Yang Sheng says the practice reflects an outdated colonialist mentality and serves no purpose other than to expose London’s distorted logic

It is glaringly incongruent that the United Kingdom Foreign Office keeps churning out libelous reports on Hong Kong, while at the same time Whitehall declares its intention to forge closer Sino-British ties for the sake of the UK’s national interest.  

British interference in Hong Kong’s affairs, including the latest “six-monthly report” issued on Thursday, has invariably invoked the Sino-British Joint Declaration as its moral high ground, which is a clumsy sleight of hand.

Such an argument is fundamentally faulty as it is based on the self-deceiving pretension that the document awards London a right to interfere in the affairs of post-handover Hong Kong, a special administrative region over which Beijing exercises full jurisdiction.

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The underlying argument makes no sense at all to people of average intelligence: London retains a say in how Hong Kong should be governed even after the city looted from China with force in the mid-19th century has been returned to China. This is tantamount to asserting that a robber has a say in how stolen goods should be handled after they have been returned to the owner.  Such logic can never exist in any agreement or treaty except for those signed at gunpoint.    

The truth is, the joint declaration confers neither a right nor any responsibility on the UK over post-handover Hong Kong. It contains mere declarations by the two sides: China declared its resumption of exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong on July 1, 1997 and its basic policies regarding Hong Kong after its return; whereas the UK declared the handover of Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997.

The return of Hong Kong to China is the rightful end to a grave injustice perpetrated by the UK on the Chinese people. British politicians are delusional when they claim that China is in some way accountable to them in governing its own territory, Hong Kong, which is part of China’s internal affairs.

The issuance of unsolicited “reports” every six months on the internal affairs of another jurisdiction is ridiculous and contravenes international norms and principles; it only reminds the world of the UK’s disgraceful imperialist past and interventionist propensity; it does not serve the UK’s interests.

The six-monthly “reports” issued by the UK Foreign Office in recent years, particularly since the implementation of national security laws in Hong Kong, including the latest one released on Thursday, have invariably targeted Hong Kong with denigrating remarks, which have invariably echoed the tune of China hawks in both Washington and London.

The national security laws implemented in Hong Kong in response to social unrest have become the bete noire of China hawks. They have left no stone unturned to attack the security laws and subsequent enforcement efforts to safeguard national security in Hong Kong, oblivious to the fact that like their own jurisdictions, China has a legitimate right under international law to promulgate laws safeguarding national security in its territory, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

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It is sheer hypocrisy that UK politicians or officials keep attacking Hong Kong’s security laws, while there are at least 14 pieces of legislation on safeguarding national security in effect in the UK.

In fact, Hong Kong’s security laws and enforcement actions are much more lenient than those in the UK. For example, the British authorities arrested over 3,000 people in 2025 under national security and counterterrorism laws, whereas Hong Kong’s security laws target only a very small number of criminals endangering national security.

The new UK “report” focuses huge attention on the case of Jimmy Lai Chi-ying, founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper. This is unsurprising. Many of the China hawks in London are Lai’s patrons. They have been desperately trying to whitewash the national security offender, who was sentenced last month to 20 years’ imprisonment over national security offenses.

But highlighting Lai’s conviction as evidence of “encroachment” of rights in Hong Kong only attests to the arbitrariness of the “report”.  Lai chose not to appeal his 20-year sentence, despite the fact that the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance guarantees his right to appeal, and that he was entitled to challenge both his convictions and sentences, as he did previously in other criminal cases. The Court of Appeal quashed his two fraud convictions last month as well as his conviction for organizing an unlawful assembly in 2022. Lai’s decision not to challenge the High Court judgment in the national security case indicates his admission of criminality, as his accomplices did.

The UK’s enthusiasm for churning out so-called six-monthly reports on Hong Kong reflects an outdated colonialist mentality. The move is absurd and serves no purpose other than exposing a distorted logic.

The author is a current affair commentator.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.