Hong Kong crisis escalates as China moves to hasten demise of city's autonomy

The constitutional crisis engulfing Hong Kong expanded dramatically on Tuesday as the Chinese government voiced its support for the seizure of more than a dozen pro-democracy activists and asserted Beijing's "rights and responsibilities to maintain the constitutional order" in the city.

With the statements, the Chinese government explicitly doubled down on its position that Beijing has the power to intervene politically in Hong Kong. The move threw further doubt over the credibility of the Hong Kong mini-constitution that ostensibly guaranteed the city a high degree of autonomy from Chinese meddling until 2047, half a century after its handover from British rule.

Long-standing questions about the efficacy of the autonomy provision, known as Article 22 of the Basic Law, were sharpened last week after Beijing's liaison office said Friday it was not bound by the noninterference law and was legally permitted as a supervisory body to voice its criticism of legislative affairs in Hong Kong, including a filibuster by opposition lawmakers.

A day later, on Saturday, Hong Kong authorities arrested some of the city's most strident anti-China voices in a coordinated and unprecedented operation, taking in figures such as the former legislators Martin Lee and Albert Ho and media tycoon Jimmy Lai on grounds of leading protests last year that did not receive police authorization but dominated world headlines.

With Hong Kong's streets in recent months cleared of mass protests due to the coronavirus, legislators and activists in the city's pro-democracy camp say the Communist Party and the Hong Kong authorities have used the opportunity to cripple their movement through a multipronged approach while world attention has been diverted elsewhere by the pandemic.

Aside from the mass arrests and increasingly pointed declarations about China's "supervisory" role over the city, Chinese officials in Hong Kong, including the newly installed director of the central government's liaison office, Luo Huining, have called for improved "national security education" in Hong Kong and the passage of a national security law that would toughen up law enforcement and prosecutorial powers to help prevent protests.

Chinese officials have consistently framed the massive, sometimes violent protests as an extremist uprising stoked and manipulated by the United States and directed on the ground by some of the activists Hong Kong police arrested over the weekend.

Beijing said on Tuesday that it "fully supported" the arrests of figures who had been involved in illegal assembly and "extreme violence." In its statement, the Chinese cabinet's Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office said it was American support for the protesters that in fact amounted to a "political conspiracy" and a "reckless trampling of human rights and rule of law in Hong Kong."

"The law is sacred and everyone is equal before the law," the central government office said. "No one has extrajudicial privileges, and those who violate the law must be prosecuted in accordance with the law."

In a separate statement, Beijing leaned into its claim that it holds "supervisory" powers over Hong Kong and said the central government "must intervene" if a situation arose that harmed the country and Hong Kong.

"The Central Government grants the Special Administrative Region a high degree of autonomy, which does not mean that the Central Government does not have or surrender its supervisory power," said the statement. "In Hong Kong, whenever the central government exercises power in accordance with the law, there are always people who clamor: 'the central government is intervening in Hong Kong's autonomous affairs.' Let us ask these people: When Jimmy Lai publicly clamored to 'fight on behalf of the United States,' why didn't you come out and express your opposition?"

The Hong Kong Bar Association issued a statement Monday saying there was no provision in the Basic Law giving central Chinese authorities "supervision" over affairs the Hong Kong government administers on its own.

Statements from Beijing and Hong Kong officials on "such a highly important legal issue have caused deep public unease," the lawyers' group said.

Fitch Ratings downgraded Hong Kong's long-term debt on Monday, citing "deep-rooted, sociopolitical cleavages" that threatened to tarnish the city's reputation as a smoothly run international hub.

Beijing is "taking a more vocal role in Hong Kong affairs than at any time since the 1997 handover," the ratings firm noted.