My Take | Britain talks softly of late while it moves in on the China jugular
- Despite conciliatory words from its consul general and his boss, the UK is unlikely to let up on Hong Kong in West’s cold war with Beijing
He is no doubt right. But Hong Kong and Beijing never wanted relations with the Anglo-American bloc to sink so low. Davidson’s message should be reserved for British politicians.
Since the anti-government riots in 2019 and their aftermath, the British political and media elites have been following Washington’s lead by using Hong Kong as a diplomatic wedge against China. The city thereby joins Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet, along with a long list of domestic issues, with which to beat China.
Britain will have to decide, at some point, to continue politicising the city or to leave it alone as a trading and financial hub for the international business community.
So far, the signs are not good. Hong Kong has become an integral part of the West’s information and economic warfare waged against Beijing.
Chief among them has been the BN(O) immigration scheme for Hong Kong people, which has lured countless naive locals to move with their families to the UK at the worst possible time in decades, with a recession and the slowest recovery of any country in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the breakdown of civil and health services from mass strikes, and an ongoing and painfully harsh cost-of-living crisis.
This is not to mention the terrible economic consequences of Brexit, which are only now becoming obvious, and the novel experience of living in a country that has been identified as a possible nuclear strike target by Russia.