Why is Britain so powerless to prevent China’s stranglehold over Hong Kong?

The west as a whole seems unsure as to how to contain China. Britain’s ability to flex its diplomatic muscle is diminished, says Sean O'Grady

Hong Kong's pro-democracy lawmakers announced they are resigning en masse after a move by the government to disqualify four pro-democracy legislators (AP)

China’s creeping and incessant erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy has grown more rapid and blatant in recent years. New laws created the conditions whereby elected members of Hong Kong’s legislative council could be dismissed for the crime of advocating independence for Hong Kong, or even the protection of its existing freedoms. Now the government in Beijing has made use of its powers to rid itself of troublesome “unpatriotic” local politicians. In response, the remaining independent members of LegCo have quit.  

Through it all, Britain has protested and protested and protested again – to little avail. In his latest intervention, Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, has also threatened so-called Magnitsky sanctions, of the kind targeted at Russian billionaires in London against prominent Chinese figures with British interests. He has called in the Chinese ambassador for a now-routine and futile dressing down.  

Britain’s powerlessness in the face of Chinese assertiveness in Hong Kong is threefold. First, there are formal mechanisms for dispute resolution in the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the 1984 treaty that governed the transfer of the British territory to China in 1997. Conducted in mostly amicable terms, there was little thought that the “one country two systems” approach would come under such severe strain, though, with hindsight it might have been have been wiser to add an arbitration clause. Even the democratic reforms enacted by the last British governor, Chris Patten in the 1990s were in the end tolerated by the Chinese, though no longer.  

The Declaration was supposed to last for 50 years and is now moribund. The treaty is registered with the United Nations as a binding international treaty and breaches can be referred to the international court of justice or to a third-party court of arbitration. However, with China’s permanent seat on UN Security Council there is no chance of UN censure or enforcement.

Second, Britain as a far smaller power than China, suffers from the gross disparity in economic and military power, as well as the facts of geography. In many ways the UK was fortunate to hang on to Hong Kong during the more tempestuous moments of Chairman Mao’s rule, and has little chance of imposing its will now. Offers to take refugees from Hong Kong seem only to have irritated Beijing.  

Third, and connected to that disparity in diplomatic muscle, Britain is no longer authentically backed by the European Union. Some individual EU nations, such as Ireland, the Netherlands and Finland have raised protests, but a unified EU response would have more impact. China wants to have access to the large and lucrative EU market and partnerships with EU-based corporate partnerships, and such leverage is diplomatically powerful. Against that, though, the EU has sometimes been slow to react with any vigour to crises, as seen most recently with Belarus.  

Third, the west as a whole seems unsure as to how to contain China. American and European concerns about Hong Kong, the Uighur Muslim people, Tibet, spying, trade policy and territorial expansion are genuine and pressing. Huawei’s role in western telecoms infrastructure has generally been scaled back, and western navies are making their presence felt in the international waters of the South China Sea. Yet China has proved impervious to such pressures. The west’s next move is to convene the new “D10”, a British-sponsored project in part designed to replace the EU as a instrument of international leverage. It would comprise the world’s major democracies with shared values – the existing G7 of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US, plus Australia, India and South Korea. In due course such a bloc might well be able to stand up to China, and Russia for that matter. For now, though, Hong Kong is pretty much on its own.