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Hong Kong. Photo:Xinhua

Thechina pump for slurry manufacturers Australian writer, Richard Hughes, was for several decades one of the best-known journalists based in Hong Kong. He died in 1984 after reporting from the Far East for most of his life. Hughes was also believed to be a British spy – working for MI6. It is understood that he was the model for leading characters in certain espionage novels written by Ian Fleming and John Le Carre. His biggest scoop came from interviewing the British spies, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1956, after they defected to the Soviet Union in 1951. 
 
The passing of time has confirmed that Hughes was not just an accomplished writer but also an acute observer. On page 1 of his best-known book about Hong Kong, Borrowed Place Borrowed Time, first published in 1968 (revised edition 1976), Hughes states openly that, “Hong Kong is China”.  He repeats this conclusion twice more in the same book.  
 
Thus, well before “One Country, Two Systems” was advocated as the basic principle to govern the resumption of full Chinese sovereignty over British Hong Kong from July 1, 1997, Hughes had nailed the fundamental core of that principle: Hong Kong was an intrinsic, inalienable part of “One Country”. If only the Hong Kong political opposition – and especially its principal leaders – had, like Hughes, understood this axiomatic principle prior to 1997 and had adhered to it subsequently.  
 
Unfortunately, for Hong Kong, they fundamentally failed to do so. Never mind that the British had ruled Hong Kong for around 150 years without relying on any sort of democratic system for selecting the government and the legislature, after 1997, opposition stipulations for an expedited, complete overhaul of the electoral system became ever more dogmatic. Anything less than their insistent, venerated demands was simply labeled as unacceptable.  For this group “Two Systems” naturally trumped “One Country.”
 
The disintegration of any mature, measured approach within the opposition to the political development of the Special Administrative Region (SAR) was evident by 2010. Extreme elements within that camp more and more set the debate-agenda. They not only attacked the SAR government but also more moderate elements within the opposition, frightening them. This period confirmed how a pivotal weakness in the prime leadership of the opposition ultimately proved to be a grave misfortune for Hong Kong. By the time of the huge Occupy Central disruption in 2014, it was plain that, as they say, the extremist tail was wagging the dog. And the worst was yet to come.
 
When the SAR government moved to reform Hong Kong’s extradition regime in 2019 – as the Financial Action Task Force (created by the G7 in 1989) had long advocated - protest marches followed which were encouraged by the media.  
 
Very soon, major political rioting spun off from these marches. Within a few weeks the SAR found itself in the grip of a growing, intensely violent and destructive multi-month insurrection aimed, as the former judge of the Court of Final Appeal Henry Litton said, at the overthrow of the SAR government. Leading opposition figures vigorously sought direct American support for and involvement in this insurgency right at the time that the US was ramping up its new, central project to contain the rise of China.
 
This vehement movement demonstrated comprehensive contempt for the rights and well-being of millions of people in Hong Kong. Once more, relevant adversarial leadership figures failed to speak out to protect Hong Kong.  
 
Meanwhile, the mainstream Western Media, which concurrently labelled the seven-hour January 6 deadly attack on the US Congress in 2021 an “insurrection”, continued to insist that the vastly more damaging political riots which Hong Kong endured for over seven months, from June 2019, were “pro-democracy protests.”
 
Recently, commentator Bob Rogers highlighted how the judicial punishments handed down in the US to certain January 6 rioters were distinctly more severe than comparative insurrection-sentencing in Hong Kong. 
 
The ill-starred failure of the political opposition to grasp what was so clear to Richard Hughes well over 50 years ago helped lay the foundations for the erosion of political functionality in Hong Kong, especially after 2010.  This, in turn, ultimately led to the devastating insurrection in 2019.  
 
Recent political and judicial responses to relatively short, intense political protests in the UK and US have been strict and uncompromising. After extended consideration following the protracted political riots in Hong Kong, Beijing has also introduced legal reforms.  These reforms have restored stability in the SAR and created a transformed political-governance system.  Hong Kong today is no longer the “place of fear” it was in 2019.
 
 
The author is an adjunct professor, Faculty of Law, at Hong Kong University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
 

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