Hong Kong risks ‘losing everything’, including rule of law, Beijing academic says

Wang Zhenmin, a former director of legal affairs at Hong Kong liaison office, speaks out against protesters while visiting United Nations in Geneva

Protesters ‘would not even tolerate anyone who may disagree with them and would attack anyone who may have made patriotic comments’, he says

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Wang Zhenmin is the latest academic to be rolled out to defend Beijing’s and the Hong Kong government’s handling of the protesters. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 8:55pm, 18 Sep 2019Updated: 11:40pm, 18 Sep 2019

A Beijing-based expert on Hong Kong affairs has warned that the city risks “losing everything” if the unrest that has rocked it since June does not abate, adding that adherence to the rule of law remains its best hope for a solution to the crisis.

If the protests go unchecked, Hong Kong’s rule of law might even be in jeopardy, Wang Zhenmin, a former director of the legal affairs at the central government’s Hong Kong liaison office, was quoted as saying on Tuesday by Xinhua.

Wang, who now works as the director of the Centre for Hong Kong and Macau Research at Tsinghua University in Beijing, was speaking on a visit to Geneva to attend a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

He is the latest academic to be rolled out to defend Beijing’s and the Hong Kong government’s handling of the three-month protest, which was triggered by the now-withdrawn extradition bill.

Last week, Hong Kong businesswomen Pansy Ho Chiu-king and Annie Wu Suk-ching spoke to the same UN council about their views on the political crisis in the city. They both criticised the protesters for the damage caused and said their demands were not in the public interest.

Wang described the situation as “extremely critical and worrying”, Xinhua said.

“To resolve the current chaos in Hong Kong, [we must] make good use of ideas and means that are [rooted in] the rule of law,” he said.

“The mass protests in Hong Kong have presented huge problems to the police as [the protesters] took it as nothing to break the law and that has presented immense challenges.”