“Hong Kong’s authorities would have the world believe that the city, after three years of crippling covid restrictions, is open for business,” explains Sebastien Lai. “Their ongoing crackdown on rights and freedoms...tells a different story”
In a speech aimed at bolstering investor confidence in Saudi Arabia last October, the territory’s financial secretary, Paul Chan, spoke of its “very promising” prospects. Hong Kong will continue to develop as an international financial centre, Mr Chan said, citing among other things a commitment to “maintaining the common-law system and independently exercising judicial power”.
Ironically, assurances from the administration of John Lee, the territory’s chief executive, about the rule of law and an independent judiciary reveal its insecurity: that these institutions are no longer the reliable bedrocks of the city they once were. This is an existential crisis for Hong Kong as a financial centre. The rule of law and the reliability of its institutions were key to its prowess in financial services, a major source of its prosperity.
The law also does away with basic common-law principles such as the presumption in favour of granting bail. Trials are held without juries by a panel of government-appointed judges. The city’s security secretary has boasted of a 100% conviction rate under the new national-security law—hardly a sign of a healthy, independent justice system. With each day Hong Kong’s laws and courts look more and more like China’s.
Those who believe businesses will be immune to the consequences of a compromised legal system do so at their peril. The judge who convicted my father insisted in his judgment that the sentence was a commercial one, free of political considerations. This sets a dangerous precedent. The government is now free to pursue politically motivated prosecutions under the guise of purely commercial transgressions without even having to invoke the national-security law.
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