PATRICK LAWRENCE: US, China & Hong Kongs Betrayal
May 26, 2020
The territorys likely loss of autonomy is a tragedy made worse because it
could have been avoided.
Protesters march in heavy rain against the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill,
August 18, 2019. (Studio Incendo, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
Chinas announcement last Thursday that the National Peoples Congress has
placed new security legislation on the table that provides a legal basis for
direct interventions in Hong Kong is a bold move by any measure, its
consequences many. It is in all likelihood the beginning of the end of the
territorys autonomy under the one country, two systems accord negotiated
as China reassumed sovereignty over the former British colony in 1997. This
is a tragedy, made worse because it could have been avoided.
But the implications of Beijings plans to assert its prerogative in Hong
Kong do not stop there. Considered more broadly, this is a major, calculated
strike against Washingtons obnoxious efforts to preserve its primacy at the
other end of the Pacific even as its long postwar decades of unchallenged
power in East Asia fade inexorably into history.
Hong Kongs 7.5 million people were betrayed last week. But we should be
careful to understand who has done the betraying.
Beijing could have managed the Hong Kong crisis with more humanity and
subtlety after protests erupted last year in response to a proposed
extradition law introduced by an ineffectual local administration. Given
that the SinoBritish declaration signed in 1984 raised questions of
sovereignty and there are none more sensitive in Beijing the territory
was bound to be a hot potato during the 50-year period it was designated a
Special Administrative Region.
Hong Kongs democracy movement was up and running even before Prince Charles
lowered the Union Jack for the last time in July 1997. Its intent from the
first was to defend Hong Kongs political institutions and liberties against
the mainlands encroachments while expanding the democratic process to
include a fully elected legislature. Having witnessed this at close range
and reported on it from time to time, I see no grounds whatsoever to
question the movements authenticity. It was an expression of a unique,
independent Hong Kong identity that had taken root gradually during the
decades following Maos revolution in 1949.
American Backing
Joshua Wong speaks at the United States Capitol in 2019. (House Foreign
Affairs Committee, Wikimedia Commons)
But in the course of the past years increasingly heated demonstrations it
is not clear when prominent figures in Hong Kongs broad pro-democracy
constituency began seeking American backing for their confrontation with the
local government and, behind it, Beijing. Joshua Wong, who emerged as an
influential voice following an earlier wave of protests known as the
Umbrella Movement, made a much-remarked trip to Washington last autumn,
during which he met with various members of Congress including Marco
Rubio, the hyper-hawkish Florida senator with a pronounced taste for regime
change operations.
Such contacts have turned out to be common, in Hong Kong and abroad. In the
course of things it also emerged that various civil society groups in Hong
Kong had been accepting millions of dollars in support from the National
Endowment for Democracy, the notorious coup-cultivating appendage of the
State Department that is funded primarily by Congress.
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There are three things to say about these connections.
One, it was monumentally unwise on the part of democracy advocates to seek
U.S. involvement and seek it so visibly. Anyone with an understanding of
the NEDs pernicious purposes and Secretary of State Mike Pompeos incessant
efforts to spark confrontations with China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and
other nations that remain beyond the perimeters of American empire could not
miss the provocation implicit in these connections.
Two, accepting U.S. support was an insensitive, inept betrayal of the spirit
of the Hong Kong democracy movement. It was never intended to turn the
territory into some kind of neoliberal outpost on Chinas border a variant
of the mess Washington has made in Ukraine. In another time, Hong Kongs
democrats would have found their natural allies in the NonAligned Movement.
Three, if Joshua Wong and his incautious comrades had set out to give
Beijing ample cause to start short-circuiting the one country, two systems
formula, they could not have made a more efficient job of it. It is a bitter
thought, but Beijing as touchy as they come about territorial integrity
since the Opium Wars and the unequal treaties that followed has sufficient
reason to deem Hong Kong a national security question. It wasnt always one,
but it is one now.
Egregious Treachery
Pro-democracy protesters waving U.S. and U.K. flags in Hong Kong, Nov. 28,
2019. (Studio Incendo, Flickr)
We come now to the most egregious of the treacheries inflicted on Hong
Kongs idealist democrats. In effect, the Trump administration, with Pompeo
and other reckless boors in the lead, has inexcusably turned what amounts to
a domestic conflict into an occasion to destabilize a nation it considers an
adversary because it will not bend to Americas extravagant imperial
ambitions.
Weve seen this before, of course most recently in Ukraine and Syria.
There are always casualties on these kinds of occasions, and Washington is
always indifferent to them. In Hong Kongs case these are the about-to-be
crushed aspirations of a people desiring nothing more than ordinary
self-determination. As demonstrators returned to the streets Sunday, one
watched with admiration but little expectation or hope.
In another time, Hong Kongs democrats would have found their natural
allies in the NonAligned Movement.
Washington has been cultivating the Hong Kong crisis for its own designs for
many months. Last November President Trump signed a bill providing for
sanctions to be imposed on any Chinese or Hong Kong official judged
responsible for human rights abuses in the territory. The House sent the
bill to the Senate with one dissenting vote, and the Senate passed it
unanimously.
We were supposed to think this reflected the sentiments of the compassionate
hearts one always finds in the administration and on Capitol Hill you
know, the morally sound people who think nothing of strangling the
populations of Iran and Venezuela while prolonging the suffering in Syria by
many years and many hundreds of thousands of casualties.
We are now treated to the virtuous pose once again. Any effort to impose
national security legislation that does not reflect the will of the people
of Hong Kong would be highly destabilizing, and would be met with strong
condemnation from the United States and the international community, the
State Department grandly declared Friday.
The will of Hong Kong people has nothing to do with what Washington is up
to. Humane compassion and democratic principle have nothing to do with it.
Subterfuge and aggression are the story here.
Wondering Why
The New York Times published an exquisitely disingenuous piece last Friday,
wherein a rewrite man in New York furrowed a worried brow wondering why Xi
Jinping would authorize this step as the National Peoples Congress (NPC)
opened its annual two-day session in Beijing. Maybe it was because the
administration in Hong Kong had fumbled before the onslaught of protesters
last year. Maybe the Chinese president is taking advantage of the Covid19
pandemic.
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A day later the Gray Lady had made up its mind: Xi is working a crisis, it
declared in the page-one lead. What use Xi might find in the Covid19
calamity as it relates to Hong Kong is beyond this columnists imagining,
but there you have it. Xi, were invited to assume, thinks the world will
somehow not notice the NPCs new legislative agenda.
The truth is less lame and far more consequential. Ever since the Pentagon
declared China a strategic adversary two years ago, Washington has sought to
push Beijing ever further into a corner with a trade war, threatened
sanctions, aggressive maneuvers in the South China Sea, and lately shrill,
ungrounded accusations of malpractice in managing the Covid19 outbreak.
Pompeo threatened Friday to rescind Hong Kongs status as a favored trading
entity.
A few weeks ago in this space I warned that if Washington pushes Beijing too
hard and too offensively it risks doing to China what Versailles did to
Germany when it settled the peace in 1919. It is difficult to overstate the
importance China attaches to the achievement of parity with the West.
Westerners refuse to recognize this at their peril.
We may now be witnessing the front end of precisely the kind of response I
earlier suggested. It is impossible to imagine that Beijing is other than
fully aware of the consequences attaching to the legislation it just put on
the table in terms of damaged confidence among Western corporations, bankers
and investors. The beckoning conclusion is that it has just announced its
indifference to such considerations.
The Chinese are not blind. They see as well as the rest of us that the West
is gradually collapsing, its day done. Accustomed to thinking in terms of
the longue durée, they know better than most that the future lies with the
emergent nonWest, of which it is a leader. There are already reports that
Beijings 14th FiveYear Plan, due to be published next March, will reflect
a purposeful shift in Chinas relations with the West, the U.S. in
particular.
Many decades ago, the great Sukarno, Indonesias founding president, had his
own confrontations with America (which eventually cultivated a coup that
deposed him). Go to hell with your foreign aid, the Bung, as he was
affectionately known, famously declared in a national radio address. It
appears Xi has just said something of the same thing.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the
International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer.
His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American
Century (Yale). Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick
Lawrence.