West’s offers help drain HK ‘bad blood’

Traitors’ fleeing to allow city to regain stability, vitality: experts

To further meddle in Hong Kong’s affairs, US and UK politicians, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have jumped out to try to lure Hong Kong residents with relaxed immigration policies, a move which Chinese observers predicted will do nothing to affect the implementation of the national security law in Hong Kong but actually helps the Chinese city drain out national traitors, who are “bad blood” poisoning Hong Kong.

The UK is prepared to change its immigration rules if China imposes a national security law on Hong Kong, Johnson said on Wednesday in an op-ed for the South China Morning Post. The British prime minister added that China’s decision to impose a national security law on Hong Kong will “curtail its freedoms and dramatically erode its autonomy.”

His response came after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday that the US is considering welcoming people from Hong Kong in response to China’s push for a national security legislation.

Earlier Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also expressed concern for 300,000 Canadian citizens living in Hong Kong but stopped short of committing to accept “asylum seekers.”

Trudeau said Canada welcomes people from around the world who flee “persecution and violence,” and hinted Ottawa is looking at more.

The attraction to relocate or migrate today in the UK is not like when there was so much political uncertainty in the 1980s when the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed. In those days there was economic and political uncertainty in the Chinese mainland, Lawrence Ma, a Hong Kong barrister and chairman of the Hong Kong Legal Exchange Foundation, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

China’s economy has rapidly picked up together with consolidation of internal political foundation and successful and effective anti-corruption campaigns, while the Western powers are declining in their influence, Ma said. “Hong Kong people have confidence in the Chinese system.”

He also said that no one in Hong Kong wants to become a second class citizen in those countries, such as the UK or the US.

Fan Peng, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Political Sciences said that the UK and the US intended to embarrass China by announcing such policies. “But if China revoked the citizenship to those Hong Kong people who immigrate to the US and the UK under such policies, few would respond to those Western countries’ calls.”

The US and UK’s announcement is only bluffing to undermine the outside world’s confidence in Hong Kong, create the impression that the city is in chaos, and exert pressure on the central government to withdraw the national security law, said Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University.

Leung Chun-ying, the former top official of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government, wrote on Facebook on Wednesday that Johnson’s article in the South China Morning Post shows “parochial arrogance,” and is again a play of the BNO visa card. “The UK has no choice but follow the US, but it has no influence at all,” Leung said.