Beijing tightens grip on Hong Kong

The oft-repeated insistence by visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that security laws imposed on Hong Kong “do not affect the rights and freedoms of residents” or “the rights and interests of foreign investors” has always looked absurd. It looks nothing less than mendacious following the passing last weekend by the territory’s rubberstamp legislature (all hand-picked by the Chinese Communist Party, of course) of an even more draconian set of laws that make Hong Kong a far more dangerous place for foreign business, lawyers, journalists and especially Hong Kong citizens, wherever they are.

The new law, known as Article 23 after the relevant clause in Hong Kong’s Basic Law, makes much more severe the full gamut of the oppressive security regime applied to Hong Kong and its people.

Citizens who have sought asylum abroad, in places including Australia, are targeted by provisions covering alleged “sedition, subversion and insurrection” against the communist tyranny. The new law eliminates just about all the remaining freedoms that distinguished Hong Kong from China before the handover. Ominously for Hong Kong’s democrats who have fled abroad, it talks of “extraditing criminal suspects” and sets out penalties of life imprisonment for alleged acts of treason. Hong Kong’s last British governor, Chris Patten, has spoken of the new law as “a devastating blow to the city’s autonomy, rule of law, rights, and fundamental freedoms”. The law, he added, was “a disgraceful breach of the joint declaration” under which Hong Kong was handed over. “Why should anyone believe any promises from Xi Jinping’s totalitarian regime on anything?” Lord Patten asked.

That’s a valid question Mr Wang would do well to attempt to answer while in Australia. Why, indeed, when every move made by Beijing in its colonialist and oppressive zeal appears designed to crush the lifeblood out of what was once a vibrant Asian business hub in which people enjoyed levels of democracy and freedom unknown in communist China? The new security law, passed 89-0 by the once democratically elected Legislative Council, is a travesty. It epitomises all that is rotten about the regime Beijing has imposed on Hong Kong.