HONG KONG has become the main theatre of operations, overt and covert, of an increasingly ferocious struggle between China and Western imperialist powers.

Trade wars, Covid-19 conspiracy theories and China’s growing international influence provide a global backdrop to the conflict, but Hong Kong provides a very specific location.

Last week seven former British foreign secretaries, Labour and Tory, issued a joint letter to the current Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

The Guardian newspaper’s Patrick Wintour lauded it as a “rare cross-party initiative” which “reflects concern that the response to China cannot be left to US President Donald Trump and that Britain as a former colonial power has a special responsibility to take a lead.”

The assumption that “a former colonial power has a special responsibility” for a territory it no longer owns is an expression of the casual contempt for Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong that runs through the British Establishment media, even its self-styled “progressive” voice.

The politicians, dubbed the Magnificent Seven by the Star, want Britain “to set up an international contact group similar to the one established during the Balkans crisis in the 1990s.”

This is when alarm bells start ringing.

The Guardian report continued: “The Balkans contact group set up in 1994 was seen as a successful way of keeping the international community united in its discussions over the future of Bosnia and Kosovo.”

The Bosnian and Kosovo crises, with their multi-sided bloodbaths and ethnic cleansings, refugee crises and Nato air strikes, might be considered as much of a “success” as the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s 1914 sightseeing tour of Sarajevo.

On the contrary, foreign intervention and interference were critical factors exacerbating and accelerating Yugoslavia’s disintegration, fuelling internal divisions between the various ethnic groups. Saudi Arabia alone sent $300 million worth of arms into the Bosnian conflict with the full knowledge of the United States in defiance of an arms embargo.

US diplomats torpedoed a potential agreement that could have prevented the Bosnian war, and the Rambouillet talks on Kosovo were deliberately wrecked by the Clinton administration to provide a pretext for Nato’s war.

The rewriting of Balkan history leaves out one essential factor: namely that the Balkan contact group set up by Nato and the EU in 1994 also included Russia, then a broken and compliant state under the rule of Boris Yeltsin. Will Vladimir Putin’s Russia even be asked to participate in a Hong Kong contact group?

Crucially, it overlooks one dramatic event in the Balkan crisis. The “accidental” US bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade on May 7 1999, killing several Chinese personnel. The attack resulted in mass protests in China, the US embassy was surrounded for days and there were attempts to burn down the US consulates in Chengdu and Guangzhou. And while the Magnificent Seven and the Guardian may have forgotten this episode, you can be certain the Chinese have not.

This insensitivity and shallow historical awareness at best, and provocation at worst, by seven senior British politicians is a fairly good example of their Terry-Thomas style British diplomatic skills.

In their letter to Raab, the seven wrote: “When it comes to Hong Kong’s autonomy under the ‘one country, two systems’ model, many of our international partners continue to take their cue from the British government. I’m sure you would agree, as a co-signatory of the Sino-British joint declaration the UK must be seen to be leading and co-ordinating the international response to this crisis and ensuring the integrity of the treaty lodged at the United Nations in 1985 and one country, two systems.”

The phrase “international partners” is a significant one. Previously the term “international community” was frequently used to conjure up “coalitions of the willing.” Partners in this context means essentially Nato powers. Few Asian or African countries are likely to take kindly to the idea that their former colonial overlords may legitimately interfere in their affairs.

Last year, I noted in this paper (A faded empire strikes back, July 15 2019) that the Sino-British declaration of 1984 was being treated as if it was non-expired treaty and the red herring of the UN references.

In fact, the document clearly states that China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong started on July 1, 1997. There is no provision for shared sovereignty, no joint custody, no guardianship, no special relationship after that date.

The declaration says under item 3: (2) “The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will be directly under the authority of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China.
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs which are the responsibilities of the Central People’s Government.”

The only reference to any form of British involvement after July 1, 1997 was to the work of the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group, which the 1984 declaration agreed was “not an organ of power. It shall play no part in the administration of Hong Kong or the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Nor shall it have any supervisory role over that administration.”

This group was purely technical and administrative and was to finish its work by January 1, 2000.

So paradoxically those now insisting on the enduring validity of the Sino-British Declaration are rejecting its key element, sole Chinese sovereignty.

The statement of the Seven is part of a wider realignment of parliamentarians on the Hong Kong issue. Labour’s new spokesman on China, Stephen Kinnock, accused the Tories of not being tough enough on China in a speech two weeks ago.

This new axis is not just about co-operation between Labour and Tories but also extends to the Lib Dems and more bizarrely, the Scottish Nationalists and the Greens. Senior figures from these parties have signed up for a “Rule Britannia” declaration, organised by Hong Kong’s last colonial governor Lord Patten and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, one of the Seven.

Quite why Scottish Nationalists would demand Westminster oversight of a territory for five decades after British withdrawal is a matter of conjecture. It is a hostage to fortune for any future independence referendum.

Given the role of the Scottish adventurers and drug dealers Jardine and Mathieson in sparking the first Opium War, perhaps an independent Scotland might claim its own share in a new Hong Kong protectorate? In reality, of course, the whole business simply reflects the shallowness of the SNP’s anti-Westminster rhetoric.

The lingering assumptions of Western ethical and political superiority are impossible to miss even in the statements of those normally identified with the left.

In other circumstances, they would be deeply offended by the “white saviour” mentality that underlies the patronising views that Britain has a superior and even unique right to interfere in Hong Kong, particularly given its sordid colonial history.

Caroline Lucas, Green MP, for example has written her own letter to Raab claiming that: “Britain has a unique legal, historical and moral responsibility to Hong Kong and to better promote the fundamental rights of the residents of Hong Kong and of China.”

Morality and colonialism are strange bedfellows. Yet Victorian-era imperialism was invariably cloaked in hypocrisy just as 21st-century “humanitarian interventionism” is.

At this point in history, where the US is in obvious decline and the European Union in considerable distress, there are forces in Britain trying to reset Britain’s relationship with China by using the Hong Kong issue. This is foolish in the extreme.

Anyone remotely familiar with Chinese history knows of the “century of humiliation” and the series of “unequal treaties” imposed by Britain and other Western powers, including those that ratified Hong Kong’s theft in the first place. China will not accept new ones.

We also need to be alert to the possibility of similar attempts to keep British colonial interference alive long after independence agreements hauled down the Butcher’s Apron. With Irish re-unification a real possibility in the not-too-distant future and with hundreds of thousands of full British passport holders in the Six Counties, we can see where that could lead.

For those reasons alone, leaving aside the broader dangers to peace, the left in Britain must stand firmly against efforts by the UK to interfere in Hong Kong.