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Opinion | Why Hong Kong’s extradition bill is not just another law to Beijing and Carrie Lam
- Both the Chinese and Hong Kong governments seem to be taking the view that the unrest over the extradition bill has been stirred up by external forces. Backtracking on the bill would now be seen as capitulation to the West, not just Hong Kong youth
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Were foreign forces behind last Sunday’s huge protest march and subsequent violent confrontations against the government’s proposed extradition treaty with mainland China? It’s a claim that’s easy to make but hard to prove. Similar claims were made during the 2014 Occupy protests but remain unproven.
A day after organisers said over a million people joined Sunday’s march – police said 240,000 – China’s ministry of foreign affairs and mainland state media claimed external forces had stirred political unrest in Hong Kong to undermine China. They cited as proof the opposition’s links with Western countries.
This presumably means visits to the United States and Europe by democracy camp leaders, some of whom met US Vice-President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to garner international opposition to the extradition bill.
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Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung told me in a television interview “geopolitical factors” were at play. When I pressed him if that meant external forces were using Hong Kong to prevent China’s rise, he replied that was the right interpretation.
Most Western democracies oppose the bill. Does that qualify as preventing China’s rise? Did foreign forces orchestrate the peaceful mass protest or just the violence that broke out after the march? Did they also instigate the blocking of streets by youngsters around the Legislative Council which began before the extradition law was due to be debated?
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