The specter of the nation’s fragmentation, disintegration and poverty in the past does not leave the Chinese leaders.
To fully understand China’s Hong Kong frustration, it is enough for the authorities in Beijing to realize that it is a living memory of a period of humiliation in their national history. Today, Hong Kong, an autonomous “special administrative region” within the People’s Republic, once formed a British royal colony, along with other land “leased” for 99 years in 1898. When the British finally left in 1997, they left behind a series of weak democratic and independent institutions, including the judiciary, after some clever diplomatic moves.
The new bill, which foresees “extradition” to the mainland, is rightly seen as compromising the independence of Hong Kong’s separate judicial system and the freedom of citizens of the region. Human rights activists and critics of the regime can be extradited to neighboring Chinese provinces for trial. The UK may be the contractual guarantor of the human rights of 7 million Hong Kongers, but of course they have no power to help them.
In fact, it is surprising that the fanatical Red Guards did not march to Hong Kong and expel the imperialists during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher asked the bureaucrats who dreamed about with her whether the British could retain the original colony after the lease expired. The Iron Lady was told that, unlike the Falkland Islands, Hong Kong could not be defended or liberated after an invasion.
Why should the Chinese also agree with Huawei, a country that is hostile (from their point of view) about China’s domestic policy in Tibet and its treatment of Muslim Uighurs in Western Xinjiang? In addition, the transfer of Queen Elizabeth, the new aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy, to the South China Sea can be seen as a provocative act.
When the British still try to pretend to be the owners of the global power they have already lost, the Chinese only remember the yoke of the past. It was a “moment” to see how China carried a superpower symbol in a navy exhibition last week to see President Shi in her buttonhole Mao jacket up to her throat outside the normal saloon team. Moreover, the country has an economy to support this claim, the largest economy in the world. Aside from May’s England, Trump doesn’t even have to be pushed by the US. Especially in her own backyard, Hong Kong.
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