Why Hong Kong Matters China is swallowing a showcase of freedom. Will Trump speak up?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-hong-kong-matters-11560466365
The young demonstrators in Hong Kong this week have done the world a favor. In calling attention to their plight, they are educating the rest of us in the nature of President Xi Jinping’s Communist Party rule in Beijing. Donald Trump in particular should be listening—and speaking up.
The demonstrators—and the million Hong Kongers who marched peacefully Sunday—object specifically to a pending law that would allow extradition from the territory to the Mainland. The people know this will put anyone who criticizes China in jeopardy of being sent to the Mainland for almost certain conviction and punishment. Hong Kong’s legacy of British law will still control—except in cases where China decides otherwise.
The official disclaimers from Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam that China has no such intentions are meaningless. She was appointed by Beijing and takes her orders accordingly. She is insisting on moving ahead with the law despite the mass protests because China has demanded it. Her job, and perhaps her own future freedom, would be jeopardized if she dared to resist.
The new law is itself a violation of China’s promise to Hong Kong that it could continue to control its legal system for 50 years after its handover from the British in 1997. As these columns wrote in 1984 after Margaret Thatcher struck her deal with Deng Xiaoping, “the essence of the [joint] declaration is that five million largely free people will soon have their futures determined by a totalitarian government not known for tolerance or stability.” We urged Britain to amend its Nationality Act to admit to England all Hong Kongers who wanted to leave.
China has been stable in the 35 years since, and for much of that time it was reforming economically and even easing up its political controls. But in the last decade, and especially in the Xi era, the Party has reasserted unbending control over Chinese politics and much of private Chinese life.
It has herded a million Uighurs into re-education camps, arrested lawyers defending dissenters, harassed Christians in the underground church, and by next year will use facial-recognition surveillance to assign citizens a “social credit” score that rates them on good or bad behavior.
The slow asphyxiation of Hong Kong’s freedom is part of this trend, and it shows how the Xi regime will also abandon its international pledges. Hong Kong has assisted China’s economic rise as an entrepôt to the world and legal safe harbor. Yet Beijing fears the territory because it is an example of how free Chinese can govern themselves.
Mr. Xi is squeezing Hong Kong because he can and because he thinks he will pay no price for it. If Ms. Lam jams the extradition law through the Legislative Council, the public will have no recourse beyond more protests or fleeing the territory. The anger in the streets is the despair of people who know they will soon be unable to escape Beijing’s arbitrary justice.
The world owes these people its attention. The State Department and some in Congress have spoken up. But Donald Trump has so far said nothing, though the U.S. has considerable investment in Hong Kong. Speaking the truth about Hong Kong won’t jeopardize a trade deal with Mr. Xi, who will only sign something in his own interests. Mr. Trump might even improve the chances of a good deal by calling out China’s failure to keep its commitment to Britain and Hong Kong.
Mr. Xi wants to expand China’s influence by narrowing the space for democratic self-government across the globe. An American President’s duty is to push back and expand the scope for liberty.
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