Hong Kong people’s brave defence of liberty, freedom

Close to the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Hong Kong’s street protesters, almost one in seven of the former British colony’s population, have shown immense courage in opposing the Chinese communist regime’s authoritarianism. On Saturday they were rewarded when Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, reportedly after consulting authorities in Beijing, suspended a bill that would have facilitated extraditions to mainland China. Ms Lam backed down in the face of demonstrations by about a million people in which police used tear gas and rubber bullets against the protesters. Police also took photographs of individual protesters, heightening fears of reprisals.

The strength of the backlash unnerved the Hong Kong government. But Ms Lam has refused to withdraw the bill totally. She says she hit the pause button to prevent further violence but still claims the legislation is justified. That’s why hundreds of thousands of protesters — young, old, families and religious groups among them — turned out again yesterday in an ocean of black outfits to demand the scrapping of the bill, under which suspects would be transferred to the mainland for trial. There, under the communist regime’s opaque judicial system, the conviction rate exceeds 99 per cent. In recent years, as Greg Sheridan wrote on Saturday, businessmen and others in Hong Kong, including dissident booksellers, who have fallen out with powerful figures on the mainland have disappeared, turning up later in detention in China.

Yesterday’s protesters also demanded Ms Lam’s resignation and that police be held accountable for their violent behaviour during earlier protests. At a time when China is expanding its military bases in the South China Sea and exerting influence in the Asia-Pacific region, its response to the protests is being watched closely. Chinese President Xi Jinping pays lip service to the “one country, two systems” model that facilitated Hong Kong’s return from British rule in 1997, and claims it is his preferred model for eventual unification with the democratically run island of Taiwan. But as China turns the screws to strengthen state power by eroding the independence of Hong Kong’s institutions, Taiwan’s leaders are more insistent than ever that “one country, two systems won’t be accepted by a democratic Taiwan”, as Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said on Friday. Prosperity and economic liberalism in China, unfortunately, have not ushered in the greater respect for human rights and personal liberties many expected.

The Hong Kong people’s willingness to fight for their freedom and the rule of law bestowed by the British is a reminder that liberal democratic values should never be taken for granted, a point worth explaining in school civics classes. Such values, prevailing across the civilised world since the Edwardian era, need to be safeguarded, including in Australia where free speech is under pressure from “offence activism”, even in universities where it should be robust. If China or the Hong Kong regime ratchet up pressure by trying to force the issue on extraditions, Hong Kong, one of the world’s centres of finance, will be a major litmus test for relations between China and the West.