Source: Politics<\/p>\n
John Lee Ka-chiu\u2019s election as Hong Kong\u2019s new chief executive<\/a> signals a decisive turn in the territory\u2019s lurch toward Beijing-style authoritarian rule.<\/p>\n Lee, the territory\u2019s former secretary of security<\/a>, won an uncontested vote Sunday as the ruling Chinese Communist Party\u2019s candidate of choice.<\/p>\n Lee\u2019s victory underscores Chinese President Xi Jinping\u2019s determination to eradicate rule of law in the former British colony \u2014 but it also risks its viability as a regional business center as foreign businesses rethink the dangers of operating in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n \u201c[Beijing] chose the guy who could crush people and use the judicial system for national security purposes. \u2026 The people the Party trusts are the people who can go for the jugular and erase protests and any kind of dissent,\u201d said Samuel Chu, president of the nonprofit The Campaign for Hong Kong. \u201c[Lee] isn\u2019t addressing pocketbook or livelihood issues. He\u2019s checked the boxes to say, \u2018I am going to be Beijing\u2019s enforcer here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Lee\u2019s record of zero-tolerance for peaceful dissent made him Beijing\u2019s natural preferred candidate to replace the widely reviled<\/a> chief executive, Carrie Lam. Not that Lee looks to be any more popular with the locals.<\/p>\n As security chief, Lee oversaw brutal police responses<\/a> to pro-democracy protests. And his implementation of the draconian National Security Law<\/a> introduced in June 2020 prompted the U.S. Treasury Department to place him and Lam on a sanctions list<\/a>.<\/p>\n Police enforcement of the National Security Law has led to the arrests<\/a> of more than 160 people since June 2020 \u2014 for crimes including organizing informal public opinion polls<\/a> \u2014 and the closure of<\/a> over 150 civil society organizations. Lee\u2019s election signals Beijing\u2019s endorsement of his role in gutting rights and freedoms guaranteed to Hong Kong for 50 years under the Sino-British Joint Declaration<\/a> and Hong Kong\u2019s Basic Law<\/a> that govern the post-1997 British handover of the territory to China.<\/p>\n Lee\u2019s election constitutes \u201ca continued assault on political pluralism and fundamental freedoms\u201d in the territory, the G-7 foreign ministers said Monday in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Beijing dismissed such concerns. \u201cCertain Western countries should face squarely the fact that Hong Kong returned to its motherland 25 years ago \u2026 and immediately stop all forms of attempts to disrupt Hong Kong and contain China,\u201d Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n The U.S. government is under no illusions about Hong Kong\u2019s direction under Lee. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month accused the Chinese government of seeking to \u201cdismantle Hong Kong\u2019s democratic institutions, placed unprecedented pressure on the judiciary, and stifled academic, cultural, and press freedoms,\u201d during the release of this year\u2019s Hong Kong Policy Act Report<\/a>.<\/p>\n GOP lawmakers are demanding the Biden administration widen its sanctions of Hong Kong officials deemed complicit in those abuses.<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe that the Committee for Safeguarding National Security of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, National Security Law designated judges, and prosecutors should be subject to sanctions,\u201d a group of seven lawmakers, including Reps. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), John Curtis (R-Utah) and Young Kim (R-Calif.) said in a letter to Biden<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n Hong Kong pro-democracy activists say the Biden administration\u2019s combination of sanctions and stern rhetoric are toothless deterrents to Beijing\u2019s tightening stranglehold on the city. \u201cBeijing basically made a calculation that if they do this to Hong Kong, the international community and the U.S. government will condemn them, but essentially will roll over which is what they’re doing,\u201d said Dennis Kwok, former Civic Party member of Hong Kong\u2019s Legislative Council and senior fellow at Harvard\u2019s Kennedy School of Government.<\/p>\n The ordeal of former Hong Kong-based American lawyer Samuel Bickett illustrates that foreign expatriates working in the city\u2019s financial sector aren\u2019t immune to the Lee-supervised roll back of rule of law.<\/p>\n Bickett, who was a financial compliance director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, intervened to stop a vicious assault<\/a> by a baton wielding assailant on a teenager in December 2019. Police responded by charging Bickett with assaulting a police officer even though the assailant was officially retired at the time of the incident. Despite inconsistencies, eyewitnesses and surveillance camera footage supporting Bickett\u2019s account of the incident, a Hong Kong court sentenced him to a four-month, two-week prison term then deported him in March after he served two-thirds of that sentence.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just shocking how blatant the judicial misconduct was,\u201d Bickett told POLITICO. \u201cMy case was one of the early ones where you saw this dive into the abyss by the judiciary from a legal [integrity] standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n Observers see Bickett\u2019s case as a sinister bellwether for the foreign business community\u2019s vulnerability to unlawful attack from Hong Kong\u2019s security forces and judiciary.<\/p>\n \u201c[Bicketts case] shows that Hong Kong has changed immeasurably and there’s a lot of uncertainties that did not used to exist \u2014 nobody knows what the rules are anymore,\u201d said Tara Joseph, who stepped down as president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong in November.<\/p>\n One metric of the growing insecurity felt by foreign citizens in Hong Kong who long took the city\u2019s freedoms and rule of law for granted was the decision last month by Hong Kong\u2019s Foreign Correspondents\u2019 Club to suspend<\/a> its annual Human Rights Press Awards. \u201cOver the last two years, journalists in Hong Kong have been operating under new \u2018red lines\u2019 on what is and is not permissible, but there remain significant areas of uncertainty and we do not wish unintentionally to violate the law,\u201d Keith Richburg, the club\u2019s president, said in a statement.<\/p>\n The fate of Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai underscores the vulnerability of the city\u2019s corporate sector to Beijing\u2019s hostility to dissent.<\/p>\n Lai is currently serving a 20-month prison term<\/a> for his alleged role in organizing what the Hong Kong government calls illegal protests. Lai also faces prosecution for allegedly masterminding<\/a> an \u201cinternational propaganda campaign\u201d aimed to bring foreign sanctions against China. The Hong Kong authorities have frozen Lai\u2019s assets, arrested<\/a> top editorial staff at his flagship newspaper Apple Daily then forced it to close<\/a> in June. Officials then capped it off by ordering the liquidation of Apple Daily\u2019s company<\/a>, Next Digital Ltd., in December.<\/p>\n \u201cThe message to the business community is they can shut you down overnight and no matter how much assets or the global worth of your company, you will not have legal rights either as an entity or as an individual,\u201d Chu said.<\/p>\n Observers say that the city\u2019s foreign business community is passively complicit in the government\u2019s attack on rule of law by failing to criticize those abuses. Even worse, international business executives in the city have attacked the media<\/a> for reporting on those violations, reflecting a longtime corporate alignment with a government whose approval is essential<\/a> to access the Chinese market.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I introduced the Hong Kong Universal Democracy Act<\/a> back in 2014, I had the business community beat down my door with phone calls saying, \u2018What are you doing!’\u201d Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) told POLITICO.<\/p>\n That mindset persists.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople in business and finance still have their blinders on as to the risks that they can face, which is stunning,\u201d Joseph said. \u201cCompanies will really think twice before they pull the plug there, but what some of them are doing is moving departments or executives to other [places] with Singapore being the prime example.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. lawmakers are serving notice that they won\u2019t tolerate corporate complicity with Hong Kong authorities\u2019 efforts to undermine rights and freedoms. The bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China in March warned<\/a> the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd., a British multinational financial services and investment bank, that any moves to freeze Hong Kong media and civil society groups\u2019 access to their bank accounts may violate the terms of the Hong Kong Autonomy Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n HSBC is unfazed. \u201cLike every bank, we are required to operate within the law and legal frameworks of all the countries and territories in which we operate,\u201d Matt Ward, head of communications at HSBC Bank USA, said in a statement.<\/p>\n Imposing financial penalties on foreign firms facilitating Hong Kong authorities\u2019 assault on rule of law may be the only meaningful tactic left to activists and concerned foreign governments.<\/p>\n \u201cShaming them from an ethical standpoint \u2026 is not going to get them to lose money,\u201d Bickett said. \u201cTwo years of protests and unethical and downright criminal behavior by the Hong Kong government and the Chinese government in Hong Kong did very little to move Western corporations and money [out of Hong Kong], but what seems to be doing it now is COVID<\/a> \u2026 because ultimately, they’re not making money there.\u201d<\/p>\n