Desinicization: Revolution of our Times

Hong Kong's summer of discontent is now longer than 2014's Umbrella Movement ... and isn't over yet
By James Griffiths

Hong Kong -- No one predicted this.
When the final protesters were cleared from Hong Kong's streets after 79 days of pro-democracy protests in 2014 -- many of them forcibly carried off by police -- they promised they'd be back.
For years this seemed like a pipe dream.
The Umbrella Movement, so-named in reference to the umbrellas used by protesters in defense of police pepper spray, changed Hong Kong forever.
The movement awoke a whole generation of new activists and politicians, some of whom would go on to be elected to the city's legislature, but in many ways it felt like a failed last stand, with everything that came after it seeming more like a desperate rear guard action against ever-increasing Chinese influence and control over the semi-autonomous city.
Protest leaders who were elected were expelled from office on dubious grounds, and many others were arrested and jailed for their part in the unrest.
Demonstrations and marches never attracted the numbers seen in 2014, and it seemed like the pro-democracy movement was on life support.
Now, four years, eight months and 12 days after the Umbrella Movement ended, ongoing protests have surpassed it in duration and massively overtaken it in terms of disruption and political turmoil -- and they show no signs of stopping.
The roots of the current unrest can be traced back to that summer five years ago, both in the radicalizing effect it had on a whole generation of young Hong Kongers and in the government's failure to do anything.
With the collapse of the protest movement in December 2014, a lid was placed on the disruption, leaving the underlying frustrations boiling and ready to explode.



The political roots of the current unrest
The current protests -- they don't have an agreed upon name but the snappiest is the "Hard Hat Revolution" for the yellow helmets many protesters wear to protect against police weapons -- began on June 9, when organizers say more than a million people attended a protest march calling for the withdrawal of an extradition bill with China.
The bill was eventually suspended following violent clashes between protesters and police outside the city's legislature on June 12 and an even bigger march the following weekend, which saw the largest ever turnout at a protest in Hong Kong's history -- but for many the suspension was too little too late.
As the protests enter their twelfth week, overtaking the Umbrella Movement in duration, the complete withdrawal of the bill remains a key priority, but protesters have also expanded their demands to include the driving issue of the 2014 protests: Genuine universal suffrage in how the city picks its leader.
When Hong Kong was handed over from British to Chinese control in 1997, it switched from having a London-picked governor to a local Chief Executive, selected by an "election committee" and officially appointed by Beijing.
Per the Hong Kong constitution, the ultimate aim is for the city's leader to be elected "by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures" and the election of all members of the legislature -- which is currently about 50% democratically elected -- "by universal suffrage."

Hong Kong protesters promised to return after the last Umbrella Movement activists left the streets in December 2014.

In the more than two decades since 1997, reform has been slow coming.
Carrie Lam, the current chief executive, is the fourth person to hold that office, none of whom were elected by universal suffrage.
In 2007, China's top lawmaking body agreed that the contest which eventually resulted in her appointment "may be implemented by the method of universal suffrage; that after the Chief Executive is selected by universal suffrage, the election of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region may be implemented by the method of electing all the members by universal suffrage."
Seven years later, however, China's leaders ruled out full universal suffrage, saying that candidates could be elected by the public -- but only after they had been approved by a Beijing-dominated nomination committee.
Most democratic activists and lawmakers rejected the deal as a sham and it was eventually defeated in the city's legislature after a botched walkout by pro-government legislators.
In the interim, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers occupied parts of the city for 79-days, demanding Beijing withdraw its decision and allow the chief executive to be elected by "genuine universal suffrage."
After the use of tear gas in the early hours of the protests backfired spectacularly, bringing more people to the streets, authorities took a largely hands-off approach, and the Umbrella Movement had gradually fizzled out by the time police cleared the last dedicated protesters in December 2014.

While the movement did not achieve its main goals, the influence of the protests was massive. Legislative elections in 2016 returned the youngest, most politically radical parliament the city had ever seen -- though several lawmakers were later ejected from office -- and the protests are also widely credited with hastening the end of former Chief Executive CY Leung's career.
Lam, Leung's former deputy and now successor, refused to consider restarting political reform after she took office in 2017, choosing instead to focus on livelihood and economic issues.
This wasn't necessarily a bad idea.
Hong Kong is one of the most unequal cities in the world; housing prices and living costs rise each year, while youth employment rates have been largely stagnant and many young graduates struggle to find work.
Inequality is linked to the desire for greater democracy, which is driven in large part by an understanding that the city's leader and legislature -- where around 50% of seats are appointed by industry bodies and other non-democratic groupings -- are more responsive to the whims of Beijing and local elites than they are to the wider public.
"The government should take from the rich and give to the poor so they can live in Hong Kong, too," Tse Lai-nam, a 26-year-old who has taken part in the recent protests, told CNN this month.
"The government has never done anything to promote social mobility, instead it has increased wealth disparity and made it more difficult for young people to buy an apartment."
Lam's proposals to remedy these issues have largely fallen flat.
Her most ambitious plan, to build a 17 square kilometer (6.5 square mile) cluster of artificial islands off Lantau at a cost of around $80 billion, has faced criticism and protests from local residents, environmentalists and opposition lawmakers.
In particular, many point out that it does not address immediate concerns, with the first group of houses built on the islands not expected to be available until at least 2032.
Other proposals to relieve the pressure on poorer Hong Kongers have fallen equally flat.
Lam also attracted outrage -- and renewed criticism for being out of touch -- when she defended plans to raise the age limit for elderly welfare payments by saying "I am over 60-years-old but I still work for over 10 hours every day."
Less than 50% of over-60s in the city are employed.
Lam makes around $635,000 a year and does not pay for her own housing.
Hong Kong is no way strapped for cash, it has some $1.12 trillion in reserves, and has posted budget surpluses every year for the last decade.
But this has largely not translated into the type of big ticket livelihood reforms and improvements Lam promised on taking office.
Instead her administration has chosen to give cash handouts -- $510 last year for around 2.8 million people -- that while appreciated by their recipients, did little to address the underlying issues.
Protesters changed their tactics, officials are stuck in the past
In retrospect, a storm was clearly brewing.
While Lam has so far failed to alleviate Hong Kong's yawning inequality, she has also continued her predecessor's policy of cracking down on Umbrella Movement leaders and moving closer to China.
A controversial bill giving mainland Chinese authorities joint control over the city's new high-speed rail terminus, raised significant alarm, as did plans to adopt a Chinese law banning insult of the Chinese national anthem and flag.
Multiple Umbrella leaders, including Joshua Wong and Benny Tai, were imprisoned under Lam's administration, and some more radical pro-democracy activists were barred from standing for election.
On the other side of the border, the situation continued to worsen, as Chinese dictator Xi Jinping secured power for life and cracked down on dissent.
In the far-western colony of East Turkestan, millions of Muslims have been detained in "re-education" camps, and numerous activists have been jailed or disappeared.
All of this tension and anger was a tinder box waiting to be lit by the extradition law.
When the government failed to respond to a huge protest march on June 9 and pressed ahead with a second-reading of the bill days later, it exploded.
Attempts by Lam to get the genie back in the bottle have proven unsuccessful, as the protests have outpaced her.
Unlike the government, protesters have learned from 2014. 
Rather than an exhausting, drawn-out occupation requiring people to camp out in the streets for weeks, making them vulnerable to police, counter-protesters and Hong Kong's often miserable weather, they have instead adopted Bruce Lee's slogan "be water."
A variety of protests, marches and strikes have taken place in the past months, evolving with the police and government response and impacting neighborhoods some of which had never seen a major protest before.
"If this was an occupation on the streets every day it wouldn't have lasted anywhere near this long," Wong told CNN this week.
Another key change has been in the leaderless nature of the protests.
While this has its issues -- most notably an inability to deescalate in violent or out-of-control situations -- it has left the authorities without obvious targets for arrest.
Some have argued that this also means there is no one for the government to negotiate with, but as Wong and others have pointed out, of five student leaders who met with Lam and other top officials in 2014, three were later jailed.
Following a rare tear gas free weekend earlier this month, Lam gestured towards future reconciliation, saying she would launch an "important fact-finding study" into the causes of the protest.
"I hope that this is a very responsible response to the aspirations for better understanding of what has taken place in Hong Kong," she said.
"And most important of all, it is not just fact finding to provide the sequence of facts. It also will provide the Government with recommendations on how to move forward and also to avoid the recurrence of similar incidents."
For many Hong Kongers, the problems the city suffers were clear before the 2014 protests brought them to the attention of the world, and were even clearer afterward.
That Lam's government still does not apparently understand, or have any plan to address them, could mean the current unrest continues another 79 days.

Freedom Fighters

For Hong Kong’s Youth, Protests Are a Matter of Life and Death

By Mike Ives and Katherine Li

Protesting against the proposed extradition law in Hong Kong on Sunday.

HONG KONG — They are on the front lines of every demonstration, dressed in black T-shirts and pumping their fists as they march through Hong Kong’s sweltering streets.

They organize on encrypted messaging groups and hand out helmets and goggles at rallies. 

When the police fired tear gas at them, they chased the smoke-emitting canisters and doused them with water.
Hong Kong’s youth are at the forefront of protests this month that have thrown the city into a political crisis, including a vast rally on Sunday that was perhaps the largest in its history. 

Organizers contend that close to two million of the territory’s seven million people participated, calling on the government to withdraw proposed legislation that would allow extraditions to mainland China.
For the many high-school and university-age students who flooded the streets, the issue is much bigger than extradition alone. 

As they see it, they are fighting a “final battle” for some semblance of autonomy from the Chinese government.
“The extradition law is a danger to our lives,” said Zack Ho, 17, a high school student who helped organize a boycott of classes. 

“Once this passes, our rule of law would be damaged beyond repair.”
They are a generation that has no memory of life under British rule, but they have come of age amid growing fears about how the encroachment of China’s ruling Communist Party — and an influx of people from mainland China — are transforming Hong Kong and what they believe is special about it.
Such fears stem from the ousting of opposition lawmakers, the disappearance of several individuals from Hong Kong into custody in the mainland and the intensifying competition for jobs and housing in a city with soaring inequality. 

Many young protesters see the extradition bill as hurting the territory’s judicial independence — in their view, the last vestige of insulation they now have from Beijing’s influence.
Youth activism in Hong Kong had ebbed in recent years, after protests demanding a direct say in the election of the territory’s chief executive ended in failure in 2014. 

The most prominent leaders of what became known as the Umbrella Movement or Occupy Central were jailed, and their legions of young supporters were left bitterly disenchanted.

Joshua Wong, who became the face of the Umbrella Movement protests in 2014, was released from prison in Hong Kong on Monday.

But the extradition legislation pushed by Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, has re-energized young people. 

Residents express worry that Beijing will use new extradition powers to target dissidents and others who run afoul of Communist Party officials on the mainland.
The young people driving the Umbrella Movement fought for the cause of universal suffrage, said Leung Yiu-ting, the student union president of Hong Kong Education University. 

But the extradition fight, he added, is “a matter of life and death.”
Compared with older generations, young people in Hong Kong feel less affinity with mainland China and are more likely to see themselves as having a distinct Hong Kong — as opposed to Chinese — identity. 

Beijing’s efforts to grapple with this have backfired; when officials tried to impose a patriotic education curriculum in schools in 2012, young people led the protests against it.
That was the beginning of this generation’s political awakening, which has accelerated along with the erosion of the civil liberties promised to Hong Kong upon its return to Chinese government in 1997. Those freedoms have long set Hong Kong apart from the mainland, and as they have begun to fray, young people say they feel the threat more sharply.
No one has emerged as the face of the current youth movement as Joshua Wong, then 17, did during the Umbrella protests five years ago. (Mr. Wong was released from prison Monday after serving a month of his two-month prison sentence.)
That is at least in part because of fear. 

“Who’s going to be quite so willing, openly, to take six years of jail as the prize for the protests?” said Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy Hong Kong lawmaker, referring to a sentence handed down last year to Edward Leung, a local activist, for his role in a 2016 clash between protesters and the police.
Instead, organizers have operated behind the scenes by spreading messages about protests and other acts of civil disobedience through social media, word of mouth and secure messaging apps like Telegram.

Students taking part in a strike at Tamar Park in Hong Kong on Monday.

One result was that high schoolers and university students turned out in large numbers at a mostly peaceful march one week ago Sunday, and also occupied a highway on Wednesday outside the Legislative Council. 

Medical students and other volunteers provided first aid and free supplies from makeshift tents.
“They are compromising our future, and for what?” Terrence Leung, a recent college graduate, who like many others was demonstrating on Wednesday in a black T-shirt and a surgical mask, said of the pro-Beijing lawmakers who championed the extradition bill.
But in both protests, some among the young demonstrators challenged the authorities with force. 

The demonstrators tried to occupy the area outside the Legislative Council — or, in Wednesday’s case, tried to storm the complex — with force, pushing metal barriers and tossing bricks, bottles and sticks at riot police officers.
The police responded with pepper spray and batons. 

On Wednesday, police also fired 150 canisters of tear gas and, for the first time in decades, rubber bullets. 

Videos of officers beating protesters and firing volleys of tear gas that sent thousands fleeing drew wide condemnation across the city.
Public anger only grew when Lam compared her response to the opposition with that of a mother with a willful child.
Linda Wong, a barrister who organized a rally attended by women who described themselves as mothers opposed to how the police had responded to the young protesters, disagreed with Lam’s characterization.
“They came out not for personal interests but for the greater ideal of Hong Kong,” said Ms. Wong. “A good mother shall listen to her own child, and apparently Carrie Lam refuses to do so.”

A mass rally on Sunday. Organizers have spread messages about protests and other acts of civil disobedience through social media, word of mouth and secure messaging apps like Telegram.

The police said Monday that 32 people have been arrested since Wednesday’s event, including five for rioting.
“Fear is striking in all of our hearts,” said Mr. Leung, the student union president, referring to the possibility of being prosecuted.
Another risk is that the leaderless nature of the movement raises the possibility of more bloodshed. Analysts say that if demonstrations descend into violence, the authorities would have an easy excuse to prosecute young protesters, discredit them as radicals or attack them with a vengeance.
“If I were them, I would be cautious not to press the advantage too far,” said Andrew Junker, a sociologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who has studied the Umbrella Movement.
Faced with another enormous protest on Sunday, Lam issued a public apology for causing so much anger over the extradition law. 

Her apology came a day after she promised to shelve the plan indefinitely, but not withdraw it.
This was perceived as too little, too late, and it especially enraged younger protesters, who were bewildered that Lam seemed deaf to the concerns of more than a million demonstrators.
“Sometimes I think to myself, is it because I have not done enough? What else could have been done?” said So Hiu-ching, a 16-year-old high schooler who attended a student strike at a park near government offices on Monday morning.
“I go home and cry,” she said, “but after that, I have to get up and try to rally more people.”

Joshua Wong walks free, calls on Carrie Lam to resign

AFP

Wong was sent to prison in May after he lost an attempt to quash a jail sentence over the huge democracy protests he helped lead in 2014.

Hong Kong -- Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong called on the city's pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam to resign after he walked free from prison on Monday, as historic anti-government protests rocked the city.
"She is no longer qualified to be Hong Kong's leader," Wong told reporters. 

"She must take the blame and resign, be held accountable and step down."
Wong was sent to prison in May after he lost an attempt to quash a jail sentence over the huge democracy protests he helped lead in 2014.
His release comes as Hong Kong is rocked by historic anti-government protests. 

They were initially sparked by mass public opposition to a plan to allow extraditions to China.
But the movement has since morphed into the latest expression of public rage against both the city's leaders and Beijing.
Speaking to the media outside Lai Chi Kok Correctional Institute, 22-year-old Wong called on protesters to continue their protests and civil disobedience campaign.
"We demand Carrie Lam to step down, completely withdraw the extradition law, and retract the 'riot' label," he said, referring to Lam's previous term to describe protesters earlier in the week.
He also condemned authorities for firing tear gas and rubber bullets during violent clashes between protesters and police on Wednesday.
"When I was in jail, I saw Carrie Lam crying on the live television broadcast. All I can say is, when she shed tears, Hong Kong citizens were shedding blood in Admiralty," he said, referring to the district where the clashes took place.

Chinese Cyberattack Hits Telegram, App Used by Hong Kong Protesters

By Paul Mozur and Alexandra Stevenson

The police used tear gas as protesters came closer to the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong on Wednesday. Protesters used the app Telegram to organize, but the police were watching.

SHANGHAI — As protesters in Hong Kong retreated from police lines in the heart of the city’s business district, a new assault quietly began.
It was not aimed at the protesters. 

It was aimed at their phones.
A network of computers in China bombarded Telegram, a secure messaging app used by many of the protesters, with a huge volume of traffic that disrupted service. 

The app’s founder, Pavel Durov, said the attack coincided with the Hong Kong protests, a phenomenon that Telegram had seen before.
“This case was not an exception,” he wrote.
The Hong Kong police made their own move to limit digital communications. 

On Tuesday night, as demonstrators gathered near Hong Kong’s legislative building, the authorities arrested the administrator of a Telegram chat group with 20,000 members, even though he was at his home miles from the protest site.
“I never thought that just speaking on the internet, just sharing information, could be regarded as a speech crime,” the chat leader, Ivan Ip, 22, said in an interview.
“I only slept four hours after I got out on bail,” he said. 

“I’m scared that they will show up again and arrest me again. This feeling of terror has been planted in my heart. My parents and 70-year-old grandma who live with me are also scared.”
Past the tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray, the Hong Kong protests are also unfolding on a largely invisible, digital front. 

Protesters and police officers alike have brought a new technological savvy to the standoff.
Demonstrators are using today’s networking tools to muster their ranks, share safety tips and organize caches of food and water, even as they take steps to hide their identities.
The Hong Kong authorities are responding by tracking the protesters in the digital places where they plan their moves, suggesting they are taking cues from the ways China polices the internet.

Demonstrators on Tuesday night outside the Hong Kong government complex.

In mainland China, security forces track chat messages, arrest dissidents before protests even occur, and are increasingly detaining people over posts critical of the government. 

The Hong Kong police have visited the mainland at times looking at ways of stopping "terrorism".
“We know the government is using all kinds of data and trails to charge people later on,” said Lokman Tsui, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Protesters used some of the same tools to organize in 2014, when the Occupy Central demonstration shut down parts of the city for more than two months. 

But their caution shows a growing awareness that the new digital tools can be a liability as well as an asset.
The police during the Occupy protests used digital messages to justify the arrest of a 23-year-old man, saying he used an online forum to get others to join in. 

One message that then spread over the WhatsApp chat service included malware, disguised as an app, that appeared to be for eavesdropping on Occupy organizers. 

Researchers said the malware came from China’s government.
“People are minimizing their footprints as much as possible,” Dr. Tsui said. 

“In that regard, it’s very different from five years ago. People are much more conscious and savvy about it.”
This week’s protests were sparked by the Hong Kong government’s plans to enact a new law that would allow people in the city to be extradited to mainland China, where the court system is closed from public scrutiny and tightly controlled by the Communist Party. 

On Thursday, city officials delayed plans to consider the legislation.
Telegram said on its Twitter account that it was able to stabilize its services shortly after the attack began. 

It described the heavy traffic as a DDoS attack, in which servers are overrun with requests from a coordinated network of computers. 

In his tweet, Mr. Durov said the attack’s scale was consistent with a state actor.
Beijing has been blamed in the past for attacks that silence political speech outside mainland China’s borders. 

In 2014, an informal online referendum about Hong Kong’s political future drew what at that time was one of the largest such attacks in history. 

A separate cyberattack in 2015 hijacked traffic from Baidu, the Chinese search engine, to overload a website hosting copies of services blocked in China, like Google, the BBC, and The New York Times.

In Hong Kong, the authorities focused on Mr. Ip, the chat room organizer, whom they saw as a ringleader. 

He said that the police arrived at his door with a warrant around 8 p.m. 

More than 10 officers demanded he unlock his phone, explaining that they were searching for extremists in the chat groups he administered.

Police officers stopped and searched people on Tuesday night ahead of planned protests.

At first he refused, but when they threatened to use a device to break into his Xiaomi 6 smartphone, he relented and entered the password. 

They then downloaded his chat records.
The officers searched his apartment, where he lives with his parents, but backed down after the parents complained that they were searching through things that were not his, he said. 

The police officers implied that they had found him based on his phone number, which was linked to his identification.
While Telegram conversations can be encrypted, the service does not have end-to-end encryption for its group chats, said Dr. Tsui, the communications professor. 

After Mr. Ip was arrested, groups distributed warnings to use new pay-as-you-go SIM cards or register foreign numbers online to join groups.
In a statement, the Hong Kong police’s Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau said he had been arrested because he was suspected of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. 

He was released on bail, but the police said an investigation was continuing. 

Mr. Ip said he had not attended any protests this week.
Many of the protesters are college-aged and digitally savvy. 

They took pains to keep from being photographed or digitally tracked. 

To go to and from the protests, many stood in lines to buy single-ride subway tickets instead of using their digital payment cards, which can be tracked. 

Some confronting the police covered their faces with hats and masks, giving them anonymity as well as some protection from tear gas.
On Wednesday, several protesters shouted at bystanders taking photos and selfies, asking those who were not wearing press passes to take pictures only of people wearing masks. 

Later, a scuffle broke out between protesters and bystanders who were taking photos on a bridge over the main protest area.
For some, the most flagrant symbol of defiance came from showing one’s face.
On Wednesday, as demonstrators prepared for a potential charge by the police, a drone flew overhead. 

The protesters warned one another about photos from above, but Anson Chan, a 21-year-old recent college graduate, said she was unconcerned about leaving her face exposed, potentially revealing her identity.
Ms. Chan said she felt compelled to join the protests out of concern about the proposed law.
“Once people get taken to China, they can’t speak for themselves,” said Ms. Chan, who had traveled nearly two hours from Lok Ma Chau in northern Hong Kong to show support and hand out supplies after seeing scenes of violence on the news.
The mainland’s restrictions were on the minds of many.
“The bottom line is whether to trust Beijing,” said Dr. Tsui, the communications professor. 

“This is a government that routinely lies to its own citizens, that censors information, that doesn’t trust its own citizens. You can’t ask us to trust you if you don’t trust us.”
“These kids that are out there, all the young people, they’re smart,” he added. 

“They know not to trust Beijing.”

China Is Courting Disaster in Hong Kong

The likely passage of Hong Kong's controversial extradition law will irrevocably tarnish the city's rule of law and its attractiveness as an international commercial hub. Unless China’s leaders are prepared to accept these disastrous consequences, they should withdraw the bill before it is too late.

By MINXIN PEI

WASHINGTON, DC – The world has been riveted by the protests raging in Hong Kong against the city government’s proposed law to allow the extradition of "criminal suspects" to mainland China. About one million people – roughly one-seventh of the former British colony’s population – took to the streets on June 9 to denounce the draft law, and another large protest on June 12 resulted in violent clashes between demonstrators and police.
Yet, despite the massive protests, the Chinese government is determined to get its way. 

Instead of withdrawing the proposed law, Hong Kong’s Beijing-controlled leaders have fast-tracked the bill and scheduled it for a vote in the city’s Legislative Council at the end of this month. 

Its adoption would be a calamity not only for Hong Kong, but also for China.
The proposed extradition law would violate China’s pledge to adhere to the model of “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong. 

And by giving the authorities in Beijing a convenient legal tool to grab individuals deemed to be “enemies” of the Chinese state, the legislation would imperil the liberty of Hong Kong’s citizens – and that of foreigners residing there.
Although the draft law does not formally apply to political offenses, this will offer no protection in practice. 

Under the Chinese legal system – which is controlled by the Communist Party of China – the distinction between political offenses and conventional crimes is hopelessly blurred. 

Increasingly, in fact, the Chinese party-state persecutes human-rights activists by accusing them of criminal, not political, offenses. 

Common charges include “running an illegal business” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
If the proposed law is adopted, the mainland authorities will be able to arrest anyone in Hong Kong easily, by charging the target with an extraditable crime. 

Given the low threshold of proof – prosecutors would not need to provide evidence beyond probable cause – the protection against politically motivated extradition requests is frighteningly slim.
At the same time, however, China’s leaders should be aware that the outside world is watching current developments with great alarm. 

Unless the Chinese government backs down, the United States, in particular, will most likely take steps to make it pay dearly.
Since Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997, Western governments have maintained special economic privileges to help bolster confidence in the city. 

In 1992, the US Congress passed the US-Hong Kong Policy Act, in order to continue treating the city as a separate entity from mainland China. 

The law grants Hong Kong economic and trading privileges, such as continued access to sensitive technologies and the free exchange of the US dollar with the Hong Kong dollar.
But such benefits are contingent upon China fulfilling its commitments under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong, which set out the terms of the city’s future handover. 

Among other things, China pledged to maintain Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, freedom, and rule of law for 50 years.
The US-Hong Kong Policy Act has teeth to deter China from violating its commitments. 

In particular, it explicitly empowers the US president to issue an executive order suspending some or all of Hong Kong’s privileges if he or she determines that “Hong Kong is not sufficiently autonomous to justify treatment under a particular law of the United States.” 

In making such a determination, the president should consider “the terms, obligations, and expectations expressed in the Joint Declaration with respect to Hong Kong.”
Even a cursory reading of the US-Hong Kong Policy Act should make it clear to China’s leaders that their actions in recent years have already seriously jeopardized the city’s status as an autonomous entity. 

Such actions include the abduction of five Hong Kong-based book publishers, the disqualification on dubious grounds of democratically elected city legislators, and the imprisonment of pro-democracy activists. 

For the US, the passage of the extradition law could well be the last straw.
The unfolding confrontation between China’s leaders and Hong Kong’s citizens will provide fresh ammunition to US hardliners who have been advocating an aggressive stance against the Chinese government. 

Revoking Hong Kong’s privileges would advance that goal, because it would significantly hurt China.
After all, as the Sino-American economic cold war escalates, and rising regulatory and legislative hurdles make it harder for Chinese companies to raise capital in the US, Hong Kong will become immensely valuable to China as an offshore financial center. 

But if the US decides to withdraw Hong Kong’s privileges on the grounds that Chinese actions no longer justify treating it as a separate entity, the city’s value as a financial center will be fatally impaired. 

China’s companies will have less access to capital, and the valuations of Chinese state-owned enterprises listed on Hong Kong’s stock exchange will fall.
Even if the US does not take this punitive step, China will reap what it has sowed. 

The likely passage of the extradition law will irrevocably tarnish the rule of law in Hong Kong and its attractiveness as an international commercial hub. 

Unless China’s leaders are prepared to accept these disastrous consequences, they should withdraw the bill before it is too late.

Hong Kong and the Future of Freedom

Under Trump, Uncle Sam no longer puts up his fists in defense of Lady Liberty.
By Bret Stephens

Protesters faced off against the police in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

Imagine if in 2018 the Trump administration had proposed legislation that would allow the government, on nearly any pretext, to detain, try and imprison Americans accused of wrongdoing at secretive black sites scattered across the country.
Imagine, further, that 43 million Americans had risen in protest, only to be met by tear gas and rubber bullets while Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan rushed the bill through a pliant Congress. 

Finally, imagine that there was no effective judiciary ready to stop the bill and uphold the Constitution.
That, approximately, is what’s happening this week in Hong Kong.
An estimated one million people — nearly one in seven city residents — have taken to the streets to protest legislation that would allow local officials to arrest and extradite to the mainland any person accused of one of 37 types of crime. 

Political offenses are, in theory, excluded from the list, but nobody is fooled: Contriving criminal charges against political opponents is child’s play for Beijing, which can then make its victims disappear indefinitely until they are brought to heel.
In 2015, mainland authorities abducted five Hong Kong booksellers known for selling politically sensitive titles and held them in solitary confinement for months until they pleaded guilty to various offenses. 

In 2017 Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua was abducted by Chinese authorities from the Four Seasons in Hong Kong. 

He hasn’t been seen publicly since, while his company is being stripped of its holdings.
The extradition bill is the next evolution in this repressive trend. 

It won’t be the last.
Hong Kong’s relationship with the mainland is supposed to be governed by the principle of “one country, two systems.” 

But as with any form of pluralism, it’s a principle that poses inherent dangers to Beijing. 

It was little West Berlin that, merely by being free, helped bring down the mighty (as it seemed at the time) Honecker regime in East Germany in 1989. 

The Chinese supreme leader, Xi Jinping, isn’t about to let that happen to him via Hong Kong.
Then again, maybe he shouldn’t be so worried. 

Throughout the 1980s the free world was politically united and morally confident: It believed in its liberal-democratic values, in their universality, and in the immorality of those who sought to abridge or deny them.
It also wasn’t afraid to speak out. 

When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union “the focus of evil in the modern world,” one prominent liberal writer denounced him as “primitive.” 

But it was such rhetoric that gave courage to dissidents and dreamers on the other side of the wall. 

What’s really primitive is to look upon the oppression of others and, whether out of deficient sympathy or excessive sophistication, remain silent.
Compare the free world then with what it is today. 

“I’m sure they’ll be able to work it out,” was just about all Donald Trump could bring himself to say about the Hong Kong protests during a press conference on Wednesday with the Polish president, Andrzej Duda. 

As clarion moments in U.S. moral leadership go, “Ich bin ein Berliner” it was not.
Trump and Duda are two of the more prominent champions of the new populist nationalism, which believes in butting out of the affairs of others so they may butt out of yours. 

Trump has applied the principle widely, from Saudi Arabia’s treatment of gadfly journalists to North Korea’s treatment of everybody. 

It’s the right-wing version of the left’s cultural relativism, always asking: “Who are we to judge?”
Why does Trump have next to nothing to say about the robbery of rights in Hong Kong? 

Because, as far as he’s concerned, it’s a domestic Chinese affair. 

Why does he seem to be indifferent to the fact that Beijing’s behavior violates the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration? 

Because that’s someone else’s business, too, concerning a treaty signed a long time ago by people who are now dead.
All this means that Xi can dispose of the Hong Kong demonstrators as he likes without fear of outside consequences. 

Under Trump, Uncle Sam might be happy to threaten tariffs one day and promise to make a deal the next. 

But he no longer puts up his fists in defense of Lady Liberty.
That’s not to say that Hong Kongers should give up hope. 

As William McGurn pointed out in an astute Wall Street Journal column, the extradition bill has turned law-abiding Hong Kongers into a million new Chinese dissidents. 

Democracies may frequently be ill-led, but they have the saving grace of making discontent work for the system, not against it. 

Authoritarian regimes don’t have that option. 

The inflexibility that makes them fearsome also makes them brittle.
The world continues to endure a democratic recession, made worse by the surly ignorance of an American president. 

It won’t last forever. 

The efficient authoritarianism that is supposed to be the secret to China’s global ascendancy is being exposed for what it is — a state whose greatest fear is the conscience of those marching in Hong Kong’s streets.

How Hong Kong protests play into Trump’s showdown with China

By Ishaan Tharoor

The battle over Hong Kong’s proposed extradition law intensified on Wednesday.

The decision of the city government’s legislature to postpone debate on the measure did little to calm a heated protest movement that has mobilized on a scale not seen for half a decade. 

In the heart of Asia’s financial capital, demonstrators once more occupied central thoroughfares, squaring off against riot police who fired tear gas and rubber bullets. 

More than 70 people were injured in the clashes, according to local news reports.
Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam, a proxy for China’s political leadership, condemned the protesters for “organizing a riot” and said her government still plans on pushing through the legislation. 

The Legislative Council of Hong Kong is dominated by pro-Beijing forces.
The protesters, though, show no sign of backing down. 

They see the invisible hand of Beijing behind the law and fear China will use it to further squeeze Hong Kong’s civil liberties, arrest dissidents and chill dissent. 

Chinese authorities in recent years have exerted unprecedented control over Hong Kong’s politics, including issuing a ruling in 2016 that led to the expulsion of six pro-democracy lawmakers from Hong Kong’s legislature.
For ordinary Hong Kongers — and especially a young, galvanized generation of protesters — the current fight is about much more than just one bill. 

“We are trying to tell the government that the more they suppress us, the more we will fight back,” Justin Tang, a 25-year-old protester, told my colleagues. 

“Being the last city in China that is able to do that, we are going to hold on to that right.”
The scale of confrontation returns the international spotlight to Hong Kong. 

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt urged the former colony’s administration to “pause and reflect” over its course of action. 

Morgan Ortagus, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, said people in Hong Kong don’t like being subjugated by Beijing.
Chinese officials have rebuffed any Western censure into what they deem an internal matter. 

Hu Xijin, editor in chief of Global Times, a strident English-language state mouthpiece, tweeted that the scenes of unrest on Wednesday looked like a “Color Revolution,” hinting that the West was fomenting “disturbance” in the city.
Autistic Trump, for his part, seemed to dismiss the gravity of the moment. 

“I hope it all works out for China and for Hong Kong,” he said Wednesday while meeting Polish President Andrzej Duda at the White House. 

“I’m sure they’ll be able to work it out.”
Human rights have never featured prominently in Trump’s rhetoric. 

He has yet to speak publicly about China’s mass incarceration of more than 1 million Uighur Muslims and other minority groups in so-called reeducation camps in the restive region of East Turkestan. 

Nor did he this week echo his administration’s comments on the “fundamental rights” of Hong Kongers.
His remarks came just a day after Trump indicated he was “holding up” a trade deal with China, and two days after Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods if Xi Jinping didn’t meet with him in Osaka, Japan, during the Group of 20 summit later this month.
The unrest in Hong Kong only adds to the tensions building around that summit. 

Few American or Chinese observers expect either party to make significant concessions. 

These would include the Trump administration easing restrictions on Chinese tech giant Huawei, which the United States essentially has barred from doing business with U.S. firms. 

There’s a chance the presidents won’t even talk in Japan. 

Though he is the leader of an authoritarian one-party state, Xi is still sensitive to nationalist sentiment at home and won’t want to be seen caving to Trump’s pressure.
“Trump’s stance that he is unlikely to make any concessions is very clear. So, China should be very cautious when arranging a bilateral meeting with him,” Liu Weidong, a China-U.S. affairs expert from the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said to the South China Morning Post.

Marco Rubio
✔@marcorubio
#China has already jailed innocent foreign business executives as retribution against other countries. If #HongKong legalizes the kidnapping of people who disagree with Beijing it will have a devastating effect on their economy https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-legislature-fast-tracks-china-extradition-bill-amid-strike-calls-11560269656 …
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Thousands of Protesters Block Hong Kong Roads Over China Extradition Bill
Thousands of protesters blocked roads around Hong Kong’s legislature early Wednesday as lawmakers were set to debate a widely unpopular proposed law that would allow people to be extradited to China.wsj.com
720 people are talking about this.

Adding to the impasse are a chorus of voices in Washington demanding tough action in defense of Hong Kong’s political freedoms. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the extradition bill “chillingly showcases Beijing’s brazen willingness to trample over the law to silence dissent and stifle the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong.” 

She added in a statement that, if the bill passed, Congress would have “no choice but to reassess whether Hong Kong is ‘sufficiently autonomous’ under the ‘one country, two systems’ framework,” referring to the degree to which Hong Kong maintains a separate political, legal and economic system from China. 

The special status is recognized by foreign governments and underpins their dealings with the territory.
Rumors swirled this week of the possibility of the United States repealing its recognition of that status as a way of punishing Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing government and China.
“Diplomats have played down the suggestion that the U.S., or other Western governments, will revoke Hong Kong’s special status on a wholesale basis,” said Ben Bland, director of the Southeast Asia Project at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank. 

“Such a move would punish the Chinese state-owned companies, tycoons and officials who use Hong Kong as an entry point to the global financial system. It would also undermine the political and economic interests of foreign governments and businesses in Hong Kong, as well as punish local citizens who would suffer from the inevitable financial fallout.”
Yet that’s precisely the sort of wanton havoc a politician such as President Trump may consider unleashing. 

“As Chinese officials have discovered over the past year, nothing is sacred to the U.S. president when it comes to collecting chips that he thinks he can cash in during the course of a negotiation,” wrote Tom Mitchell, the Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times. 

“If anyone is willing to turn the screws on Hong Kong as they are now being turned on Huawei, it is President Trump.”

As Hong Kong stands up to China, US should do the right thing — this time

BY JOSEPH BOSCO 

At least four times in recent decades, a U.S. president has been presented with opportunities and risks from a popular uprising against an oppressive foreign adversary that threatens American interests. Now Trump, still addressing the consequences of the earlier unconsummated events, faces a new situation as the people of Hong Kong defy Beijing’s further erosion of their guaranteed rights of limited self-government.
Last week, we observed the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. 

In 1989, thousands were killed when millions of Chinese demonstrated peacefully in Beijing and other Chinese cities for political reform of the ruling Communist Party and were met by the guns and tanks of the People’s Liberation Army.
George H.W. Bush kept an unseemly low profile during the horrific events that shocked the world, but sent his national security adviser to assure China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, that U.S.-China relations would not change. 

Henry Kissinger, an informal Bush adviser and paramount U.S.-China hand, said Deng had acted to keep order in the nation’s most important public space as any leader would.
In 2009, Iran’s population rose up against the tyrannical Islamist regime that, for 30 years, had been crushing their aspirations for freedom and modernity while also spreading terrorism in the region and threatening the United States and its citizens. 

Despite desperate pleas for help from the Iranian people, Obama refused to provide either material or moral support and the revolt was crushed. 

Meanwhile, the ayatollahs proceeded with their anti-Western campaign of terrorism, provocation and nuclear weapons development.
In 2014, the people of Hong Kong demonstrated peacefully against Beijing’s violation of its commitments to autonomous local elections under the “one country, two systems” arrangement promised both Hong Kong and Taiwan by Deng in the early 1980s. 

The Obama administration again decided that interfering in another country’s domestic affairs — even with words of encouragement for people who shared America’s values — would further endanger already tense relations with a despotic regime that did not wish America well. 

Hong Kong’s “umbrella movement” petered out and the People’s Republic again stifled the Chinese people’s wishes.
In Venezuela, the Russian- and Cuban-supported dictatorship of Hugo Chávez, followed upon his death by his protege Nicolás Maduro, so corrupted and destroyed the economy that the population is on the verge of starvation. 

As a candidate, and then as president-elect, Trump warned that he would take action against the anti-U.S. despot.
After Maduro’s challengers refused to recognize the results of the 2018 Venezuelan election, claiming irregularities, the Trump administration led the international community in declaring his rule illegal and recognized Juan Guaidó as the legitimate interim president pending a new election. 

The U.S. worked with Guaidó and the political opposition to arrange a peaceful transfer of power, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Russia’s intervention foiled the plan.
The Iran and Venezuela crises remain unresolved, and now the Trump administration must decide whether to throw at least its moral support behind the million Hong Kongers who rallied against Beijing’s plan to change the autonomous region’s extradition laws so that China can get its hands on Chinese living abroad who express views at variance with the Chinese Communist Party line.
With all the pressing foreign policy challenges already on its plate, it would be easy for the Trump administration to look the other way on Hong Kong’s plight, especially given the fraught relations with China on trade, Taiwan, the South China Sea and more. 

But, aside from the moral and legal reasons for supporting the Hong Kong people’s cause, there are strategic considerations as well.
The fates of Hong Kong and Taiwan have been inextricably linked ever since Deng promulgated his “one country, two systems” formula for both.
The Taiwanese people long ago decided they are not interested in surrendering their democratic system for a communist dictatorship. 

The horrific events at Tiananmen in 1989 and all that has happened under Beijing’s rule since, especially under Xi Jinping, have deepened Taiwan’s resolve to remain free and democratic. 

That is clearly in synch with America’s values and interests.
Taking a strong stand in support of Hong Kong’s people, even without a formal legal obligation, would greatly reaffirm Washington’s commitment to Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act and other congressional declarations of deep U.S. ties with Taiwan. 

And it is surely the right thing to do for Hong Kong.

UK PM May says Hong Kong extradition must be in line with Sino-British declaration

Reuters

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May leaves Downing Street, London, Britain June 12, 2019. 

LONDON -- British Prime Minister Theresa May said extradition rules in Hong Kong had to respect the rights and freedoms set out in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration.
“We are concerned about potential effects of these proposals particularly obviously given the large number of British citizens there are in Hong Kong,” May told parliament.
“But it is vital that those extradition arrangements in Hong Kong are in line with the rights and freedoms that were set down in the Sino-British joint declaration.”

The Hong Kong Protests Are About More Than an Extradition Law

Huge crowds took to the streets to resist moves by Beijing to curtail human rights.
The New York Times

If we are to believe Carrie Lam, the chief executive of the Hong Kong government, the hundreds of thousands of people who marched through the city’s sweltering streets on Sunday just didn’t get it. They may have thought they were protesting a proposal to allow extradition of criminal suspects to mainland China, but, in Lam’s view, they failed to understand that the measure would ensure that the city did not become a haven for fugitives and that existing legal protections and human rights would remain in force.
And if we are to believe the press in mainland China, that vast throng was really “some Hong Kong residents” who had been “hoodwinked by the opposition camp and their foreign allies” into opposing the legislation, to cite the version in China Daily, an organ of the Chinese Communist Party.
No, Lam and editors of China Daily, the people of Hong Kong were not “hoodwinked,” nor did they misunderstand this legislation.
They understand very clearly that the measure making its way through the local legislature, where pro-Beijing deputies hold sway, has nothing to do with bringing murderers to justice, and everything to do with breaking down the firewall between Hong Kong’s rule of law and mainland China’s thoroughly politicized judicial system. 

They understand that the legislation represents a further encroachment by Beijing into the “high degree of autonomy” Hong Kong was promised when Britain returned the territory to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
Lam, at least, did not publicly question the motives of the protesters, who came out in the biggest numbers since at least the 1997 handover. 

“I believe most of the protesters yesterday loved Hong Kong and came out for the sake of the next generation,” she said.

In pledging to protect human rights, she at least acknowledged the core concern of the residents of every age and calling who so jam-packed the downtown streets that other people couldn’t get out of subway stations.
Beijing, by contrast, showed its true colors by playing down the protests and spreading the shopworn canard that they were the work of “foreign forces.”
“We firmly oppose any outside interference in the legislative affairs” of the region, intoned the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, perhaps oblivious to the irony that the only interference was by his government.
Lam has not backed down on the extradition bill, and neither she nor the city legislature is likely to buck Beijing. 

Under Hong Kong’s limited democracy, the chief executive is approved by Beijing and only half the seats in the legislature are filled by popular vote, though Lam insisted on Monday that the extradition bill was not imported from the mainland.
The residents of Hong Kong demonstrated once again that they will not easily surrender the civil liberties they learned to regard as their self-evident due under British rule. 

Five years ago, protesters of the Umbrella Movement occupied central city streets for 79 days to demand more transparent elections. 

And in 2003, an effort to enact a package of laws prohibiting sedition, subversion and treason against the Chinese government was shelved after half a million residents poured into the streets in protest.
Hong Kong’s freedoms are a standing irritant to the Communist authorities in Beijing, who have not ceased chipping away at them. 

One example is a draft law to criminalize disrespect for the Chinese national anthem; another is the disappearance of people from Hong Kong into mainland custody.
The extradition measure was initially presented as needed to send a Hong Kong man to Taiwan, where he allegedly killed his girlfriend. 

But to the democracy-minded people of Hong Kong, this was only cover for a portion of the bill that would also allow extradition to mainland China, which would enable Chinese authorities to pry political foes from Hong Kong by leveling false accusations and demanding their extradition. 

That, in effect, would extend China’s reach into Hong Kong and strip its residents of the protection of the law.
Sunday’s protesters vowed to be back in the streets when the bill next comes before the legislature. 

If Lam really believes they are acting out of concern for “the next generation,” she would do well to heed them and shelve this cynical assault on Hong Kong’s rule of law.

UK lawmakers warn journalists and activists could be extradited by Hong Kong to China under new law

By James Griffiths

Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator Claudia Mo (center right) and bookseller Lam Wing-kee (center left) protest the government's plans to approve an extradition deal with mainland China.

Hong Kong -- The UK government has expressed concern over a new extradition law between Hong Kong and China, as British lawmakers warned the move could see pro-democracy activists, journalists, and foreign business owners surrendered to Chinese authorities.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he had "formally lodged our initial concerns" with the Hong Kong government, he said in a letter to Chris Patten, the city's last colonial governor.
"We have made it clear to the Chinese and Hong Kong Special Administrative Regions that it is vital that Hong Kong enjoys, and is seen to enjoy, the full measure of its high degree of autonomy and rule of law as set out in the Joint Declaration and enshrined in the Basic Law... I can assure you that I, and my department, will continue to closely monitor developments in Hong Kong," Hunt said, according to a copy of the letter Patten shared with UK-based pressure group Hong Kong Watch.
"It is clear that the relatively short formal consultation process has not been sufficient to capture the wide-ranging views on this important topic."
While Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, the city operates its own legal and political system, and citizens enjoy a number of freedoms not protected on the mainland.

At present, Hong Kong does not have an extradition law with China, Taiwan or Macau, a situation officials in the city say has created loopholes preventing criminals from being brought to justice.
Fear that the law will allow dissidents and pro-democracy activists to be bundled over the border to China has dogged the bill since it was first suggested, however.
Business groups too have expressed concerns, prompting the government to remove nine economic crimes from the list of potentially extraditable offenses. 

The government also changed the minimum severity of offense from those carrying one year in prison to three.
In a statement responding to those changes, the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) said members continued "to have serious concerns about the revised proposal."
"Those concerns flow primarily from the fact that the new arrangements could be used for rendition from Hong Kong to a number of jurisdictions with criminal procedure systems very different from that of Hong Kong -- which provides strong protections for the legitimate rights of defendants -- without the opportunity for public and legislative scrutiny of the fairness of those systems and the specific safeguards that should be sought in cases originating from them," the AmCham statement said.
"We strongly believe that the proposed arrangements will reduce the appeal of Hong Kong to international companies considering Hong Kong as a base for regional operations."

Protesters march along a street during a rally in Hong Kong on March 31, 2019, to protest against the government's plans to approve extraditions with mainland China, Taiwan and Macau.

Responding to reporter's questions about the law last month, Hong Kong Secretary for Security John Lee said the extradition law was part of the city's "international commitment to fight organized crime."
He said the foreign business community should support the effort, which "will benefit (the) business environment."
"If the accusation is that somebody may unwittingly become a political offender, then I have said repeatedly that the law at present, under our Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, has clearly stated that this will not be possible," Lee added.
"There is a provision to say that no matter how you purport that offense to be, if it relates to political opinion, religion, nationality or ethnicity, then it will not be surrenderable."
AmCham's statement is part of a growing chorus of condemnation of the law from multiple quarters. Critics of the law point to past situations where people have been snatched in Hong Kong and transported to China to face trial, including multiple booksellers and Chinese businessman Xiao Jianhua.
Last week, the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) said the new law could enable the Chinese government to extradite reporters critical of Beijing, saying it would "not only threaten the safety of journalists but also have a chilling effect on the freedom of expression in Hong Kong."
"Over the years, numerous journalists have been charged or harassed by mainland authorities with criminal allegations covered by the (law)," it said.
"The (law) will make it possible for mainland authorities to get hold of journalists in Hong Kong (on) all kinds of unfounded charges. This sword hanging over journalists will muzzle both the journalists and the whistleblowers, bringing an end to the limited freedom of speech that Hong Kong still enjoys."
The Hong Kong Bar Association has also criticized the new law, and questioned the government's assertion that there were loopholes in the city's current arrangements.