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Martin Murphy
Martin Murphy
Martin Murphy is a former US diplomat and banker with 25 years’ experience in EU and Asian affairs. He is the author of Europe 1992: A Business Guide to US Government Resources.

Heightened US-EU cooperation will be less about trying to contain others than repositioning the international order around the democratic values and open market rules that have enabled Asia and the global economy to prosper.

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John F. Kennedy once said, "No matter how big the lie, repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as truth." China's officials, mouthpieces and supporters should know what he was talking about.

Beijing loathes it. The Hong Kong government rejects it. And the US Congress has all but forgotten about it. It is in need of a comeback. The US-Hong Kong Policy Act, passed in 1992 by Congress, gave Hong Kong its legal status in US law after 1997.

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After all the breathless commentary about the Edward Snowden cyberspying case is said and done, and the hero-villain rides off into the sunset, critics of America will be left with an unsettling reality. Little will have changed in what many now see as a massive surveillance state in the US.

Here in our backyard, the areas of Mai Po and Inner Deep Bay, a tiny nature reserve squeezed between two of Asia's most densely populated cities, forms a critical link in this winged migration, a biological process that repeats itself every year.