On Hong Kong, China hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt

In recent weeks, the people of Hong Kong have escalated their protests of a proposed amendment to the Special Administrative Region’s (SAR) Fugitive Offenders Ordinance and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance.

This amendment would allow extradition to any jurisdiction with which Hong Kong does not have an existing extradition agreement, which includes the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This follows the case of Hong Kong resident Chan Tong-kai, accused of strangling his girlfriend while vacationing in Taiwan in 2018.

On the face of it, this seems largely uncontroversial, and even, as the China Daily touts, a way to strengthen the rule of law in Hong Kong.

Approximately 1 million people who protested in the streets of Hong Kong last weekend think differently. For them, this is a gambit for Beijing to finally puncture the ever-weakening membrane that keeps Hong Kong and the PRC separate under the “One Country, Two Systems” formula established in 1997.

Positions have hardened in recent days as protesters fearing the loss of autonomy from the mainland filled the streets of Hong Kong. As business and community leaders expressed fears of negative economic effects emanating from the amendment, Beijing continued a full-court press to justify the move.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen signaled her opposition because it would treat Taiwan as a part of the PRC, while Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced on Monday that she has no intention of delaying the vote, scheduled for June 27. 

What are the stakes behind such strong feelings on both sides? Since the early 19th century, Hong Kong has been a political football in China’s relations with the rest of the world, wrested out of China’s sovereign control in a war waged over the right for the West to feed widespread opium addiction in China and establish terms of trade more favorable to Great Britain.

In the post-Mao era, Deng Xiaoping made the reversion of Hong Kong to China an early priority, reaching an agreement with Margaret Thatcher in 1984. When I lived in Hong Kong from 1992 to 1994, the evening news almost always led with the latest in the ongoing battle between then-Governor Christopher Patten and his interlocutors from the mainland, Zhou Nan and Lu Ping.

The PRC complained, not without reason, that after treating Hong Kong as a colony with only the most limited of suffrage, London was now disingenuously introducing democracy to Hong Kong as a cynical parting gift to the scheduled handover that would occur three years later. 

This can be debated, and will be, long into the future. But the fact remains that the people of Hong Kong have been exposed to the democratic process, even in a highly stratified and somewhat limited fashion. Moreover, the people of Hong Kong have always been highly political.

That is not to say that there is universal agreement that democracy is what is best for the SAR, but it is impossible to have a full, meaningful debate about this (or an infinite number of other topics) without the kind of pluralism that has evolved naturally in Hong Kong long before 1997.

This amendment is a political lightning rod, and as such, should not be rammed through the legislature. Doing so would further erode the already fragile democratic process in Hong Kong and have dark implications for the future of political discourse in the SAR.

Why not give Beijing the benefit of the doubt? Quite simply, its actions have not earned it such consideration. The 2014 Occupy Hong Kong Movement was a response to the PRC’s attempts to change Hong Kong’s electoral system to give Beijing more direct control over screening candidates.

In addition, beginning in 2015, five Hong Kong booksellers who sold books critical of China’s leaders disappeared, some later appearing on TV broadcasts from the mainland, giving what were seen by many as forced confessions. These are steps backward that do not serve the people of Hong Kong.

The people of Hong Kong are asking that we support them, and as fellow travelers in the messy, often unsatisfying and fraught experiment of democracy, we owe it to them to do so.

Andrew Mertha is the director of China studies and the director of SAIS China at School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.