An obvious example would be to criminalise calls for the downfall of the CCP. 

Patriotic “grassroots” groups will loudly demand more such action against national "traitors". 

To ease the slide into censorship, we expect local telecoms companies to ‘voluntarily’ censor undesirable online content.
Institutions that are already bending with the wind in various ways – like the media, academia, professional associations, faith groups, even financial analysts – will continue to adapt through pre-emptive self-discipline.
How far does this go? 

Will Hong Kong media outlets be punished or closed for endangering national security? 

Will troublesome lawyers be arrested for subverting state power? 

Will we see outspoken student leaders making televised confessions? 

Will we be monitored by a “panopticon” internal security apparatus online and through facial recognition systems in public places (no doubt already installed in parts of the West Kowloon rail station)?
All we can say is that what sounded unthinkable 10 years ago is happening now.

Establishment optimists trust that mainlandisation will stop at damaging the business environment. Certainly, local bureaucrats cling to the city’s image as a global business hub.
But this is one area where the local administration and Beijing are not on the same wavelength. 

The Chinese leadership puts its own control before the reputation of an ex-colony’s courts and bureaucracy – or foreign companies’ confidence.
That said, corporate interests that Beijing wants to co-opt or reward (probably owned by ethnic Chinese) may find new opportunities arising from Hong Kong’s ‘integration’ with the mainland. 

The Chinese elites do value Hong Kong as a zone under PRC sovereignty that has no capital controls, but the CCP has no special affection or need for many of the city’s clusters of international professional skills.
Indeed, all the international, Cantonese and pre-1949 Chinese characteristics that make Hong Kong distinct from the mainland must ultimately give way to CCP-approved quasi-Confucian Han culture. Mandarin in schools or goose-step marching by uniformed groups are just a start.
Beijing’s long-term intention should be clear from the ongoing influx of mainland immigrants, the opening of new cross-border transport links, the pushing of a ‘Greater Bay Area’ conurbation and the growing campaign to encourage young Hongkongers to move north.
This is about symbolic, psychological and actual merging of Hong Kong and the mainland. 

If it sounds grandiose, it is just a small-scale version of the top-down demographic, cultural and infrastructural strategies that the CCP has used for decades to “Sinicise” the mainland’s Muslim, Tibetan and ethnic Korean regions.

A brief optimistic conclusion
The end point, in theory, is Hong Kong as another secure CCP-controlled part of the PRC. 

This implies that Xi Jinping’s vision for China as a whole becomes reality. 

And that assumes that tighter centralised control in such a vast nation is a sustainable model that will succeed – that you can have a modern and innovative and thriving society in which the state controls the allocation of capital, decides what news and opinions everyone hears, and tells the population how many children to have.

Whether China’s economy is fundamentally sound or frail right now is a state secret known only to a perhaps-tellingly paranoid leadership. 

But history strongly suggests that a dictatorship, Leninist/state-capitalist/strongman or otherwise, is not durable.
Hong Kong’s younger people – and their counterparts throughout China – will surely see a freer future one day. 

As the venerable Jerome Cohen recently said: “I’ve been studying China for almost 60 years. This too shall pass.”

Hong Kong independence

How China's paranoia put global spotlight on Hong Kong activist Andy Chan
By Andreas Illmer

Andy Chan says China's pressure proves that Hong Kong should go it alone
A lunchtime talk by a little-known Hong Kong politician has drawn global attention to China's influence on free speech in the territory.
Andy Chan is the head of the nationalist party calling for Hong Kong's independence from China. The Hong Kong National Party is already facing a ban over its separatist stance.
When the 27-year-old politician was invited to talk at the city's Foreign Correspondent Club (FCC) this Tuesday, it sparked stern criticism from communist authorities, who asked for the event to be axed altogether.
The FCC defended the talk and will push ahead with it -- with global media attention now focused on what otherwise likely would have received little or no attention at all.

Why does Hong Kong care?
A former British colony, Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. 

But it enjoys considerably more freedoms due to the "one country, two systems" formula, under which Beijing agreed to give the region a great deal of autonomy and to preserve its economic and social systems for 50 years.
There are widespread concerns in the city that those freedoms are gradually being eroded and the extent of China's influence over Hong Kong is a sensitive issue.Hong Kong and China - one country, two systems ?

Student protests, calling for more democracy, paralysed the city for several weeks in 2014. 

Several of the protest leaders were convicted and even faced jail terms. 

Those demonstrations, however, were merely about a more democratic election process -- nowhere near as contentious as the issue of independence.

Why is China so touchy about this?
China is extremely sensitive about what it says are questions of national "sovereignty".
The two main focal points of that sensitivity are Hong Kong and the self-ruling island of Taiwan. 

In Taiwan's case, Beijing's position is crystal clear: China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that rightfully belongs to China.
In the case of Hong Kong, the situation is more blurry. 

Hong Kong is part of China but its special status and the liberties granted to its citizens can be seen as indirectly undermining Beijing's tough hand on the mainland.

Every July, students protest for more democracy in Hong Kong

China's ministry of foreign affairs has urged the FCC to cancel the event and Hong Kong's top official, Carrie Lam, has criticised it as "regrettable and inappropriate".

What do the FCC and Mr Chan say?
Freedom of speech and press freedom are among the key liberties that set Hong Kong apart from the mainland. 

So supporters of the event argue that a talk given at a press club primarily to the members of that club should not be contentious.
The FCC has defended its decision to invite Mr Chan, arguing that "Hong Kong rightly prides itself on its reputation as a place where the rule of law applies and where there is freedom of speech".
"We believe that in free societies such as Hong Kong it is vitally important to allow people to speak and debate freely, even if one does not agree with their particular views."
As for Andy Chan, the attempts to ban him from speaking didn't come as a surprise, and instead bolstered his belief that "China is treating Hong Kong as a colony".
"It proves our point that it is China who is destroying Hong Kong's rights," he told the BBC. 

"The Hong Kong authorities acted out of obedience, the Beijing authorities out of hubris."