‘Hypocrites are those who apply to others the standards they refuse to accept for themselves,” said the philosopher Noam Chomsky.
To serve in any foreign service can sometimes be difficult, particularly if it is that of the United States. Since its foreign policy is now focused on halting China’s rise, its diplomats have no choice but to regurgitate whatever they are fed by the State Department, however outlandish and bereft of truth. They themselves are required to send back stories, however bizarre, which can then be weaponized against China. Although this type of work repels some, there are always careerists aplenty.
On July 6, 2019, just five days after rioters trashed the Legislative Council, Michael Hanscom Smith arrived in the city to take up the position of US consul general for Hong Kong and Macao. In his new role, Smith, who has also served at the American Institute in Taiwan, a de facto US embassy, was answerable to then-US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who chose him, and whose representative he became. If Pompeo was not what The Washington Post has called “the worst Secretary of State in history”, he was certainly the vilest, and he made no secret of his desire, and that of then-president Donald Trump, to damage Hong Kong. Apart from trying to destabilize its government by encouraging the protest movement, they sought to ruin its economy and undermine its way of life, and Smith cannot have relished serving such individuals.
On July 14, 2020, Trump announced that Hong Kong’s trading privileges would be ended, telling Fox News that this meant it would lose its business attractiveness, and that its economy, which would “fail”, would no longer be able to “compete with free markets”. He added that “Hong Kong markets will go to hell, nobody’s going to do business”, which, if true, would cause widespread job losses and hardship to many families. The removal of the “Made in Hong Kong” label from products entering the US was also ordered, although neither Trump nor Pompeo explained how endangering people’s livelihoods like this would serve any useful purpose. Although Smith, who claims affection for Hong Kong, should have been protesting from the rooftops, he apparently acquiesced.
In criticizing the National Security Law for Hong Kong, Smith failed to mention how the US had also opposed even the very mild national security laws which were proposed in 2003, and which, if enacted, could have saved the city from its subsequent trauma. Since the US would never tolerate a situation in which a part of its own country had no national security laws, Smith was unable to explain how China could be expected to accept it in Hong Kong, particularly after the void was ruthlessly exploited by those who wished to harm the country and promote secessionism
It would, however, be nice to imagine he sought to discourage his bosses from harming Hong Kong. He might even have considered a principled resignation, although that would have ended his career. After all, if Pompeo was prepared to bully the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, into reversing his decision to grant Huawei a role in the United Kingdom’s 5G network, and to slap sanctions on the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, for investigating if American personnel had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, Smith would have been crushed like a cockroach had he stood up to Pompeo, whose instincts are those of a street thug.
Putting speculation to one side, what we do know is that, shortly after Smith’s arrival, on Aug 6, 2019, at the height of the protests, his political counselor, Julie Eadeh, met covertly with protest leaders, including Joshua Wong Chi-fung and Nathan Law Kwun-Chung, at a local hotel. While it would have been fascinating to have eavesdropped on what Eadeh told them to do, or, indeed, not to do, whatever she said would have been in furtherance of Pompeo’s agenda. Indeed, once Eadeh’s cover was blown, she was not reprimanded for overstepping the mark, and officials blustered away instead about such meetings being “normal”, which fooled nobody.
Also in August, two Civic Party leaders, Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu and Dennis Kwok Wing-hang, embarked on their now notorious tour of the US. While there, they lobbied politicians for legislation inimical to Hong Kong, and sought to undermine its police force. What role, if any, Smith played in the visit has yet to be clarified, but Yeung, who has since been charged with conspiracy to commit subversion, will hopefully come clean at some point. If so, he may also wish to disclose what Smith told him when they met up subsequently at the offices of the Civic Party chairman, Alan Leong Kah-kit, on Aug 5, 2020. Although, when asked, Smith’s spokesman obfuscated, we do at least know he was there for 90 minutes, and we can safely assume he was not there to discuss the weather.
On April 22, moreover, there were stunning revelations in the High Court, when former Civic Party legislator Jeremy Tam Man-ho, who is charged with conspiracy to commit subversion, applied for bail (HCCP 114/2021). His lawyer, Edwin Choy Wai-bond SC, told Justice Esther Toh Lye-ping that Tam had received three emails from the US Consulate, dated Sept 25, 2020, Dec 8, 2020, and Feb 17, 2021, inviting him “to meet the Consul General for coffee”. As Tam did not reply, we can never know what Smith wanted of him, but the invitations showed that, even after his resignation from the Legislative Council on Nov 11, 2020, he remained a person of interest to the US.
Indeed, as the judge noted, Tam was one of the four Civic Party legislators who, on Sept 2, 2019, wrote a letter to the leaders of the US Congress, which “urged that the passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights Act 2019 should be passed, which was detrimental to the Government of Hong Kong and its citizens”, something Smith would have known. In refusing Tam bail, Toh concluded that there was “no doubt” that Tam was a “key signatory of the letter to the US Congress, and his influence is evidenced by many invitations to meet the US Consul”.
Although Smith would have seen for himself how close the insurrection came to succeeding in 2019, and how much injury and destruction it caused, he nonetheless objected when Beijing finally acted to end the violence and restore sanity to the city. While he is simply his master’s voice, he knew better than most that an orchestrated attempt was made to bring the government down, destroy the city’s infrastructure, and provoke an intervention by the People’s Liberation Army, and his recent media claims about the National Security Law for Hong Kong being a tool of “repression” which has created an atmosphere of “fear and repression” simply do not ring true. While the US plan is to sacrifice Hong Kong in order to harm China, there must be real sadness that Smith, a professed friend, has not taken a firm stand against it.
Indeed, although the National Security Law for Hong Kong, which was enacted on June 30, 2020, finally gave the city the tools it needed to combat the subversive activities and terrorism which had plagued it for months, Smith called it “a tragedy for Hong Kong”. The US, as he must know, has multiple national security laws of its own, many draconian, backed up by a battery of agencies. They include the Espionage Act, which is being used to hound the hapless WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, currently rotting in a British jail as he fights US attempts to extradite him for exposing alleged abuse and wrongdoing at the heart of government. It is clearly hypocritical to seek to deny Hong Kong the tools it also requires to defend itself from those who wish it ill.
It was, moreover, disappointing when, following the release of the US State Department’s latest Hong Kong Policy Act Report on April 1, Smith maligned the city, in both media exchanges and writings. However much this may have pleased his new boss, Antony Blinken, who, like Pompeo, is a visceral China basher, and is now choosing the next US ambassador to China, the attempt to downplay the extent to which anti-China forces tried to cripple the city was extraordinary. He even sought to gainsay the role of foreign forces in encouraging social disorder, belittling what he called “a revival of old propaganda tropes”. This was an interesting turn of phrase, not least because it was identical to that used subsequently by the State Department’s spokesman who, on April 23, called Justice Esther Toh’s expose “an old propaganda trope”, and this points to Smith’s remarks having been drafted for him in Washington, DC.
However, as Smith surely appreciates, the multifaceted support provided to the protest movement and its allies by, for example, such US-based organizations as the National Endowment for Democracy and the US Agency for Global Media and its Open Technology Fund, was no “propaganda trope”. We now also know, courtesy of Nury Vittachi, that various other US-backed groups were also complicit in the insurrection, including the grandly titled Oslo Freedom Foundation, the Albert Einstein Institute and the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, and Smith must read his book. This apart, nobody could reasonably dismiss as a “propaganda trope” the crude encouragement provided to the protesters by the likes of Senator Ted Cruz, who, when he visited Hong Kong in October 2019, decked out himself in black to show “solidarity” with “freedom fighters”. Indeed, during a media session at Smith’s home, on the very day that “protesters” were firebombing a train station and vandalizing property in the name of democracy, Cruz claimed he was unaware of rioting, violence and mob attacks, despite months of lawlessness, even though Smith must have briefed him in advance.
Even less of a “propaganda trope” was the boost the secessionists received on May 19, 2020, when Republican Congressman Scott Perry introduced Resolution 6947 into the US Congress, authorizing the US president to treat Hong Kong as “a separate, independent country”. As for the US decision to welcome as a returning hero Brian Leung Kai-ping, the rioter who gained notoriety by removing his mask as the Legislative Council was trashed in 2019, and then to invite him to the US Congress, this spoke volumes, and was clearly no sort of “propaganda trope”. Indeed, even Smith would find it hard to keep a straight face if instructed to categorize as a “propaganda trope” the $10 million allocated by the US Strategic Competition Act 2021 for the promotion of “democracy in Hong Kong”.
In another fascinating insight, Smith alluded to the convictions on April 1 of Next Digital owner Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, and six others, for the offenses of organizing and taking part in an unauthorized protest in 2019. He claimed it was “enormously troubling to have this case of people who were convicted on Thursday of a peaceful assembly”, thereby disregarding the actual charge, which was one of holding a march without the required authorization. Many US cities, including New York, also place restrictions on public gatherings, in the interests of public safety, yet Smith chose to criticize Hong Kong for having like controls. At this point, a little digging yields a lot, and provides Smith’s remarks with an illuminating context.
In July 2019, when he visited the US, Lai was red-carpeted by Pompeo; the US vice-president, Mike Pence; and the national security adviser, John Bolton, and who all saw him as their man on the ground, as he himself later confirmed. When interviewed by CNN, on Aug 28, 2019, Lai frankly declared “we in Hong Kong are fighting for the shared values of the US against China, we are fighting their war in the enemy camp”. This, therefore, was not a “propaganda trope”, it was Lai disclosing his mission, and indicating on whose behalf he was acting, and this may explain Smith’s angst at his conviction.
What honesty required, therefore, was for Smith to have thanked the central authorities for not intervening militarily in Hong Kong, even when grievously provoked by, for example, the brutalization of mainland people, the destruction of their offices and businesses, and the indiscriminate violence. Had anything like this occurred in the US, the response of the federal authorities would have been draconian, as their furious reaction to the insurrection at the Capitol Building on Jan 6 has subsequently shown. Smith might, moreover, also have congratulated Beijing for having kept faith with the “one country, two systems” policy, rather than simply scrapping it, given the violence, although this would not have endeared him to Blinken.
In criticizing the National Security Law for Hong Kong, Smith failed to mention how the US had also opposed even the very mild national security laws which were proposed in 2003, and which, if enacted, could have saved the city from its subsequent trauma. Since the US would never tolerate a situation in which a part of its own country had no national security laws, Smith was unable to explain how China could be expected to accept it in Hong Kong, particularly after the void was ruthlessly exploited by those who wished to harm the country and promote secessionism.
Although Smith lamely trotted out the Raabian myth about the new law violating the Sino-British Joint Declaration, this only showed he had not read it, as it said nothing about national security. Had he checked, he would have discovered that Britain never proposed, and China never agreed, that Hong Kong would be denied the laws it needs to defend itself from subversive activities or terrorism, or to protect the nation. Under China’s Constitution, national security is always a matter for the country as a whole, just as it is in the US, and Smith really needs to get on top of his brief.
Indeed, although he painted the National Security Law for Hong Kong as a threat to basic rights, Smith seemed wholly unaware that the new law is, in fact, human rights heavy. It even stipulates, at the very outset, that “human rights shall be respected and protected in safeguarding national security”, and that the rights and freedoms which citizens enjoy under both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights “shall be protected in accordance with the law” (Art.4). It then states that, in national security cases, “the principle of the rule of law shall be adhered to”, that “a person is presumed innocent until convicted by a judicial body”, and that a defendant’s traditional fair trial guarantees “shall be protected” (Art.5). As Blinken is new to his job, he is probably unaware of this, and Smith should at least try to put him straight, even if he chooses, like Pompeo, to disregard it.
Having maligned the National Security Law for Hong Kong, Smith then turned to the electoral reforms, which he called “an enormous step backwards”, which was, to say the least, naive. Since political wreckers had used Hong Kong’s fledgling democracy to undermine the “one country, two systems” project, the need for electoral reform was obvious. Smith, however, condemned measures which “quash meaningful pluralism and lead to governance that is even less responsive to the concerns of Hongkongers”, blithely ignoring why a change of direction had become vital if the “one country, two systems” project was to survive.
Despite everything, Hong Kong has survived not only an insurrection, but also a plot to paralyze its Legislative Council and create constitutional chaos. It was a close-run thing, but the “one country, two systems” project has triumphed, due to the resolve of people of goodwill throughout the country. In the process, the city has finally come of age, and a bright future beckons. If Smith truly cares for the city, let him now speak truth to power and back Hong Kong. If this upsets Blinken, so be it, but at least he will finally be able to look himself in the mirror
After 1997, Hong Kong’s democratic development progressed apace, moving from a situation whereby all the legislators were appointed by the British governor at the time of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, to one in which 35, or half, of its legislators were directly elected in 2012, for which Smith gave Beijing no credit. He chose to ignore how its plans for greater democracy were stymied in 2015, by opposition legislators blocking plans to have a chief executive elected by universal suffrage in 2017, and which would then have paved the way for more directly elected legislative councilors. As the democratic experiment was being sabotaged from within by people who saw the “one country, two systems” policy not as a great opportunity, but as a means of harming China, new arrangements were unavoidable. Had nothing been done, the city’s downward spiral would have continued, killing off any prospects of the city’s unique status being extended beyond 2047, when the Basic Law’s “50 years unchanged” expires, although it appears that this is exactly what the US wants.
In any event, quite how Smith deemed it appropriate to lecture Hong Kong on democracy, given events at home, beggars belief, and he must surely resent his superiors placing him in this invidious position. According to former president Donald Trump, the US presidential election on Nov 3 was a fraud, and the White House was stolen from him. When his supporters, demanding “stop the steal”, smashed their way into the US Congress on Jan 6, its institutions were trashed, 140 people were injured, and five others died from various causes, but they felt it a price worth paying to save their democracy. Instead of sorting things out, however, various states have aggravated tensions by drawing up plans to make it harder for people with different political views to vote at all. In Georgia, for example, on March 25, Republicans rammed through various voter restrictions, which even include criminalizing the provision of refreshments to people queueing up to vote, a move directed at African Americans, many of whom support the Democratic Party.
Despite everything, Hong Kong has survived not only an insurrection, but also a plot to paralyze its Legislative Council and create constitutional chaos. It was a close-run thing, but the “one country, two systems” project has triumphed, due to the resolve of people of goodwill throughout the country. In the process, the city has finally come of age, and a bright future beckons. If Smith truly cares for the city, let him now speak truth to power and back Hong Kong. If this upsets Blinken, so be it, but at least he will finally be able to look himself in the mirror.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.