Revolution of Our Times

Hong Kong sees biggest protests since democrats’ election boost
Reuters

Human Rights Day march in the district of Causeway Bay in Hong Kong.

HONG KONG – Vast crowds of black-clad demonstrators thronged Hong Kong on Sunday in the largest anti-government protests since local elections last month that boosted the pro-democracy movement seeking to curb controls by China.
It was the first time since August that the Civil Human Rights Front – organizer of million-strong marches earlier in the year that paralyzed the Asian finance center – had received authorities’ permission for a rally.
It estimated turnout of 800,000.
Chants of “Fight for freedom! Stand with Hong Kong!” echoed as demonstrators, from students to professionals and the elderly, marched from Victoria Park in the bustling shopping district toward the financial area.
As dark fell, some protesters spray-painted anti-Beijing graffiti on a Bank of China building.

Riot police stood on guard as protesters yelled “dogs” and “cockroaches.”
The former British colony of 7.4 million people reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. 

It is governed under a “One Country, Two Systems” formula guaranteeing freedoms not allowed in mainland China, but Beijing is tightening the screws.
“It’s Christmas time soon but we’re not in the mood to celebrate anymore,” said Lawrence, a 23-year-old student.
He held a poster saying: “My 2020 wish is universal suffrage”, a reference to demands for an open vote on the city leader, currently the unpopular Beijing-backed Carrie Lam.
On Saturday, two leaders of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong were denied entry to the neighboring Chinese city of Macau, without explanation.

Sore Loser

After Massive Electoral Loss in Hong Kong, Beijing Points Finger at U.S.

China accused the United States of meddling in its internal affairs following an election that was a rebuke of Xi Jinping.
By Javier C. Hernández

Supporters of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement celebrating on the streets outside a polling station in Tuen Mun, Hong Kong, early Monday.

BEIJING — The Chinese government, still coming to terms with a stunning electoral victory for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, is directing its ire at a popular foe: the United States.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the American ambassador to Beijing on Monday, a day after the local elections in Hong Kong that were a rebuke to the authoritarian policies of Xi Jinping.
Chinese officials warned the ambassador, Terry Branstad, that the United States should “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs,” according to the ministry. 

They also criticized Congress for passing a bill recently to support the protesters.
The state-run news media on Tuesday revived a popular line of attack against the United States, accusing American politicians of harboring “sinister intentions” and encouraging unrest in Hong Kong as a way of containing China’s rise.
By directing their anger at the United States, Chinese officials are reviving a theme that will likely be popular with the masses and allow the government to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat.
“Beijing knows very well that they lost the game in the election,” said Willy Lam, a political analyst who teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

“Beijing had to blame somebody, so in this case it is blaming outside foreign forces, particularly in the United States, for interfering in the elections.”

A rally in Hong Kong in October calling for the United States Congress to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.

The flash of anger from Beijing reflected the central government’s deep anxieties about months of unrest in Hong Kong, one of the most sustained challenges to Communist Party rule in decades. 

The victory for the pro-democracy candidates appeared to take Beijing by surprise.
Pro-democracy candidates captured 389 of 452 elected seats, far more than they had ever won. Beijing’s allies held just 58 seats, down from 300.
The elections on Sunday were for district councils, some of the least powerful positions in Hong Kong’s government. 

But the vote was seen as a barometer of public attitudes toward Beijing and a referendum on the protests, which began in June over an unpopular extradition bill and have since turned into a call for greater freedom in the semiautonomous territory.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s embattled leader, on Tuesday disputed the idea that the bruising defeat of pro-Beijing candidates had broader implications. 

But she acknowledged that there appeared to be dissatisfaction with how the government handled the extradition bill.
“There are people who want to express the view that they could no longer tolerate this chaotic situation,” Mrs. Lam said at a regular news briefing. 

“There are of course people who felt that our government has not handled competently the legislative exercise and its aftermath.”
At the meeting with Ambassador Branstad on Monday, Zheng Zeguang, a vice foreign minister, criticized the passage of the bill, known as the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
“Any attempt to destabilize Hong Kong and undermine its stability and prosperity will never succeed,” Mr. Zheng said, according to the ministry
The House and Senate both passed the bill, which could impose sanctions on Chinese officials for cracking down on the protesters, with a veto-proof majority this month. 

The White House, which is engaged in delicate trade negotiations with China, has not said whether Trump will sign it.
At their meeting on Monday, Mr. Branstad told Zheng that the United States was watching the situation in Hong Kong with “grave concern,” according to a spokesman for the American embassy in Beijing. 

Mr. Branstad added that “the United States believes that societies are best served when diverse political views can be represented in genuinely free and fair elections,” according to the embassy.

China is showing its true nature in Hong Kong. The U.S. must not watch from the sidelines.

By choosing violence and intimidation to silence Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party is once again showing its true nature. 
By Marco Rubio

Demonstrators at Tamar Park in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

Beijing recently reinforced its People’s Liberation Army garrison in Hong Kong with thousands of troops and authorized a new wave of arrests to intimidate peaceful demonstrators. 

In parallel, it blocked the Hong Kong government’s proposal to work out a compromise with the city’s massive and grassroots pro-democracy movement.
What began as a protest against an unjust extradition bill backed by China has now become a fight for Hong Kong’s autonomy and future. 

Yet what’s happening in Hong Kong is not simply China’s internal affair. 

The United States and other responsible nations are not watching from the sidelines.
The extradition bill is only the latest example of China’s many broken promises to the Hong Kong people and the world. 

Most obviously, the Chinese Communist Party is preventing the city’s government from acting with the autonomy that Beijing had promised it in a legally binding 1984 international treaty with Britain, under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, and in China’s diplomatic outreach to the United States and other nations.
In 2014, Beijing also backed off its commitment to allow Hong Kong citizens to choose their city’s chief executive through universal suffrage, a provocation that sparked the city’s massive Umbrella Movement protests. 

And in 2016 and 2017 , the High Court disqualified a total of six democratic lawmakers from their Legislative Council seats using a controversial interpretation of Hong Kong’s constitution.
Thirty years after People’s Liberation Army troops massacred reform activists and ordinary Chinese citizens on the way to Tiananmen Square, Beijing now appears poised to intervene overtly and aggressively in Hong Kong.
The paramilitary People’s Armed Police — built up in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre — has thousands of personnel and vehicles in Shenzhen, just across the boundary between mainland China and Hong Kong.
Chinese officials and state media have steadily escalated their warning rhetoric and outlined what they describe as the legal case for intervention based on “signs of terrorism.”
An unsigned editorial in Xinhua, a state-run news agency reflecting the institutional voice of the party center, claimed that Hong Kong is engaged in a “color revolution.”
The world ignores these warning signals at the peril of the Hong Kong people and the hundreds of thousands of foreigners — including roughly 85,000 U.S. citizens — living in the city.
China’s communists today are using the same messaging playbook that they have followed since they intervened in North Korea in 1950. 
We were surprised then; we should be prepared now.
The United States and the international community must make clear to Chinese leaders and power brokers that their aggression toward Hong Kong risks swift, severe and lasting consequences.
In particular, the administration should make clear that the United States can respond flexibly and robustly in Hong Kong.
Our options are much more than just a “nuclear option” of ending Hong Kong’s special status under U.S. law.
The Hong Kong Policy Act, authored by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and enacted in 1992, allows the president to apply to Hong Kong those laws that address the People’s Republic of China.
The law’s power is selective and flexible, however, and not necessarily all-or-nothing for Hong Kong’s special status.
For example, the Tiananmen sanctions could be applied to target the city’s police force, which has collaborated with organized crime, instigated violence and now is torturing detained demonstrators.
Hong Kong’s special status — and therefore Beijing’s ability to exploit and benefit from it — depends on the city being treated as a separate customs area, on open international financial connections and on the Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the U.S. dollar.
The United States both administratively and diplomatically can constrain these conditions.
The administration also can impose sanctions against individual officials who have committed serious human rights abuses under the Global Magnitsky Act, which enables sanctions against foreign individuals or entities.
In addition, Congress should pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, a bill that I co-authored with Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), James E. Risch (R-Idaho) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).
The bill, among other things, would mandate that officials in China and Hong Kong who have undermined the city’s autonomy are vulnerable to such sanctions.
The United States and other nations have options precisely because Beijing benefits from Hong Kong’s special status. 
Indeed, the city has proved irreplaceable as a gateway for international finance, even as China attempts to build up a mainland alternative.
China’s leaders must either respect Hong Kong’s autonomy and rule of law or know that their escalating aggression will inexorably lead them to face swift, severe and lasting consequences from the United States and the world.
Today, that choice is theirs.

Address protest grievances, US chamber of commerce tells Hong Kong leaders

AFP

Hong Kong’s leaders must address the grievances fuelling nearly two months of protests, the American Chamber of Commerce said Monday (Jul 29), as the business community becomes increasingly alarmed by the chaos engulfing the financial hub.
The once stable city is reeling from weeks of anti-government protests that show no sign of abating.
What began as a mass display of opposition to an extradition Bill two months ago has morphed into a wider pro-democracy movement that has thrown down the most significant challenge to Beijing’s authority since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

And there is growing frustration over the seeming inability – or unwillingness – of Beijing and the city’s leaders to offer compromises or a solution that might end the political crisis.
Protesters battled riot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets on two consecutive days over the weekend in some of the most sustained and violent clashes since the pro-democracy movement kicked off last month.
The American Chamber of Commerce said “a clear majority” of its members felt Hong Kong’s leaders needed to do more to address core protester demands, including an independent inquiry into the unrest and a permanent withdrawal of the extradition Bill.
“The government should take immediate and tangible actions to address the root causes of recent demonstrations and restore confidence in the city’s status as Asia’s pre-eminent international business and financial centre,” the Chamber said in a statement released Monday.

Tara Joseph. 

AmCham president Tara Joseph said the administration of city leader Carrie Lam needed to “show clear leadership in meeting the expectations of Hong Kong people and in restoring the city’s international reputation for effective governance”.
“A clear majority of our membership surveyed over the past week said the government needs to address the underlying causes of the protests and not simply to paper over the cracks of social instability with a short-term law-and-order fix,” she added.
The statement follows a similar rebuke from the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce last week which also called for a permanent shelving of the extradition Bill and an inquiry.
Lam has faced growing criticism over her response to the crisis, both from opponents but also within the civil service and the city’s pro-Beijing establishment ranks.

Beyond agreeing to postpone the widely-loathed extradition Bill she has made few compromises. 

She has also made few public appearances in recent weeks despite the unprecedented scenes of violence – over the weekend she was pictured visiting a Chinese army barracks in the city.
Beijing has thrown its support behind Lam’s administration and issued increasingly shrill condemnations in the last two weeks, dismissing protester grievances and portraying the rallies as a foreign-funded conspiracy.