Beijing's broken promise on Hong Kong democracy shattered our trust
Frank Ching says at heart, it was Beijing's reneging on its pre-handover pledge on Hong Kong democracy that sparked the protests
Two weeks ago, Britain's House of Commons held an emergency session to discuss China's decision to bar a delegation of its Foreign Affairs Committee from visiting Hong Kong.
According to committee chairman Sir Richard Ottaway, China's deputy ambassador, Ni Jian, told him that the Sino-British Joint Declaration "is now void and only covered the period from the signing in 1984 until the handover in 1997".
This is highly unlikely to be China's formal position. After all, its foreign ministry has just issued a sophisticated policy paper regarding the Chinese dispute with the Philippines in the South China Sea and its department of treaty and law understands how contracting parties incur obligations to each other in the signing of treaties.
What is much more likely is that the Chinese official told Ottaway that, since the winding up of the Joint Liaison Group in 1999, Britain has no further obligations and there is no role left for it to play.
But to any British government with some spine, such a position should not be acceptable. After all, from 1984 to 1997, when London had an obligation to run Hong Kong, China was loud in its comments of what the British were supposed to do or not do.
Even in November 1995, less than two years before the handover, Chen Zuoer , then China's point person in the Joint Liaison Group, warned that Hong Kong was spending too much on welfare and that "it's like a Formula One car which is going to crash and kill all six million people in Hong Kong".
Since 1997, it has been China's turn to discharge its legal obligations. This should mean that, until 2047, if Britain feels that China is not properly discharging its obligations, it has the right - indeed, the responsibility - to point this out.
One example is the 1993 promise by Lu Ping , then director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, to the people of Hong Kong: that they would decide when the whole of the legislature would be chosen by universal suffrage and the central government would not intervene. "How Hong Kong develops democracy … is entirely within the autonomy of Hong Kong," he said on the front page of the overseas edition of the in March.
In 2004, the central government reneged on this pledge and introduced a five-step procedure under which the National People's Congress Standing Committee had to approve when Hong Kong could take the first step. How Hong Kong develops democracy was, from that point on, no longer within the autonomy of Hong Kong.
China reneged on a major commitment made to the people of Hong Kong during British rule. This is certainly one issue Britain would be justified in looking into.
The failure to carry out a solemn promise made to Hong Kong resulted in a serious lack of trust in the central government. The Occupy protests and civil disobedience, as well as demonstrators waving the British colonial flag, can be traced to this betrayal by the central government of the promise made by one of its senior officials.
