A response to Prof. Valori in the margins of the article “Some reflections on Xianggang (aka Hong Kong). Valori’s opinion” that appeared in le Formiche of March 22, 2024 previews an initial analysis of China’s near future and, consequently, ours as well – When the Chinese Communist Party wanted Hong Kong to remain a very undemocratic British colony
By Professor Silverio Allocca (DIPLOMATICINFO.COM GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST)
(3) However—
- (a)if a person does an act only with any of the intentions specified in subsection (4), the act is not done with a seditious intention; and
- (b)if an act, word or publication only has any of the intentions specified in subsection (4), the act, word or publication is not an act, word or publication that has a seditious intention.
(4)The intentions are as follows—
- an intention to give an opinion on the system or constitutional order mentioned in subsection (2)(a) or (b), with a view to improving the system or constitutional order;
- an intention to point out an issue on a matter in respect of an institution or authority mentioned in subsection (2)(a) or (b), with a view to giving an opinion on the improvement of the matter;
- an intention to persuade any person to attempt to procure the alteration, by lawful means, of—
- any matter established in accordance with the law by the Central Authorities in relation to the HKSAR; or
- any matter established in accordance with the law in the HKSAR;
- an intention to point out that hatred or enmity amongst different classes of residents of the HKSAR or amongst residents of different regions of China is produced, or that there is a tendency for such hatred or enmity to be produced, with a view to removing the hatred or enmity.
24.Offences in connection with seditious intention
(1)A person who—
- (a)with a seditious intention—
- (i)does an act that has a seditious intention; or
- (ii)utters a word that has a seditious intention;
- (b)knowing that a publication has a seditious intention, prints, publishes, sells, offers for sale, distributes, displays or reproduces the publication; or
- (c)imports a publication that has a seditious intention, commits an offence and is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for 7 years.
(2) A person who colludes with an external force to do the following—
- (a)with a seditious intention—
- do an act that has a seditious intention; or
- utter a word that has a seditious intention;
- (b)knowing that a publication has a seditious intention, print, publish, sell, offer for sale, distribute, display or reproduce the publication; or
- (c)import a publication that has a seditious intention,
commits an offence and is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for 10 years.
(3) A person who, without reasonable excuse, possesses a publication that has a seditious intention commits an offence and is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for 3 years.
(4)In this section—
publish (發布) includes—
- to communicate in any form, including speaking, writing, displaying notices, broadcasting, screening and playing of tapes or other recorded material; and
- to disseminate or make available.
25. Proof of intention to incite public disorder or to incite violence not necessary
(1) In proceedings for an offence under section 24(1)(a) or (2)(a)—
- it is not necessary to prove that the person does the act or utters the word with the intention to incite any other person to do an act causing public disorder; and
- unless the intention under section 23(2)(e) constitutes an element of the offence, it is not necessary to prove that the person does the act or utters the word with the intention to incite any other person to do a violent act.
(2)In proceedings for an offence under section 24(1), (2) or (3)—
- it is not necessary to prove that the act, word or publication (as appropriate) has the intention to incite any other person to do an act causing public disorder; and
- unless the intention under section 23(2)(e) constitutes an element of the offence, it is not necessary to prove that the act, word or publication (as appropriate) has the intention to incite any other person to do a violent act.
26. Defence for offence under section 24(1)(c) or (2)(c)
(1) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under section 24(1)(c) or (2)(c) to establish that, at the time of the alleged offence, the person did not know that the publication is a publication that has a seditious intention.
(2) A person is taken to have established a matter that needs to be established for a defence under subsection (1) if—
- there is sufficient evidence to raise an issue with respect to that matter; and
- the contrary is not proved by the prosecution beyond reasonable doubt.
As we can clearly see, we are clearly in the presence of a text of a law that blatantly comes across as worthy of a police state that is beyond repressive of freedom of speech and freedom of opinion (see in this regard what is explicitly stipulated in Article 25), the ratification of which it appears rather puerile to attempt to pass off as the fruit of popular wishes by presenting it moreover, as having been assumed as a result of public consultation and in this regard writing that “The Xianggang government sponsored Article 23 legislation on January 30 and launched a month-long public consultation, during which more than 13.000 opinions, of which 98.64 percent expressed support and positive opinions. On this basis, the Xianggang government drafted the draft law and submitted it to the Legislative Council for review“: something that brings to mind the farcical alleged ‘consultations’ on the platform of the Italian “5 Star Movement” which I see no reason why they should rise to greater dignity here given the context.
Proof of this, to some extent, can be found by reading what is stated in Appendix C entitled “Legislative Council – Panel on Security, Panel on Administration of Justice and Legal Services and Subcommittee to Study Matters Relating to Basic Law Article 23 Legislation – Joint Meeting – Safeguarding National Security : Public Consultation on Basic Law Article 23 Legislation” contained in the aforementioned document Legislative Council Brief- Safeguarding National Security Bill – File Ref.: SBG/3/101/2024 and from the opening reading of which we learn that
“The overwhelming majority of submissions were made by individuals, while about 4 percent were submitted as organizations, including: industrial associations, chambers of commerce, labor unions, clan/fraternity associations, political parties, district organizations (e.g., rural committees, neighborhood committees, residents’ associations, community affairs/people’s livelihood associations), etc. The vast majority of them (13,069, or 96.89 percent of the total) clearly expressed their support for the legislative proposals. Among these 13,069 supportive contributions, most (over 90%) were general opinions in support of legislation as soon as possible without specific recommendations, and part of these contributions (about 40%) were coordinated by various organizations, district organizations and rural committees,”
which, in practice, represents at most a favorable opinion of an exceedingly general nature of manifestly no specific significance as Prof. Valori himself implicitly confirmed on balance.Values when the same, after vigorously pointing out the Xianggang government’s promotion of the aforementioned public consultation, then verbatim wrote: “On this basis the Xianggang government drafted the draft law and submitted it to the Legislative Council for review,” implicitly confirming that the choral assent had been expressed literally on the ground of nothing.
concluding with a triumphalist:
Now, in light of what we glean from the aforementioned official Chinese source, the most interesting fact concerns the exceedingly significant very high percentage of anonymous dissenters whose very small number seems most understandable given the stigmatization of non-aligned organizations branded in no uncertain terms as “anti-Chinese organizations.” a characterization that seems decidedly specious if we only consider the rather peculiar circumstance that these include even “Amnesty International,” i.e., an international organization that for decades and decades has not discounted any of the world’s political structures and can hardly be, for its punctual and documented criticisms and denunciations, be made the subject, without any distinction, of a reprimand patently devoid of any foundation that aims, moreover, to qualify it as animated by sentiments marked by that “Imperialism,” as Prof. Values, which “in its most hideous forms-which are colonialism and neocolonialism-loses its hair but not its vice” for merely opposing the wishes of the Chinese Central Government.
There is to be said, however, that this … consultation was not in the least in Beijing’s ropes and that it was prepared in the wake of the remarks made by Amnesty International itself when the same NGO noted its absence in a 2021 paper titled “Hong Kong: in the name of national security” and dealing with human rights violations related to the implementation of Hong Kong’s national security law (with reference to the previously dismissed and adopted text).
The text in question reads at the beginning, “The Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (NSL) was unanimously approved by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China (NPCSC) and promulgated in Hong Kong on June 30, 2020 without any formal and meaningful public consultation or other local consultations.
The impact of the NSL was immediate and radical. Since the enactment of the NSL, Amnesty International has documented a wide range of human rights violations in Hong Kong. The law’s broad definition of “national security,” which traces that of China’s central authorities, lacks legal clarity and predictability and has been used arbitrarily as a pretext to restrict rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association, as well as to suppress dissent and political opposition.
Apparently, the Hong Kong government has been given freedom to use the law to target dissent. Accusing political parties, academics and other organizations and individuals actually or allegedly critical of the current government and political system in Hong Kong or mainland China of “threatening national security,” the authorities sought to justify censorship, harassment, arrests and prosecutions that violate human rights.”
It is evident from reading the text already in use and the current one that the so-called human rights safeguards provided by the NSL are effectively useless as the law abrogates existing human rights protections in both local jurisprudence and international law being its primary objective to zero in on any right to legitimate expression, peaceful protest or human rights work by means of an instrument designed precisely to restrict rights and freedoms in ways that go beyond what is permitted by law and international human rights standards: something that emerges so blatantly that it is obvious even to the eyes of anyone with eyes to read and a mind capable of understanding the literal meaning of a piece of writing.
Between July 1, 2020 and June 29, 2021, police arrested or ordered the arrest of at least 118 people in connection with the NSL; of these, at least three were under the age of 18 at the time of arrest, and as of June 29, 2021, as many as 64 had been formally charged and 47 were in pretrial detention in connection with the charges against them.
The analysis and documentation contained in the Amnesty International text cited above gave rise to specific requests for clarification forwarded by Amnesty International to the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) and the Hong Kong Department of Justice (DoJ), which they were careful to accommodate. Specifically, “the Justice Department responded that it does not retain relevant documents“-a patently ridiculous non-response.
IF this is the current air in Beijing, and the U.S. position is the one that is making a fine show in the Middle East, the world has little to trust in a New World Order under the banner of values that are not tainted by the arrogance of power.
Not to mention the reference, as far as critics are concerned, to those mentioned as “absconders (absconders in the original text on p. 360 of the document i.e., p. 3 of Appendix C)” Hui Chi-fung, Cheung Kwan-yang, and Lau Cho-dik who turn out to be, respectively:
- Hui Chi-fung is a Hong Kong politician made culpable upon entering politics for first attracting media attention to his protests. In 2014, for example, he had been expelled from a meeting of the council’s working group on civic education while protesting the council’s decision to grant 150,000 HK Dollars (of a total grant of 250,000 HK Dollars) to pro-Beijing groups. Hui on that occasion had complained of conflict of interest in that many advisers were members or advisers of the beneficiaries. During the deportation process, he had been injured by city hall security personnel: hence the demand for an apology.
- Cheung Kwan-yang is a political activist and advocate of Hong Kong’s autonomy and democratization, known for declaring “We want to build a democratic Hong Kong. It is not our responsibility to build a democratic China.” A former spokesperson for the Hong Kong Higher Institutions International Affairs Delegation (HKIAD) as a representative of the Student Union Council of the University of Hong Kong, he participated in the 2014 Umbrella Revolution and the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests. His lobbying efforts in the United States, as well as in a variety of other countries, helped promote the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, along with sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials. It deserves due consideration here that the fugitive in question has on several occasions declared that he wants to fight in order to raise international awareness for that Pro-Democracy Movement that since the days when Hong Kong was a British colony has been fighting for autonomy from London as well, as indeed is logical if we only consider that although democracy in Hong Kong grew progressively until the transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, historically the former British colony has never been an electoral democracy, something the aforementioned movement has always aimed at, and which the attempts made by the British to bring Hong-Kongers to the negotiating table during the Sino-Anglo-American discussions (attempts rejected by Beijing in the late 1980s for obvious reasons, the British attempt to try to bring the region to a situation of instability potentially exploitable by London in order to get a foothold in the area again, magarti under the pretext, for example, of defending civil rights) could not make people forget. Now. unmasking British partisanship, it is worth noting that, as substantiated by documents declassified in 2014, discussions on self-government between the British and Hong Kong governments resumed in 1958 due to British expulsion from India and growing anticolonial sentiment in the remaining Crown dominions, show us a Zhou Enlai, then a representative of the CCP, active in arguing that this “conspiracy” of self-government would be seen as a “rather hostile act” and that the CCP wanted Hong Kong’s colonial status to continue.
This in itself is hardly surprising considering that at the time China was facing increasing isolation in a world dominated by the Cold War and the Chinese Communist Party needed Hong Kong for contacts and trade with the outside world. This is substantiated by a whole series of desecreted documents published in an article that appeared on October 10, 2014 in Atlantis magazine under the title “The secret history of Hong Kong’s stillborn democracy” and signed by Gwynn Guilford, in which one can read verbatim about this singular affair.
On closer inspection, this particular position now returns somewhat useful in understanding the real reasons for the current polemics raised by Beijing against the autonomism of a Hong Kong once again regarded as a communication bridge to be controlled in the most total way possible for ends that with patriotism, anti-colonial spirit, anti-imperialism and a bit of other propaganda rhetoric have little to do with it.
- Lau Cho-dik radical dissident activist in Hong Kong known for launching a type of action called Lam Chau, a Hong Kong term referring to a concept of mutual assured destruction: literally “burn with us.” The term was chosen by Hong Kong’s 2019-2020 protesters as a doctrine against the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). According to his proposed strategy, the whole thing is aimed at getting sanctions from foreign countries to hit Hong Kong in such a way as to create economic damage to mainland China. The guiding principle is that if Beijing feels a threat to its economy coming, it will have to give the Hong Kong protesters what they want so as to appease them and not receive the financial consequences. This stance earned him a bounty placed on his head by the communist Hong Kong government. The questionable logic that takes the form of “Samson dies with all the Philistines” from us and the government’s reaction allows us to take stock of an aspect that has been little examined, namely that concerning the economic and political weight of Hong Kong-based economic relations for Xi Jinping’s China. The real issue behind this whole even media pantomime comes through the necessary and dutiful consideration of the fact that beyond the +5.2 percent growth in 2023, behind the Great Wall the economic signs are not the best in that while consumers are saving their incomes rather than spending them, businesses have begun to suspend investment for fear of diminishing profitability and corporate value. Other alarm bells are emerging in the midst, such as rising youth unemployment-which last March reportedly officially hit 20 percent although unofficial sources speak of as high as 50 percent-and the smallest increase in direct investment by foreign firms of just US$33B in the past 33 years, not to mention the news on January 29, 2024 regarding the liquidation by a Hong Kong court of the Chinese real estate giant Evergrande, indebted to the tune of more than US$300 Bn, while more recently Country Garden, China’s largest private real estate developer, found itself facing a liquidation petition filed by a creditor. In such an environment, characterized as well by a sharp drop in foreign demand, the worst thing is the risk of a liquidity crisis in China’s banking system.
To stay in the piece here is that in all the apologetic rhetoric of the cited article by Prof. Valori is missing a crucial link essential to assessing why the Hong Kong Security Law currently at the center of the dispute: a thorough examination of what happened at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China after the realization that the old modus operandi cleared by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, characterized by reforms and openness to the outside world – the same model, to be clear, that enabled the Asian giant to take on the guise of the so-called “world factory” – ran out of steam around the early 2000s.
END OF PART 2
