A giant poster that reads "Improving electoral system, ensuring patriots administering Hong Kong" is mounted on the fence of a basketball court on Maple Street, Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong, March 31 2021. (CALVIN NG / CHINA DAILY)
Sunday’s Election Committee vote, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s first election under the revamped electoral system, has become the bete noire of external anti-China forces. These forces have been running a threadbare but relentless campaign to demonize the new electoral system, as well as the National Security Law for Hong Kong, both initiated by Beijing to ensure Hong Kong’s lasting stability and prosperity as well as protecting China’s national interests.
READ MORE: HK Election Committee polls go smoothly
But the China-bashers’ crusade against these two initiatives has proved to be futile. By virtue of China resuming the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, Beijing has the right and full authority to safeguard national security by plugging the loopholes that existed in the special administrative region’s statutes and electoral system.
The West never had a problem with the UK’s undemocratic rule of Hong Kong for one and a half centuries. Indeed, they had never bothered themselves with the question of whether the city needed democracy or not
Loopholes in the old system had allowed individuals with subversive agendas against China’s political system and Hong Kong’s constitutional order as a special administrative region of China, to infiltrate the SAR’s governance structure, particularly its legislature. The absence of a national security law in Hong Kong, due to its failure over more than two decades to fulfill its constitutional responsibility to legislate according to Article 23 of the Basic Law because of relentless opposition from those subversives, had emboldened political fanatics in the city.
They launched an all-out “color revolution” offensive in Hong Kong in 2019, using Trojan horses to paralyze the local legislature while black-clad rioters stormed the streets with wanton violence on a daily basis for months. They forced Beijing’s hand, and action had to be taken to pull Hong Kong back from the brink of implosion.
It is hypocritical of those China-bashers, particularly the British officials and politicians among them, to continue their crusade against China, accusing Beijing of undermining democracy in Hong Kong with the introduction of the new electoral system and National Security Law.
The United Kingdom had seen no need to promote democracy in Hong Kong for the majority of its one-and-half-century occupation of the city. It rejected Hong Kong residents’ demand for representative democracy until the 1997 handover was approaching.
ALSO READ: Explainer: Hong Kong's Election Committee elections in 8 keywords
The British Hong Kong government implemented the first indirect election and the first direct election for the city’s legislature in 1985 and 1991 respectively, with the objective of putting their loyalists/proxies into Hong Kong’s future governance structure and maintaining Britain’s influence in the city after 1997. In sharp contrast, democracy has progressed by leaps and bounds in Hong Kong in the more than two decades since the 1997 handover, a fact those China-bashing Western politicians and mainstream media have deliberately ignored.
The West never had a problem with the UK’s undemocratic rule of Hong Kong for one and a half centuries. Indeed, they had never bothered themselves with the question of whether the city needed democracy or not.
The ongoing crusade against Beijing over Hong Kong’s new election system and National Security Law, spearheaded by hostile Western politicians and mainstream media, has nothing to do with Hong Kong’s democracy. It is driven by both ideological prejudice and geopolitical considerations.