Hong-Kong: Oil Spill In The Ongoing Conflict Between US-China

The recent passage of a security bill by China’s National People’s Assembly on the Hong Kong Autonomous Region has served as a catalyst and a spill of oil in the ongoing conflict between the United States and China.

Both the United States and the United Kingdom, along with Japan and Canada and Australia, have reacted strongly because they believe the UK-China concession agreement is being overturned, where Hong Kong in 1997 was granted to China with a kind of political autonomy for fifty years. (1997-2047), ensuring that China will be “one country (China), with two systems (Communism-China, Capitalism-Hong Kong).

The EU wants to reach an investment agreement with China by silencing human rights issues in Hong Kong, so it does not follow the US and its allies in choosing who to support in this dispute.

But sooner or later EU will have to take a stand and choose. The EU is Hong-Kong’s largest trading partner after China.

The fact that the United States, through Mike Pompeo 70th US Secretary of State, has threatened to abolish the privileged trade relationship with Hong Kong, which is one of the most important hubs of the global financial system, shows the mood of the United States about the issue.

At the same time, the bill creates ambiguities about what the terms mean, “terrorism” and “undermining national security” and “foreign infiltration”, allowing Chinese authorities to outlaw activist organizations and enforce them prison sentences. So, questions about the rule of law in Hong Kong, which is the basis for thousands of investments by Europeans, Americans and Japanese, are growing.

This law-bill, with its ambiguity about the terms “undermining national security” and “foreign penetration”, could make any investment from abroad undesirable overnight.

What is not understood by the United States and the West in general is that as China’s economic and military power grows, such phenomena will continue.

Ten years ago, China would not have dared to do so – to integrate with the so-called Hong Kong under its political rule – so as not to disrupt its relations with the West and the United States.

Today, the size of its industrial production, the West’s dependence on products produced in China (e.g. protective equipment for medical and nursing staff due to the Covid-19 pandemic), its rapid increase in GDP, and improving the living standards of its citizens gives it the power not to count on what the United States and its allies are saying.

The Hong Kong case proves this fact and is the first link in a chain of developments and events that will accelerate in the next decade, and I am referring to the effort to impose Taiwan’s political and territorial integration into China and China’s maritime control of Chinese Sea.

In addition, China and its Communist regime in general, which has succeeded in its governmental role in the development and evolution of the country by adopting the capitalist system and its principles over the last thirty years, has largely trusted it by the Chinese people and it will never accept suggestions and instructions from countries that, through their colonial policies, have made the Chinese people suffer for centuries.

About the author

The Liberal Globe is an independent online magazine that provides carefully selected varieties of stories. Our authoritative insight opinions, analyses, researches are reflected in the sections which are both thematic and geographical. We do not attach ourselves to any political party. Our political agenda is liberal in the classical sense. We continue to advocate bold policies in favour of individual freedoms, even if that means we must oppose the will and the majority view, even if these positions that we express may be unpleasant and unbearable for the majority.

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