Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po delivers the 2020-2021 fiscal year to the Hong Kong Legislative Council on February 26, 2020.
Photo:
jerome favre / Shutterstock
We almost sympathize with Paul Chan Mo-po, who is writing a letter to a nearby publisher. The Hong Kong financial secretary is upset that the Heritage Foundation has given up Hong Kong on the annual Index of Economic Freedom after years at the top of the list.
Mr. Chan has the impossible task of denying what everyone can see clearly: The Communist Party of China is rebuilding Hong Kong after its own image of the continent. That was the point of view of Heritage’s Ed Feulner in his explanation on these pages last week. Until Singapore ranked first in the index, Hong Kong reigned in first place for 25 years. As the preface to the 2019 Index mentioned, “The Hong Kong government has put ads all over the page to promote its number one ranking.” But China’s aggressive assimilation of Hong Kong, Mr. Feulner wrote, turns it into another Chinese city.
Mr Chan disagreed, citing “the principle of one country, two systems”. This was the promise of autonomy for Hong Kong embodied in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration which set out the conditions for the return of the former British colony to China. What Mr Chan is not saying is that Beijing has stated that the Joint Declaration is a dead letter.
In 2017, Lu Kang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, called the Joint Declaration “a historical document that no longer has any realistic significance.” Hong Kongers have every reason to believe it after pursuing China by adopting an unpopular national security law, the provisions of which include allowing Beijing to take several cases from Hong Kong to China for trial.
Mr. Chan wants readers to believe that economic freedom continues, regardless of political repression. But China is not Singapore. In China, dissidents simply disappear. Foreign businessmen could be arrested and detained as diplomatic hostages as two innocent Canadians must now press Ottawa not to extradite a Huawei executive to the US
Economic freedom? Tell Apple Daily editor Jimmy Lai, who remains in prison because the government invoked the national security law, overturning the presumption of common law bail that is supposed to govern Hong Kong. Xia Baolong – the highest official in Beijing for Hong Kong – says that only true “patriots” are suitable for the “administrative, legislative and judicial bodies” of the city.
China also dictates corporate boardrooms. Two years ago, the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration asked Cathay Pacific Airways to ban any employee who participated in “illegal protests” from flights to mainland China’s airspace and began transmitting information about the entire crew before any flight to China. China to be approved … lower the price of its stock. In May, former Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying called for a boycott of HSBC in London because he did not directly approve the national security law. His senior executive soon signed a petition supporting the law.
Our advice to Mr. Chan is to stop trying to convince the world that Hong Kong is what it used to be and to accept that it is now dealing with the man who really leads Hong Kong: Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Main Street: Jimmy Lai from Hong Kong goes to jail – and Pope Francis says nothing. Images: Reuters / Zuma Press Composite: Mark Kelly
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It appeared in the printed edition of March 11, 2021.