China is a rising power – economically, militarily and culturally. The world therefore has an interest in ensuring that its leaders understand the value of keeping commitments and adhering to the rule of law. Ergo, the world has an interest in what happens in Hong Kong.
That was the message brought to Washington this week by the courageous leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, a 20-year-old college student named Joshua Wong. China, which has owned the city since Britain ceded control in 1997, has been flexing its muscles again, some say in contravention of international treaties it signed.
Given all that is going on in Washington and the world, one would say that Wong and fellow activists such as Jeffrey Ngo don’t have the best of timing. Hong Kong, after all, is a speck of land very far from Washington and New York.
But who knows? The new administration may see China as a strategic threat. If Wong and his colleagues can link the fate of Hong Kong, a global financial center with 7.1 million people, to the fate of the world, people may listen.
“If we don’t see hope in Hong Kong, then we don’t see hope in China,” Wong said at a small gathering with think tankers and government people before heading over to Congress to explain why they must make sure that Beijing stands by its word.
Wong wants Congress to re-introduce the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which would require President Trump to certify that Hong Kong is indeed autonomous before exempting it from any new law or agreement applicable to the People’s Republic of China.
The issue pitting the communists in Beijing with millions of Hong Kongers (the majority, if elections are anything to go by) is a variation of what has been the same sticking point since 1997. To get Hong Kong, China co-signed with Britain the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which it pledged to respect Hong Kong’s freedoms and separate system for 50 years after the handover.
Article 5 of the Joint Declaration was clear:
The current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will the life-style. Rights and freedoms, including those of the person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of correspondence, of strike, of choice of occupation, of academic research and of religious belief will be ensured by law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Private property, ownership of enterprises, legitimate right of inheritance and foreign investment will be protected by law.
Things have not quite turned out that way. The communist party that still rules in Beijing is so afraid of any sign of freedom and democracy that it began to retreat on its promises.
Two years ago, it reneged on pledge that the 2017 elections for chief executive would be open to universal suffrage. Yes, they would be, but only after a committee controlled by Beijing selected the candidates.
Such obduracy unleashed demonstrations by millions in the streets of Hong Kong. This birthed the “Umbrella Movement” that Wong leads, nothing less than the largest pro-democracy movement in China since demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square were massacred by Chinese troops in June 1989.
Then last year, Chinese forces kidnapped from Hong Kong a publisher who sold anti-Beijing books, and put him in prison for months. Four of his colleagues met the same fate; one of them was nabbed in Bangkok, Thailand.
Then this month, China’s rubber-stamp legislature disqualified from the city’s Legislative Council two elected Hong Kong lawmakers who did not take the approved oath of office, but pledged their loyalty to the “Hong Kong nation” and used the insulting pronunciation for China that was used by Imperial Japan.
As the Economist put it, the legislators’ actions “at times seemed puerile,” but “the Communist Party’s own miscalculations have created today’s dissent” in Hong Kong.
Wong does not condone their actions, nor does he seek independence. But as he and Ngo wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week, “Neither sovereignty nor nationalism are prerequisites to self-determination. That right, according to the U.N., applies to all non-self-governing peoples. It is a fundamental right, based in history, that Hong Kongers deserve to exercise.”
By making another Tibet out of Hong Kong, China has miscalculated. We will find out soon enough how big an error it has made.
