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China rips up Hong Kong Deal with the UK
 Last Monday the convenient fiction on which Britain handed over Hong Kong to China ("one country, two systems") came to an end. The Standing Committee of China's parliament, the National People's Congress, declared that the inhabitants of Hong Kong could not elect their chief executive in 2007, nor vote for more than half the seats in the territory's legislature in 2008. But that's the extent of it. Seven years after the hand-over, the spirit of the Chinese-British deal has been destroyed, and we prefer to ignore it. In slightly menacing celebration, eight Chinese warships sailed into Hong Kong harbour last week, the biggest show of Chinese naval strength there since 1997. Why? Chinese government officials rummaged around in their collective memory and produced a pretty feeble reason: it was the 55th anniversary of the creation of the Chinese communist navy. Wouldn't it have been better to celebrate the 50th anniversary in this fashion? No answer. Back in 1999, of course, the Chinese were still wary of flouting the agreement with Britain. Not any longer. The display of naval force was intended for another audience altogether: the government and people of Taiwan. Beijing has stopped playing Mr Nice Guy, trying to seduce the Taiwanese by showing how affectionate and accommodating it can be to those parts of the Motherland which have become temporarily unattached. Now it's sending Taiwan a pre-emptive warning. The commander of the flotilla in Hong Kong harbour, Vice Adml Yao Xingyuan, was straight-spoken when someone asked him about Taiwan. "We are ready for the call from our country," he snapped. "We have the capability to maintain the political stability of Taiwan." In other words, China is showing that it exerts a potential control over Taiwan to match its actual control over Hong Kong. If the United States and Britain don't like it, too bad; China has the military strength to do the job if necessary. This presents the Americans with a real problem. Like the British in Hong Kong, they have been looking for a way of maintaining Taiwan's basic rights while keeping China happy. The "one nation, two systems" approach seemed a reasonable way forward. But all sorts of factors have now persuaded China that it doesn't need to jump through these tiresome hoops any longer: the Americans are mired in a foreign adventure in Iraq which may well act as a kind of aversion therapy for the rest of this decade, much as previous American disasters in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia did; China is more sure of itself economically, politically and military; and Taiwan has got itself into a foolish state of political weakness after the muddled election which only just gave President Chen Shui-bian another term in office. The best reason for threatening Taiwan is the relative absence of fuss in the West about what's happened to Hong Kong. If anyone, back in 1997, had realised that the agreement to allow Hong Kong to follow its own path for half a century would be trashed within seven years, there would have been international outrage. Now the few remaining Western foreign correspondents based in Hong Kong count themselves lucky to get a few column inches about it, and the Chinese have turned it all neatly into an argument about how little democracy the British allowed Hong Kong when it was their colony Posted by: 3dc 2017-07-01 |
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