Letters | Why Hong Kong’s justice chief needs to visit London again to talk about the rule of law

Justice Secretary Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah’s recent visit to the United Kingdom seemed specially designed for the masters of irony themselves – the British.

I’m sure the oddness of her promoting Hong Kong as a dispute resolution centre while being the person most responsible for the carnage of disputes that is Hong Kong today, caused by her handling of the extradition bill earlier this year, wouldn’t have been lost on anyone. I wonder if she was also planning on talking about the responsibility of government officials to uphold the rule of law themselves by their own exemplary behaviour?

As we are so often hectored by Beijing about having a “correct understanding of the Basic Law”, the pronouncement by China’s top legislative body on the mask ban ruling being the latest, perhaps Cheng should now go back to London and tell her audience that Hong Kong is still an ideal dispute resolution centre with a sound rule of law – except when Beijing doesn’t like a judgment.

That would be the perfect irony for pushing Hong Kong’s role in the Greater Bay Area and Belt and Road Initiative which, we are led to believe by her and her boss, are the panacea to all of Hong Kong’s ills.