My Take | Keep foreign interference out of Hong Kong affairs
Pan-democrat lawmaker Ted Hui is inviting foreign governments to look into Hong Kong’s affairs but this will only provoke a hardline response from Beijing
It’s bizarre that pan-democrats are always appealing to some mythical entity called the international community to protect Hong Kong and its people. You may be cynical and critical about your own government. But you should also extend your cynicism and scepticism to foreign governments, which care even less about you, whatever their sanctimonious public statements. Remember, Western democratic politicians only really care about votes and donations, and you can’t vote for them and I assume you are not a billionaire.
If our city ever goes down the proverbial drain, there is nothing to be gained and much to lose for the central and Hong Kong governments. But how would our fate affect London, Washington, Tokyo, Canberra or Brussels? Not an ounce; it might even be “strategically desirable” in containing a rising China.
But such naivety is again apparent in the latest cri de coeur from pan-democrat lawmaker Ted Hui Chi-fung. It is indeed a core belief of the opposition.
“I strongly believe it is the perfect time for the international community to look closely into Hong Kong’s current situation,” he wrote in an op-ed for Hong Kong Watch, a political NGO. “China’s meddling in Hong Kong’s internal affairs has become increasingly frequent and more obvious in recent years.”
Let’s get some nomenclature right: Hong Kong is part of China, so perhaps he should have written “the mainland”.