The Shameless Legacy Of Britain’s Perfidious Posturing On Hong Kong

Image: AP/Himalayan Times

Well the inevitable has arrived and the goal of China’s regime, to extend its cancerous control over Hong Kong, realized. Defended by what that fetid authority claims as ‘law’. According to declarations from Beijing it ‘s now a criminal offense to show any sign of dissent against the Chinese authorities. Opposition to the dark excesses of Xi Jinping’s dictatorship is met with a range of vicious and oppressive punishments.

Torture, executions, forced-labor and disappearances are the incoming abnormal for Hong Kong, a grim and dangerous future awaits. One that was entirely predictable and known to those British politicians and civil servants who in signing their 1984 agreement with China cruelly and cynically betrayed the citizens of Hong Kong.

Image: theglobalistquorum

It is unlikely that the true nature and extent of Britain’s appeasement during those negotiations shall ever be fully known, even what will prove a heavily a redacted account of events is scheduled to remain a secret until 2026

What is blatantly clear is that the British in their early talks with Deng Xiaoping’s regime told ithemselves that it was possible to keep control and influence over Hong Kong. That position soon crumbled and Margaret Thatcher and her advisors adopted a strategy of prioritizing UK financial interests in the region. The assurances on protecting freedoms, democracy and autonomy were always destined to be little more than posturing, diplomatic face-saving for the British. After all in their over a century of rule in Hong Kong they had done almost nothing to build genuine democratic rights and infrastructure. It was a colonial occupation.

Image: Courtesy of CNN

The platitudes offered by Britain on its treaty obligations to ensure civil and political freedom for Hong Kong’s citizens are exposed when measured against the economic determination of several UK governments to secure lucrative trade relations with China. That remains the policy of Boris Johnson and his advisors. Even as protestors today took to the streets in Hong Kong to oppose the tyrannical law imposed by Beijing the focus of British foreign policy consultants is securing profits from the Chinese.

In truth, like the State Department, the British Foreign Office and political establishment have long known about the odious excesses of China’s regime. Just like they knew in their negotiations on Hong Kong that they were consigning its people to the bloody maw of Chinese rule. We see reports today that one or two members of the British authorities have spoken in their Parliament of their concerns about Uyghur women being forcibly sterilized on order of the Chinese authorities.

This is political opportunism, not a legitimate commitment to human rights. We say this because as part of activism over the years our network worked tirelessly to tell governments including that of the UK of China’s mass forced sterilization campaigns. Yet despite detailed documents and reports on the issue made available to political representatives in England, no action was taken. Indeed those women whose lives had been viciously traumatized by China’s forced sterilization policies were ignored, while the very same foreign relations advisors who counseled the UK government on Hong Kong remained tight-lipped. Fully aware of the atrocities but more concerned with encouraging and maintaining commercial relations with the Chinese tyranny.

A similar duplicity and appeasement contributed to the failed treaty on Hong Kong, there was never any genuine commitment to protecting citizens rights there. The emphasis was upon securing long-established British economic interest in the region It was with that in mind that Margaret Thatcher and her negotiating advisors signed up to the empty promises agreed by China.

Image: courtesy of CNN

It was from the beginning a treachery forged from financial interests, with a final tragic and unavoidable conclusion. Those architects of the Sino-British Joint Declaration knew damn well what the outcome would be, but it was not the fate of Hong Kong’s people which troubled them. Rather protecting British political, diplomatic and economic interests!

UK Betrayal On Hong Kong (Like Tibet) Is A Greed-Driven Policy Failure

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There’s a whole bunch of governments around the world who for years have happily gorged themselves at China’s money trough. Even the platitudes on human rights and freedom where swiftly jettisoned by states who valued profit above such democratic principles. It’s been a scramble for money, and its ongoing.

Of all countries none have appeased the Chinese regime more than that of the UK, it’s equivalent of the State Department (known as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) has since engineering the Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed on December 19,1984, given a new meaning to the term softly-softly.

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Their advisors and specialists have consistently urged governments to be sensitive towards China, counseling a constructive engagement, while paying scant and cosmetic attention to the vicious oppression, censorship and cultural genocide waged against Tibetans, Uyghurs. Mongolians and Manchurians.

This approach has proved a complete failure in moderating such troubling excesses, of course any claim that positive relations with China would lead to reform and a reduction in human rights abuse was completely exposed as a fig-leaf when the pro-democracy students in Tienanmen Square were murdered in June 1989. Apart from a few acutely composed words of sympathy and hand-wringing it was to be business as usual, with the blood still on the streets of Beijing.

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Since then China’s economic and global reach has become dominant, along with that rise the UK government has continued to blindly follow the counsel of its foreign policy strategists. Chinese money has bought considerable sections of the British economy, while the influence of China upon British academic institutions has grown considerably. Trade deals have flourished, corporations and politicians falling over themselves to benefit from positive relations with China’s totalitarian state and its many corrupted businesses. Including of course Huawei, one of China’s go-to mass surveillance providers, concerns on exposing critical communications infrastructure to control by Chinese tech-companies have been brushed aside by the British government.

Image: DALE DE LA REY / AFP) Epoch Times

Little wonder its Foreign Office has remained virtually silent on the false promises made to Hong Kong, now cruelly revealed as China makes legislative move to criminalize any and all forms of opposition and dissent there. Like the Tibetans and Uyghurs suffering the destruction of their culture and brutally denied their freedom,the UK authorities; driven by foreign policy advice, will serve up similar excuses, warm words and platitudes to the brave and determined people of Hong Kong.

It was always a betrayal, always duplicity and having kowtowed to the Chinese regime perfidious England is too busy making money from China to give a damn!

Apple’s Core Values Drive Appeasement Of China’s Regime

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The decision by Apple to once again appease China and, pull from sale an app which the Chinese regime objected to on the grounds it enabled Hong Kong’s protesters to view location and movement of local police units, reveals its core values. The corporation cares little about human rights or freedom, its entire structure is dedicated to profit, at any cost it would appear. Including grovelling to dictatorships such as Xi Jinping’s regime to maintain its market position within China. This action by Apple places them even more firmly on the side of the oppressor. Moreover in denying the people of Hong Kong a resource to monitor what is an increasingly violent and brutal police force it is enabling and empowering the enemies of free-speech, public assembly and the right to dissent.

China’s National Day Glorifying A Brutal Dictatorship

Image: scmp adapted by @tibettruth

As Chinese police today fired live rounds at protesters in Hong Kong what a disturbing yet utterly appropriate reminder that 70 years ago today a regime was born that inflicted genocidal suffering upon its own people through insane ideological policies. The so-called Great Leap Forwards, in truth it plunged China’s people backwards into a feudal condition, tortured by famine and environmental catastrophe. Millions perished as a consequence of the crazed dogma of the Chinese communist party ruler-ship. The misery was extended by the harrowing excesses of what was laughingly described as a Cultural Revolution, the only culture which prevailed was one of terror, thought-control, mass arrests, labor-camps and countless numbers of people murdered or broken enduring the misery of prison. This brutal state-approved and engineered madness was inflicted across not only across China, but brutalized too the occupied territories of Tibet, East Turkistan, Southern Mongolia and Manchuria. The destruction ran wild year-after year, families destroyed, monasteries dynamited, culture targeted for violent assimilation.

China's National Day Glorifying A Brutal Dictatorship — Tanks Parade In Downtown Beijing

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Nixon trumpeted a rapprochement with China, the CIA pulled the funding of Tibetan resistance fighters, the great betrayal had fallen. After Mao a respite, some hope flickered of an easing, but that proved to be illusory. The decade of the 1980s arrived bringing cynical moves of Deng Xiaoping and a supposed opening of the Chinese market, much was made of the economic reforms. Companies across the world licked their lips, while the machinery of terror remained, to maintain control for China’s corrupt authorities. The draconian policies continued, mass campaigns of forced sterilizations, censorship and a vicious denial of human rights were enforced. During 1987 through 1989 Tibetans again rose against Chinese rule, and the tanks rumbled past the Potala Palace. Many were shot, more tortured and disappeared. Then in the Summer of that last year Chinese students massed around a beacon for a democratic China, their dreams bled across the cold stones of Tiananmen Square following a government ordered massacre. As the blood was being washed away the US Administration was covertly arranging an emergency visit to Beijing, its envoy to reassure the Chinese authorities that business would not be interrupted.

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Economic growth and the opening of Chinese markets witnessed throughout the 1990s a global rush to trade with China. The scent of money was on the wind and western corporations, backed by their governments wanted some of that profitable action. The human rights violations persisted, as did the oppression and tyranny, under the approving rule of Jiang Zemin. When questions were raised about doing business with a Chinese state that abused and tortured the response was to insist that ‘constructive engagement’ would result in progress. That economic liberalization would be followed by an improvement on civil freedoms and human rights. That was another deception. In 2001 China was admitted into the World Trade Organization and since that time its economy has risen to a position of global dominance, not without a creeping realization that there was a troubling cost to such expansion.

Image: chinanews/adapted for accuracy by @tibettruth

Along with the consumerism and commercial revolution, which in part has transformed Chinese society, China’s regime under, then President, Hu Jintao consolidated it’s power. While the world applauded China’s miraculous economic rise and salivated at the prospect of trade the denial of basic freedoms persisted. Torture, executions and prison camps maintained the social ‘harmony’. A condition inherited by the current glorious leader Xi Jinping, like Emperor Nero he has assumed the mantle of a supreme being. What cosmetic scraps of political accountability that previously linked his office to the Chinese communist party were swiftly abandoned. This dictatorship is engineering a new China, intensifying totalitarian control, extending state surveillance into every area of society, constructing more detention camps, dispatching thought-control police onto the streets. There exists only one truth according to this new cult; loyalty to the leader and complete obedience and devotion to the communist party of China.

Image: chinanews

Today Xi Jinping observed a mass military parade in Beijing. The choreographed thousands dutifully waved their flags, as the jackboots, missiles and tanks paraded in celebration. In Hong Kong the bullets were flying. Seventy years have passed, the brutalized people of Tibet, East Turkistan, Southern Mongolia, Manchuria, Hong Kong and China are asking how few are left for this corrupt and genocidal regime?

UK’s Pro-China Foreign Secretary Offers Empty Threat On Hong Kong

Image: taken by a very courageous Tibetan and published via CTA

As large numbers of Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns are being rounded up from Yachen Gar in Kham region of occupied Tibet and detained in brainwashing camps With Hong Kong facing the risk of a violent crackdown by Chinese paramilitary, the English Foreign Secretary (equivalent of Secretary Of State) has reportedly today issued a warning via the BBC to the Chinese leadership:

“The UK signed an internationally binding legal agreement in 1984 that enshrines the one country two systems rule, enshrines the basic freedoms of the people of Hong Kong and we stand four square behind that agreement, four square behind the people of Hong Kong…There will be serious consequences if that internationally binding legal agreement were not to be honoured.”. (Source BBC TV)

Wonder what his Chinese partner thinks of such a response? Lucia Hunt, born in Xian China we can only presume she has been given clearance by the English security services? Is she perhaps discretely monitored? After all as the case with Huawei has revealed the Chinese regime is actively engaged in a spying and propaganda war, stealing commercial, industrial information, influencing politicians and media.

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Not that Jeremy Hunt, his government colleagues or Conservative party are unduly concerned, far too busy appeasing China in the greed-driven scramble to secure deals. Taken the craven and servile policy on China adopted by the Foreign Office (not so different to that of the State Department). Hunt’s assurances on standing with Hong Kong should be taken with an ocean of salt. After all was it not another Conservative government headed then by Margaret Thatcher which betrayed the people of Hong Kong. Having been bullied and dictated to by China into signing a dangerously compromised treaty on the status of the island, they turned their backs upon Hong Kong’s plight. Just as UK governments have consistently done with Tibet.

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Since then successive UK authorities have remained largely silent on the increasing erosion of rights supposedly enshrined by the ‘international legal agreement’ on Hong Kong.

The basic truth remains that states such as the UK are preoccupied with maintaining and securing trade arrangements with China, the plight of Tibet, Hong Kong, East Turkistan, Southern Mongolia, Manchuria, and that of Chinese people is of little importance. Their suffering and denial of basic freedoms is responded too with hand-wringing platitudes and cosmetic gestures. With that in mind just what does Jeremy Hunt mean by ‘serious consequences’ and from whom?