Happy New Year to our Chinese readers!
The Year of the Rat has begun. The rat is typically associated with yang, the beginning of a new day. It is also associated with wealth and surplus in Chinese culture. Chinese people have achieved immense success as great traders, as builders of creative and culturally stunning societies in China, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau — as well as settled migrants to countries right across the world, including fortunately the UK and the USA.
But China itself continues to be ruled by the dictatorial Chinese Communist Party. As we enter the Year of the Rat, the first first of all zodiac animals, China is at a crossroads.
China’s population is on the cusp of shrinking, while its economy continues to be much smaller than the global superpower of the United States of America. An expansionist foreign policy meeting global opposition, an aging population, a leader that has designated himself ruler for life, overreach in Hong Kong, belligerence towards Taiwan, the ongoing trade war with the Trump administration, questions in the West about security concerns with Chinese technology and state-involved enterprises, environmental concerns, the increase in debt of public firms. That’s before talk of organ harvesting, questionable treatment of prisoners, political imprisonment, the destruction of religious sites, a social grading system based on the moral judgements of the Chinese Communist Party, the mass internment camps for the Uighur people.
It’s not a pretty picture, and it’s getting worse. From decades of increasing economic freedom being the predominant story of Chinese success, we can seemingly only look forward to further retractions in personal and civic freedoms — in exchange for nationalism abroad and subservience to the state at home.
In Hong Kong, China’s grip continues to dominate debate — despite Carrie Lam’s best attempts to get away from it all at Davos this week — and its as good a time as any to remember that Britain has a special responsibility to act as guarantor for the liberties and way of life in the territory.
As part of our obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration we guarantee until 1947 the right to free assembly, the right to a free press, freedom of religion, free expression, the move to universal suffrage for officials, and the right for Hong Kong arms of government’s operations in the territory to not be controlled or coerced by the Chinese mainland.
We have failed to uphold these rights against the slow mission creep of the Chinese Communist Party in recent years, we have failed to give Hong Kong’s citizens an alternative to Communist rule, and we have failed to stand by those that British in nationality in the territory.
It’s not too late to stand up for is right, and this Chinese New Year is a wonderfully auspicious moment to do so.
It is customary to offer gifts of red packages at Chinese New Year. Might I suggest the British government looks, as we leave the EU, to give ethnically Chinese British Nationals (Overseas) a red, white and blue package instead? One filled with a blue passport, that can guarantee their freedoms and turn the tide of the debate in Hong Kong from one of fear to one of hope.
If people have an out, they must be given a reason to stay. China would be forced to do better.
The Chinese people deserve better than their current Communist masters on the Mainland but we’re limited in what change we can affect. In Hong Kong that’s not the case. We have a duty to speak out and stand up for those clamouring for the freedoms we all enjoy every day.
This country has the ability to do this and the responsibility under law to do it too. Importantly, Boris has the majority.
It’s imaginative, cunning, adaptable, and a success just in the nick of time. All the best attributes for the year of the Rat.
恭喜发财 — Gung Hei Fat Choi.