Ahead of the first official meeting between the United States and China, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai on Monday (March 15) delivered a message to the United States on Hong Kong, arguing that the Communist Party wants the same loyalty from Hong Kong officials as the United States wants public officials to be “patriotic.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will meet with Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Alaska on March 18 and 19, the first meeting between the two sides at the highest level since Joe Biden‘s administration took office. This was the first meeting of the highest level officials from both sides since Joe Biden’s administration took office.
On March 12, Sullivan revealed that the meeting would see the U.S. side raise concerns about Hong Kong, security risks related to technology, and other aspects. Sullivan announced that he and Blinken will broadly communicate “how the United States intends to move forward at the strategic level. He said they will also directly confront their Chinese counterparts on China issues, including the mass detention of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, which Blinken has declared a genocide, and Beijing‘s crackdown on Hong Kong activists.
Prior to the U.S.-China meeting, Cui Tiankai’s article in the South China Morning Post (titled “Ensure Patriots Rule Hong Kong, Secure One Country, Two Systems”) was dismissed by netizens for being out of touch with basic facts.
Netizens chortled, “I don’t understand why Cui Tiankai posted this article. You are the ambassador to the U.S., are you explaining the situation in Hong Kong in advance because you are too afraid of the U.S.?”
Cui Tiankai’s article was not only published in full in China’s domestic media, but also promoted in the English versions of all CCP national media, such as CCTV International (CGTN), People’s Daily, and China News, and even promoted through the overseas social media accounts of these media (e.g., Twitter) as a sample, with the strong intention of getting the word out to the United States.
This meeting will be an opportunity to understand the future direction of the U.S.-China relationship and a test of the Biden Administration‘s toughness on China Policy.
Patriots ruling Hong Kong? Cui confuses the concept of “patriot”
Cui Tiankai said he did not understand the outside world’s questioning of the Chinese Communist Party‘s “patriots ruling Hong Kong. The United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union all see it as a break with the Chinese Communist Party’s commitment to one country, two systems, and a crackdown on the rule of law and democracy in Hong Kong.
“Isn’t patriotism the most simple emotion and the minimum quality of every citizen of a country? Not to mention public officials.” He also asked rhetorically, “Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, what is wrong with the Chinese side putting the governance of Hong Kong in the hands of patriots?”
Taylor Millard, a columnist for the U.S. website HotAir, explained to Cui that the Chinese Communist Party’s claim of “patriots ruling Hong Kong” is both vague and frightening because patriotism is a very malleable word, and political factions that disagree with Hong Kong people or have very different goals can easily declare their allegiance, while The criteria for a “Hong Kong patriot” in Cui Tiankai’s eyes is even simpler – you either support the Chinese Communist Party or you are anti-China.
A reader left a message for Cui below the South China Morning Post, saying, “Cui may be too old to remember, he forgot that according to the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law, Hong Kong will eventually achieve universal suffrage, and the Chief Executive and all members of the Legislative Council of the HKSAR will be directly elected by all qualified voters. ‘scrap paper’, a copy of which was sent to the United Nations for the record, and is an international document – signed by former Chinese Communist Premier Zhao Ziyang and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984.”
“Moreover, in the Basic Law, which provides for a high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong people and for Hong Kong to be governed by Hong Kong people (without, say, the so-called patriots), the recent sweeping changes to Hong Kong’s electoral system violate both the Declaration and Annexes I and II of the Basic Law.” The reader also reiterated.
Netizen dismisses Cui Tiankai’s Chinese Communist version of “democracy”
Cui Tiankai also falsely claimed that Hong Kong had “no democracy” under 150 years of British rule, and gave the Chinese Communist Party credit for saying that “it was only after the handover (in 1997) that the process of democratic development really began and Hong Kong residents began to enjoy unprecedented democratic rights.”
On Twitter, netizens questioned Cui Tiankai, saying that the so-called unprecedented democracy enjoyed by Hong Kong residents means “arresting anyone who disagrees with you, denying them bail and imprisoning them in harsh conditions, and then waiting for those minions to do your work for you”, which is what you call improving democracy.
Another Hong Kong netizen criticized Cui Tiankai, saying, “Your dictatorial boss has killed democracy in Hong Kong. Only the Chinese Communist Party’s canine slaves will believe your nonsense. Educated Hong Kong people are fleeing to the UK, Canada, Australia and other places where they can have basic human rights, freedom of speech and democracy.”
In response to Cui Tiankai’s interpretation of the CCP’s version of “one country, two systems” – that “patriots ruling Hong Kong” has been the core principle of “one country, two systems” since Hong Kong’s return to China – netizens have been very impressed with the Chinese version of “one country, two systems”. “If Hong Kong no longer has autonomy, you can’t even read Hong Kong newspapers like the South China Morning Post, so of course you can no longer make such comments. Please don’t say that you are saving democracy while killing it.
Cui Tiankai throws out the “foreign power theory” again.
At present, not only Hong Kong people are dissatisfied with the Chinese Communist Party and the Hong Kong government’s suppression of Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedom, but the international community has also condemned the Chinese Communist Party for destroying “one country, two systems”. “foreign forces”.
Cui said that since the 2019 anti-China campaign, Hong Kong’s civil society has entered the SAR’s governance structure through various types of elections and used these platforms or their public office status to speak out for Hong Kong people as “anti-China and chaos in Hong Kong, and even premeditated to take control of the dominant power of the Legislative Council and seize the right to govern Hong Kong through elections.
The 2019 anti-China campaign set a new record of 2 million Hong Kong people taking to the streets in opposition, equivalent to 1 in 4 Hong Kong people taking to the streets in protest. And during the protest, the high quality of the marchers who were rational and calm and quickly gave way to ambulances and police cars was praised by the world.
Hong Kong netizens left a message to Chui Tin-kai saying, “Once again, outside forces are being used as a cover-up to divert attention from the real problems facing Hong Kong people. It becomes unimportant what is really happening in Hong Kong’s political system, what matters is (the Chinese Communist Party says) who is doing it. Mr. Choi, it’s easy to justify the CCP’s policies, but can you justify the CCP’s main values and focus? It is obvious that they are not in line with the values of the vast majority of ordinary people in Hong Kong.”
Top U.S. and Chinese Officials Meet for the First Time This Week
The highest-ranking U.S. and Chinese officials to date will meet in Alaska on March 18 and 19, and the U.S. has made it clear that it will talk about Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong activists.
The Communist Party’s rubber-stamp National People’s Congress on March 11 forced through a bill to amend Hong Kong’s electoral system despite international opposition, calling for so-called “patriots to rule Hong Kong,” a decision that will significantly reduce the proportion of elected members in Hong Kong and further erode Hong Kong’s autonomy.
The Financial Times analyzed that the Communist Party’s decision to reform Hong Kong’s electoral system ahead of a high-level U.S.-China meeting sharpened the divide between the two sides over Hong Kong’s democracy movement.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese Communist Party President Xi Jinping mentioned the Hong Kong issue during their first phone call in February, but the two sides did not seem to share a common position. Xi even threw out the diplomatic rhetoric that a confrontation between the U.S. and China would be a “disaster. He even drew the red line that the issues of Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan are internal affairs, warning Washington to be cautious in its words.
Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, told the Voice of America that if the Chinese side continues to talk the same old talk during the meeting, it will be a “disaster. If the Chinese side continues to play the same old game, the talks will not have a positive outcome,” she said.
She said, “If Chinese officials repeat what they’ve said in recent speeches, that the blame for the problems in the U.S.-China relationship lies with the United States and that the ball is in the U.S. court, then this meeting will not have a positive outcome.”
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