Is China a sovereign country? The question may seem ludicrous. But it must be asked of the US and other Western politicians and media objecting loudly to Beijing’s disqualification of four opposition lawmakers in Hong Kong. That act has sparked the resignation of 15 other “pro-democracy” legislators.
A sovereign nation has the unchallengeable right to remedy political deficiencies in territory under its jurisdiction. The four dismissals were an act by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, constitutionally China’s highest organ of authority. They were part of a bid to close a longstanding loophole in Hong Kong governance, under which government officials — including lawmakers — weren’t required to pledge loyalty to the administration and sovereign they were serving, and were free to collude with hostile foreign forces.
China has moved to fix this deficiency, bringing the Hong Kong system into line with national and international — including Western — practices. So the ferocious criticism simply suggests that the West, at least subliminally, doesn’t recognize China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong. That would be the latest absurdity the Western powers have flung at Beijing since America’s Trump regime decided three years ago to punish the Chinese, essentially for being too successful.
To call the dismissed and resigned politicos Hong Kong’s “pro-democracy opposition” would be to beautify and flatter them inappropriately. In the 23 years since the territory’s return to China, they have not behaved at all like the “loyal opposition” in the Western countries they profess to admire. Instead, they were far more like saboteurs of their own city, working traitorously with China’s ill-wishers abroad to undermine their own nation’s interests.
The “pan-democrat” legislators resemble nothing if not political thugs. They draw generous salaries from public coffers not to make laws, but to prevent them from being made and even to break them. In the process, they have turned Hong Kong’s once-august Legislative Council into a House of Brawling Monkeys. These China-hating charlatans were key accomplices in the Black Terror last year, launched by their local street-fighting comrades and backers in Anglo-America. For two decades, Hong Kong’s negligent, neocolonialist authorities pandered to their depravities, allowing them repeatedly to bring governance to a virtual standstill without penalty.
But the color revolution last year has changed all that. By overplaying their hand, Hong Kong’s Sinophobic “democrats” and their Anglo-US allies finally provoked Beijing into putting its foot down. Its first major move to rectify Hong Kong’s countless neocolonial anomalies was to enact a National Security Law on June 30. It targeted sedition, secession, terrorism and collusion with external forces. That quickly stopped the riots and other forms of political violence, restoring some much-needed peace and stability amid the COVID pandemic.
The NPC Standing Committee decision was Step 2 of the cleanup. It not only removed the wayward lawmakers but laid down baselines to overhaul Hong Kong’s entire governing machinery and purge it of neocolonial influences. All government employees will be required to pledge allegiance to Hong Kong and China, as well as the territory’s Basic Law. Foreign collusion will be forbidden. National security will be protected. These strictures, which exist in most jurisdictions worldwide, will apply also to Hong Kong’s foreigners-dominated judiciary, which has long behaved like an independent fiefdom.
Instead of crippling One Country, Two Systems, Beijing’s moves will protect its integrity and put it back on track, after a serious, 23-year derailment. They seek a return to the guideline laid down by the inventor of OCTS himself, Deng Xiaoping. It is that “only patriots must rule Hong Kong.”
The time is over when the Anglo-American establishment can continue to treat Hong Kong as its neo-colony.