Hong Kong independence talk controversy is evidence that silly season is in full swing

Mike Rowse says the escalation of events surrounding the ban on the Hong Kong National Party and the objections to its convenor’s talk at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club are a convenient filler in the slow summer news cycle

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Andy Chan Ho-tin, convenor of the Hong Kong National Party, is scheduled to give a talk at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club on Tuesday. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Published: 10:00am, 13 Aug 2018Updated: 4:14pm, 13 Aug 2018

The summer can be a difficult time for media organisations as many of the people they rely on to feed them stories or do newsworthy things are on holiday. For a long time, a whole generation of newspapermen called this the “silly season” because trivial events that might not normally attract any coverage at all would suddenly become hot topics, even front-page news, for want of alternative.

So perhaps we should all be grateful to the leader of the so-called Hong Kong National Party, Andy Chan Ho-tin, for helping to fill the gap between Legislative Council going into summer recess and members straggling back from holidays in early September, for giving us something to write about in the interim.

For a virtual political neophyte, with a nonsensical platform and a bare handful of followers, he has certainly struck gold by getting no fewer than three of our four past and present chief executives to talk about him publicly. And all that before he even stands up to speak at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

In fairness, he has had a lot of assistance from individuals and organisations scrambling to give him far more coverage than his batty ideas merit.

Let us deal first with this issue of independence, and the idea that Hong Kong could somehow become a separate nation. It won’t take long to dismiss the suggestion because it is both ludicrous and impossible.

Article 1 of the Basic Law (see, you don’t have to read very far to find it) states emphatically and unambiguously that the Hong Kong is an inalienable part of China. Can anyone seriously foresee the day when the National People’s Congress is likely to repeal that article? Of course not.

Hong Kong independence talk controversy is evidence that silly season is in full swing

Watch: What is the Basic Law of Hong Kong