Last week, a British member of Parliament, Wera Hobhouse, was refused entry to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China. Hobhouse stated she was set to visit her newborn grandchild, and her husband was allowed entry. She later spoke out, saying the refusal was “to shut me up”. It is worth noting that she is a member of the anti-China organization the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).
Only two weeks ago, two British Labour MPs were denied entry to Israel. However, one can note how the two incidents were met with completely different political and media responses. UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy condemned both incidents, but notably in reference to Hong Kong he claimed the restriction “further undermined its international reputation”. The British media also made a much greater fuss of the Hong Kong case, as if the glaring double standard they were setting simply didn’t exist.
First of all, let’s talk about IPAC, which is a relentlessly anti-China organization — fanatical perhaps — which receives funding from the United States’ National Endowment for Democracy and the Taiwan authorities. Although IPAC is framed in the Western mainstream media as merely being “concerned about human rights”, it is neither impartial or neutral, and nor does it act in good faith. Instead, it serves as a vehicle to push the geopolitical agenda of the said sponsors, such as seeking to actively revise the one-China principle, undermining the relationships of Western countries with Beijing, and coordinating anti-China publicity stunts such as dubious motions in various parliaments in the West.
Moving to the locality of Hong Kong, IPAC is an alleged active supporter of unrest and violent disturbances in the city, and therefore poses a threat to China’s national security. Since at least 2020, individuals who have been associated with promoting the 2019-20 riots and insurrection in Hong Kong have been refused entry to the HKSAR, so this is not a new development. However, one should ask if such behavior is unreasonable? The answer is that many countries and regions, including the United Kingdom itself, deny entry to individuals they deem to be a national security risk, and this is the norm rather than any kind of exception.
Ironically, Britain itself strongly advocates this policy, refusing entry to those who push political points of view deemed a risk. While this has typically referred to Islamist hate preachers and far-right activists, it has also applied to legislators too, such as Dutch MP Geert Wilders. Likewise, in 2023 a Chinese businessman, Yang Tengbo, was banned from the UK as a “national security risk”. Britain routinely applies such restrictions, so why, may we ask, is Hong Kong denied the right to do so? Why is Hong Kong’s reputation “undermined” when people deemed a risk are refused entry, but this does not apply to anywhere else?
Likewise, we do not need to revisit the argument that violent riots of the scale that occurred in 2019-20 in Hong Kong would be tolerated in Britain, let alone if they were being backed by external forces. We generally see in Western media discourse related to the HKSAR that it has no true “right” to national security, and any act to enforce it is depicted as a form of irrational “oppression” or a conspiracy. Hence, Hobhouse claimed the Hong Kong authorities have a list of “critics” to disbar, but as noted above, does the UK Foreign Office not have the same thing? And why do other jurisdictions that do the same thing not face the same level of criticism? What we have seen in the UK over the past couple of weeks is a true example of political doublespeak, where differing standards and discourse are actively applied to similar scenarios, completely contingent on political preferences.
The author is a British political and international-relations analyst.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
