Britain should stop its hypocritical 6-monthly report on Hong Kong

Both the UK and China have likely breached the Joint Declaration. As the treaty has no enforcement or dispute provisions, they should suspend it under international law once and for all

Alex Lo

Published: 9:00pm, 24 Jan 2023

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Every six months, the British government performs a wasteful and hypocritical exercise by publishing its report on Hong Kong. This year, ironically, it was released on January 12, the same day Human Rights Watch published a scathing report on the rapid and unprecedented deterioration in the human rights situation in the United Kingdom. Granted, the group also published a highly critical assessment of China, but of course, you would expect that.

Be that as it may, it’s high time the world acknowledged the British exercise for what it is: the weaponisation of human rights as part of the West’s information warfare against China.

First of all, whatever you think about the status of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, there is nothing in it that says a report every six months is warranted. Why not make it every year, two years or not at all? The British side simply made this reporting up.

The British say the Chinese have breached the Joint Declaration. The Chinese say it’s none of their business as it’s their internal affair.

For the sake of argument, let’s agree that the treaty is still in full force and legally binding under international law. What does that actually mean? Well, both sides have a good case that the other has breached the treaty. How and why?

It’s usually argued that China is breaching the “basic rights and freedoms” guaranteed under Section 13 of Annex 1 of the Joint Declaration. This is often summed up by British leaders as undermining “the high degree of autonomy” promised in the treaty for 50 years.

Beijing hits back at Britain over Hong Kong report, calls it ‘waste paper’

However, who should decide whether Hong Kong’s “high degree of autonomy” has been breached? Shouldn’t it be Hong Kong itself, that is, the local government or some representative body elected or chosen that is recognised by the Hong Kong government? Otherwise, it’s just he says, she says: “You have breached the city’s autonomy.” “No, I have completely respected it.”

Likewise, by accusing the UK of interfering in China’s internal affairs, it is tantamount to claiming the British side has breached the Joint Declaration. After all, the first provisions of the treaty are for China “to resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong” and uphold “national unity and territorial integrity”. Sovereignty means managing your own affairs, without foreign interference.

Moreover, while the Joint Declaration states the agreed upon principles, it’s the Basic Law, sometimes referred to as Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, that codifies those principles into actual laws for the city’s legal system. The Basic Law and the entire local legal system fall under the purview of the constitution of China. That’s why judges and lawyers in Hong Kong respectively decide on and argue cases, when relevant, by referring to the Basic Law, and not the Joint Declaration.

The Basic Law has legal force and standing, and is capable of being enforced; the Joint Declaration may have legal standing, but no means of enforcement. If the British government thinks Beijing has violated the treaty, perhaps it should send lawyers over to Hong Kong to argue over the Basic Law in a local court. Otherwise, it should just stop barking. There is nothing in the Joint Declaration that sanctions Britain, a former colonial power, to continually assess the rule of law in a former possession in any supervisory role. That breaches the very idea of sovereignty.

In a policy-briefing paper published in July 2019, the British government acknowledges that “the treaty [i.e., the Joint Declaration] contains no enforcement or dispute provisions”. In other words, it is technically in force, but practically useless.

As a result, it is always going to be no more than a war of words between the two countries. And it is the height of absurdity for the United States government to sanction mainland Chinese and Hong Kong officials for breaching the Joint Declaration – especially when the US is not even a party to the treaty.

In the unlikely event that both sides agree on there being a breach or breaches of the treaty, the briefing paper also points to a solution, indeed, the only one viable under international law. It said: “The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, to which both the UK and China are States Parties, provides only for the suspension of the operation of a treaty in the event that it is breached.” Voilà!

That may indeed be an option worth pursuing, so we can stop all that nonsense and hypocrisy. That won’t happen, of course, as it has been a useful propaganda tool for the West. The war of words will just go on and on.

But next time someone rages about the Joint Declaration having stipulated this or that, just roll your eyes and yawn.