China is threatening autonomy of Hong Kong

Last British governor of region urges Foreign Office to object to Chinese remarks
By Patrick Wintour

Chris Patten receives the union flag after it was lowered for the last time in Hong Kong on 30 June 1997. 

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, has warned that China’s threat to overrule the Hong Kong judiciary represents a dramatic threat to the autonomy of the region and may damage its chances of remaining a thriving financial centre.
Patten called on the British government to speak out as soon as possible to express its concern at the Chinese remarks, which followed the overturning by Hong Kong courts of a ban on protesters wearing face masks, a move that infuriated Beijing.
China claimed that the compliance of Hong Kong’s laws with the Basic Law governing relations between Hong Kong and China could only be judged and decided by China’s Congress.
A spokesman for the National People’s Congress (NPC) legislative affairs commission said: “No other authority has the right to make judgments and decisions.”
Patten said in a letter to the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab: “The Chinese statement was in complete breach of the Sino-British joint declaration, which states that: ‘The Hong Kong special administrative region will be vested with executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication.’” 

The declaration was partly negotiated by Patten.

He added: “The NPC’s statement could seriously undermine judicial independence and the rule of law in Hong Kong.“If the rule of law and autonomy are threatened, Hong Kong’s success as one of the world’s most important international financial and trading centres is at risk.”
Patten pointed out that in 1996, a year before the handover, the then prime minister, Sir John Major, had said that “if there were any suggestion of a breach of the joint declaration, we would have a duty to pursue every legal and other avenue available to us”.
The former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind also warned that the NPC statement was “a naked power grab by the central government from the Hong Kong judiciary, and is clearly in breach of both existing Hong Kong case law and the terms of the Sino-British joint declaration”.The British protests came as Republicans in Washington predicted that Donald Trump would sign a bill passed by Congress this week that could open the way to fresh sanctions by the US against China.

Hong Kong’s Mask Ban Reveals Carrie Lam’s True Face

The city’s leader announced an emergency law to restore order. It was a deliberate provocation.

By Alan Leong Kah-kit

Protesters defied a new emergency law banning masks at public gatherings in Hong Kong on Saturday.

HONG KONG — This city has long prided herself on respecting the rule of law — the ultimate guarantee of Hong Kongers’ freedoms, human rights and way of life. 

It is one of the attributes that make Hong Kong stand apart from cities on the Chinese mainland. 

Our practice of common law, together with an independent judiciary served by high-caliber judges, has earned us the trust and the confidence of friends and trading partners all over the world. 

Our legal system’s predictability and its freedom from political interference guarantee that no one will fall victim to the arbitrary exercise of power by government authorities.
Or so it did. 

All of this changed last Friday when Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s besieged chief executive, unilaterally decided to invoke the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to prohibit face masks and other coverings at public gatherings. 

The new regulation — formally called the Prohibition on Face Covering Regulation and, more commonly, the face-mask ban — makes it a criminal offense punishable by one year of imprisonment for people to hide their faces in ways that prevent identification, even if they are participating in lawful meetings or marches.
Lam said the ban was designed to stop violence and restore order, but her move only added fuel to the fire. 

Thousands of people — in masks — took to the streets all weekend, even after service was suspended across the entire underground system. 

There were clashes with police. 

A 14-year-old was shot in the leg.
The ordinance is an archaic statute from 1922, when Hong Kong was a British colony and the acts of the city’s governor were regulated by the monarchy in Britain. 

Since Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, it has had its own Constitution, the Basic Law, which is supposed to protect the city’s autonomy from China under the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. 

Acts of the chief executive should be reviewed for compliance with the Basic Law.

• Article 39 provides that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights will continue to apply in Hong Kong after 1997. 
• Article 73 vests the legislative power of Hong Kong in the Legislative Council. 
• Article 8 says that any laws previously in force that contravene the Basic Law cannot be maintained.

On Friday, Lam violated all of these provisions. 

To take one example: She usurped the lawmaking function of the Legislative Council by bypassing the council altogether. 

LegCo is scheduled to reconvene on Oct. 16; Lam could have waited until then to propose her ban as a bill. 

She now claims that her regulation is subject to “negative vetting” by LegCo, or vetting after the fact. Yet it should not have come into force until after it was reviewed by LegCo.
Lam announced the ban by fiat, and with that, Hong Kong has just moved one step closer to becoming an authoritarian regime, ruled at the executive’s pleasure without institutional or systemic safeguards. 

We are moving away from the rule of law toward rule by law.
The invocation of the emergency ordinance is unlawful, and so the face-mask ban should be deemed inherently void.
Lam knows this fact only too well, and she knows that she may yet lose any judicial review of the law’s constitutionality. 

So why did she do this? 

She is reported to have initially been reluctant to pass the measure. 

But then, suddenly, she passed it — just three days after returning from Beijing, where she attended celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
Xi Jinping might well have given her the marching order. 

The Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) is haunted by the images of millions of peaceful marchers taking to the streets of Hong Kong to demand the freedom, the human rights protection, the rule of law and the preservation of Hong Kong’s way of life that they have been promised under the Basic Law but have been treacherously denied.
The authorities’ calculation seems to be that if masks are banned, future rallies will be smaller. 

Some protesters will not be deterred. 

But others — especially peaceful demonstrators who are civil servants and employees of government-funded NGOs, Chinese businesses or conglomerates that actively trade with China — will be reluctant to assemble or march. 

Already, the local airline Cathay Pacific has fired employees, including pilots, who had expressed sympathy on social media for the protest movement.
At the same time, the pushback by dedicated protesters this weekend was so predictable that it is impossible not to think that it, too, was a desired effect. 

The ban was also designed to provoke the more radical factions of the protest movement into escalating violence. 

Lam and the C.C.P. can then invoke any such deterioration, as well as, say, acts of arson — or even, some fear, crimes by agent provocateurs planted by the police — to call the movement a riot and its participants vandals.
One of their hopes is that more Hong Kongers may then distance themselves from the movement because of the increased social costs. 

Another is that the movement will lose some of the moral authority it seems to command with liberal democracies around the world.
A more sinister explanation is that further violence on the streets could become an excuse to impose a curfew, formally or de facto, and pass other extreme emergency regulations. 

Members of the major pro-government party are also said to worry about their prospects in the district council elections scheduled for late November: Chaos would be a convenient pretext to postpone or cancel those.
Legislators from the democratic camp have started a legal battle challenging Lam’s ordinance and are asking that it be reviewed judicially. 

The High Court refused this weekend to order an interim injunction to stop the ban from taking immediate effect but has said that the case could be heard in full before the end of October.
We already knew that “One Country, Two Systems” was dying; now we know that the rule of law is dying too.

Standing With The People Of Hong Kong For Human Rights And Democracy

By Ewelina U. Ochab

September 15 marks the International Day of Democracy, a UN day aimed at reminding us of the importance of democracy. 

This year’s commemoration focuses on participation. 

Indeed, democracy is built on participation as well as other principals such as inclusion and equal treatment. 

As the UN reminds us, “True democracy is a two-way street, built on a constant dialogue between civil society and the political class. This dialogue must have real influence on political decisions. This is why political participation, civic space and social dialogue make up the very foundations of good governance. It is even more true with the impact of globalization and technological progress.” 

Unfortunately, this crucial civic space continues to shrink. 

“Civil society activists are finding it increasingly difficult to operate. Human rights defenders and parliamentarians are under attack. Women remain vastly under-represented. Journalists face interference, and in some cases violence.” 

These are all signs of democracy undermined or even at risk of collapse. 

Marking the UN day, the UN “urges all governments to respect their citizens’ right to active, substantive and meaningful participation in democracy.”

Protesters are seen holding up umbrellas while they walk down a street in Hong Kong on August 18, 2019. According to the organizers, over 1.7 million people attended the rally. 

However, in many parts of the world, such calls are bluntly ignored. 

The recent protects in Hong Kong are a perfect example. 

The protests in Hong Kong were sparked by a proposed extradition bill that would have enabled China to extradite individuals from Hong Kong and try them in mainland China. 

The bill has rightly sparked concerns. It could be interpreted as one step towards tightening the Chinese power grip over Hong Kong.
Hong Kong was handed back to China from British control in 1997. 

Hong Kong is governed under the authority of the Chinese government. 

The handover agreement was meant to guarantee Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy and accommodate the “one country, two systems” framework. 

Indeed, Hong Kong has an independent judiciary, legislature, a free press and other freedoms, that are often lacking in mainland China.
In light of the protests, the extradition bill was suspended in mid-June. 

The protests, nonetheless, continued with calls to officially withdraw the bill. 

First on September 4, 2019, Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, announced that her government will formally withdraw the extradition bill. 

As this step was taken too little too late, the protests continue.
In response to the protests, the authorities have been resorting to more and more excessive measures to curb the ongoing protests. 

Furthermore, towards the end of August 2019, several pro-democracy advocates, including Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow were arrested. 

They were charged with offences including taking part in an "unlawful" assembly. 

It is assessed that more than 800 people have been arrested since the being of the protests in June 2019.
As the UN reports, there is credible evidence of “law enforcement officials using anti-riot measures which are prohibited by international norms and standards.” 

Some examples include “firing tear gas canisters into crowded, enclosed areas and directly at individual protesters on multiple occasions, creating a considerable risk of death or serious injury.”
The UN called upon the authorities to act with restraint when responding to such protests; respect and protect peaceful protesters and ensure that any response to acts of violence is in accordance with international standards on the use of force. 

These calls appear not to be heard.
The example of the protests in Hong Kong and the excessive response to them shows the ever-growing challenges to participation, a necessary principle for any functioning democracy. 

As there is little international support and solidarity towards the peaceful protesters exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly, fundamental human rights enshrined in international legal standards, the authorities that try to suppress them will only continue until they break those protesting.
In solidarity with those protesting, on September 9, 2019, over 130 British parliamentarians delivered a letter to the U.K. Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, calling for international support for the people of Hong Kong. 

 Their letter emphasized that: “China’s recent words and actions indicate that their leadership has moved away from the commitment to upholding Hong Kong’s way of life, enshrined in their Basic Law and founded on values we share: commitment to the rule of law, democracy and human rights. The continuing protests by the courageous people of Hong Kong have been their response to increasing restrictions on those values.”
Standing alongside the people of Hong Kong, speaking up for their human rights and democracy, should be commended and encouraged. 

The alternative incites further human rights violations and suppression that should not be accepted in the 21st century.

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.”