The US Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) was established in 2000, following the normalization of trade relations between the US and China. It purports to monitor human rights and rule of law issues in China, and produces an annual report. In recent times, as China’s world role has expanded, so has the CECC turned increasingly hostile, with the quality of its reporting markedly declining. Its latest comments on, for example, extradition, policing and autonomy in Hong Kong vividly illustrate just how far its standards have fallen.
In the CECC’s 2019 report, released on Jan 8, objectivity has been thrown to the wind, and replaced by fallacy. Although its analysis of the situation in Hong Kong is obviously tendentious, it is nonetheless a godsend for anyone who opposes its government and dislikes its police force. The report clearly has a pre-conceived agenda, which the facts have been manipulated to further, but this should surprise nobody.
The co-chairs of the CECC are, after all, none other than Senator Marco Rubio, who has been described as “Joshua Wong’s man in Washington, D.C.”, and Representative James P. McGovern, whose vilification of Hong Kong’s police force has surprised even hardened China-bashers.
Rubio, of course, attracted derision in 2018 when he nominated three convicted criminals, Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Nathan Law Kwun-chung and Alex Chow Yong-kang, for the Nobel Peace Prize. He told the Award Committee in Oslo that they deserved the award for their “peaceful efforts to bring political reform and protect the freedoms granted to Hong Kong”. What he failed to disclose, however, was that, far from being “peaceful”, his three nominees had recently been convicted of violently invading a restricted area at government premises, which left 10 security guards injured, with one having to take 39 days sick leave.
It (CECC’s report) also seeks to drum up sympathy for political activists who have been prosecuted for committing serious crimes, implying they should be above the law, which lawyers like Rubio should know is intolerable in places where the rule of law holds sway
Although the Court of Appeal described their offence as “a large-scale unlawful assembly involving violence”, this was not revealed to Oslo. The Award Committee, nonetheless, rumbled what was going on, and gave Rubio’s nominations short shrift. However, this unsavory episode called into question Rubio’s judgment, and helps to provide a context for the distortions in the latest CECC report.
As for McGovern, he pinned his own colors firmly to the mast last year. After violent protesters unleashed a wave of violence in Hong Kong, smashing up public buildings, destroying private businesses, manufacturing petrol bombs, torching MTR stations, attacking police officers and people with different opinions, and threatening judges, McGovern’s response was to blame the police force for trying to restore law and order and defend the city. On Sept 15, for example, he accused the police of a violent crackdown on “peaceful protesters”, and of using their crowd control equipment for “immoral and unjust purposes”. In another fatuous intervention, on Nov 11, he accused the force of being “out of control and escalating the violence against unarmed people”. Although McGovern was quick to call on the government to protect freedom of assembly, he had rather less to say about the mobs who caused the trouble in the first place, even though their depredations would never have been tolerated in the US by him or Rubio.
It comes as no surprise, therefore, that, on their watch, the CECC should have proposed the Protect Hong Kong Act, which bans US companies from exporting tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray and other crowd control equipment to Hong Kong. Thus, at a time when the police are valiantly trying to defend Hong Kong, all this pair can think of is trying to make their task even more difficult. Quite clearly, they have demonstrated not only animus toward Hong Kong but also appalling judgment, effectively giving their green light to mob rule, and it is hard to see how anyone can take their report seriously.
The report, moreover, criticizes the SAR government’s — now-withdrawn — proposal to create an extradition mechanism to facilitate the return of fugitive offenders to face justice. Although this was a long overdue attempt to enable Hong Kong to return criminals to the 177 jurisdictions around the world with which it currently has no extradition agreements, the CECC distorts its purpose, giving the impression that it only covered the Chinese mainland. It ignores the damage being done to Hong Kong by the absence of extradition arrangements, and which has resulted in hundreds of offenders from throughout China, as well as from elsewhere, being able to escape their just deserts by fleeing here. The fact that 55 other jurisdictions already have extradition agreements with the Chinese mainland, including nine from the European Union, and that these have operated smoothly, is simply ignored, as also is the inconvenient truth that the US has itself recently extradited three criminal suspects back to Beijing, without problem.
Although the police force has, since the riots started, consistently displayed great bravery, utter professionalism and huge restraint, the CECC accuses it of “excessive force”, and of violating international standards. By mechanically regurgitating the lies peddled by the protest movement, and by failing to denounce in the strongest possible terms the armed mobs who have caused widespread injury and harm, even murdering one man who tried to photograph them and setting fire to another, the CECC has forfeited any claim to credibility, and its report is worthless.
Although, moreover, much of the violence has been directed at people from other parts of the country, and would have justified a firm response, Beijing has exercised great restraint. Chinese visitors have been beaten up, official premises have been vandalized, mainland businesses have been torched, Putonghua speakers have been put in fear, and the national flag has been desecrated. The CECC should, therefore, instead of criticizing Beijing for meddling in Hong Kong, be commending it for not into intervening, as most other countries would have done in like circumstances. As the world can see, the Chinese central authorities, despite the violence, have remained committed to “one country, two systems”, and it is a pity that the CECC is now, like its chairmen, so blinded by prejudice that it cannot, or will not, see this.
Although the CECC is, at this point, scraping the bottom of the barrel, its report also impugns the exclusion from public office of people who fail to take their oaths of office in the prescribed manner, or else lie to qualify as candidates, something that would never be tolerated in the US, where oaths of office and untruths are taken very seriously. It also seeks to drum up sympathy for political activists who have been prosecuted for committing serious crimes, implying they should be above the law, which lawyers like Rubio should know is intolerable in places where the rule of law holds sway. Whereas, moreover, the US regularly excludes foreigners whose presence is deemed inimical, the CECC brazenly questions Hong Kong for doing likewise. Although the report calls for democratic change, it blithely ignores how the “pan-dem” legislators themselves stymied further progress on this in 2015.
After its latest report, the CECC must now be seen in its true colors, and it is not a pretty sight. It is, unfortunately, no longer in the business of truth and reality, but of politics and chicanery.
In consequence, its report is biased, misleading and unjust. It is a deliberate attempt to mislead the US president and Congress, to whom it is being submitted. If they have any sense, therefore, they will consign it to where it belongs, the waste bin.
The author is a senior counsel, law professor and criminal justice analyst, and was previously the director of public prosecutions.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
