HK’s slow-motion national security suicide

Nothing underscores the political perversity mummifying Hong Kong better than the long-standing inaction over Article 23 of its Basic Law. Asked about rumors that she might try to pass it next year, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor reaffirmed the government’s long-standing position that there was no timetable.

Article 23 mandates that China’s premier Special Administrative Region (SAR) pass national security legislation against sedition and other subversive acts. Hong Kong in 2018 is the only significant place in the world that does not have such laws. And at a time when the West is pulling out all the stops to confront, contain and subvert China, mainstream discourse in Hong Kong continues to treat Article 23 as some radioactive monster, to be avoided at all cost.

That is no accident. Since Hong Kong returned to China over 20 years ago, local anti-Beijing forces have worked with the West’s agents to depict Article 23 as irremediably toxic, playing on deepseated fears of the Communist Party in the territory. When the SAR last tried to pass even a watered-down version of the national security law, in 2003, the pan anti-Communists managed to muster a protest rally of 500,000 people. The show of force obliged then-chief executive Tung Chee-hwa to scuttle the legislation and resign not long after.

Since then, Article 23 has been the ultimate political hot potato in Hong Kong. Anytime anyone dares mention it publicly, much less touch it, he or she is bludgeoned down by the pan anti-Communist coalition of politicians, media, educationists, student activists and even the judicial system. Their battle cry has been: “Article 23 will threaten our freedoms!”

Meanwhile, over the years, the pan anti-Communists have certainly exercised their freedoms – to indoctrinate an entire generation of Hongkongers against their own nation, to orchestrate anti-Beijing eruptions like the Occupy Central movement in 2014 and the violent Mongkok riots of 2016, and to facilitate the rise of a previously inconceivable Hong Kong independence movement. They have carefully and systematically abused the freedoms under One Country, Two Systems for their own nefarious ends, which ultimately hurt Hong Kong and prevent the entire community from making progress. If Article 23 were to be passed, of course, their life work would be in jeopardy.

Hong Kong’s anti-Beijing subversives needn’t worry, however. Despite recent calls by mainland officials to get tough on independence advocacy, Hong Kong leaders continue to pussyfoot around the matter. For Lam even to acknowledge that she and her officials have been working hard to create favorable conditions to discuss Article 23 is an act of great political courage, by Hong Kong standards. Naturally, “we do not have a timetable for enacting the legislation yet.”

So Hong Kong, once the glittering “Pearl of the Orient” and can-do capital of the world, continues its slow-motion decline.