Category Archives: Hong Kong

UK risks China’s wrath by suspending Hong Kong extradition treaty

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Foreign secretary also bans export of riot control kit in response to security crackdown

The UK is to immediately suspend its extradition treaty with Hong Kong and also bar the export of riot control equipment following Beijing’s imposition of a sweeping national security law on the territory, Dominic Raab has announced.

Speaking to the Commons on Monday, the UK foreign secretary said that while Britain sought cooperative ties with China, it was deeply worried at both events in Hong Kong and the repression of the Uighur population in China’s Xinjiang province.

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Global wrap: Hong Kong ‘critical’ as Covid cases rise worldwide

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Lam says situation out of control, while Melbourne makes face masks compulsory

The coronavirus situation in Hong Kong is “really critical”, with a record 100 new infections recorded on Sunday, the territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, said, as Melbourne became the first city in Australia to make wearing masks compulsory in response to a resurgent and aggressive outbreak there.

Hong Kong was held up months ago as a model for its success in keeping down Covid-19 cases in the crowded city-state of 7.5 million people, but its caseload – although still low by European and American standards – had grown by a third in the past fortnight to nearly 1,800. Lam has shuttered bars, gyms and nightclubs in the past week and on Sunday announced new guidelines including mandatory mask-wearing indoors.

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Global report: coronavirus infections in India pass 1m as outbreaks flare globally

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Country becomes third in world to reach figure; alarming peak in French region of Brittany

India has become the third country to record more than 1m coronavirus infections, following the US and Brazil, as it reported 34,956 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking the national total to 1,003,832.

New peaks continue to appear around the world, including an alarming rise in the Brittany region of France.

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UK looking at help for young Hongkongers who want to flee

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Priti Patel says she is looking at giving people aged 18-23 a new right to come to Britain

The UK home secretary, Priti Patel, has said she is looking at giving young Hongkongers a new right to come to the UK.

Britain has made an offer of citizenship to 2.9 million people in Hong Kong eligible for a British national overseas (BNO) passport, but this excludes anyone born after 1997.

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China promises ‘firm response’ to Trump’s order ending Hong Kong’s special status

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Beijing says US move to rescind Hong Kong’ preferential economic treatment over new security laws is a ‘mistake’

China has vowed to retaliate after Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to Hong Kong’s special status under US law to punish China for what he called “aggressive actions” against the former British colony.

Citing China’s decision to enact a new national security law for Hong Kong, Trump said he signed an executive order that will end the preferential economic treatment Hong Kong has received for years – “no special privileges, no special economic treatment and no export of sensitive technologies”, he told a news conference.

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How many Hongkongers will want to come to Britain is unclear

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There are 3 million eligible for citizenship, but many factors will determine if it is taken up

The Foreign Office claim that 200,000 Hong Kong citizens will want to come to the UK over the next five years to take up Britain’s offer of citizenship is a very broad estimate and not a forecast, diplomats have said.

The figure suggests less than 10% of the 3 million Hongkongers eligible for a British National Overseas passport will be attracted to a new life in Britain.

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Hong Kong’s national security laws are designed to make the media self-censor | Tom Grundy

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The legislation imposed by China intends to make journalists tiptoe around ill-defined red lines. The need to hold power to account is growing

Beijing’s far-reaching security law was foisted on Hong Kong with breathtaking speed, sweeping aside guarantees of freedom of expression and freedom of the press overnight. Analogies of slow-boiling frogs and civil liberties suffering a “death by a thousand cuts” now feel redundant as independent media outlets scramble to future-proof themselves against vaguely worded legislation that carries a punishment of life imprisonment for crimes such as “subversion” and “collusion.”

I founded Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) as a response to dwindling press freedoms after cutting my teeth reporting on the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement. As a non-profit, it was the city’s first crowdfunded outlet – transparent, impartial, governed by an ethical code and built to resist censorship. But it was all based on the free press guarantees in the city’s mini-constitution.

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China’s colonial mindset over Hong Kong | Letter

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Prof Christopher R Hughes believes a letter by Dr Hugh Goodacre on the crisis in Hong Kong does not stand up to historical scrutiny

Dr Hugh Goodacre’s letter (5 July) in response to Simon Jenkins (Britain can’t protect Hong Kong from China – but it can do right by its people, 2 July) claims that the people of Hong Kong gained the democratic right to vote on their future because China “stood up in the world”, which would have been unthinkable under British rule. This does not stand up to historical scrutiny.

As early as January 1958, Zhou Enlai warned the Macmillan government against supporting a “conspiracy” to make Hong Kong a self-governing dominion. In the 1960s, China insisted Britain should resist US pressure to introduce self-government, as the status of Hong Kong was to China’s benefit. Beijing continued to resist the introduction of democracy throughout the Sino-British negotiations and its current behaviour confirms its intention to act like a colonial power. Its narrative that the current protests are due to the whipping up of anti-Chinese hysteria by outside forces reflects this mindset by denying agency to the people of Hong Kong.
Prof Christopher R Hughes
Department of international relations, London School of Economics

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The Guardian view on Covid-19 worldwide: on the march

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Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope

“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.

It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast.

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‘My civil right’: Hong Kong citizens vote in unofficial pro-democracy poll – video

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Hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers queued to cast ballots over the weekend in an unofficial poll to select the strongest pro-democracy candidates who will aim to seize control from pro-Beijing rivals for the first time.

The vote might fall foul of the new national security law imposed by Beijing, according to senior Hong Kong officials. But residents visited 250 polling stations in what the Chinese-ruled city’s opposition camp says is a symbolic protest vote

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You could end up in jail, US warns its citizens in China

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Americans told to be very cautious following the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong

The US has warned its citizens in China to “exercise increased caution” because of a heightened risk of arbitrary detention and exit bans that prevent foreign citizens leaving the country.

Citizens could face prolonged spells in jail, without US consular support, or access to details of any alleged crime, the state department said. The warning, sent in an email to US citizens in China, comes after Beijing passed a national security law for Hong Kong, with the legislation drafted to cover people “from outside [Hong Kong]”, including non-residents.

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Donald Trump is a hypocrite on China – but China deserves to be condemned | Jonathan Freedland

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Beijing is crushing human rights in Hong Kong, and is accused of genocide against the Uighurs. The world cannot stand by

Donald Trump taints everything he touches. If he supports a cause, he damages it. If he takes a stance, the instinct of most self-respecting liberals is to rush to the opposing side. So when Trump rails against China, a favourite bete noire, it can make a progressive pause.

That’s especially true when the US president lurches so easily into casual bigotry – referring to the coronavirus as “kung flu” – and when his hypocrisy is so rank. Thanks to his former national security adviser, John Bolton, we know that, for all his talk, Trump begged Beijing to meddle in this year’s election in his favour, breezily granting US blessing to what Amnesty International calls the “gulag” of camps in Xinjiang, in which China holds a million Uighur Muslims against their will.

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Global report: Tokyo hits Covid-19 high as Australia limits arrivals

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Japan reels from resurgence of virus while Australia restricts admissions to 4,000 a week

Tokyo hit another record daily high number of new cases, Australia is to halve the number of citizens it allows to return each week and Hong Kong’s schools have closed early for the summer as countries around the world struggled to contain fresh coronavirus outbreaks.

Amid growing signs of a resurgence of the virus in Japan, the capital reported 243 new infections on Friday, more than the previous day’s 224 and the first time that more than 200 cases have been confirmed for two consecutive days.

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China has only itself to blame for Australia’s move on Hong Kong

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The Australian government and its partners had no choice but to recognise the new reality in the territory and offer some of its citizens a way out

I feel sorry for Chinese foreign ministry officials, with whom I have had many good conversations over the years. They have been pushed to lambast Australia and other Western democracies with such frequency that they risk running out of fresh invective, hyperbole and idiom.

It was inevitable that Chinese diplomats would excoriate Australia after prime minister Scott Morrison’s measured moves this week in response to Beijing’s draconian national security legislation for Hong Kong: offering limited sanctuary to Hong Kongers, suspending an extradition treaty with Hong Kong and heightening the travel warning for the city.

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‘This is intolerable’: fearful Australians in Hong Kong hasten plans to leave city

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Expats say they feel insecure about living somewhere ‘where the walls have ears’

• Australia’s Hong Kong intervention was hardly strident but that didn’t matter to China

Australian expats in Hong Kong are feeling jittery about their future after Beijing imposed a new national security law that could lead to foreigners being arbitrarily detained. They say the move has hastened their plans to leave the financial hub amid calls from their government for its citizens to “reconsider” their need to stay there.

The national security law passed in Beijing and enacted in Hong Kong on 1 July punishes crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison. It applies to permanent residents and non-residents in Hong Kong who breach the law in the territory, along with anyone accused of violating the law regardless of their nationality and where the alleged crime took place – so foreigners could be arrested on arrival in Hong Kong. National security cases can also be sent to Chinese courts for trial.

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China has shown it is willing to pay the economic price of suppressing Hong Kong | James Lim

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Now that it has its own financial hubs on the mainland, Beijing may be prepared to risk the fate of its golden goose

Last week, the Chinese government passed a broad national security law criminalising dissent in Hong Kong. While the law has already had a chilling effect on protests, the consequences for Hong Kong’s economy are unclear. Since 1 July, Hong Kong’s stock market has climbed. Some foreign businessmen in Hong Kong have dismissed the law’s potential effect on business. This incredulity is unsurprising: for decades Hong Kong has thrived as a gateway for international capital into and out of China. Surely Beijing wouldn’t kill its own “golden goose”?

But investors and businessmen, used to the unencumbered movement of capital, may have lost sight of recent changes. Contemporary China is different today to just 10 years ago, let alone to the 1990s when Hong Kong was handed over by the British. Now a global power that commands one-sixth of the world’s GDP and is increasingly authoritarian, it is approaching Hong Kong with a new rationale that is both political and economic.

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China accuses Australia of ‘gross interference’ after offer of safe haven for Hong Kong visa holders

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Prime minister Scott Morrison cancels extradition treaty citing the new national security law as ‘a fundamental change of circumstances’

China has accused Australia of “gross interference” after Scott Morrison granted a range of visa holders from Hong Kong a five-year extension and suspended an extradition treaty with the city.

The prime minister announced on Thursday that Australia would allow a range of visa holders to stay in the country for longer and then offer them a pathway to permanent residency – but has stopped short of creating a special humanitarian intake for Hongkongers fearing persecution under the new national security law.

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China’s Great Firewall descends on Hong Kong internet users

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Residents rush to erase digital footprints as law gives police powers over online activity

At midnight on Tuesday, the Great Firewall of China, the vast apparatus that limits the country’s internet, appeared to descend on Hong Kong.

Unveiling expanded police powers as part of a contentious new national security law, the Hong Kong government enabled police to censor online speech and force internet service providers to hand over user information and shut down platforms.

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‘Our spirit will never be crushed’: Hong Kong activists vow to keep fighting despite new laws

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Joshua Wong, Lee Cheuk-yan and James To say they have no choice but to oppose draconian legislation imposed by Beijing

Hong Kong activists planning parliament in exile

For Joshua Wong, Lee Cheuk-yan and James To – three of Hong Kong’s highest profile pro-democracy activists – the possibility of going to jail in China has never been more real.

The national security law passed in Beijing and enacted in Hong Kong on 1 July appears to be tailor-made for them in many ways.

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Hong Kong police given sweeping powers under new security law

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Officers able to conduct raids without warrants and secretly monitor suspects

Hong Kong police have been granted sweeping new powers, including the ability to conduct raids without a warrant and secretly monitor suspects, after controversial security laws were imposed on the city by the Chinese central government.

The powers allow for the confiscation of property related to national security offences, and allow senior police to order the takedown of online material they believe breaches the law. The city’s chief executive can grant police permission to intercept communications and conduct covert surveillance. Penalties include HKD$100,000 (£10,300) fines and up to two years in prison.

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