Hong Kong’s moment of truth

The great Hong Kong illusion lay in the belief that a second system based on economic freedom and the rule of law could be maintained for 50 years within a communist dictatorship. Calling the Joint Declaration an international treaty and lodging it with the United Nations was beside the point, because neither Britain nor anyone else was going to go to war to defend it.

What seemingly gave the illusion substance was the belief that preserving Hong Kong’s capitalist way of life was in China’s self-interest, especially given the country’s own embrace of the market economy under Deng’s guidance. There was also the remote hope that Chinese capitalism would gradually lead to greater democracy, so that the two systems would eventually converge.

Things did not turn out that way. China’s own economic miracle made Hong Kong less important to it economically, while Deng’s violent suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests eviscerated any hope that communist rule would wither away.

Hong Kong’s current crisis arose over the implementation of the 1990 Basic Law, a constitution designed to give effect to the Joint Declaration. The Basic Law’s Article 23 states that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) “shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government”. The HKSAR would also “prohibit foreign political organisations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region,” while barring “political organisations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organisations or bodies.”

Article 23 was designed to set the limits on Hong Kong’s autonomy, and to help ensure that China retained control of security, defence and foreign policy. British attempts before 1997 to limit the provision’s scope to actual acts of violence – as opposed to expressions of opinion and politics – were vetoed by China. And the Hong Kong government’s post-handover efforts to implement Article 23 failed in the face of popular protests.

China’s legal position is not without merit, because Hong Kong’s guaranteed autonomy never extended to national security. But the heart of the issue is that the new security law breaches the spirit, if not the letter, of the Joint Declaration, because the political dynamics of the “two systems” have started to diverge so profoundly.

But none of this is likely to deter China, which has waited 23 years for “its” security law to prevail in Hong Kong and is unlikely to back down now. So, Hong Kong’s citizens will face their moment of truth: either knuckle under, or get out.