Politicians in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance have kept on joking with Chinese people, as well as with people around the world, these days.

In a joint statement issued on Wednesday, foreign ministers from Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States “urged the Chinese central authorities to reconsider their actions against Hong Kong’s elected legislature and immediately reinstate the Legislative Council members”, despite knowing those disqualified Hong Kong legislators have harmed China’s national interests by seeking foreign intervention, including sanctions on the city and its motherland.

In another joint statement in early September, the foreign ministers from the “core Anglosphere” nations “condemned” the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government for postponing the Legislative Council election originally scheduled for Sept 6 to next year because of mounting concern about the raging coronavirus pandemic, despite the fact that nearly 70 regional or national elections had been delayed, around the world including in the UK and Australia — for the same reason.

In a joint statement in early July, the five nations criticized China for the introduction of a new National Security Law for Hong Kong by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, despite the fact that most countries in the world, including those Five Eyes nations, had installed various laws to safeguard their own national security. For example, the US has passed numerous pieces of legislation, particularly after the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

Politicians in the Five Eyes alliance speak modern languages. But it seems that many of them still live in the 19th century, when the Western powers’ foreign policy was based on the principle of “might is right” and the human world was ruled by the law of the jungle.

They must believe that they can still dictate to China what it should do with its internal affairs in the same way that the 19th-century imperialists dictated to the weak and defenseless Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) by leveraging their mighty gunboats.

It seems that those politicians live in a parallel universe, wherein there are no such things as the United Nations Charter which demands members of the global village observe international covenants and principles, of which non-interventionism is the most widely known.

Whatever those politicians — who have allowed themselves to be consumed by ideological bigotry — have to say, they cannot deny China’s full jurisdiction over the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. China might be occupied with its relentless endeavors to lift more of its citizens out of poverty and further improve the lives of those who have been doing well, and has no business arguing with those politicians, much less meddling in their and others’ internal affairs. Still, those politicians are to be reminded that the world is no longer ruled by the law of the jungle, and the weak and defenseless Qing Dynasty is long gone.