The Hong Kong government has hit back at a United States congressional report that blames Beijing “interference” for uncertainty around the city’s “one country, two systems” model.
In a statement released today, the government insisted Hong Kong “exercises a high degree of autonomy” and was administered in “strict accordance with the Basic Law”.
The government was responding to a report by the US congressional-executive commission on China, chaired by Republican Senator Marco Rubio.
Released yesterday, the report specifically cites the stripping of six pro-democracy lawmakers’ seats after their oaths were ruled invalid. While decided in a Hong Kong courtroom, the decision came just over a week after Beijing publicly releasing its interpretation of the city’s Basic Law, which stated that public officials are required to take their oaths “sincerely” and “solemnly” or face disqualification.
The commission also highlighted the harsher sentences recently given on appeal to three activists for their roles in the 2014 Occupy Central movement and the fact that cases have been brought against several more.
It referred to central government “pressure” on Election Committee members to support current city leader Carrie Lam during March’s chief executive election and also expressed concern over restrictions on press freedom.
The report called May 2017 statements by Zhang Dejiang, the chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC), an “ominous warning” regarding the central government’s view of Hong Kong’s “long term trajectory”.
Dejiang, who is also head of the Communist Party’s coordination group on Hong Kong affairs, had said that under “no condition” should Hong Kong’s “high degree of autonomy be used as a guise to confront the Central Government’s authority” .
“Twenty years after the handover, the long-term viability of the ‘‘one country, two systems’’ model in Hong Kong is increasingly uncertain given central government interference,” states the report, referring to Hong Kong’s transfer to China from British colonial rule in 1997.
In its response today, the Hong Kong government said the “full and successful implementation of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle” had been “widely recognised by the international community”.
Foreign legislatures should not interfere in Hong Kong’s internal affairs, it added.
In addition to the U.S. report, former British colonial governor Chris Patten has been vocal of late about increasing control by the central government, describing a “steady tightening grip” by Beijing during a speech he gave to journalists in June.
In that same speech, he also specifically addressed the oath takers, decrying what he described as Beijing “intervening in a law case being held quite properly before Hong Kong courts.”
