After the implementation of Hong Kong‘s version of the National Security Law, the British government announced in July last year that it would start providing 5+1 visa services for people with BNO status in Hong Kong to move to the UK on January 31, 2021, after examining the obvious violation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. At the Time, the announcement did not attract much attention, but as soon as it came into effect, the Chinese government counteracted it, and the SAR government followed suit without going through the legislative process, making it impossible for Hong Kong people to use BNO to leave the country immediately. China even said that it reserves the right to take further measures, so that Hong Kong people do not know what the consequences will be. Regina Ip advocated that a date should be set for all foreign nationals to lose their right of abode in Hong Kong, so that those who want to emigrate can consider the price they will have to pay. China’s countermeasures and the intimidation of pro-China advocates have instead led to a huge increase in Hong Kong people who want to emigrate. According to a survey released yesterday by CUHK’s Asia Pacific Research Institute, 43.9 percent of Hong Kong people intend to emigrate and half have made preparations to do so, a highly abnormal rate. The first choice for immigration is the United Kingdom, which has the least threshold, for self-explanatory reasons.
200 years ago the French thinker Montesquieu said, “The principle of governance in a republic is character, in a monarchy it is honor, in a dictatorship it is terror.” To govern by terror is to instill fear in the people. This is what the English historian Eric Hobsbawm meant when he quoted the Italian peasant woman’s saying, “Flee, the fatherland is coming!” The meaning of this is profound.
The UK seems to have expected this from China, i.e., it expressed disappointment that China does not recognize the BNO as a travel document, but is not surprised that Hong Kong people who choose to move to the UK with the BNO can use documents other than the BNO to travel. In other words, Hong Kong people can not use the BNO to leave the country, may wish to use the SAR passport to travel to the UK, and then seek 5 +1 assistance upon arrival.
Will the Chinese law that does not allow dual nationality be applied to Hong Kong, forcing Hong Kong people to choose between foreign passports and the right of abode in Hong Kong, as suggested by Yeh Liu? Or will it simply abolish even the SAR passport and require all to use Chinese passports? Or should we require government permission to leave Hong Kong, as is the case in mainland China? With Hong Kong becoming more and more indistinguishable from mainland cities, and even more regulated than ever, anything can happen. For example, China does not recognize dual nationality, but how many people in the NPC, CPPCC and senior officials hold foreign nationality? Earlier Chinese think-tank Zhai Dongsheng broke the news that a Jewish magnate on Wall Street has Chinese nationality. In China, all laws are political from person to person.
What Hong Kong is now practicing is Xi Jinping‘s new era characterized by one country, two systems, featuring a court that can apply both the common law presumption of innocence and the national security law presumption of guilt, varying from person to person and from matter to matter. Uncertainty about future legal rights and security is the main reason for people’s fear.
In a speech last year, Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, said that “Hong Kong needs a ‘second reunification'” in terms of governing power and hearts and minds, among other things. In the past, it has been said that Hong Kong was only returned to land in 1997, but hearts and minds have not yet been returned. Zhang said that Hong Kong’s national security law is the “second reunification”.
From the reality of Hong Kong since the implementation of the “second reunification”, BNO’s new measures and China’s countermeasures, it shows that this “return of hearts and minds” does not come from the hearts and minds of the heart, but from the hearts and minds of the scared.
The penalty of the National Anthem Law and the National Flag Law is not to make people sincerely love the national flag and national anthem, but to respect the national flag and national anthem without making a statement. The United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, the European Union and other countries, generally do not prohibit their nationals to leave the country and let the departure. In countries where people are allowed to leave, no one has to flee. Only in countries where people are strictly restricted from leaving the country, the phenomenon of “flee, the motherland is coming” will occur.
It is difficult to get a job in a foreign country, to earn a living, or to be discriminated against and become a second-class citizen. All these have never scared off the Chinese who want to flee. And the flight to avoid Qin is more of a survival tradition for Chinese since ancient times. According to decades of observation, Hong Kong people, no matter where they go in the world, with their flexible minds and hard work, can survive in even more difficult circumstances. In fact, the take-off of Hong Kong over the past hundred years has relied on the Chinese spirit of struggle under the protection of the law. The Hong Kong people themselves, accustomed to independent spirit and free will, are the most important wealth. The wealth that immigrants take away is not mainly money, but people with Hong Kong characteristics.
Recent Comments