JULY 24, 2020

Chinese ‘Imperialism’ in Hong Kong

Concerns US Media; Puerto Rican,
Palestinian Colonies, Not So Much
JOSHUA CHO

When China passed a national security law for Hong Kong on June 30,
criminalizing terrorism, secession and subversion of the Chinese
government, as well as collusion with foreign governments, massive
condemnations resounded all over Western media.
Vox (5/21/20) described it as an
“o cial death sentence” for the
“one country, two systems” model
of governance in Hong Kong.
Business Insider’s headline
(7/1/20) described China’s national
security law as having “killed Hong
Kong’s pro-democracy movement
in less than a year.” The
Washington Post (7/3/20) ran an
op-ed mocking China’s actions as
“nothing less than imperialism
with Chinese characteristics.” The
Atlantic (7/1/20) described Hong
A Washington Post op-ed (7/3/20) warns
Kong as a “colony once more,”
China: “With sustained pressure from within
equating the Chinese government
and without, even the most repressive
with previous British and Japanese
colonial systems can eventually fall victim to
“overlords in a distant capital” their own lawlessness.”
making “decisions on Hong Kong’s
behalf.”

Of course, while Western media describe the national security law as

something China “imposed” on Hong Kong, these same outlets rarely if
ever present the “one country, two systems” model of governance in Hong
Kong as something that was imposed on China by British imperialism,
when London refused to unconditionally return the former colony to
China. Hong Kong was violently seized from China with the Treaty of
Nanking in 1842, after the British waged a war to impose the opium trade
on China, causing about 90 million Chinese people to develop an addiction
by the end of the 19th century.
FAIR studies (10/26/20, 12/6/20) have found that Hong Kong protests
received dramatically more media attention than contemporaneous
protests in US client states like Chile, Haiti and Ecuador. FAIR found that
the disparity in coverage couldn’t be explained by the protests’ size,
signi cance, number of casualties or response from the authorities, as
police crackdowns in US dependencies have been far more brutal and
lethal than the crackdown in Hong Kong. The disparity is better explained
by corporate journalists considering Hong Kong protesters “worthy
victims,” more deserving of coverage because they are protesting against
an O cial EnemyTM of the US, rather than a government friendly to
Washington.

While one cannot describe China’s national security law as an act of

“colonialism” or “imperialism,” since Hong Kong is part of China, FAIR
conducted a study comparing media coverage of Hong Kong’s national
security law and actual colonialism by the US in Puerto Rico, and by its ally
Israel in Palestine. From June 16 to July 14, FAIR searched for all relevant
results for “Hong Kong+security law,” “Israel+annex” and a general search
for “Puerto Rico” on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal’s
websites, as well as a Nexis search for CNN’s coverage. FAIR included all
relevant results, except reposted content from newswires like Reuters and
the Associated Press. Full documentation, including links to all the articles
in the sample, can be found here.
In total, there have been 113 articles on China’s new national security law
in Hong Kong, 12 on Israel’s plans to unilaterally annex parts of the West
Bank on July 1 (which have currently been stalled), and six altogether on
Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is currently the world’s oldest colony, incorporated into the US
empire as spoils of war following the Spanish/American War of 1898, and it
currently enjoys less political participation than it did during the Spanish
monarchy (Washington Post, 12/13/17). The US has consistently exploited
Puerto Rico’s economy for over a century, and has denied the colony
representation in Congress or the right to vote in presidential elections
(CounterSpin, 8/2/19, 3/18/20). Washington has imposed neoliberal shock
doctrine on the island, withholding aid following the devastation left by
Hurricane Maria, earthquakes and coronavirus (FAIR.org, 2/9/18; Common
Dreams, 1/9/20).

Puerto Rico’s local sovereignty is also compromised by the fact that the
Jones Act and the PROMESA Act render it totally dependent on the US
federal government for its
economic viability, along with
having an unelected, Washington-
appointed body overseeing the
colony’s nances. In 2019, the
human rights group Kilómetro
Cero documented the police killing
of at least four civilians on the
island. Puerto Rico’s police have a
long history of racist violence and
suppression of free speech,
suspending the First Amendment
after 11 PM to terminate protests
in part of 2019.

In FAIR’s sample, two of the six

articles on Puerto Rico (New York
In nearly a month of coverage, there were
Times, 7/10/20; CNN, 7/12/20)
only six stories on Puerto Rico in three
also discussed the revelation that leading outlets, despite the island’s ongoing
Trump considered selling Puerto crisis. One was a New York Times story
Rico following Hurricane Maria, (7/10/20) that reported that Trump had
referring to it as an “asset,” asked then-Homeland Security Secretary
Elaine Duke, “Can we sell the island? You
demonstrating the US’s mercantile
know, or divest of that asset?”
attitude towards its colony–though
neither of these articles used
words like “colony” or “imperialism.”

While Israel’s settler colonialism has been going on for decades, FAIR’s
search focused on Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank on July 1, because
it was a contemporaneous measure taken by a US ally that would
permanently end prospects for Palestinian independence under a two-
state solution (FAIR.org, 1/31/20, 2/7/20). While some of the disparity in
coverage could be explained by the postponement of the planned
annexation on July 1 due to coronavirus and international condemnation,
even if we con ne coverage from the Times, Journal and CNN from June
16 to July 1, there are still 44 articles on China’s national security law for
Hong Kong, compared to 12 on Israel’s planned annexation of Palestinian
territory.

If, as Israel’s annexation asserts, the West Bank is not an independent

nation deserving of self-determination, than Israel/Palestine is an
apartheid state where millions of Palestinians are denied democratic rights
due to their ethnicity. The denial of these rights has a heavy human cost:
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem (1/1/20), Israeli
security forces killed 133 Palestinians in 2019, including 28 children. Fifty-
six of the people killed took no part in hostilities against Israel, making
them victims of Israeli state terrorism.

Corporate media’s particular interest in Hong Kong protests cannot be

explained by the Hong Kong police force’s crackdown being exceptionally
brutal. After Chinese revolutionaries waged what Chinese people call the
War of Liberation against Western and Japanese colonizers, Communists in
Hong Kong led uprisings against British colonial rule in 1967, during which
colonial police shot to death or otherwise killed at least 17 people. In
contrast, while instances of police brutality have been documented during
the current Hong Kong protests, none of the four deaths of protesters
reported so far in the current unrest have been directly and credibly
attributed to police violence. Hong Kong protesters, meanwhile, have set a
man on re, bombed subways, beaten elderly people and young women,
and murdered a 70-year-old man by hurling a brick at his head (South
China Morning Post, 11/12/19, 6/3/20).
Nor does international condemnation explain the greater attention US
media pay to China’s assertion of control over its own territory compared
to actual colonialism in Puerto Rico and Palestine: More countries support
China’s actions defending its sovereignty than oppose them, and the UN
has passed numerous resolutions calling for Puerto Rican and Palestinian
self-determination.

Not only was far more media

attention given to the national
security law in Hong Kong, there
was also a huge di erence in tone
in the coverage. The Journal ran
numerous editorials (7/1/20,
7/8/20, 7/14/20) and op-eds
(7/2/20, 7/13/20) worrying about
Hong Kong’s “endangered
elections,” and mulling over how
to best “punish China” for its
“illegal takeover,” as well as ways
to “curb Chinese intimidation” of
Western corporations, pointing to
laws forbidding companies to
boycott Israel as a model.
However, the Journal only ran one While a Wall Street Journal editorial on
op-ed (7/1/20) on the West Bank, Hong Kong (7/1/20) mourned that “China
which advised Netanyahu to “slice snu s out a beacon of freedom,” a Journal

some pieces o the annexation op-ed (7/1/20) advised the Israeli Prime
Minister on how to “slice the annexation
salami,” because Israel’s illegal
salami.”
takeover works better as a
“bargaining chip” than “as a fait
accompli,” and only one column on Puerto Rico (6/22/20), a celebration of
the privatization of Puerto Rico’s bankrupt public utility.

The Times’ editorial board (7/1/20) urged Trump to “pressure” China,

because “history will not be kind to those who did nothing to try to stop
Beijing’s human rights abuses”; the paper did not speculate on history’s
attitude toward the US’s own human rights abuses in Puerto Rico, or its
support for those of its ally Israel in Palestine.

The paper ran numerous articles (7/7/20, 7/8/20, 7/14/20) on the national
security law’s suppression of political expression in Hong Kong, noting that
the Times will be moving part of its Hong Kong bureau to Seoul. The paper
unironically noted that it must partially relocate to South Korea for that
country’s “independent press,” and because some journalists fear Beijing
will “crack down on activism and speech.” South Korea’s defamation laws
can imprison people for three years for publishing true statements its
government deems not in the public interest, and its authoritarian National
Security Act censors and punishes people for reading and voicing opinions
favorable to North Korea.

Judging by the volume and tone of media coverage about China’s national
security law, one might get the impression that the law is an
unprecedented and obvious threat to civil liberties. While there are
legitimate concerns about how widely it can be applied (the vaguely
worded law appears to assert “long-arm jurisdiction” for violations
committed outside the territory, although the Chinese government denies
this), China passed a similar law in 2009 for its other autonomous region,
Macau—which was returned to China by Portugal in 1999—and Macau still
remains autonomous. Plenty of other countries, including the US, already
have anti-sedition laws on the books.
CNN (6/29/20) notes that anti-separatism is the “norm worldwide,” and a
UN resolution states:

Any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of

the national unity and the territorial integrity of a
country is incompatible with the purposes and principles
of the Charter of the United Nations.

While Hong Kong protesters wave US and British colonial ags for varying
reasons, some have called on US President Donald Trump and UK Prime
Minister Boris Johnson to “liberate” the territory and “ ght for us.” The US
government funded last year’s protests through the US Agency for Global
Media (FAIR.org, 7/15/20). The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
—which performs the foreign government–subverting work the CIA used
to do more covertly—has also given millions of dollars in support. Some of
its leaders have openly colluded with US o cials, and yearn for a return to
British colonialism, which had little semblance of democracy throughout
most of its occupation. Given that the United States criminalizes foreign
interference in its elections, it should hardly be surprising or shocking that
China would pass similar laws.

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Filed under: China, Israel/Palestine, Protest, Puerto Rico

Joshua Cho
Joshua Cho (@JoshC0301) is a writer based in Virginia.

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