My Take | Hong Kong lawmakers who serve the United States Congress
- Civic Party legislators are partnering with a hostile foreign power that is prepared to use Hong Kong as another battleground to fight China
The world is full of useful idiots who want to do good yet inadvertently damage the real interests and prospects of their fellow citizens. They invite or provide cover for outsiders with ill intentions and ulterior motives to move in on their own country and society, thinking they are helping to advance freedom and democracy while actually sowing the seeds of discord and chaos.
It appears the Civic Party has an alarmingly high number of such individuals sitting in our legislature.
Five of their lawmakers – Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu, Kwok Ka-ki, Dennis Kwok Wing-hang, Tanya Chan and Jeremy Jansen Tam Man-ho – now openly support the US Congress to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
If passed, the act will amend the Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992 and imperil the city’s separate customs status, thereby potentially exposing us to the same tariffs, sanctions and restrictions on technology transfers that the US may impose on the rest of China or has already done so. It will require Hong Kong to achieve universal suffrage by next year.
Every year, Hong Kong will be put on the examination table by the Americans, who will effectively be the judge, jury and executioner – to decide on whether “one country two systems” stands or fails for the rest of the world. Last time I checked, China signed the Joint Declaration with Britain, not the United States.
Our Civic Party lawmakers respect the sovereignty of America whereas they denigrate their own country. In a letter to US politicians, they wrote: “The contents of the bill are of course entirely within the prerogative of [US] Congress.” To mess up Hong Kong?
Understandably, they have been denounced as traitors, but that’s not quite right. Traitors are evil whereas they are probably full of good intentions, which is precisely why, to paraphrase the old saying, they are paving the way to hell for Hong Kong.