Opinion | Intriguing omissions in western scrutiny of the two sessions

By Richard Cullen, Visiting Professor of Law at HKU

We have seen extensive Western commentary, in the media and from politicians and officials, on the Two Sessions decision related to reforming the political system within the HKSAR. Most of this coverage is written to fit within a standing narrative crafted by the same actors over the last several years which rotates around the premise that the rise of China is a cause for deep global concern.

Within this storyline, the fact that China's rise has also fostered unprecedented, positive international progress (not least lifting over 800 million people from abject poverty in record time) is trumped by the unbending primary concern that China is jeopardizing lasting US-Western, geo-political dominance.

In this article I want to consider, by looking at two representative examples, certain instructive aspects of that ill-advised but dominant narrative.

A recent BBC report on the Two Sessions was entitled, "China's Parliament remakes Hong Kong in its own image". It is a lengthy report, which grimly notes at the outset that: "The spectacle of the China's stage-managed, National People's Congress imposing sweeping changes on Hong Kong's political system - by a true-to-form unanimous vote – is for many observers the moment that the experiment [One Country Two Systems] goes up in smoke." The article continues to adopt a discouraging tone through to its conclusion.

How, though, has this dismal turning point for the HKSAR come to pass? Above all, the report leaves one with the impression that the primary explanation for what has transpired is Beijing's steady, malevolent plotting to spring a trap, to force Hong Kong to knuckle-under.

Never mind that the article itself notes that for 24 years Beijing has left Hong Kong measurably free to experiment politically. The proverbial Man from Mars – along with the average reasonable onlooker - might wonder if something critical may have happened recently to trigger change? As an explanation, Beijing brooding and plotting and then impulsively switching to severe clamp-down-mode just does not measure up as a paramount cause. Why now? Why not 10 years ago – or earlier? Why allow Hong Kong so much freedom to experiment? None of these obvious questions are answered in the report.

Next, consider what the G7 Group of Countries has recently opined. In joint statement with the EU, the G7 said that they "call on China and Hong Kong authorities to restore confidence in Hong Kong's political institutions and end the unwarranted oppression of those who promote democratic values".

In both cases, apart from the skewed nature of what is said, vital context is rendered largely invisible. These two-dimensional responses all but erase any candid elucidation of three vital contextual realities. The first two are: the extended, intensely violent and destructive 2019 insurrection in Hong Kong; and the subsequent vigorous attempt to create a new source of menacing chaos using the "35+ plan" which openly envisaged a "burn together" ultimate outcome.

The G7 simply ignores this awkwardly grim information as it offers its high and mighty advice. Members of the G7 have form when it comes to shifting ground and using facts that suit and ignoring discomfiting realities. Shortly before France put down G7 protests using customary hardnosed measures at a G7 meeting in August 2019, the EU and Canada told the Hong Kong Government, as the insurrection was at its height, "to exercise restraint and to seek dialogue and protect fundamental freedoms". Moreover, the Extradition Bill used so effectively by the opposition to trigger and energize the mass marches (and the extended insurgency) was premised, not least, on complying with advice from the G7 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which said, in 2008, that the lack of adequate extradition provisions in the HKSAR notably hindered Hong Kong's capacity to combat internationally based corruption. The FATF repeated this advice in 2019.

The BBC report, meanwhile, characterizes the insurrection as massive protests which were "sometimes violent". The facts were quite the other way around. The well-planned and financed, ferociously damaging insurgency spun off from earlier peaceful mass marches and ran for over six shocking months as key actors managing this ill-omened project sought to bring Hong Kong to its knees. The dominant extremists within the movement harbored the illusion, as Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-Leung recently explained, that they could initiate an international crusade to bring down the Chinese Government.

The headline in the BBC story is also fundamentally off-target. The remaking that is happening is needed in order to restore stability and to preclude any further conspicuous attempts to undercut Hong Kong's constitutional order. This remaking is, however, far more inclined towards the image of British Hong Kong. The Two Sessions proposals implicitly draw on that understanding as they aim to allow Hong Kong to step away from the progressively fraught, distinctly politicized experience culminating in the 2019 insurrection and to rebuild a positive accommodation - as a still highly distinctive city - within China.

The British, according to their own account, managed Hong Kong with exceptional success relying on a clear and well applied form of non-democratic legality for virtually the entire period between 1842 and 1997. This works and works very well they told anyone who asked. And the evidence essentially backed them up.

Lord Sumption, a British, non-permanent judge in the HKSAR Court of Final Appeal, very recently wrote a comment for The Times, where he firmly expressed his commitment to serving Hong Kong people in that role. He said that he was guided by their interests and not by the wishes of UK politicians trying to draw British judges into a political boycott directed at the HKSAR. He also noted, acutely, that "The British had never introduced democracy [in Hong Kong] when they had the chance", adding that, "Our most important legacy to Hong Kong was not democracy but an impressive legal system".

The third comprehensively overlooked reality in this Western coverage is how the insurgency in the HKSAR has unfolded within what leading commentators in the US have saluted as a New Cold War directed by America against China. At the very least, what has unfolded is an American-led, confrontational, Sino-containment project, which dates back around four years.

In summary, these latest changes affecting Hong Kong have primarily been triggered by an exceptionally destabilizing, offshore-influenced insurrection, that was propagated, hardly unexpectedly, at a time of serious geopolitical tension, which was followed up with the fresh, "35+" plan to generate a political-constitutional crisis aimed at creating further intense destabilization in Hong Kong. These reforms are radical but are also considered and systematic. Moreover, they convincingly signal enduring support for the distinctive role of the HKSAR within China

In "The Adventure of Silver Blaze", Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate both the theft of a famed racehorse from a racing stable and the murder of the horse's trainer. At one point Holmes observes the curious incident of the dog which did not bark in the night-time. From this "negative fact" Holmes draws a conclusion which helps solve the case. Thus, the absence of the discussion of certain matters can be informing about the matter under discussion.

Why, when the pivotal contextual circumstances, outlined above, are as so clear, is the visible avoidance of reference to these factors unmistakable in these commentaries on the Two Sessions? The logical explanation is that these interpretations have been consciously or unconsciously pre-shaped by a need to fit within a knowingly curtailed meta-narrative aimed at sustaining an insistently adverse perspective on China.

This is a narrative fashioned and intentionally refined over time by Western opinion-shapers and the media, in combination. It is a project anxiously energized by an ominous conviction that the rise of China presents an existential menace to the American-led, liberal world order, which these observers deeply favor. Normative guard rails have been set in place to shape and control global discussion of what is emerging as the greatest geo-political shift in a century. Certain conventions are clear. Informed and freedom-enhancing liberalism should be contrasted with always disturbing authoritarianism – or worse. Western-style, electoral or process legitimacy pre-emptively enjoys a superior rank to performance or outcome legitimacy.

The "black hat – white hat" discourse facilitated by this ascendant perspective makes the job of those delivering such observations easier – and predictable. But it does a grave disservice to those who are consuming these estimations. Over time, this pre-set shallowness also undermines the reputation for clear-headed, comprehensive thinking, on which rests the long-term credibility of institutions like the BBC.

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