Beijing’s takeover
Tensions between Britain and China intensified this week when Beijing complained of “gross interference” in its domestic affairs over its treatment of Hong Kong. Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to London, condemned in particular Britain’s offer of new visa rights and, ultimately, British citizenship to up to three million Hong Kong residents, a proposal made in response to China’s imposition last week of a draconian new security law, which penalises almost all political dissent in the former British colony. Boris Johnson described the law as a “clear and serious” breach of the 1997 treaty that returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule.
The ambassador also said that Britain would have to “bear all the consequences” if it treated China as a “hostile country”, and reversed its decision to allow the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei a role in building Britain’s 5G network. The move would send a “very bad message”, he said, to the Chinese firms that invested £6.6bn in Britain last year. The Government is under mounting pressure from the US and Conservative backbenchers to change its position on Huawei. An announcement is expected this month.
What the editorials said
China has once again displayed its “contempt for liberal freedoms”, said the FT. Beijing claims that Hong Kong needs its new national security law to deal with an “anarchic minority”. But its aim is clearly to bring the territory “into line”. The freedoms promised under the “one country, two systems” formula agreed in 1997 have been consigned to history. The new law introduces a slew of illdefined offences which carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, said The Independent. What’s more, for the first time, China’s own security police will operate openly in Hong Kong, and will be free to search homes and intercept communications without a warrant. Small wonder there’s a mood of “uncertainty and foreboding” in the territory.
We should applaud Britain’s decision to open its doors to the three million Hongkongers who were born there before 1997, and have British National (Overseas) passports, said The Economist. Undoubtedly it will “annoy” Beijing, and could prove costly: China is Britain’s third largest trading partner, and its students flock to our universities. But the British public seems happy with the idea; even Tories who oppose mass immigration see Hongkongers as “the ‘good’ kind of migrant: honest, hard-working and entrepreneurial”.