Death by slow boiling (HONG KONG, CHINA ALERT)

The Economist ^ | September 27, 2002 | The Economist

[MadIvan]

Are Hong Kong's liberties gradually being taken away?

THROW a frog into boiling water and it jumps out; gently bring it to the boil, and the frog, never noticing the incremental increases in heat, allows itself to be cooked. Is Hong Kong a frog in a pot in Beijing's kitchen? If so, then on September 24th the temperature rose another notch.

On that day, Hong Kong's government formally began—by circulating a consultation paper—the process of enacting a controversial set of laws against subversion, sedition, treason and other ills, as required by Article 23 of the Basic Law, the territory's constitution. Overdue and a mere matter of protocol, says the government—something that should have been seen to in 1997, when Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty. An insidious threat to Hong Kong's liberties, counter the critics. If Article 23 could wait for five years, what's the urgency now?

To understand the controversy, it is necessary to know a bit about Article 23's history. The Basic Law came into being during the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of the negotiations between Britain and China about Hong Kong's handover. Its over-arching formula came to be known as “one country, two systems”. Hong Kong, in other words, would remain autonomous, and would enjoy freedoms absent on the Communist mainland. A principal concession to Beijing was a phrase, included in 1988, requiring Hong Kong to prohibit any act “to subvert” the central government.

The problem, however, was that subversion is an alien term to Anglo-Saxon common law, on which Hong Kong's legal system is based. After all, most citizens in free societies regard it as a basic right to subvert—peacefully—their own governments: they call it opposition. So a second draft, in February 1989, replaced “subversion” with “treason, secession, sedition or theft of state secrets”, concepts already defined, if not much invoked.

Then came the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989. Hong Kong was horrified at the crimes committed by its future leaders, but the leaders were horrified in turn by the prospect that they might soon have to contend with similar uprisings in Hong Kong, where they would be powerless to crack down. The colony was rocked by huge demonstrations in support of the students. Supplies, money and, perhaps most important, newspapers were sent to them. In the months after the massacre, China insisted on a new draft. The final version of Article 23, in April 1990, restored the requirement for the prohibition of subversion, and added new ones aimed at links between “political bodies” in Hong Kong and abroad.

“Isn't it obvious that, after Tiananmen, Beijing felt threatened and wanted more control?” asks Martin Lee, who helped draft the early versions of the Basic Law and now leads Hong Kong's Democratic Party, the closest thing to an opposition in Hong Kong's toothless and mostly unelected legislature. The fear is that the proposed laws are really targeted at groups such as Falun Gong, a spiritual movement considered an “evil cult” on the mainland but currently legal in Hong Kong. Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive (pictured above right with Mr Lee), certainly appears to hate having to tolerate Falun Gong in Hong Kong. He might welcome means to brand the group as subversive and deal with it accordingly.

Falun Gong, moreover, is only the most obvious potential target of the new laws. Other dissidents are worried too. So are some journalists and academics, who fret about the clauses regarding theft of state secrets and sedition. Could a research paper on, say, Taiwan-mainland relations constitute a “seditious publication”?

The government, naturally, is working hard to allay these concerns. Not only, it says, has it compared its proposals to existing laws in countries far and wide, it has also complied strictly with international covenants on civil rights in the drafting. Besides, it adds, the point of the whole exercise is only to protect national security, not to limit anybody's freedom of expression. The definitions are tight enough, the government says, that most journalists and dissidents should have nothing to fear.

Ask, for instance, Elsie Leung, Hong Kong's justice secretary, about Falun Gong. She pulls a tome off her shelf and leafs through it to find some fine print that defines political bodies as organisations that “promote or prepare candidates for elections”, under which definition Falun Gong is not a political body in Hong Kong, at least for the present. Or ask Regina Ip, the secretary for security, whether, under the proposed laws, she could extend the mainland ban of Falun Gong to Hong Kong. No, she replies, as Beijing at present does not ban the group on national-security grounds (required for a Hong Kong ban under the new rules) but under a different category, one for “evil cults”. This is meant to be reassuring.

Critics fear this is all part of a pattern, whereby Mr Tung is slowly eroding Hong Kong's checks and balances. In July, he altered Hong Kong's colonial government structure, in which he sat atop an apolitical civil service. He replaced it with one in which he oversees a cabinet of ministers accountable only to himself, who is in turn accountable only to Beijing. It is these ministers who are now drafting Hong Kong's new laws. Every few months, it seems, the water gets a little hotter.

[PhilDragoo]

Who did not know in 1997 that Hong Kong was lost?

Who can speak of Taiwan's "reunification" and not shiver with dread?

The Borg is mere fiction; China is real.

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

To that end China aids the Taliban/al Qaeda, and is active in the Western Hemisphere, from its sigint installation on Cuba, to its Cristobal/Balboa grip on the Canal, to Hugo and the FARCers, not to mention Brazil.

Yet Daschle and DiFi are blind to it; Hitlery embraces it.

Jiang is invited to Crawford for barbecue the 26th of October. .

Throw him on the fire.

[piasa]

Eroding the apolitical civil service sounds like what Obama and Biden have done with their Czars and other shuffling to get around congress.