by Roie Yellinek
Beijing is signaling its determination to expand its area of control and influence even in the face of international criticism.
Police face off against protesters in Hong Kong,
image by Studio Incendo via Flickr CC
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,643, July 14, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In 1997, after 156
years of British rule, the United Kingdom transferred responsibility for
the city-state of Hong Kong to China. Twenty-three years later, in
2020, China enacted a security law that extends its powers over Hong
Kong in contravention of the terms of that transfer. In doing so,
Beijing is signaling its determination to expand its area of control
and influence even in the face of international criticism.
In June 2020, Beijing enacted a security law that
extended its power over Hong Kong in contravention of the terms agreed
upon with Britain when the latter transferred the former colony to
China. Beijing took this step without consulting the local parliament,
as was required by the transfer agreement. It did so in defiance of both
inevitable international criticism and the rioting and protests that
have occurred in Hong Kong in recent months.
Under the new law, 7.5 million Hong Kong residents
will be subject to restrictions imposed on Chinese residents, including
a life sentence for “subversion,” a routine indictment used by the
Chinese government to imprison and silence its opponents and human
rights activists. This is probably the most significant political change
in Hong Kong since its transfer to China.
Why has Beijing chosen this moment to impose the
law? China is, after all, still trying to deal with the fallout of the
coronavirus pandemic, which erupted in Wuhan. It is also engrossed in
border battles with India and Russia even as it gets more deeply
involved in an expanding competition with the US for global hegemony.
Beijing did this because it can, and because it wants to continue to expand its sphere of influence.
The Chinese have been paying close attention to
Washington’s response to their conduct for some time, from the
oppression of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang to China’s aggressive
operations in the South China Sea to the eruption of the global
coronavirus crisis, which was largely caused by China’s initial
blunders. Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, said
Washington has failed to understand China’s international conduct,
calling it “the greatest failure of US foreign policy since the 1930s.”
In every one of the areas listed above, Beijing
came out virtually unscathed. This bolstered its confidence that it can
do whatever it wants to bring Hong Kong into line. By imposing the
security law on Hong Kong, Xi Jinping’s China is signaling that it will
not tolerate any criticism of its conduct, whether internal or external.
As Zhang Xiaoming, deputy head of the Chinese Office of Hong Kong and
Macau, put it in response
to sanctions imposed by the US Senate on Beijing: “Some countries are
threatening us with sanctions. I would say this is the logic of bandits…
Long gone are the days when we Chinese had to takes cues from others.”
The question is whether the Western nations will
be able to read the writing on the wall or continue to keep their heads
in the sand.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/china-security-law-hong-kong/
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