Opinion: Hong Kong’s Illusionist – WSJ

Financial Secretary of Hong Kong Paul Chan Mo Po presents the budget for the fiscal year 2020-2021 to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong on 26 February 2020.

Photo:

jerome favore/shutterstock

We’re almost sympathetic

Paul Chan.

Mo-po, writing a letter to the editor nearby. Hong Kong’s Finance Minister is upset that the Heritage Foundation has removed Hong Kong from its annual Index of Economic Freedom, after several years of putting the city at the top of the list.

Mr. Chan has the impossible task of denying what everyone can clearly see: The Chinese Communist Party is making Hong Kong its equal on the Chinese mainland. That was the essence of the legacy.

Ed Feulnerable

in his statement in these pages last week. Until Singapore took over first place in the index, Hong Kong had led for 25 years. As mentioned in the preface of the 2019 index, the Hong Kong government released a full-page ad to highlight its first ranking. But China’s aggressive assimilation of Hong Kong, Feuroniti writes, makes it a Chinese city like any other.

Mr Chan disagreed and invoked the principle of one country, two systems. This was the promise of autonomy for Hong Kong in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which set out the terms for the return of the former British colony to China. What Mr Chan does not say is that Beijing has made it clear that the Joint Declaration is a dead letter.

in 2017

Lou Kahn,

spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, called the joint statement a historical document that no longer has any real meaning. Hongkongers have every reason to believe this after watching China push through an unpopular national security law whose provisions include allowing Beijing to transfer certain cases from Hong Kong to China for trial.

Mr. Chan would have readers believe that economic freedom persists regardless of political oppression. But China is not Singapore. In China, dissidents just disappear. Foreign businessmen could be arrested and taken as diplomatic hostages, while two innocent Canadians are now being pressured by Ottawa not to hand Huawei over to the US government.

Economic freedom? Just say it.

Apple

Daily publishers

Jimmy Lai,

who remains in prison because the government is using the National Security Act to override the presumption of bail that would apply in Hong Kong.

Xia Baolong

-According to Beijing’s top official in Hong Kong, only true patriots are fit to serve on the city’s governing, legislative and judicial bodies.

China also dictates corporate boards of directors. Two years ago, China’s Civil Aeronautics Administration demanded that

Cathay Pacific Airways

Employees involved in illegal protests are banned from flying in Chinese airspace and information on all crew members is started before approving a flight to China, driving down the company’s share price. In May last year, a former manager from Hong Kong,

Leung Chun-ying,

called for a boycott of London.

HSBC

because he didn’t agree to the National Security Act. Her supreme leader quickly signed a petition in support of the bill.

We advise Mr Chan to stop trying to convince the world that Hong Kong is what it used to be and accept that it is fading away in favour of the man who really runs Hong Kong: the President of China.

Xi Jinping.

Main Street: Jimmy Lai of Hong Kong will go to jail, and Pope Francis will say nothing. Images : Reuters/Zuma Press Composite: Mark Kelly

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Published on the 11th. March 2021 in the print edition.

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