According to its website, “The BBC is the world’s most trusted international news broadcaster — committed to providing accurate, impartial, and independent news to audiences across the UK and around the world.” It was disappointing, therefore, to read a recent BBC article about Hong Kong that was so completely lacking in balance and impartiality.
Titled Silenced And Erased, Hong Kong’s Decade Of Protest Is Now A Defiant Memory, the article is based on interviews with a number of disenchanted people saddened that the 2019 protests ended in failure and tighter security laws in the city. Clearly, all the people who are quoted have the absolute right to hold and express their opinions. What I take issue with is the way these opinions are portrayed as the norm, with no attempt to create a more balanced picture. No one with different views, and certainly no one who was horrified by the violence of the 2019 riots, was interviewed. No attempt was made to explain the context of the new security laws and how similar they are to laws in Western countries. No misleading statements were challenged.
In recent years, the BBC has grown accustomed to highlighting the research done by its BBC Verify unit, which investigates claims made in news stories at home and abroad and then corroborates the claims, refutes them, or modifies them. If the unit is looking for a new target, it needs to look no further than its own BBC website.
Even something as basic as the original spark for the 2019 protests is phrased in misleading terms, with the claim that they “were triggered by Beijing’s proposal to extradite locals to the mainland”. The image conjured up by this wording is that of Beijing attempting to undermine Hong Kong’s legal system by removing Hong Kong residents for trial on the Chinese mainland. The truth is far more nuanced. First, it was the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, not Beijing, that proposed an extradition law. Second, the proposed law was in response to Taipei, not Beijing, requesting extradition of a suspected murderer who had fled to sanctuary in his native Hong Kong. Third, the proposed new law was only designed to be used for those accused of the most serious crimes such as murder, committed in other parts of China; it specifically excluded extradition of any suspects accused of political crimes. Fourth, the proposed new law specified that the independent Hong Kong courts, not Beijing, would have the final say on whether to grant any extradition requests. There was never any suggestion of Beijing having a unilateral right to randomly “extradite locals to the mainland”.
Another misleading claim is that “Hong Kong has become no different from other Chinese cities”. No attempt is made to clarify that Hong Kong and Macao are unique in China because of the “one country, two systems” constitutional arrangement which guarantees them a high degree of autonomy from the mainland. This includes Hong Kong’s judicial system, where the rule of law is still paramount, based on British procedures and principles of common law.
The assertion that “Hongkongers now have to think twice about what they say out loud”, is also misleading. Hong Kong residents are guaranteed freedom of speech, so long as the intent is not to promote secession from China, subvert the government, or undertake terrorist activities. This is not so different from security laws in Western countries. Hong Kong residents also enjoy freedom of association, movement, religion and assembly.
The obvious irony here is that the activists who provoked this minimal change are now the most vocal in complaining that “Hong Kong has changed”. It would be good to see BBC Verify pointing this out, but don’t hold your breath
One of the flashpoints during the 2019 riots was at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). The BBC article asserts that “students fended off the police with bricks and petrol bombs in a fiery showdown”. The implication here is that protesters were under attack and had to “fend off” or defend themselves from police aggression. This is a gross distortion. The other side of the story is that the police were in the unenviable position of having to contend with months of violent protest, arson and rioting, including the petrol bombing of police stations, the hurling of petrol bombs, corrosive liquids and other projectiles at police cordons, the targeting of police officers with lasers, the destruction of MTR stations, attacks on banks and shops with links to the Chinese mainland, the abuse and violent targeting of Mandarin speakers in the street, and the storming and vandalizing of the Legislative Council building. There were multiple reports of police injuries, including one officer who was slashed in the neck with a box cutter and another who was shot in the leg with an arrow during the PolyU siege. Inevitably, there were times when individual police officers overreacted and behaved less professionally than they should have, but equally there is no question that they were facing unprecedented violent provocation.
Another source quoted in the article describes how after leaving Hong Kong to relocate to Britain, she felt homesick and returned to the city for a holiday. She goes on to lament that “the Hong Kong she remembered” had changed and singles out the fact that “most of the people around her were speaking in Mandarin”, rather than in Cantonese. The impression given here, that the official mainland language of Mandarin has replaced Cantonese in some sort of cultural takeover, is completely misleading. Yes, Hong Kong attracts visitors from the mainland, as it always has since the handover, but the reality is that Cantonese remains easily the most dominant language in the city. It would be a simple matter for BBC Verify to reel off statistics from the last census in 2021 that 88.2 percent of people in Hong Kong are native Cantonese speakers, 4.6 percent native English speakers, and only 2.3 percent native Mandarin speakers.
The same quoted source, now back in the UK, speaks with pride of her daughter responding angrily when people call her Chinese: “She always tells people, ‘I’m not Chinese, I’m a Hongkonger’.” The child’s heartfelt words undoubtedly reflect how some people think, but it would also be appropriate for BBC Verify to point out that the vast majority of “Hongkongers” are indeed also Chinese, just as people living in the UK may be English, Scottish or Welsh, but are all British. This is something obvious that most residents accept, unlike those activists who attacked mainlanders for speaking Mandarin or for having the temerity to operate a business in Hong Kong. Such behavior anywhere in the West would immediately be condemned as racist, a point which BBC Verify could choose to make.
Of course, the BBC Verify unit will go nowhere near this story, as those who rioted, destroyed Hong Kong infrastructure, petrol bombed the police, undermined the most basic human right of safety, and attacked mainland-funded businesses did so under the protection of the untouchable “pro-democracy” umbrella. The irony here is that these so-called democrats completely ignored the fact that the majority of Hong Kong people opposed both their violence and their unrealistic anti-China, secessionist objectives that threatened to endanger the highly valued “one country, two systems” governing policy.
A further irony is that those now complaining that Hong Kong has changed are the same people who were demanding change. The change they wanted — an independent Hong Kong — was never a realistic option, but the anti-China protesters were certainly the catalyst for the changes that have taken place. What is remarkable is that these changes have been so minimal. Despite the months of rioting, destruction and violence, Beijing was surprisingly cautious about interfering in the city’s internal affairs. It did not escalate matters by sending in the tanks, as some protesters may have wanted. It didn’t even mobilize the PLA soldiers who are based in Hong Kong, preferring to leave it to the city’s police force to restore order. It didn’t abandon the “one country, two systems” constitutional arrangement. It didn’t absorb Hong Kong into the mainland and remove its special status. All Beijing did was to introduce security laws, mirroring similar laws in the West, to strengthen Hong Kong’s ability to prevent any repeat of the chaos that had engulfed the city for so many months.
The obvious irony here is that the activists who provoked this minimal change are now the most vocal in complaining that “Hong Kong has changed”. It would be good to see BBC Verify pointing this out, but don’t hold your breath.
The author is a British historian and former principal of Sha Tin College, an international secondary school in Hong Kong.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
