On Hong Kong
For the sixth straight month, the people of Hong Kong are fighting for their liberty and their lives against a tyrannical government in…
Credit: National Review
For the sixth straight month, the people of Hong Kong are fighting for their liberty against a tyrannical government in Beijing. They have braved bullets and tear gas in the streets to reject China’s creeping influence over their legal right to self-government. At a time when many around the world are beginning to question the strength of constitutional democracy and the rule of law, Hong Kongers are risking their lives to protest totalitarianism. Yet, so far, America has been unacceptably silent.
In many respects, the plight of Hong Kong mirrors the plight of our early American colonies. Since 1984, the people of Hong Kong have been governed under the legal authority of an international treaty signed between China and Britain — the Sino-British Joint Declaration. As part of that agreement, China submitted Hong Kong to a transition period of British sovereignty until a handover in 1997, subject to certain important conditions. The most important condition was that Hong Kong would retain its capitalist economic system, along with the basic freedoms required for capitalism to function. This arrangement was aptly dubbed the “one country, two systems” policy and was to remain in place until 2047.
Yet, since 1997, China has routinely and systematically violated these legally binding commitments to both Hong Kong and the international community. First, Hong Kong’s government has been held back from undertaking the types of reforms that would secure the liberal foundation of free-market capitalism, despite its commitment to do so after 2007. To this day in Hong Kong, universal suffrage does not exist, the chief executive is selected by an election committee heavily influenced by Beijing, and the legislative council is only partially democratically elected. This has kept Hong Kong’s government insulated from popular accountability — forcing the people to resort to mass demonstrations to have their voices heard.
Second, China has directly intervened in Hong Kong’s development, flouting the terms of its international treaty. In 2002, China pushed Hong Kong to adopt an anti-subversion measure which sought to tamp down criticism of China but that was later tabled in the face of public agitation. Then, in 2014, the Chinese government published a white paper that questioned Hong Kong’s autonomy and cast doubt on China’s commitment to the “one country, two systems” policy. China even attempted to pre-screen candidates for Hong Kong’s chief executive position to ensure a pro-Beijing bent. Yet again Hong Kongers responded, taking to the streets by the thousands in what became known as the Umbrella Protests.
Most recently, China has again sought to undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy by passing new extradition laws that would permit Hong Kong citizens charged with a crime to be sent to Chinese courts and tried under Chinese law. This assault on Hong Kong’s independent judiciary strikes right at the core of the region’s autonomy. If Hong Kongers must answer to the Chinese government instead of their own, they will have lost a critical pillar of self-government.
To be sure, China is not invading Hong Kong and dissolving its legislature, but neither is it respecting the terms of the Joint Declaration to which it remains bound. China’s posture towards Hong Kong is fairly obvious: it fears what might happen if Hong Kongers are truly left to govern themselves in the presence of free-market capitalism for the next thirty years. It fears that the liberating impulse of such a regime will whet Hong Kongers’ appetites for freedom and make their ultimate integration into China’s communist fold virtually impossible by 2047. Such an outcome would mean a humiliating loss for Chinese communism in the battle of ideas.
To its credit, China is right on the money. It turns out, when given the choice, people the world over choose freedom — and so China has resorted to a death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy to assert its dominance over Hong Kong, erode the legitimacy of the Joint Declaration’s 2047 timeframe, and limit the incidence of true freedom in the region.
As any American knows, liberty and self-rule are not lost in one fell swoop. They are eroded gradually over time in the hopes that the subjugated won’t notice that they are slowly losing their freedom. In this way, a people are drained of their hope and their expectations are adjusted. Hong Kongers understand this — and the limited freedoms of their neighbors just outside the HKSAR remind them of the stakes. It’s why they have taken to the street by the thousands to agitate for their rights. It’s why 71 percent of them voted in unprecedented numbers over the weekend to elect 300 pro-democracy candidates to their 452 district council seats. It’s why they are singing a revolutionary tune and begging the world to listen.
But, so far the White House isn’t listening. The president is narrowly focused on his own political position ahead of the 2020 elections and is begging Xi to agree to just about anything so that some kind of a “victory” can be announced before November. This posture led Mr. Trump to announce on Friday that he might veto two measures recently voted out of the House and Senate by overwhelmingly bipartisan margins. The first bill instructs the Secretary of State to certify once a year that Hong Kong has enough autonomy to retain its special trading relationship with the United States. The second prohibits the sale of rubber bullets and tear gas to Hong Kong police. These are small but meaningful steps that would send a clear signal to China and the people of Hong Kong who carry our flag through their streets: America still stands on the side of freedom.
A veto of these measures would be an affront to 200 years of American foreign policy and undermine our national commitment to liberty, freedom, and democracy. It is this commitment that ultimately defines us as a nation — not our GDP or trade balance. It need not lead us to right wrongs all around the world or to reconstruct foreign lands in our image. But, it must remain a commitment nonetheless, or the liberating values that America represents will recede as the totalitarian impulses of others take root.
We are engaged in a battle of ideas with China that will shape the course of the 21st century. Xi is betting that we as Americans have grown tired of our idealism and are eager to forfeit our role as a global leader to focus solely on our own internal political problems. He hopes that our selfishness and short-term lens will consume our ability to think and act strategically on the world stage with generational outcomes in mind. If we shirk our values, if we stand for nothing — Xi will win that bet and China’s version of modern totalitarianism will convince other leaders around the world that democracy and the rule of law are not suited for the challenges of tomorrow.
Must the consequence of our overzealous extension in the wake of September 11th really be the abandonment of our values? Does America as a nation really stand for nothing more than the material well-being of our own citizens? Aren’t our own futures inextricably linked to the cause of liberty throughout the world? The world depends on a strong America that stands for something more than itself. We are a nation defined by our just causes. We penned the Declaration of Independence, we fought a bloody Civil War against our family and neighbors to end slavery, we liberated continents from the twin scourges of Nazism and Soviet communism. All of these things cost us money and lives — but we won entire centuries and blazed new paths of human growth. If the nation that did those things can no longer muster the moral courage to pass a few Congressional resolutions to stand with a beleaguered people fighting for freedom against one of our chief geopolitical adversaries, we truly have lost our way.