How the UK can help Hong Kong

Those of us who spent our formative China-watching years reading Chinese Communist party publications learnt early on that the word ‘basically’ was a synonym for ‘not’. ‘The party has basically succeeded in…’ meant that there was a problem. Hong Kong is basically an autonomous region.

Xi Jinping is satirised by liberal Chinese as the ‘Accelerator-in-Chief’, whose policies are hurtling the CCP’s regime towards collapse. This could be wishful thinking on their part. Certainly, he has sped up the demise of the ‘one country, two systems’ concept. Article Five of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s ‘constitution’, promises ‘50 years without change’, implying that the city would be governed differently from other Chinese cities until 2047. But last year’s unrest has convinced Xi to bring forward the timetable: Marxist heaven forfend that the virus of protest should escape the live market of Hong Kong and spread to mainland China.

A totalitarian handbook would surely recommend taking control over the legislature, judiciary, education, media, the streets, religion, civil society.