What the commentators said

Late last Tuesday night Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, confirmed that the new security law would come into force the next morning, said Juliet Samuel in The Daily Telegraph. But at that point, no one in Hong Kong – not even Lam herself – actually knew what it contained, or outlawed, because it hadn’t been published. “Welcome to the twilight zone of Chinese ‘law’, where the only real law is fear.” The first arrest was of a man holding a flag featuring the words “Hong Kong Independence”, said Ian Birrell in the Daily Mail. By dusk another nine protesters – including a 15-year-old girl and a woman with a sign featuring the British flag – had been “seized”. The territory has been well and truly absorbed into “Orwellian” China, a state that imprisons and even sterilises its Muslim minority in Xinjiang.

Xi Jinping’s China is “an enemy of all the values we hold dear”, said Max Hastings in The Sunday Times. And outfits such as HSBC, which have endorsed the security law, are guilty of “appeasement”. But we should avoid “historical hypocrisy”. When Britain was in charge, it ran Hong Kong largely for the benefit of the great British trading houses, and never bothered to enfranchise the locals. The idea that Beijing would allow Hong Kong to remain a “liberal cuckoo” in the Communist nest for the agreed 50 years was always “absurd”, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. Frankly, it’s amazing its patience has lasted this long. Sad to say, but the radicals “should have lived with such freedoms as they were allowed. Now they’ve none.” The reality is, China’s so powerful “it can do what it likes”. All Britain can do is offer refuge.

Don’t be too sure, said Malcolm Rifkind in The Daily Telegraph. China is keen to avoid a humiliating mass exodus of Hong Kong’s “best and brightest”, and that gives the West some leverage. And we can, and should, limit China’s leverage over our own economy, said Iain Martin in The Times. We should buy “protective stakes” in vital British firms to prevent them falling into Chinese hands. As for Huawei, we should try to strip its kit not just out of the 5G network, but also out of the existing 4G one. “Hong Kong cannot be free – yet – but we can.”