Hong Kong Is Still Free; China Can Be

From investors to soccer fans to academics, a conviction that the loss of liberty is not inevitable.
By James Freeman

Security services try to confiscate a banner reading "Hong Kong is not China" as Hong Kong plays China at the East Asian Football Federation tournament in Busan, South Korea on Wednesday. 

It’s looking like a bad day for the communist bullies of Beijing.
Despite the best efforts of the Chinese dictatorship, the people of Hong Kong remain free.
And even on the Chinese mainland some brave souls are asserting their basic liberties.
A new report helps explain why Hong Kong protesters are so courageous in demanding that the Chinese government keep its promise to allow citizens of the former British colony to enjoy the rights they have long enjoyed.
Hong Kongers have more to lose from oppressive government than almost anyone in the world.
The latest Human Freedom Index rates Hong Kong as the world’s freest economy and third most free country overall.
The U.S. ranks 15th and China checks in at an abysmal 126th, 12 spots behind Russia.
The index is co-published by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute in Canada and the Liberales Institut at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in Germany.
The season of protests has helped push Hong Kong into its first recession since the financial crisis. But a recent rally in Hong Kong shares suggests that this great jewel of the world economy has not suffered irreparable damage.
Meanwhile citizens of the former colony are sharing the message of freedom well beyond their borders today. 
In Busan, South Korea, China has defeated Hong Kong 2-0 in a regional soccer tournament, but the Hong Kongers in attendance remain unbowed.
The Journal’s Eun-Young Jeong reports:
The protest chants would have rung familiar on the streets of Hong Kong.
“Fight for freedom! Stand with Hong Kong!” they shouted...
When the Chinese national anthem, the March of the Volunteers, played before the game, dozens of Hong Kong fans booed and turned their backs to the field. 
Some held up their middle finger. 
One man held up a banner that read “Hong Kong is not China,” and was approached by security guards to take it down.
As soon as the game started at Busan Asiad Main Stadium, the Hong Kong fans belted out “Glory to Hong Kong” in Cantonese, a song that has become the protesters’ de facto anthem.
Over on the Chinese mainland, the communist government’s effort to expand its control over all institutions of society is meeting some resistance.
Strange as it may sound to American ears, university faculty and administrators are pushing back against politicized education.
The Journal’s Philip Wen reports from Beijing:
Amendments to the charters of three Chinese universities that place absolute adherence to Communist Party rule over academic independence have provoked heated online debate and prompted some prominent academics to raise concerns amid a backdrop of tightening ideological control on China’s campuses.
References to academic independence and freedom of thought were stripped out of the charter of Shanghai’s Fudan University, long-considered one of the country’s most liberal academic institutions.
Substituted were references to “serving the governance of the Communist Party” and “dedication to patriotism,” according to a notice posted on the website of China’s Ministry of Education...
“If we do not speak out today about such a blatant challenge to the bottom line of education and academic ethics, I am afraid we will never have the chance,” said Lu Xiaoping, vice-president of the literature school at Nanjing University—another university whose charter was rewritten—in a Weibo post on Wednesday that was... later deleted. 
Shaanxi Normal University, in northwestern China, was the third university to have its charter altered.
Mr. Wen adds that “footage purportedly of Fudan students gathering in a university cafeteria to sing the school anthem circulated on Chinese social media on Wednesday afternoon. The lyrics include the reference to ‘academic independence and freedom of thought’ once enshrined in the university charter.”
Communist dictator Xi Jinping says China’s university campuses should become “strongholds of the party’s leadership.”
Faculty resisters may not be able to draw much inspiration from their U.S. academic counterparts. But liberty advocates in both China and Hong Kong are surely an inspiration to millions of Americans.

Hong Kong Is Not China

Hong Kong soccer fans jeer Chinese anthem ahead of China match

By Sangmi Cha

Hongkongers gesture as they chant slogans before a soccer match between Hong Kong and China outside Busan Asiad Stadium in Busan.

BUSAN, South Korea -- Hong Kong football fans greeted the Chinese national anthem with jeers on Wednesday before their team’s clash with China at a tournament in Busan as the political turmoil that has gripped the former British colony spilled over to the sports world.

The Korea Football Association said it had taken steps to ensure there were no banners bearing political messages at the Busan Asiad Stadium, where nearly 200 Hong Kong fans chanted and banged drums to drown out a tiny pocket of Chinese supporters.
Hong Kong has been rocked by six months of mass demonstrations, with protesters angered by what they see as Beijing’s stifling of freedoms despite a “one country, two systems” promise of autonomy when the city returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
China rejects the suggestion it is interfering in Hong Kong, and blames Western countries for inciting the trouble.
Hong Kong, designated the home side for Wednesday’s match in the four-team tournament that also includes hosts South Korea and Japan, were dressed all in red and turned to face their flag when the anthem began.
The Chinese players, dressed in yellow, turned the opposite way to face their flag and belted out the anthem as it was being played, while boos rang out from the section housing Hong Kong fans.
Television coverage of the match in Hong Kong did not show the anthem being played, instead cutting in as the players were shaking hands.When Chinese player Ji Xiang scored the first goal in the ninth minute, the Hong Kong fans booed and shouted in English: “Let’s go Hong Kong, let’s go!”
Chinese fans tried make themselves heard in the cavernous 50,000-seater stadium as Hong Kong supporters chanted: “We are Hong Kong” throughout the match.
University student Ben Wan, 21, said he flew in to watch the tournament and said the match against China had taken on a different edge due to the unrest back home in Hong Kong.
Wan, who was wearing a black mask, said: “I think the games against China are much more important than the previous because ... in Hong Kong there is political cleavage, it is becoming more and more serious.
“If we win I think ... there’s some significance to the protest because something like ‘Oh we beat China’ in some sense.”

Hong Kong fans also jeered the country’s national anthem during a soccer World Cup qualifier against Iran in September.

Hong Kong Is Not China

Hong Kong soccer fans boo Chinese anthem

By Clare Jim, James Pomfret

Soccer fans hold signs in support of anti-government protesters at a football World Cup qualifier match between Hong Kong and Iran, at Hong Kong Stadium, China September 10, 2019.

HONG KONG -- Anti-government protests that have roiled Hong Kong for more than three months spread to the sports field on Tuesday, as many local fans defied Chinese law to boo the country’s national anthem ahead of a soccer World Cup qualifier against Iran.
The latest sign of unrest in the former British colony followed another weekend of sometimes violent clashes, in which police firing tear gas engaged in cat-and-mouse skirmishes with protesters who at times smashed windows and started fires in the streets.
Earlier on Tuesday, the city’s Beijing-backed leader, Carrie Lam, warned against foreign interference in Hong Kong’s affairs, adding that an escalation of violence could not solve social issues in the Asian financial hub.
Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula that guarantees freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland. 

But Beijing is steadily eroding that autonomy.
Weeks of protests over a now withdrawn extradition bill have evolved into a broader backlash against the government and greater calls for democracy.
At Hong Kong’s main stadium on Tuesday night, a sizeable contingent of the crowd of more than 10,000 football fans jeered and held up “boo” signs as China’s anthem played before the game, while others chanted “Revolution of our time” and “Liberate Hong Kong”. 

Disrespecting the national anthem is an offence in China.
Other fans sang “Glory to Hong Kong,” a song that has become a rallying cry for more democratic freedoms in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
“We hope we can unite Hong Kong,” said one of those booing, Ah Wing, wearing a red Hong Kong team shirt and glasses. 

“Even if we lose, we’ll keep going. That’s what we do against strong teams, against strong enemies.”
During a rally at the U.S. consulate on Sunday, thousands of demonstrators, some waving the American flag, called for help in bringing democracy to Hong Kong.
The protesters urged the U.S. Congress to pass proposed legislation that would require Washington to make an annual assessment of whether Hong Kong is sufficiently autonomous from mainland China to retain special U.S. trade and economic benefits.
A bipartisan group of senior U.S. senators stepped up the pressure on Tuesday by writing to the U.S. State and Commerce Departments asking them to assess U.S. export rules for Hong Kong and expressing concern about China’s potential acquisition of sensitive U.S. technologies via the special treatment Hong Kong is allowed.
The lawmakers also expressed concern about whether current export control laws allowed U.S. persons to “inappropriately” export police equipment to Hong Kong that could be used to suppress dissent.

The sometimes violent demonstrations have taken a toll on Hong Kong’s economy, which is on the verge of its first recession in a decade. 

Hong Kong visitor arrivals plunged nearly 40% in August from a year earlier.

Fitch downgrading

Stephen Schwarz, head of sovereign ratings for the Asia-Pacific region at Fitch Ratings, said the agency’s downgrade of Hong Kong last week reflected damage to the city’s reputation as a place to do business.
“The downgrade reflects months of ongoing conflict environment which are testing the ‘one country, two systems’ framework and which have inflicted damage to the international perception of the quality and effectiveness of Hong Kong’s governance and rule of law as well as the stability of its business environment,” Schwarz said.
China expressed rage on Tuesday after German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas met prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong.
On Monday, former U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the anti-government protests were not an internal Chinese matter and the United States should offer at least moral support to the demonstrators.
Lam last week withdrew the controversial extradition bill that had triggered the unrest, but the gesture failed to appease demonstrators.
Anger over the now-shelved bill has rekindled opposition to Beijing that had waned after 2014, when authorities faced down 79 days of pro-democracy protests in the city’s central business district.
Lam called for dialogue on Tuesday.
The protests, beamed live to the world since June, have also prompted some of the city’s powerful tycoons to appeal for calm.
In his first speech mentioning the unrest, billionaire Li Ka-shing urged political leaders to offer young people an olive branch, calling them “masters of our future”, according to an online video of remarks to a small crowd during a monastery visit on Sunday.