The End Of "One Country, Two Systems" And The Future Of Freedom In Hong Kong

good afternoon uh or good evening uh wherever you may be if you are in hong kong or taiwan or somewhere else in east asia uh we wish you good morning my name is larry diamond with dr glenn tiffert i lead the program on china's global sharp power uh here at the hoover institution where i'm privileged to be a senior fellow and it's my great pleasure today to welcome you uh to this special event on the end of uh the system of one country two systems uh and the challenge uh to freedom uh for hong kong i think most of you know that on june 30th the people's republic of china effectively brought to an end what remained of its promise of one country two systems that hit it had pledged as part of the agreement with britain that hadn't its sovereignty back to mainland china on july 1 1997. with its imposition of a draconian national security law that the people of hong kong had courageously resisted in mass demonstrations of unprecedented scale that inspired the world the communist party state betrayed its commitment to britain the people of hong kong and the world and launched an ongoing crackdown that has now ravaged the limited elements of democracy and rule of law in hong kong that gave those people and the world hope for a better and freer future for hong kong this is now a new and more alarming era in the struggle of the hong kong people for freedom dignity and autonomy and a major challenge for american foreign policy and for uh the democracies of asia pacific region in particular in terms of what is to be done we are so pleased and grateful to have two leading scholars and activists to help us understand the challenges ahead for hong kong and the world in this special session today our first speaker will be victoria timberway associate professor of political science and a fellow of the lou institute for asia and asian studies at the university of notre notre dame her essay crackdown hong kong faces tienen men 2.0 was published in the october 2020 issue of the journal of democracy and her writings have also appeared in numerous academic journals and in the journal foreign affairs our second speaker will be nathan law and nathan thank you for staying up very late in london to be with us nathan is a democracy activist and was one of the student leaders of the 2014 umbrella movement in hong kong that launched a new era of democracy struggle in hong kong in 2016 he became the youngest person ever elected to hong kong's legislative council but his election was nullified under pressure from beijing the following year and we'll be hearing from our speakers about the tragedy that has befallen this most important instrument of democracy in hong kong in recent weeks nathan recently obtained an m.a degree in east asian studies from yale university and recently spoke on behalf of the hong kong pro-democracy movement when it received the 2020 freedom award by freedom house in his remarks uh to freedom house he warned about china's growing sharp and soft power aiming to penetrate and compromise the world's democracies and said freedom for me is about having eternal vigilance toward the injustice in society and to be able to combat it freely the people of hong kong are still combating it but the freely part of that vision is now increasingly at existential risk so uh with that we turn now to our first speaker victoria thank you so much for being with us thank you so much for having me it is good right okay so uh mary's the topic for us is that the end of hong kong and the future of freedoms so let me begin with the the end of the win country to systems model so for everyone from hong kong or for the rest of the world the one country to systems model as promised by the 1984 sign of british jones declaration and the 1990 basic law uh hong kong's media constitution they basically that's really the end of it but there are two different interpretations of it for hong kong people in the rest of the world or when britain signed the designer which is joint declaration the two systems refer to the hong kong systems with with the hong kong system and factory freedoms free press of academic freedom that you can actually yell down with the isn't that chinese leader you can continue to hold candlelight vigil every year on june 4th whereas for chinese leaders already at the time that they felt well you know hong kong has so hoka is capitalism whereas china has socialism so for them the ideal was to take hong kong's capitalism but without his freedom so essentially what we're seeing is that this establishment has taken over the hong kong model of freedom originally intended to protect hong kong from china's one party dictatorship and how do we understand the end of this one country to systems model and sometimes because a lot of international observers probably pay more attention to eastern europe that to china or hong kong and one thing to think about is berlin and these days for example hong kongers have adopted the idea that we are all believers because think about a one's free building being taken over by the soviet union the one one difference is that berlin was not really an international financial center without the significance of hong kong its significance to the world and two another difference is that um the peri did not reroll out of the tanks to technical for hong kong but we would be mistaken to just focus on the use of military force so looking at for example the hoof institute's project on china's sharp power is that you really can dominate other people you can dominate other countries without ever rolling out the tanks and this is also what what's the what the authorities in beijing hong kong have done instead of rolling out times to the streets of hong kong they subverted corrupted the hong kong police the hong kong police used to be asia's finest i remember when i was a kid that we actually would call these police uncle police auntie we trusted them i still remember that many years ago when we were holding when we were having protests we would say high five to police officers we didn't fear them but then another thing is that these days that what has happened is uh with with the entire tradition protest of last year beijing has imposed a whole of society cracked down what i mean by this is that the crackdown has expanded from the core protesters to the rest of the society when it came to the core protesters that was there's been this campaign to address as many as possible so since june last year over 10 000 people have been arrested along with that it's also a decapacitation campaign against protesters so in the u.s people have been just really abhorred by scenes of police officers kneeling on the bones of people whether they are you know they're genuine genuine criminals or they're just protesters or they just happen to be unlucky this kind of scene was very common in hong kong and all then we could actually see all of those scenes through live streaming media and the police apparently did not even care they were doing all of that in front of the media apparently they knew that they did not really have to account for anything that they did they knew that the authorities were behind them another part of this is that for example new york times last year had a story behind every protest there was an army of supporters so this is how we came how beijing is also launching this whole society crackdown is that there were all there were a lot of middle class professionals so not just the core protesters but many people who didn't really go to protest sites were talking about professionals catholic pacific staff labor union workers civil servants even financial sector workers they all separately organize their unions and organize their supports they place they try to collect money to place as and how do you deal with these people if they don't get arrested at protest site you try to still come up with excuses to dismiss them to arrest them but the minimum thing is that you dismiss them so that they lose their livelihood that's the best way to silence a lot of these people and then beyond that also a lot of prominent political fakers have been subject to arrest and these political figures actually have been very very moderate they many of them basically you you were not cons a lot of the core protesters actually found them way too moderate so we're talking about martin lee who was arrested on april 18th along with many others and and they were charged with unlawful assemblies because in hong kong if he wants to have a protest you have to apply for a no objection permit from the police when the police stop granting such a permit then you are subject to unlawful assemblies and they are they are actually subject to five years of imprisonment for just parties participating in protest and then also that p this year for june 4th that uh um it was the the produce was also not granted permit and so more people were arrested for that now we expand also to the circle also electrical the legislative council of hong kong larry was just talking about this that of for a while that's basically for a long time beijing has managed to already keep the opposition in perpetual minority but apparently in this mind this even in the minority but this vocal opposition is too vocal for even beijing's taste and then this year early this year in in july in late july beijing first the authorities first disqualified four candidates and then the next day they postponed the elections all together this is because what this time a lot of the opposition forces got together to organize primaries to make sure that they will not compete against each other and does this campaign to win 35 plus one seat because there's 76 with with electrical so if you can win 35 plus one you can control the majority and because of that because of this this prospect that they actually could win beijing then cancel the elections so not just that these people are not disqualified so uh last week that's four of them because the elections were cancelled and therefore that some of those continue to stay on but last week four of them got disqualified again and then the rest of the democracy legislators also walked out in solidarity now beyond dismissal another thing is that these legislators are also subjected further arrest these four for example um there's already talked that they should be charged with misconduct in public office and we know that uh 12 uh uh 11 legislators former legislators already arrested for scuffles in the legislative chamber that happened early in may and june so um let me mention the national security law i would say that this has imposed a reign of terror it criminalizes secession subversion terrorism and collusion it is important to see that the definition of these crosses is so broad to include not just action action could mean violence and non-violence and terrorism actually also includes just setting up roadblocks and also the law would also criminalize activity meaning any kind of financial material support it also criminalizes speech so the next day people held the prudent slogan five demands not one less or rough revolution about time the blue tongue called these protest logins are now all ban under the national security law and so far there have been about uh 30 arrests under the national security law most of those that we actually don't even know what the charges are because the law is so big and and then for example nathan's colleague friend and his child as she's been arrested and we really don't know what exactly that she's going to be charged for i guess in competitive perspective in the wider perspective is how do we understand hong kong's the end of hong kong's freedom i would say that you know i think it's important for us to see that hong kong's protest did not just begin last year it actually has been going on for over three decades beginning from the late 1980s and then when we look at other cases in the world whenever you see about 3.5 percent of the population coming out to protest then a lot all of those cases actually uniformly succeeded so in hong kong we have seen up to two million people out of a population of 7.4 coming out to protest we're talking about 22 percent of the population showing up then why is it that in hong kong the movement has failed i think because the idea as i mentioned before the idea of one country two systems basically had two interpretations and that's why basically essentially it was born it just suffered from a bad birth already and then another important issue is that for a lot of these movements they succeeded it actually has then in a way created for beijing has learned lessons oh make sure that we do not even allow nonviolent forms of protest because non-violence is like color revolution which also means regime change and that makes them think of tenement so with all of these so it is essentially it doesn't matter whether it is violent or non-violence that hong kong's protest is kind of like it's really difficult to get anywhere now where does this take us about the future uh in a way that so the legislators when they stepped down last week they said we see you in the streets the worrying thing is that you really can not see people in the streets anymore because the police will not issue no objection permit any kind of open descent is now criminalized but i don't think that you know the hong kong has no future no hope because the civil society is very strong i would say it is very important for people to continue to maintain this very strong civil society maintain the sense of community and then another thing is to stick to the truth because the regime is really also learning from the tournament model to reconstruct the truth and to say that you know this is all about riots and the police are just restoring law and order and also impose amnesia so we're talking about the the government's trying to impose hr education on hong kong and then another important thing is going back to what we said earlier that for beijing the model the ideal model for hong kong is capitalism without freedom and the international community has to really get beijing to understand that it cannot really keep its capitalism or to reap all the benefits from hong kong without its freedom as well so let me stop here victoria thank you so much and i really urge uh all of our audience to read your eloquent and incisive piece in the journal of democracy uh i will say uh i think we need to have a conversation about what capitalism without freedom means because in the rest of china it's a very distorted version of what we really understand to be capitalism well we'll leave that for later i want to give the floor now to my friend and someone i i very deeply admire uh both of you but now to nathan law um hi everyone this is nathan thank you for the invitation from the hoover institute and the introduction from nary also the statement from victoria the title of this event is the end of one country two systems and the future of freedom in hong kong i think the parts accurately depict the situation and the later part remains uncertain as we all are aware we used to know is gone now after a year of protesters and dreadful responses from the authority the popularity of hong kong government has dropped to historical low and the confidence of hong kong people towards one country two system ruling framework has basically vanished while the situation looks grim in hong kong beijing authority made it worse by circumventing all of our constant consultation and legislative processes to impose the notorious national security law to us as a de facto final nail in the coffin of one country to system with the draconian national security law beijing has an arbitrary power to detain arrest and prosecute any political activists or dissidents that they don't like carillon says that the law is only intended to target violent protesters this is a blatant lie the sole purpose of the law is to quash our freedom of expression any desires for political changes and the right to protest it has created a widespread psychological terror and fear across the city up until now as victoria has mentioned around 30 people have been arrested under the law indeed international media had covered the arrest of my dear's friends fellow activists and a shell and democratic veteran jim eli who runs pro-democracy news outlets in hong kong high-profile activists like them were arrested as a retaliation towards the sanctioning from the u.s government towards hong kong officials who are responsible for the human rights violation in hong kong however arrests are not limited to those of the highest profiles ordinary youngsters have also been arrested simply for possessing flags and stickers with plot protest slogans on during arbitrary stop and searches in the city these cases demonstrate the use of the law to terrorize and deprive hong kong people on all levels from the most fundamental rights and as a legal weapon from the beijing government by setting up these examples and abusing such a vaguely defined law a sense of fear and white terror has permeated our entire city some of my friends are actively disengaging from political lives and deleting poses on facebook due to the fear of being prosecuted under the national security law academics are self-censoring and eliminating research topics that may be considered as crossing the line reporters are worried that they are no longer able to cover certain sensitive topics the latest update are the outcasters of the pro-democracy legislators in the council four legislators were housed by the bridging government due to the retrospective application of the concepts in the national security law subsequently all the other pro-democracy legislators resigned to protest resulting to a chamber that has no genuine opposition voice some may find the action hard out to understand but for many hong kong people this is the way to preserve their dignity and unity as it's impossible to speak up in the council anymore when the government can arbitrarily unseat them but the suppression does not stop at hong kong recent reports have also indicated that signs of academics and students in western institutions engaging in self-censorship either for the fear of danger when they visit china or due to strong funding ties to ccp linked donors hong kong is simply the first domino of the free world that has been knocked over by this autocratic influence hong kong was once placed as a pearl of of the orient the vitality of our beloved city radiate through its freedom nothing traditions and citizens that are hopeful in their future and system but the shrine of the city has faded our generation has grieved and witnessed the complete degradation of our home from the beacon of freedom in asia to an authoritarian police state that we no longer recognize today thousands of political dissidents have already been arrested hundreds of them are imprisoned and even tortured just because of their love for the city and the desire to protect them even at the course of their life and the future i myself am one of them i have been elected as the youngest lawmaker in history but was eventually evoked from the council because of beijing's intervention in our local legal system i was jailed because of my participation in the peaceful civil disobedience movement and for now i had to flee to london to embark on a life in exile because of the threat under the national security law according to the news outlet delivered by the state media recently i am now wanted by the hong kong police force for my pro-democracy activism i'm still living in the fear of being hunted by the chinese government and their far-reaching secret services which have a long reputation of kidnapping and covert missions it's devastating that i am unable to go back to my beloved city but left more reason not only for my safety but the liberty to continue to speak up for hong kong people and i think many youth in hong kong share the same sentiment with me which even though the reality seems grim but at the bottom of our hearts we still have hope also arise from the shared experience and suffering in the movement a much stronger sense of hong kong identity is fortified and it will fill the future struggle for our autonomy many are concerned with the future of hong kong because they think that the chinese communist party is too big to fall indeed the ccp is still very powerful and equipped with the most sophisticated tools to quash dissidents and survey its people but we can also see a much more consolidated international resort responses to the human rights violation in china most of the eu countries uplift their extradition treaties with hong kong and many of them extended the arms embargo to hong kong and release strong and prompt statements in regards to all the major incidents happened for the past few months the ccp of course has their own problems to face china's economic growth has long been regarded as a source of legitimacy and stability but the pandemic had dealt its a blow with a looming debt crisis and even recovery growing income gaps failing industrial transformation rising unemployment rate and pressure drawn from an aging society its growth model and wealth redistribution system failed to generate sufficient economic power to keep the country going on the current path the warrior diplomacy adopted by xi jinping is an example of this ship of this shift trying to drum up nationalistic pride to replace decreasing confidence in the party yet it will also steam international criticism and isolation on the global stage when china is more isolated its economy will be worsened this vicious cycle would lead to a potential gigantic legitimacy crisis still the short-term future for hong kong is still looming there's no signs of beijing deviating its heavy-handed approaches and the civic society in hong kong will face suppressions just like the ones in mainland china states like education judiciary academic journalism or the major battlefield the government will try their best to avoid any accountability and silence the crowd who dare to speak these intrusions will be more subtle quiet but as detrimental as the ways they prosecute political activists as now we have left the beijing-dominated chamber it's not easy to guide a new path that can generate momentum to fight back but luckily even though the suppression is a notch the tenacity and creativity in the resistance movement are also emboldened we have a stronger economic circle that reciprocate the movement we have larger international lobbying network that helps build up our tactics and policies that hold china to account our voices are more visible and determined than before which helped us to garner more support from the international stage the road of combating authoritarianism is lengthy and pumpy i hope more institutions in the west could join us in the fight the democracies need to join our hands and work together to safeguard the liberal values and stop china from spreading its ideology and control over their brothers we hope that the democratic communities around the world can stand together and to protect our shared democratic values thank you so much thank you uh nathan and thank you uh victoria for your incredibly uh eloquent uh and moving uh and informative remarks um i wanna get into uh the question of what exactly uh we can do to help you we individuals but we in the west uh more broadly um before i do i'd like you to illuminate a little bit more what's happening on the ground in the following respects that enlarge your concept of battlegrounds nathan first of all if you can tell us about the state of those arrested and what lies ahead it sounds like there have been tens of thousands of arrests but there are hundreds of people now in jail um do we first of all know who those people are and who's monitoring the conditions of their treatment and second of all for the others um that have been arrested in our awaiting trial what is the legal process and timetable that awaits them and my second yeah thanks i'll ask both of these questions and nathan you can start and then we'll come to victoria uh i i wonder if you could um enlighten our audience a little bit more about the state of the mass media which we know uh is slowly being strangled in subtle ways as well as overt ways by beijing with of course jimmy ly's apple daily being a brave hold out and the state of civil society organization so nathan you start and then we'll come to victoria go ahead yeah sorry larry for the inter interruption previously and um yeah i guess i'll answer the first question um there are more than ten thousand arrests for the in the past in the past year and uh a few hundreds of them are facing serious charges like writing which could result up to six to seven years of sentencing and uh most of them are awaiting trial but already several hundreds of them are being locked and uh waiting trial without bail so that is the situation of hong kong's political dissidence which is actually drastically different from a couple years ago when i was sentenced to eight months uh in 2017 it was already seen as one of the largest political cases in hong kong's history but for now we are saying that these people these fellows they will face years of imprisonment and many of them of them will face that and there are many of them have already given the sentence so this is uh what we are dealing with and for for these people we've got their information because uh the court cases are open uh for public review and um there are uh people mainly the district councillors that they will pay visit to them and there is some fundings that uh can help them for their uh for example uh daily charges in in in prison and supporting their families and we're trying to build up a back-end network that could help them to alleviate it and alleviate their pressure so in general i think uh there are good monitoring system in place but we don't know whether in the future the the government would um close down we'll cram down the fundings and cram down the physics uh from the district councillors uh this is uh the development that we pay close attention to is there a website that people can go to to contribute if they want to support these uh the legal uh defense of these people yeah yes that that a few uh particular foundations that provide support to these people the most famous and most credible one is uh 612 uh humanitarian assistance foundation which is uh monitored uh by famous singer dennis ho and other former legislators uh you could check it out on their website and to if you could uh you're generous enough you can make a donation great so we'll ask you to share uh those with us and we'll put them on our website uh victoria yes thank you i let me just add to what nathan said about the condition of dos arrester so earlier i said that you know over 10 000 arrested but actually there also many thousands who were injured during those protests because some of them managed to just get away even though they were injured but um and and then at the same time those who are detained it was actually until last year it was never unheard of so for example when nathan was you know participated in in the umbrella movement he was expecting that he could be jailed but then i don't think that nathan would ever expect to be beaten to be tortured or to be denied access to lawyers and family for hours on end and these are all happening in hong kong since last year so that's another thing that is also very important to keep in mind and then back to the question about the state of the mid mass so the idea of the press a strong supporting network behind the protesters because without the press we would not have known what was going on on the ground in hong kong and what is interesting is that last year i mentioned earlier that the police would torture people right in front of live streaming international local media but after you know they got what they wanted they provoked outrage and so it will also prove the violence turn later on it's like we don't really want that so what has happened in the last few months is that one um we used to have the hong kong journalist association just giving journalists accreditation on their own and the police decided to take that away and now unless you work for one of those pro regime media organizations you would not be allowed on site well you can still go but then whenever the police decided to show up and then they draw they call yellow caught in line and you happen to be inside then you'll just be treated not as oppressed but as just another protester and you're subject to arrest another important issue earlier i talked about how beijing is also trying to learn from the tenement playbook to impose its reconstruction of the truth one of the major incidents last year was in yunnan when white shirted fox attacked people and with that incident king kong is government media organization they ran two very very good programs to show who was doing what essentially providing evidence of collusion between police officers and these white shirted thugs and for that the producer was arrested and so a lot of the things are going on and the media at the forefront another group to look at also is medical workers because a lot of us really do not know what happened inside hospitals the extent of these injuries but last year we managed to know that because medical workers beginning in mid-august they were protesting with the sign hong kong police attempts to murder hong kong citizens they actually the people who know the kind of injuries um another first question what can we do one thing is that support you know if you are a us voter support all of the legislations that are currently on table with the congress also lobby the incoming government at the same time it is important to also put pressure you tell you know if you have the right to vote tell the people that you want to you want to govern the united states that you care about hong kong ask them to actually take strong extra not just to to make strong words and nathan earlier talked about forming an international coalition of democracies to champion values because hong kong stands for universal values i think it is just as important because ultimately china has this sharp power and it can coerce other countries and individuals to sub to exercise self-censorship because of its economic power and so i i'm really hoping that to you know the inc the incoming government administration is going to restart the trans-pacific partnership tpp now that with china already signing getting all the a lot of the pacific countries to to join the reset the region its own china-central organization that occupies about 30 of the global trade the only way to counter that is for the u.s to rejoin the tpp which then was was much broader and is the one it would be the only organization that excludes china and go back to what larry said about capitalism without freedom china the main difference between now and berlin was that at the time the soviet union did not fully count on western democracies western economies today china's own economic model actually relies on its assets to global capital global market and so that's really the leverage that the international community has well you've begun to answer uh the question uh that one of our um participants posed i'm going to read it anyway just because it's touching i grew up in hong kong in the 1980s i'm a dual citizen of the us and uk my heart is broken from my beloved city how can we help the people of hong kong from abroad uh beyond just praying and and posting on social media so you've said uh to begin with well uh if you live in a democracy whether it's the united states or britain or australia or whatever uh let your congress uh representative let your member of parliament know that you care and you want action now you've said you hope the next administration which i think will be the biden administration will stand up for human rights rally a coalition of democracies to stand up for human uh universal values in in hong kong and obviously in xinjiang and in china itself and around the world we have an instrument uh which you're both deeply familiar with and lobbied for the hong kong human rights and democracy act that imposes sanctions against officials from the people's republic of china from mainland china and from the hong kong special administrative region who are deemed to have been responsible for human rights abuses in hong kong um i would like to ask you each to evaluate what the united states has done so far to implement the provisions of the hong kong human rights and democracy act what would you like them to see them do that they haven't done and whether you see any other democracies moving in the direction of that legislation sure uh thank you for the question larry um i think uh first of all it it reminds me about uh what i felt differently when i visited uh dc for the first time in 2015 when the hong kong horizon democracy act was first draft and proposed in the car congress uh the numbers of congressmen endorsing that were less than ten but we can see that uh last year's passage of the law of the bill it was uh a bipartisan agreement and there was one acting vote and the others folded yes for that so we could really see the huge difference between the issue of hong kong and the the popularity and the the degree of attention of the uh u.s politics paying on that issue and i think the major change would definitely be uh how the u.s positioned china uh you know the u.s china policies had had been through drastic changes in the recent two uh two to three years and we could all really witness that through the ways uh china the us government um portraying china processing it as a threat instead of a strategic cooperation and uh we we can see from a lot of speeches from that so i think that general trends is moving to a right track but of course uh if you uh want to say that um is there anything that we need to do more in the future yes indeed i think we need more cooperation we we need more multilateral approach uh in our with uh democracies in european in europe and also in asia so that we can have a much larger coalition and occupying more economic power to combat that authoritarian expansion from china so i think in the future a cooperation would be definitely uh a crucial factor to to how we enhance that kind of um china strategy in the global stage yeah so you guys essentially i agree with uh nathan what the hong kong human rights and democracy act does you know ultimately is to require the administration to certify if hong kong remains autonomous autonomous in order to keep its special economic privileges to be treated as a separate customs zone as separate from the rest of china so it was really important that um these stage departments announced early on that you know hong kong basically no longer has autonomy well the actions actually so far um we actually there could be a lot more done at the same time i think what happens is that beijing really did the calculation is that one they don't really care what the rest of the world does because they are becoming the next superpower and they impact on the facts that you know all these other economies kind of china's investment chinese infrastructure uh the chinese market and then at the same time they also calculated that well if the us actually does anything to take away everything from hong kong then it is actually loosely situation for u.s businesses as well they probably bet on the fact that u.s businesses will continue to lobby against taking stronger actions i think one thing we can think about is that for so long that beijing was trying to take advantage of hong kong's special economic status to get access to international capital international finance international technologies and all of that but now that you have all of these major international companies with the regional headquarters in hong kong they have their own assets they have the entire buildings so now the essentially the what the national security law also asks these companies to do is that if we ask you to provide information to provide data on your employees or you know if it's just facebook request that you provide data you have to we actually don't really know what has happened uh immediately facebook and what's up enough those companies got together and said that we are suspending any processing of such requests but since then we actually don't know if they go back to complying so maybe beijing is actually taking leverage of the existence of these internet international assets to make it very difficult for the us to take stronger actions and then this goes back to also what i was trying to say earlier that ultimately china's a lot of its power even its military power is a function of its economic power and so then the really the most effective way to try to to counter china's influence is to go back at the rules of this economic power from this coalition another thing is that the u.s has done is to impose sanctions on 11 individuals high officials well you know maybe but if caroline her essays her family actually are in london and not in the us so those sanctions actually don't mean anything which also goes back to the importance of getting all of the western democracies to come together to impose sanctions at the same time and on top of top officials it may be just as important to also impose sanctions on police offices which is something that a lot of politicians or governments don't really have appetite for because ultimately you want these guys before they should and be the people to think twice so one thing is that you have once you have leverage on top leaders at the same time it is just an importance that maybe we can count on the food soldiers the people who have to carry out orders to to pause and think twice uh thank you i'd like to call now on my colleague our program manager for the china global sharp power program research fellow glenn tifford thank you very much larry we've spoken about the media but in addition to the media three civil society institutions that have distinguished hong kong from the rest of the prc are its education sector particularly its excellent universities and the judiciary and the bar beyond the well-known cases of benite and johannes chan i wonder if you could both reflect on how far the worsening climate that you've described in your remarks have affected these institutions recently uh thanks for questioning glenn there are several uh incidents that we could refer to the first one is um there are already universities having flat racing ceremony um in in upcoming days this is a big thing for them because there has never been uh any flat rating ceremony in these universities but um they are starting to have one so it really shows that they are having that there's a need for them to show their loyalty to the government and uh secondly uh all these universities they uh uh school council are being controlled by uh the by the chief executive um the members of most of the members were are appointed by the chief executive so basically they have uh the power to determine uh all the issues in uh the school and there are already professors they are very worrying about um their position in the university as they are more or less more outspoken and working on more or less a sensitive issue so i think uh for now that um we indeed need more response from the west in order to really help these uh rather vocal professors and also to preserve the academic freedom in hong kong and that has been a proposal that i've been advocating for which is not directly applicable for uh by the help of individual scholars and and universities but i really do hope that all these uh uh university ranking system they could include uh a rating of academic freedom as uh one of the factors when they rank uh these universities and uh it will give incentive for these universities to uh to have more leverage when they need to counter some very observed orders from the governments and it will help those professors in the universities to fight for their courses because they could use it as the name of preserving the ranking of the university which sounds less political but it will help them to negotiate in their feud so i think if we could really add that factors and helping these uh professors i think it would be a good thing uh so i guess um we are facing a very difficult time but we will have a lot of uh struggles in the process of that yeah to add to that go ahead to add so to add to that is that the education site and the legal cycle very very important um so it's just yesterday uh john xiaomi first a face deputy director of the hong kong account affairs office in celebrating the 30th anniversary of the basic law he said that you know the base of our promises hong kong people in hong kong would be under one country to systems model he said that actually we really only want patriots only only patriarchy hong kong people are entitled to ruling hong kong which means you know essentially only people who are loyal to beijing and so this has then been extended to the education sector and the legalist side the legal sector as well and um i think the word the the worst thing that's going to happen is that people they may the authorities may introduce quote unquote legal reform to make sure that only loyal judges can can stay and already that the national security law requires that the chief executive can appoint certain judges to rule over national security cases and this may be extended to other things we also know that judges who have um uh dismissed cases about certain cases because the police are lying or they don't have sufficient evidence and those gestures have been subject to massive honest attacks by people this is another thing to keep in mind and at the same time back to kind of like how do we counter the whole society the crackdown and also what larry said what can we do i think other professions in the rest of the world one thing that people could do is to have this peer-to-peer connection and i suppose as a professor then you know professors should really reach out to professors in hong kong uh labor union work leaders in the u.s should reach out to labor unions in hong kong the legal sector the bar associations in the u.s should reach out to to the legal sector in hong kong and in that sense then that also creates a bit more kind of like you know at least whatever happens we know this is going on even if you cannot really stop what beijing really wants to do great uh thank you i'm going to uh pose several questions now that have been posed by the audience and then i'll let you each answer the ones you can and i'll have one final question i want to ask you each that i'll save so why don't you take some notes and answer as you can and victoria will come to you first this time because the first question is right up your ally alley does non-violent protest work okay i know you've thought a lot about non-violent civil resistance and have written widely about it some people think well look what's happened now non-violent civil resistance has failed would violent resistance be any more successful i have a very strong view on this but we want to hear your view and nathan's a colleague in the law school here asks more broadly about you know what the outlook is now for maintaining a robust civil society which is of course the pillar of strategic non-violence and then there's a specific question that's uh very interesting i haven't thought enough about this um the previous uh roman catholic cardinal uh in hong kong joseph zen now emeritus was as you know an outspoken critic of the ccp but the current archbishop has been the questioner of postulates of far friendlier to the beijing authorities and um the current pope of course this um is true for mainland china as well as hong kong has been criticized for reaching an accommodation with the chinese communist party so comment if you will each of you if you wish on the role of the catholic church and religion uh more strongly and then finally my colleague our director of fsi and senior fellow at hoover mike mcfaul our former ambassador to russia uh and i and others have been very uh concerned about the increasing weaponization of interpol by authoritarian regimes like china and russia do you see the prc trying to utilize interpol to try and further put the squeeze on hong kong protesters and of course we would being with your being abroad nathan we would uh worry about your safety in this circumstance victoria let's start with you and then we'll come to nathan okay great first question um on july 1st last year hundreds of protesters stormed into the legislative council building and one of the graffitis that they spray painted around the building was it is you caroline who taught us that peaceful protests do not work in a way that they have a logic because hong kong's democracy movement has been going on for over three decades and every time it was non-violent every time it was peaceful and also the umbrella movement was strictly non-violent it was peaceful but then it didn't really achieve anything so we can understand why people came to this conclusion but at the same time it is important to know that when non-violence has not worked it is actually to work time is important we have to look at not just how representation is um but also the level of speech capacity so for this i'm taking from tilly tarot telling tarot because they argue that it's you know maybe you're if you're dealing with a weak machine because a weak regime cannot really monitor every inch of his territory it cannot really surveil every single one of his citizens then maybe you have a chance to do anything to do something but we're dealing with a machine that has the highest capacity around the world they can actually put everyone under surveillance this is something that we haven't talked about is that all the prominent all the known opposition leaders in hong kong are under 24 7 surveillance whatever they do that the authorities know and given this any kind and you turn to violence is suicidal just basically no way to work now does it mean that non-violence doesn't work that's another thing that protesters when they spray painted this they misunderstood my violence to mean only peaceful protest there are many means of nonviolence it's not just about going out in in this huge massive valley hong kong people believe in strengthening numbers so the oftentimes you know how many people show up but it is also important and especially when you're dealing with a high capacity regime is that you take decentralized and diversified methods the economic boycotts the yellow economic circle that pro democracy people support each other employers support each other and and employees approach each other or people go basically make sure that you can keep the pro-democracy individuals sustainable over time that is a decentralized diversified and also a daily method that you can do you can actually pay a bit more to go to this little shop around the street corner that charges you more but at the same time you know that you know you're doing a good cause so non-violence has not really actually failed in the sense that we haven't tried everything and two now given with the national security law violence basically suicidal there's nothing nothing that we could do other than sticking to diversified decentralized and daily methods of non-violence the second question about the civil society i'm optimistic that the civil society especially given what happened last year when all the different professional groups became so organized and the hong kong identity has become so strong that it can survive now we also you know it's not just us to learn from the rest of the world beijing has done the same thing they also learned that if the way to kill a civil society is to divide and rule and they set up this hotline and get people to report on one another and this can really kill the civil society but i'm hopeful that hong kong people are really organized enough and committed enough and hates the regime hated authorities enough that they can resist this and then the vatican and and archbishops and it's just in a way that a lot of people just really a lot of catholics really shake their head the way that uh san has been treated and the vatican and the vatican has really turned toward beijing uh just one a little story is that when notre dame invited uh archbishop zen to come we brought the red carpet and i was like i had never seen sand you know other than putting on a t-shirt and all sweaty in the protest but ultimately then he looks so insanely and so in a way that religion also can help people sustain the faith even in hard times so i guess this is nothing we can look at yeah i guess um for now uh if if we um try to understand the hong kong movement and also possibly tight the the the time movement we could really disown uh the leaderless nature of that which also infer to there is no set of rules that we could follow and um there are a lot of diversified uh actions that would come out from the protesters so that would definitely result to uh exploration to different tactics including nonviolent and violent ones so i guess there has been a trial period or a period of testing of different tactics and we were just realizing that uh there will be a lot of much more miserable consequences from the violent protests as we were seen just a year before from now on so i guess uh uh this is a learning process of uh the public because what we rely on only leaderless movement is collective wisdom and we have to been through a lot of history with relative experience so that we could generate enough consensus on certain um mindset on certain conclusions so i i think uh this is something that is difficult to be construed by a structural theory that under the notion of a leader under lotion centralized leadership and ordinary protesting so i guess um this is a more organic and dynamic one and for the civic society i think um as what victoria have said uh the the hotline from uh the government which encourages people to turn out the others uh it's only its own aim is to uh destroy the social fabrics the trust among each other and my recommendation is you have to always to stay in a small group which you could fully trust each other and you discuss every anything with them with your political uh ex our political views and you fully trust them so that you still have some room to discuss things in your head and not to be worried about being turning out uh i guess this will uh if this becomes uh usual practice it will encourages you and uh making you not being defeated by the government and by these uh measures even though the uh the government tries to get rich to you great um i'm going to close uh and ask you uh each to uh address um uh two final questions very difficult ones first of all [Music] the question of economic sanctions someone asked well should we encourage divestment from hong kong on the part of the west should we impose broad economic sanctions for hong kong's violation of human rights on the economy and society rather than targeted sanctions on individuals what are the trade-offs there there that we should weigh since obviously we'll be hurting ordinary people if we do that and then something that haunts me uh which is i i think really a moral dilemma here um i think canada and britain and my view is probably the u.s too should be prepared to accept um in my view a virtually unlimited number of immigrants from hong kong uh you know if they decide that the risks of continuing under this system are just unbearable but of course if everybody who hates the system leaves uh then you know in a way the prc is one in a different way so there's kind of a tension between a humanitarian impulse to help every individual we can who wants help or an exit and the kind of political impulse to affect change uh nathan why don't you start and then we'll come to victoria to close um thanks larry for the questions i i guess uh the important point for the first questions uh is about how we can avoid these trade relations being abused by china as a way to circumvent all the international obligation and responsibility that they should bear so if if we can hold them accountable it's fine we still trade with them but if they are always going to abuse these trade relations and take advantage from it and uh to continue its human rights violation regardless of what the international community has said there is problem and we should tackle it by divesting it so i guess these are two complete different scenarios and uh for me of course i i would love to see when we have a stronger alliance which could possibly be a conglomeration of many democracies and it will occupy more than half of the gpp gdp of the world then by the time we have strong very strong alliance and power to have trade with china while holding them accountable i guess this is uh the more uh desirable outcome um than the previous one so i guess uh these questions is also related to how much leverage we can we have and uh how much pressure that china will suffer when they try to abuse that uh trade relations and for the second questions about um well uh yeah immigration yes um thanks for the re reminder uh for me i don't think that will be many people leaving to be honest uh is it's not easy to settle yourself in a new place as i've i've been to i'm going through and um i guess there are also a lot of people trying to stay in hong kong to fight and when you consider immigration there are lots of other things that you have to really pay attention to uh well the job opportunity the future and so on and so forth so i think uh all these like lifeline scheme that the meanings of that is they're offering safe exit for the people who can leave and face imminent dangers and that's why i think actually the promises from the government that they're not going to reveal or take your uh criminal records because of protest into consideration this is actually more important than actually offering um uh uh easiest or more easier exit because it could guarantee people who are under political uh prosecution when they can leave they still have exit to go and the criminal records because of political prosecution were not being taken into account so i guess um there are different ways to help them and offering them a scheme to leave is one of them um so talking about divestment it resonates reminds me of apartheid era south africa and in fact i think hong kong the current hong kong is going to be as impressive if not more so that's what black africans south africans experience so in that sense you know maybe it is actually not a bad idea to talk about digestion but as i said earlier that i think the biggest challenge is for a lot of international businesses is like a loose situation for them because they have so much invested in hong kong already they own buildings so the hong kong economy is not still going well you know they lose a lot as well larry asked what about you know any kind of international sanctions are going to hurt the people of hong kong as well but then the interesting thing is that a lot of hong kong people have been calling for sanctions and and i know that this is i've been hearing from franklin that you know things in hong kong even food is getting much more expensive than before so they definitely suffer it but they feel that you know there's really no other way to put pressure on on on beijing so they're willing to go through that pain when it comes to immigration the more dilemma what is interesting is that i think hong kong people were shocked when london announced that it was going to offer up to 3 million hong kong people a pathway to citizenship pathway meaning that anyone who has a british national overseas passport and independence um which means that people who were born in hong kong before the hangover of july 1 1997 is entitled to this and you don't automatically get citizenship but you can go there and you have five years to settle down by a job and i think even britain actually didn't really think that you know the whole three million people would go the thing is that as nathan said for a lot of people it's really not viable to go and i presume that the people who actually would do choose the path of exit professionals english speaking professionals this is why those people actually are welcome everywhere um but also another thing is going back to my points that beijing wants to reap all the benefits from hong kong's economic status but at the same time curling is freedom i think these measures together divestment sanctions and also giving hong kong people the exit option all of this together you know if beijing wants to turn hong kong into just another chinese city then keep it as a chinese city and you do not really get all the special privileges and at the same time for those hong kong people who cannot bear this give them a way out that may be really the best solution in the short term before beijing changes his mind thank you uh both so much uh i'd like to close uh this session today with uh two observations uh first i will declare my personal view i think it's time uh for the united states of america and other democracies around the world to impose targeted sanctions on a wide range of hong kong leaders who are responsible for this really devastating assault on human rights limited elements of democracy that existed in the rule of law in hong kong beginning with carrie lamb her government and other legislators that are that remain in legco that are standing by and allowing this to happen um at a minimum these people uh should uh have their visas revoked to come to the united states should be denied future visas uh and should know that uh their kids are not going to be able to come to the united states and britain to study and enjoy life here if this is what they're going to do to their own people finally i just want to offer a personal word i i have a very uh acute and poignant memory of standing on a uh kind of uh rooftop balcony uh overlooking the city uh with martin lee and uh another legeco uh legislator a couple of years ago the last time i was in hong kong and i fear perhaps the last time i will be in hong kong for a very long time and we could see what was coming they could see what was coming and i asked them you know a version of what i just asked you uh wouldn't you like to emigrate i mean why sit around and wait to be arrested and i'll just say uh that they and an awful other a lot of other people in hong kong um you know have an awful lot of courage uh to stick it out and fight for freedom uh even though they see what's coming and that of course includes jimmy ly uh who spoke at the hoover institution uh within the past year i think just last fall well uh you both are really a great inspiration to us uh you've really helped to educate us about one of the great human rights and democracy challenges of our time nathan our hearts are with you and your fellow activists uh in hong kong and i hope you will continue to uh engage us and tell us what we can do uh to be supportive of this struggle to everyone who joined us thank you for doing so and please continue to follow the work of our program on china's global sharp power on our hoover institution website thank you all for participating and good evening

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 6,642

Keywords: The End Of One Country, Two Systems, The Future Of Freedom In Hong Kong

Id: UG86umVwivk

Length: 74min 26sec (4466 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020