Obviously, American corporate lawyer Samuel Bickett didn’t enjoy his term in a Hong Kong prison and is now seeking revenge with gusto. Bickett was deported from Hong Kong in March 2022 after serving time for assaulting a police officer during the “black-clad riots” in 2019. Like other self-proclaimed “human right activists”, Bickett uses the full power of the press to express his grievances against Hong Kong.

His latest onslaught appeared in a recent edition of Asia Sentinel, a reprint of his “report” for the US-based International Republican Institute (IRI). IRI was founded as one of the core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy, which is funded by the US Congress and operates under the guidance of the US State Department with a mission to promote American diplomatic policies worldwide under the guise of “democracy”. Before this latest “report”, Bickett had churned out other unsubstantiated “reports” with China-bashing institutions such as the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, which were invariably aimed at showing Hong Kong in a bad light.

Bickett claimed he spent a year researching access to information in a handful of government departments and concluded, “My work revealed a culture increasingly marked by secrecy and hostility toward open information.”

Oh dear, Bickett found it difficult to get information on Hong Kong chief executive communications with foreign governments and access to various documents marked “secret”. Secret means secret and if he has trouble obtaining secret information in Hong Kong, perhaps he should try the Pentagon or the State Department in his own country.

He alleged that at the heart of the Article 23 legislation is a new State secrets framework modeled on the Chinese mainland’s “notoriously vague” State secrets system. He then lists a number of secret categories, including policy decisions on State affairs, national defense construction, diplomatic and foreign affairs, and science and technology. These are not “new” and were covered in the pre-1997 Official Secrets Ordinance. In fact, they are similar to state secrets belonging to most countries, including the United States.

He adds that the new law has expanded to bar officials from disclosing confidential information, which has always been the practice in Hong Kong and throughout the world. Civil servants are required to sign the Official Secrets Ordinance upon taking up their duties. Despite Bickett’s claims, they must think twice before discussing or disclosing information to journalists. Our civil servants are professional and know what is right and wrong, what is confidential, and what is open to the public.

There is nothing vague with the Article 23 legislation — Hong Kong’s national security law — an argument used by activists seeking to skirt the law.

Bickett’s allegation of “opaque” regulatory practices doesn’t tally with the fact that Hong Kong ranks as the world’s freest among 165 economies, up one place from last year, in the Canada-based Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World 2024 Annual Report. Among the five areas of assessment in this report, Hong Kong ranks top in “freedom to trade internationally” and “regulation”

During the 2019 riots in Hong Kong, Bickett was arrested, charged, tried and jailed for 18 weeks for assaulting a police officer. After serving his sentence, he lost an appeal and was deported to the US. He has also been banned from ever entering Hong Kong again. While incarcerated in Hong Kong, he called himself a “political prisoner”, a glorified claim made by activists jailed for rioting. But assault is not a political offense.

Bickett arrived in Hong Kong in 2013 as a compliance lawyer for Bank of America. Now, more than 13,000 kilometers away in Washington, DC he relentlessly demonizes Hong Kong remotely. He writes of the difficulties he encounters when trying to obtain information without mentioning the type of questions he asks. For example, he could be asking questions to intentionally obtain a negative response.

He uses a worn-out argument about the “loss of press freedom”, citing “the media facing growing censorship with many forced to shut down”. Of the 90-plus daily publications in Hong Kong only two — Apple Daily and Stand News — were closed down, not by the government, but by the owners themselves because of their own problems. Associated Press reports that at its current pace, the US will hit 3,000 newspapers closed in two decades by 2024 (150 a year) with just under 6,000 remaining. There are now 2.5 closures a week. At the same time, 43,000 newspaper journalists have lost their jobs, most at daily publications. Perhaps Bickett should look at the newspaper industry in his backyard before complaining about the vibrant media industry in Hong Kong.

Entering into his corporate and financial transparency field, Bickett says that with increasing government control and the rise of “opaque” regulatory practices, there is growing uncertainty about the availability of reliable business data. This, he said, poses challenges for international investors. What rubbish! Hong Kong’s business environment thrives better than ever despite the doomsday trajectory of failure.

Bickett’s allegation of “opaque” regulatory practices doesn’t tally with the fact that Hong Kong ranks as the world’s freest among 165 economies, up one place from last year, in the Canada-based Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World 2024 Annual Report. Among the five areas of assessment in this report, Hong Kong ranks top in “freedom to trade internationally” and “regulation”.

Bickett claimed that Hong Kong’s “long-held reputation as an open and corruption-free city — a cornerstone of its economic and civic success — is unravelling”. However, Hong Kong ranked 14th out of 180 jurisdictions surveyed in the 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index, a leading global indicator of public sector corruption.

Bickett also took a swipe at Hong Kong’s Judiciary, claiming that while its access was intact, “the Judiciary’s independence has been compromised in other ways”. Again he offered no evidence to support such a serious allegation nor elaborated on how judicial independence has been compromised.

Bickett is only too eager to criticize others on X (formerly Twitter) and other social media platforms but blocks anyone who challenges his comments. For Bickett, criticism is a one-way street: His own.

The author is a former chief information officer of the Hong Kong government, a PR and media consultant and veteran journalist.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.