Chinese language President Xi Jinping visited Hong Kong on June 30 and July 1 to commemorate the twenty fifth anniversary of the top of 156 years of British rule by refusing to remain in a single day, a sign, in accordance with knowledgeable sources, of Xi’s fears for his security.
The identical fears have been a part of the rationale that he has not left mainland China for almost two and a half years, previous to this go to. As an alternative, Xi slept in Shenzhen, from whence he got here to Hong Kong by high-speed practice. In distinction, when former Chinese language President Jiang Zemin visited Hong Kong in 1997, he stayed at a resort owned by his buddy Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong’s richest man.
The truth that Xi didn’t trouble to remain the evening can also be illustrative of the town’s diminished standing as a world metropolis. Whereas Xi desires Hong Kong to be an essential monetary hub on his phrases, it will likely be beneath draconian rule by the Chinese language Communist Get together, not on the phrases of liberal Hong Kong folks and expatriates. Xi desires Hong Kong to prosper as a CCP-dominated polity.
In the course of the president’s go to, drones have been banned throughout the town, whereas the airspace above the Conference Heart, the venue of the handover ceremony, was a no-fly zone. A number of layers of barricades emanated in concentric circles, with doorways typically guarded by police. Within the method, cops have been stationed at intervals, sporting flak jackets with digital devices. Saying crowds have been muted was an understatement. There appeared little urge for food for the commemoration past rigorously orchestrated commemorations.
Newspaper distributors have been giving freely free copies of China Every day, which usually prices HK$10 (US$1.27). The entrance web page of the state newspaper was splashed with articles lauding the handover, together with a narrative on Xi commending the earlier Hong Kong chief govt Carrie Lam for quelling the protests that rocked the town from 2019 to 2020.
The protests abated after Beijing imposed the Nationwide Safety Legislation in the midst of 2020. Tons of have since been arrested and impartial media shops like Stand Information and Apple Every day have been shut. The town’s retired Catholic cardinal has been arrested together with its most distinguished writer, the architect of the essential regulation governing relations with China, and 47 distinguished democracy advocates.
Throughout his speech, Xi mentioned that after “the wind and rain,” Hong Kong folks now notice ”the town can’t afford to descend into chaos.” He highlighted the necessity to protect the widespread regulation system inherited from the previous British rulers. However he careworn that “The regime should be within the palms of patriots… [there is] not a rustic or a jurisdiction the place its residents would enable those that usually are not patriotic, or are even traitors maintain political energy.”
In a touch that China’s model of “one nation two methods” is more likely to stay in Hong Kong – if in China’s vastly restricted model – nicely previous its expiry date in 2047, he added, “There is no such thing as a motive to vary such a very good system, and it should be maintained for a very long time.”
His remarks on “one nation, two methods” drew applause from the 1,300 rigorously chosen visitors on the ceremony, which included John Lee, Carrie Lam, and Donald Tsang, a former Hong Kong chief govt who had been jailed. Additionally current have been native tycoons like Allan Zeman and Victor Li, the eldest son of Li Ka-shing.
Round lunchtime on July 1, Asia Sentinel visited the Causeway Bay district, the place protest marches have been held for many years on July 1 since 2003. No demonstration was seen and the police presence in that space was seen. Asia Sentinel got here throughout a number of policemen frisking a person in Causeway Bay.
“I bought combined emotions about what Hong Kong is popping into,” a mainland Chinese language lady who beforehand lived in Hong Kong advised Asia Sentinel.
“As a Chinese language, I do know it’s inevitable and it marks the top of humiliation, and I’m certainly happy with that. But as a Hong Konger, I in all probability don’t like the truth that Hong Kong is turning into one other regular metropolis within the mainland,” mentioned the lady who declined to be named.
Patten’s criticisms
The distinction in opinion couldn’t be extra stark. On the identical day Christopher Patten, the final British governor of Hong Kong, delivered a scathing assault at what he known as the “Leninist” authorities in Beijing and the “Quisling authorities” of post-handover Hong Kong, named after Vidkun Quisling, the puppet chief of Norway beneath German occupation throughout World Conflict II. Patten mentioned these harsh phrases in a video posted on July 1 on the Fb web page of Hong Kong Watch, a UK-based nongovernmental group (NGO) which displays Hong Kong affairs.
“There is no such thing as a query that what you’ve seen in Hong Kong is the try to forestall any democratic expression of view, to finish freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry and freedom of the press, to engineer the souls of younger folks in Hong Kong by imposing on them a Communist curriculum, and naturally to begin to erode the rule of regulation because the Chinese language Leninists don’t really imagine that there’s a distinction that needs to be drawn between the legislature, the judiciary and the manager,” mentioned Patten.
The Quisling regime” of Hong Kong, he mentioned, “has connived at turning Hong Kong into an appendage of the Chinese language surveillance state. What was as soon as admired as Asia’s best police service is no longer serving the folks of Hong Kong however serving the Ministry of State Safety in Beijing.”
“They’ve crushed democracy, they’re crushing freedom placing it in handcuffs, they’ve crushed freedom of speech, and the Quislings are merely going together with that, as we will see that with the case of Apple Every day….which they hated as a result of its proprietor (Jimmy Lai) has been a refugee from Communism and someone who criticized Chinese language conduct with the bloodbath of individuals in and round Tiananmen Sq. in 1989,” Patten declared.
Lai is at the moment in jail for violating the Nationwide Safety Legislation.
“Why has the Chinese language Leninist get together performed this?” Patten requested rhetorically.
“They don’t seem to be safe of their boots, these Leninist bosses in Beijing. What they’re frightened of is the freedoms which Hong Kong displays,” Patten defined. That features a free press and the flexibility to name leaders into consideration, “which the Chinese language Communist regime realizes that in the end will carry their regime crashing down.”
“I don’t assume these concepts are going to be snuffed out. I feel they may survive lengthy after the Chinese language Leninist regime has been swept into the ash can of historical past,” Patten predicted.
What would Deng Xiaoping do?
At a Hong Kong International Correspondents’ Membership webinar on June 29, Zhang Weiwei, a former interpreter for Deng Xiaoping, mentioned if the late Chinese language chief was alive at this time, the Nationwide Safety Legislation or one thing comparable may have been utilized in Hong Kong a lot earlier.
In the course of the Nineteen Eighties, Deng negotiated the handover of Hong Kong with then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Zhang, who’s now director of the China Institute at Fudan College in Shanghai, recalled that in 1992, officers of the Individuals’s Liberation Military (PLA) introduced Deng with a report on the Chinese language army preparation for the handover on June 30 and July 1, 1997. Deng mentioned it was “too gentle,” Zhang disclosed.
Deng mentioned this army preparation was for a peaceable switch, Zhang mentioned. Deng requested the PLA officers if the British did one thing surprising so there was no peaceable switch, whether or not the PLA was militarily ready for a non-peaceful switch, Zhang mentioned. So the PLA redrafted the plan, he added.
