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National security overreach is US malady
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The US State Department, in its annual report on Hong Kong for the period ending in January 2023, accused Hong Kong of using national security laws to undermine the rule of law and fundamental rights and freedoms.
The reality is Hong Kong has yet to fulfill its constitutional obligation under Article 23 of the Basic Law to safeguard national security. The loopholes in its national security laws prevented Hong Kong from taking effective actions against the instigators and perpetrators of the prolonged political violence in 2019. To counter the clear and swelling national security threat and restore order in Hong Kong, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress enacted a National Security Law for Hong Kong in June 2020, and introduced four new offenses to plug the conspicuous lacunas.
The impact of this law in quelling violence and restoring order was powerful and immediate. However, in view of the evolving threat to national security arising from technological advancement and geopolitical tensions, Hong Kong needs to do more to keep itself safe and minimize any security threat to the country.
Despite the US accusations of alleged abuse of national security laws, few countries can beat the US in creating a powerful national security apparatus with sweeping powers. The concept of nation-al security took center stage in the US in the 1940s, after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack led the US to establish the concept of national security as the non-negotiable standard against which all future foreign policy, and even economic, decisions are to be made.
The impact of national security on US policymaking is enormous, ubiquitous, and elastic. It can be stretched to apply to any person, entity, country or territory once a national security threat has been identified. Take Hong Kong for example. Hong Kong, a puny territory thousands of miles away from America, cannot conceivably pose any national security threat to the US. Yet on July 14, 2020, invoking multiple statutes and on trumped-up charges of rights and freedoms violations, then-US president Donald Trump declared that the situation in Hong Kong “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in substantial parts outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States.” A “national emergency” was declared with respect to the alleged “threat” from Hong Kong.
Last October, US President Joe Biden released the 2022 National Security Strategy, and went further than Trump in identifying China as the “only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it”. Immediately following publication of this strategy, measures were taken by US agencies to prohibit high-tech exports to China; prohibit foreign companies using American technology from exporting to China and American nationals from working in Chinese high-tech firms. “National security” was invoked to constrain China in every conceivable manner — from curbing trade and investments, tightening export controls, sanctioning central government officials and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region officials, adopting new industrial polices to undercut China’s competitiveness in advanced technologies, to forming new security alliances with pro-US countries, securing more military bases in the Philippines and waging disinformation campaigns and ideological warfare.
Concerns about the “China threat” are so prevalent in Washington that even TikTok, a popular video-sharing app, is liable to be banned on national security grounds just because it is Chinese-owned.
Taking its cue from the US, the United Kingdom enacted the National Security and Investment Act 2021 to scrutinize foreign investments and business transactions on national security grounds.
Speaking in a similar vein to his American counterpart, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told a US media outlet in March: “China represents the biggest state threat to our economic interests, for sure. It’s a systemic challenge for the world order.” The British Parliament is in the final stages of enacting a new national security law, the National Security Act 2022-23, to overhaul outdated anti-espionage law, and to create new offenses against “hostile state” activities.
Singapore, often regarded as Hong Kong’s peer competitor, is far more advanced than Hong Kong in enacting comprehensive laws to safeguard national security. In 2019, Singapore enacted the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act to counter fake news and disinformation spread through the internet. In 2021, Singapore enacted the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act to empower the government to counter foreign interference through local proxies, designated in the law as “politically significant persons”, and electronic communications. Despite protests from human rights bodies, the US and its allies were silent in warning against curtailment of individual rights and freedoms upon commencement of this new legislation.
Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, an international treaty and a product of compromise negotiated with myriad countries with differing standards of rights and freedoms, few individual rights and freedoms are absolute. The parties to the Covenant fully recognized that where national security, public order or public health is threatened, laws can be enacted to limit individual rights and freedoms. All national security laws are bound to impact individual rights and freedoms to varying degrees.
The national security laws in force in Hong Kong are no different from those applied in other jurisdictions, except that they are far less comprehensive and stringent, and have yet to be updated to take account of technological change and threats arising from external interference. As China’s key southern gateway and its most international, open and porous city, Hong Kong has a constitutional duty and a practical need to step up protection against national security threats. Let there be no further prevarication and procrastination, and let this historic mission be completed as soon as is practicable in accordance with international norms and precedents.
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The US State Department, in its annual report on Hong Kong for the period ending in January 2023, accused Hong Kong of using national security laws to undermine the rule of law and fundamental rights and freedoms.
The reality is Hong Kong has yet to fulfill its constitutional obligation under Article 23 of the Basic Law to safeguard national security. The loopholes in its national security laws prevented Hong Kong from taking effective actions against the instigators and perpetrators of the prolonged political violence in 2019. To counter the clear and swelling national security threat and restore order in Hong Kong, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress enacted a National Security Law for Hong Kong in June 2020, and introduced four new offenses to plug the conspicuous lacunas.
The impact of this law in quelling violence and restoring order was powerful and immediate. However, in view of the evolving threat to national security arising from technological advancement and geopolitical tensions, Hong Kong needs to do more to keep itself safe and minimize any security threat to the country.
Despite the US accusations of alleged abuse of national security laws, few countries can beat the US in creating a powerful national security apparatus with sweeping powers. The concept of nation-al security took center stage in the US in the 1940s, after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack led the US to establish the concept of national security as the non-negotiable standard against which all future foreign policy, and even economic, decisions are to be made.
The impact of national security on US policymaking is enormous, ubiquitous, and elastic. It can be stretched to apply to any person, entity, country or territory once a national security threat has been identified. Take Hong Kong for example. Hong Kong, a puny territory thousands of miles away from America, cannot conceivably pose any national security threat to the US. Yet on July 14, 2020, invoking multiple statutes and on trumped-up charges of rights and freedoms violations, then-US president Donald Trump declared that the situation in Hong Kong “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in substantial parts outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States.” A “national emergency” was declared with respect to the alleged “threat” from Hong Kong.
Last October, US President Joe Biden released the 2022 National Security Strategy, and went further than Trump in identifying China as the “only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it”. Immediately following publication of this strategy, measures were taken by US agencies to prohibit high-tech exports to China; prohibit foreign companies using American technology from exporting to China and American nationals from working in Chinese high-tech firms. “National security” was invoked to constrain China in every conceivable manner — from curbing trade and investments, tightening export controls, sanctioning central government officials and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region officials, adopting new industrial polices to undercut China’s competitiveness in advanced technologies, to forming new security alliances with pro-US countries, securing more military bases in the Philippines and waging disinformation campaigns and ideological warfare.
Concerns about the “China threat” are so prevalent in Washington that even TikTok, a popular video-sharing app, is liable to be banned on national security grounds just because it is Chinese-owned.
Taking its cue from the US, the United Kingdom enacted the National Security and Investment Act 2021 to scrutinize foreign investments and business transactions on national security grounds.
Speaking in a similar vein to his American counterpart, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told a US media outlet in March: “China represents the biggest state threat to our economic interests, for sure. It’s a systemic challenge for the world order.” The British Parliament is in the final stages of enacting a new national security law, the National Security Act 2022-23, to overhaul outdated anti-espionage law, and to create new offenses against “hostile state” activities.
Singapore, often regarded as Hong Kong’s peer competitor, is far more advanced than Hong Kong in enacting comprehensive laws to safeguard national security. In 2019, Singapore enacted the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act to counter fake news and disinformation spread through the internet. In 2021, Singapore enacted the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act to empower the government to counter foreign interference through local proxies, designated in the law as “politically significant persons”, and electronic communications. Despite protests from human rights bodies, the US and its allies were silent in warning against curtailment of individual rights and freedoms upon commencement of this new legislation.
Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, an international treaty and a product of compromise negotiated with myriad countries with differing standards of rights and freedoms, few individual rights and freedoms are absolute. The parties to the Covenant fully recognized that where national security, public order or public health is threatened, laws can be enacted to limit individual rights and freedoms. All national security laws are bound to impact individual rights and freedoms to varying degrees.
The national security laws in force in Hong Kong are no different from those applied in other jurisdictions, except that they are far less comprehensive and stringent, and have yet to be updated to take account of technological change and threats arising from external interference. As China’s key southern gateway and its most international, open and porous city, Hong Kong has a constitutional duty and a practical need to step up protection against national security threats. Let there be no further prevarication and procrastination, and let this historic mission be completed as soon as is practicable in accordance with international norms and precedents.
Much has changed in the global balance of power since the 1972 Shanghai Communique set in motion steps towards the normalisation of US-China relations. This relationship has since become the world’s most consequential.
The steady US-China collaboration on trade, investment, manufacturing, science and technology, and academic, sport and cultural exchanges, in the past 50 years has yielded handsome dividends for both countries and the world. Yet, in recent years, relations have deteriorated rapidly into distrust and hostility, with some pundits even predicting a military confrontation over Taiwan.
What went wrong? How do we bring the relationship back on an even keel?
In 1972, the United States was willing to adopt a more tolerant and magnanimous attitude towards China, despite the vast differences in ideology, sociopolitical system and foreign policy. Perhaps this was because China was much poorer and weaker, unlikely to challenge US hegemony.
The US stated in the Shanghai Communique: “Countries should treat each other with mutual respect and be willing to compete peacefully, letting performance be the ultimate judge. No country should claim infallibility and each country should be prepared to re-examine its own attitudes for the common good.”
This is a far cry from the US industrial policy recently adopted to blunt China’s competitiveness in advanced technologies. The US has restricted hi-tech exports to China, forced allies to do the same and compelled the world’s most successful chip contractor, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, to relocate some of its most advanced production to the US.
Talk of a “China threat” now permeates political conversations in the US, which has solidified its security collaboration with its allies, through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with India, Australia and Japan, and the Aukus alliance with the United Kingdom and Australia.
The ostensible purpose is to improve security in the Indo-Pacific. Should military conflict break out between the US and China, such alliances would ensure a network of battle-ready nations capable of encircling and reining in China.
The US and China are thousands of miles apart with no common border. Both know full well the only tinderbox is Taiwan, which has strong ties with Washington and which Beijing regards as an inalienable part of China.
Beijing stated its position unambiguously in the Shanghai Communique: “The government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China; Taiwan is a province of China which has long been returned to the motherland; the liberation of Taiwan is China’s internal affair in which no other country has the right to interfere; and all US forces and military installations must be withdrawn from Taiwan.”
It further stated: “The Chinese government firmly opposes any activities which aim at the creation of ‘one China, one Taiwan’, ‘one China, two governments’, ‘two Chinas’, an ‘independent Taiwan’ or advocate that ‘the status of Taiwan remains to be determined’.”
Beijing reiterated its position on Taiwan in the 1979 joint communique that established US-China diplomatic relations, and in the 1982 joint communique, which focused on the question of Taiwan.
While insisting that its position on Taiwan has not changed, the US has stepped up arms sales and let Taiwan’s ruler Tsai Ing-wen meet US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other lawmakers during her California “stopover”. This is the second meeting of senior American politicians with Tsai within one year. Such meetings would have no other effect than aiding and abetting Taiwan’s aspirations for independence.
No Chinese leader can afford to go down in history as the one who acquiesced to Taiwan’s secession. To underscore that independence for Taiwan is a red line that must not be crossed, China has responded with military drills and sanctions on Taiwan’s top representative in the US Hsiao Bi-khim – like it did last August after then House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit – and on the US institutions that hosted Tsai.
After three days of military exercises simulating targeted attacks on Taiwan, China announced a three-day closure of airspace over Taiwan to conduct “aerospace activities”, which was cut short, reportedly to avoid affecting the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Japan. Whatever the reason, the situation in Taiwan is getting pretty close to triggering a confrontation.
It is a dangerous play of words for some in the US to argue that in all three communiques, the US merely acknowledged China’s position on Taiwan. Having repeatedly acknowledged this, it is inconceivable for the US to walk back its one-China policy.
Note that in the 1982 communique, the US stated that “it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan”, that “it intends to reduce gradually its sales of arms to Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final resolution”.
It also said the development of US-China relations “is not only in the interests of the two peoples but also conducive to peace and stability in the world”. Return to this consensus is as critical as ever, as the world faces daunting challenges, including a war in Ukraine, a global economic slowdown arising from deglobalisation, and climate change.
The ball is in the US’ court. The solution is as simple as it may appear complex. Return to the basics of the US-China agreement on Taiwan as spelled out in the three communiques. Let China resolve the question of Taiwan over time, relying on the use of force as the last resort.
The emotional return of Taiwan’s former ruler Ma Ying-jeou to the mainland to pay his respects to his ancestors and visit history-laden sites is a case in point. Not all Taiwanese feel detached from the mainland. Let China work on the people of Taiwan. Without US meddling, let peace prevail.
(Photo: AFP)
This afternoon (2/11) , at the invitation of Dr. Herman Hu, I took part in a forum with the theme 'Towrads a Faireer, Safer World' organised by Friday Culture and the Hong Kong Coalition. Chief Executive John Lee was the principal officiating guest. I was invited to serve as one of the panellists at Panel 1 on "Achieving Fariness in a Polarised World'. The other panellists include Amabassador Elhenawy, Consul General of Egypt, Mr, Chandran Nair and NPC delegate Nick Chan. The moderator was Patrick Tsang from the Chow Tai Fook Group.
Following on Chandran Nair's comments on 'fairness', I said I shared his concerns that the concept of 'fairness' is open to interpretation,. It means different things to different people. For example, President Trump had tried to use 'fair' trade to suppress 'free' trade. As for the world, it has always been divided into two camps. In his ground-breaking work "Clash of Civilisations", eminent American political scientist Samuel Huntington, writing in the 1990s, referred to "the West and the Rest'. "The West" were the advanced industrialised nations of the western world, while "the Rest" were the developing and less developed countries in other parts of the world - Asia, Africa and South America, which were perceived to to be poor, backward, and even 'uncivilised" in the sense of not imbued with the western notions of liberty. With the rise of the emerging economies, particularly that of China, another narrative developed , which described the world as "the Rest and the West, because the economic growth rate of the Rest' had outpaced that of the West. The spectacular economic growth of China gave rise to yet another narrative - as President Biden declared in his recent comments on China - the future would be a struggle between democracy and autocracy.
I consider such binary division of the world into democracy versus autocracy not only unfair and over-simplistic, but also outdated and anachronistic. There is no one-size-fits-all political system that suits all countries and territories. Every country and territory must be allowed to develop a political system best suited to its socio-economic and political realities, and best serve the welfare of the people.
Take Hong Kong for example, the British rulers only pushed the development of participative democracy in Hong Kong in the early 1980s, when they knew they had to hand Hong Kong back to China. Direct elections to the Legislative Council started only in 1991. Democratic development in Hong Kong has a short history. Our experiment with democracy has been far from successful. It created chaos, dysfunction and even violence in our legislature. Nothing got done. After we managed to reform our electoral system with help from the Central Authorities (after the NPC Standing Committee made a decision to improve the electoral system in Hong Kong in March 2021), we introduced local legislation to reform our electoral system. Now our Legislative Council is working much more effectively. Since then we have passed important legislation to open up medical registration, abolish offsetting of Mandatory Provident Fund contributions, and a slew of legislation to improve our competitiveness. Our electoral and legislative systems are working much better now, but our reform has been demonised by the western media as an illiberal, democratic backslide.
In response, Chandran Nair cited three sources of power which put the West in an advantageous position - military might, economic strength, and the ability of the western media to control the global narrative and stifle our voice. I added a fourth souce of power - technological power. Technological knowhow should be shared to improve the welfare of mankind, not weaponised to suppress the growth of other countries. China and Egypt contributed to global welfare with the scientific inventions these two countries developed in ancient times. None of them claimed monopolies or patent rights, and were happy to see the diffusion of their technologies. But the US has banned the export of semiconductor and other critical technologies to China in an effort to strangle China's technological development.
Tech gurus like Morris Chang, the founder of TMSC, has commented that the forcible removal of semiconductor production back to the US would not work. It would only create a lot of inefficiencies and hobble the international division of labour which has served the world so well in recent decades.
Finally, on the question of what do you want to see the government tackle as a top priority, many cited housing. I agreed, but pointed out that getting education right is also paramount. Education is destiny. We should not put quantitative growth before qualitative gains. We should not aim for equality of outcomes, but equality of opportunity. We should ensure that every child has an opportunity to realise his or her potential and live a fulfilling and meaningful life.