As former director of public prosecutions Grenville Cross pointed out, the mainland authorities have made enough improvements in this respect for Hong Kong to lose its phobia of the legal system across the border. And, as the headline of Chief Secretary Mathew Cheung Kin-chung’s opinion piece summed up, “Justice demands that we amend our extradition laws” (May 13).

However, the reality is also that the pan-democrats know they no longer have the majority to throw such amendments out of the Legislative Council. This is why they resorted to mob rule to prevent the bill reaching Legco for the third reading, culminating in the near-disaster in the chamber on May 11.