TNAG-2119-FCO40-3025-Future-of-Hong-Kong-general-1990 — Page 26

Insistence on a right to

subvert puts innocent

people at risk

Internationalization

ideas propose outright

subversion

The issue of loud

hailers is not loud

hailers

that China must refrain from intervening against social practices and market consequences that it finds utterly detestable. And it means that Hong Kong has to be a good neighbor to a state that is brutally totalitarian. The real world provides no choices other than coexistence or absorption of Hong Kong into the totalitarian system.

In this situation, the view of some liberals that they are only exercising their democratic rights in actively subverting the Beijing regime amounts to utter callousness about the fate of Chinese people who have to live in Hong Kong for many years. Leading Hong Kong Chinese democratic "radicals” mostly have foreign passports and therefore are not at risk. And the view that it is a sellout to demonstrate inside Hong Kong but not send money over the border belongs to a fairyland of ideology that has no place in real politics; those who have profound commitments to human rights have the right to put themselves at risk, but not the right to put large, innocent populations at risk without their consent.

This perspective should guide every discussion in Hong Kong of issues affecting relations with Beijing. The minimum that such a perspective implies is that Hong Kong must accept that it is under China's sovereignty after 1997 and must not try to compromise that sovereignty. Virtually the whole world has accepted Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong; there is no alternative. Proposals by Hong Kong politicians or overseas friends of Hong Kong to internationalize the Hong Kong issue fly in the face of Chinese sovereignty. They ensure the maximum nationalistic reaction from Beijing and the consequent defeat of the goals of the sponsors. How would Washington react to a proposal by Moscow to internationalize New York?

Those who denounce the government for not harboring the Goddess of Democracy propaganda ship, they should consider whether their views are consistent with maintaining “one country, two systems." The Goddess of Democracy may or may not be a good idea, but for Hong Kong to harbor it would be suicidal. The freedom of Hong Kong people is not enhanced by

suicide.

Likewise when the press discusses whether people should be prosecuted for using loud hailers without permission, the central issue should be whether the groups in question are using the loud hailers for purposes that ultimately are consistent with the rule of mutual non-subversion. Whether the law has been invoked consistently in the past is nearly irrelevant. The only relevant issue, aside from the minor one of noise pollution, is enforcement of the rules of “one country, two systems.” If the ultimate purpose of the group is to subvert China, then the government should invoke every archaic law available to suppress the activity. If not, then the government should ignore the loud hailers as it does in other cases. It is a sign of the confusion of the