Severe Acute Tyranny Syndrome
BORK, ELLEN
Severe Acute Tyranny Syndrome Beijing tightens the vise on Hong Kong. BY ELLEN BORK IN A FEW WEEKS, China will further extend its control over Hong Kong. Laws on subversion, treason, and...
...proxies in the legislature block the elected democrats, for example, from preventing a rollback of democratic practices in local government...
...It is part and parcel of China's clever Hong Kong strategy: Create a veneer of legality by adopting elaborate procedures and institutional arrangements, and the international community will stand aside...
...That is much less than Hong Kong's people were promised when they were returned to Chinese rule...
...Indeed, enactment of the national security measures is required by Article 23 of the Basic Law...
...Under U.S...
...That's true only if you are a Chinese official...
...A delegation of democrats from Hong Kong arrives in Washington this week, seeking support for their struggle...
...For the record, deputy State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker affirmed last fall that "a democratically elected government, answerable to the will of the people, is the best way to ensure the protection of fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong...
...That is exactly what the United States has done...
...So on that much there is agreement...
...Hong Kong's new national security laws will be enforced not openly, as in a democratic system, but indirectly, by an arbitrary and repressive regime that locks up its own democratic activists and regards Hong Kong as a base for subversion of the mainland...
...For many years now, the United States has swallowed every infringement of freedom and democracy in Hong Kong, finding each one justified under China's constitutional arrangements...
...China's Ellen Bork is deputy director of the Project for the New American Century...
...official in Hong Kong, Consul General James Keith, said that "decisions on Article 23 legislation are something for Hong Kong people to make," glossing over the fact that Hong Kong's people do not get to make these decisions...
...Some Hong Kong democrats favor convening a constitutional convention...
...Hong Kong's people get little attention these days (aside from SARS, which their undemocratic government badly mishandled by imitating Beijing's approach...
...Of course, China would object...
...law, the State Department is required to report on how China lives up to its promises to leave Hong Kong alone, and the president is charged with determining whether Hong Kong is sufficiently autonomous to merit its separate treatment under U.S...
...Most recently, the top U.S...
...They should realize, however, that supporting democracy in Hong Kong would strengthen American influence with China, not to mention helping mainland democracy activists, who, unlike those in Hong Kong, serve long prison terms...
...When necessary, China, invited by its proxies, steps in to interfere with the Hong Kong judiciary, although the courts were promised independence...
...American officials would rather not deal with this either, feeling they have much bigger concerns to manage with Beijing...
...The pro-democracy delegation—whose members include politicians, a free labor activist, and a representative of the press—deserves the full attention of members of Congress and the Bush administration...
...Laws on subversion, treason, and sedition, among others, will be enacted by the partially elected legislature, whose antidemocratic members hold the majority under the Beijing-drafted constitution known as the Basic Law...
...All of this was foreseeable as early as 1984, when the deal between China and Great Britain was done...
...Deng Xiaoping had made clear that the mainland's interpretation of "one country, two systems" was entirely different from the West's...
...Since before the handover, Washington has maintained that everything in Hong Kong is going well...
...China picks the chief executive...
...To be fair, Keith's disingenuous-ness is official policy...
...But Washington preferred to remain neutral about China's plans for Hong Kong's so-called autonomy...
...But this was an abdication...
...As assistant secretary of state Winston Lord told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1996, the United States was not entitled to judge whether China's treatment of Hong Kong conformed to its promises...
...Although for years, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill pushed administrations of both parties to mean what they said about defending Hong Kong's rights and freedoms, even Congress, with few exceptions, has recently fallen silent on the issue...
...The only country with enough clout to contest the slow but steady tightening of Beijing's grip, the United States has failed to make an issue of the national security laws, as it has of many other bad developments since the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China...
...The United States," said Lord, "does not offer legal interpretations of agreements to which it is not a party...
...But enough talk of legality...
...Yet something can be done...
...law in such matters as export controls...
Vol. 8 • June 2003 • No. 38
