China closing its grip on Hong Kong

Frank Gaffney informs us that, after six years of the “One Country, Two Systems” fraud, the People’s Republic of China is about to drop the mask. A law is in the works that could deny to the people of Hong Kong the basic freedoms of religion, press and expression that had been guaranteed by the Chinese. Yet to anyone with eyes to see, this tragedy was inevitable from the moment that Britain ceded control over Hong Kong to a Communist government. Here is a letter I wrote to the New York Post about this tragedy on July 1, 1997:

To the editor:

Thanks to Ray Kerrison (“Easy as ABC for Beijing Butcher”, July 1) for expressing the anguish and shame that all men of the West and all lovers of freedom should feel about the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese Communists, instead of “celebrating” this horrible event, as does that unspeakable swine Peter Jennings, or finding in it grounds for “cautious optimism,” mixed with “pride” and “sadness,” as Mrs. Thatcher does in her pathetic attempt to pretty up the worst failure of her Prime Ministership.

It is important to understand that Britain’s shameful surrender of Hong Kong to Communist China wasn’t necessary. Initially China didn’t even want Hong Kong, but only began demanding it because of British diplomatic clumsiness, as explained in a devastating article in Commentary some years ago.

Second, and more important, the British should not have felt bound to observe the terms of the 100-year lease. They had leased Hong Kong from a weak disorganized Chinese empire; but that empire had been replaced by a totalitarian regime. As Plato argues in The Republic, if you borrow a weapon from a man and he then becomes dangerously insane, a true understanding of justice does not require you to hand the weapon back to him, even though technically it belongs to him. The same principle applies here. A higher requirement than observing the letter of the law in this case was Britain’s moral obligation to protect the liberties of the people of Hong Kong from a totalitarian government.

If Britain had taken a principled stand, mixed with a measure of diplomacy to avoid offending the Chinese,, and gotten world opinion on her side, would China have proceeded to take Hong Kong by force? It seems unlikely. At least a principled stand would have been worth trying, instead of simply surrendering to the Communists and then trying to conceal the surrender with transparent fig leafs such as “One Country, Two Systems.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 12, 2003 12:01 AM | Send