FeaturesEdited by: James Joseph | Managing Editor, Long-Form Content
On Thursday, the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHK) held its annual symposium at the US Capitol Visitor Center to discuss the current state of the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. The symposium this year was titled “Intensifying Repression: Beijing’s Crackdown on Hong Kong and U.S. Policy Options” and was a bipartisan discussion featuring US Senators, Members of Congress, journalists, policy advocates, and even remarks from Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. The discussion touched on a range of topics from Hong Kong’s National Security Laws to US sanction policy to the relationship between Hong Kong and various global conflicts.
Background
The rule of law in Hong Kong has come under significant threat over the last few years. The threat increased dramatically in 2019-2020 as a result of China and the Government of Hong Kong’s crackdown on pro-democratic protests. While the protests largely involved peaceful approaches such as sit-ins at government headquarters and peaceful marches, the government response involved excessive force, mass arrests, and pepper spray among others. In response to these protests, the government issued the 2020 National Security Law under the direction of Chinese authorities which gave the government broad powers to conduct mass arrests under the guise of addressing “Secession,” “Subversion,” “Terrorist Activities” and “Collusion with a Foreign Country.” This conflict has been reignited now in 2024 with the passage of Article 23 also known as Hong Kong’s Second National Security Law. Article 23 was passed on March 23, 2024 and introduced an additional 39 national security crimes which included treason, insurrection, incitement to mutiny, and a number of crimes related to “Organizations Engaging in Activities Endangering National Security.” Under this new law Hong Kong has rounded up protesters and journalists and shuttered key news organizations while exerting significant control over the ones still in place.
In the intervening time the global landscape has also changed. Russia has been at war with Ukraine since 2022 and has been using China to acquire western technology by way of Hong Kong. Similarly Iran and various extremist groups throughout the middle east have also been trafficking western technological components via Hong Kong. The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation put out a new report on August 19 of this year called “Beneath the Harbor: Hong Kong’s Leading Role in Sanctions Evasion” which details the extensive network utilizing Hong Kong as a central hub for the exchange of money and goods in violation of sanctions.
The Symposium provided a unique opportunity for journalists, members of Congress, and the foundation itself to create thoughtful discussion around these issues.
Congressional Messages: A Bipartisan Approach to Hong Kong
The symposium was addressed by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Representative James McGovern (D-MA), Representative Young Kim (R-CA), and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and one key theme throughout each address was that Hong Kong is a bipartisan issue. Senator Merkley poignantly reminded us, “We’re here today because we must never give up on the dream of a free Hong Kong and we will continue working together in partnership activist Members of Congress to make that happen.” James McGovern who has himself been sanctioned by China for “interfering with China’s domestic affairs” had this to say on the need for bipartisanship on Hong Kong “The bills that are really holding China to account are bills that come out of the House of Representatives with huge bipartisan support. They have been invested in Democrats and Republicans working together…and we can’t politicize this issue it has to reflect our principles and our values.” Representative Kim commented on the response that bipartisan legislation from the US is seeing in China saying “In response to that bipartisan, bicameral charge to hold them accountable, Beijing resorted to what it loves best: bullying, coursing, silencing dissenters to keep their grip on power.” Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi even mentioned bipartisanship in her address to the symposium as a special guest speaker saying “But the one thing I can say that if[sic] you have strong bipartisanship when it comes to issues that relate to human rights violations in China especially as it was manifested from that vote in Hong Kong.”
Panel 1: Article 23 and Beyond: The Struggle for Media Freedom
The first full panel of the symposium was moderated by Mark Clifford, the President of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, who was joined by Aleksandra Bielakowska from Reporters without borders and Anna Kwok from the Hong Kong Democracy Council. Their discussion revolved largely around the deterioration of personal freedoms in Hong Kong, particularly freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. Aleksandra noted in particular that in the RSF World Press Freedom Index Hong Kong has fallen from 18th place in 2002 all the way down to 135th this year. Aleksandra also highlighted that Hong Kong has begun in the last 4 years jailing journalists, something never before seen in modern Hong Kong. Anna Kwok gave a specific overview on what losing media freedom in Hong Kong means suggesting three stages of the loss of media freedom. The first stage is the “vacuum of information” where individuals no longer know where to look for news and have to question whether news is legitimate or fabricated. Anna’s second stage which comes 1-2 years later is the “vacuum of narratives” where the people on the ground in Hong Kong no longer have the ability to share new narratives for fear of arrest. Finally, the third stage is the “psychological vacuum” where Hong Kong’s identity is lost and there is a sense that people don’t know how to relate to a Hong Kong living under this kind of repression with the on-the-ground resistance having been silenced and seemingly faded away.
The panelists discussed approaches to supporting media freedom in Hong Kong as well. Anna Kwok said “It’s really important that we also try to legislate policy actions and empower the community to build that bridge of communication [sic] media information flow going forward.” Aleksandra described the challenges facing Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and their determination to continue fighting for Hong Kong anyway: “I think for RSF it will be very difficult to go back physically to Hong Kong right now because they have us in a way under the rudders apparently but we still try to continue our underground work. We still try to do things that we’ve been doing for the past few years. We do capacity building for jounalists… we trained around 1000 Chinese speaking journalists today from Hong, China. We try to continue the emergency assistance support.” The panel ended on a high note with the moderator Mark Clifford saying that despite these challenges to media freedom, these journalists and activists would continue to push the stories and would not be going away.
Panel 2: Adapting U.S. Policy to Address Hong Kong’s Central Role in Sanctions Evasion for Russia, Iran, and North Korea
The second panel focused on trade in Hong Kong and the increasing role that Hong Kong is playing as a safe haven for the exchange of money for western goods in violation of sanctions. The panel was moderated Carolyn Bartholomew, a China Policy Analyst and she was joined by Samuel Bickett, a lawyer and head of the U.S.-Hong Kong Policy Roundtable, and Doug Klain, a policy analyst for Razom for Ukraine. Ukraine was a point of particular interest for these analysts because while the US has been providing weapons, technology, and supplies to the people of Ukraine, Russia has been secretly acquiring a lot of the same western goods and technologies from China by way of Hong Kong.
The moderator, Carolyn Bartholomew set the stage for the discussion saying “It is simple and cheap to open a Hong Kong based company and firms in the territory can buy goods produced by U.S. Companies with little trouble. Once in Hong Kong, those goods can be shipped with no questions asked to countries and companies under Western sanctions and trade controls. Hong Kong’s role in helping Russia continue its assault against Ukraine is startling in its growth and extent. Many of the shipments consist of goods purportedly made by Western companies, such as Intel, Analog Devices, Apple, and Texas Instruments. Hong Kong companies have shipped billions of dollars of goods to Russia for its war effort.” Samuel Bickett made a bold call to action saying “Fundamentally, I’ll just say right now we’ve got to speed up how quickly we’re finding these companies, sanctioning them, getting them cut off from the global financial system. That’s priority number one.” Doug Klain brought in a piece of shrapnel from Ukraine that belonged to a Russian Iskander K-9M727 cruise missile to highlight that Russia has fired over 10,000 missiles like this into Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion. Klain went on to explain that this missile could not function without critical components made by Texas Instruments, a company based in the US. Samuel Bickett acknowledged the role that Texas Instruments plays, but also highlighted an even greater concern “Ultimately though, I think what concerns me the most is not Texas Instruments…The most concerning to me are American companies at the cutting edge like NVIDIA. Recently, the New York Times asked them [Nvidia] for comment on some of their most advanced AI technology getting to China and presumably also getting to Russia. Nvidia said ‘Well, it’s like a speed limit and we follow the speed limit the U.S. government sets.’”
Samuel Bickett had very concrete action that he and his organization are seeking from the US government and strong rationales behind it. Bickett explained: “You can’t do international trade without trade finance. You can’t do it in cash. It has to be done with debt. And to do it with debt you need a bank, so if you cut off the banks, then you make a huge difference here.” He further noted that every big bank in the world needs access to the US financial system because 55% of trade in the world is conducted in U.S. dollars. His second approach was to call for Hong Kong as a jurisdiction to be designated a Primary Money Laundering Concern which would allow the US government to require that US banks gather information about who they are trading with in Hong Kong. Carolyn Bartholomew added that it would be helpful if US government agencies streamlined and consolidated their entity lists because right now there are multiple entities with multiple lists. The actions suggested by the panelists here are largely based on enforcement mechanisms already familiar and available to the government to employ. The panelists noted that for any of these to be successful, there has to be will in Congress to affect them and in particular to choose to fund them.
Panel 3: Hong Kong Emerging Technologies & Beijing’s Military-Civil Fusion Policy.
The final panel of the day was moderated by the CFHK’s own Shannon Van Sant for a discussion between Peter Mattis of the Jamestown Foundation and Rick Switzer of ProjX Technology Consulting. Rick Switzer posited in this panel that while the perception of China since the 80s has been a view of cooperation and research, the actual tendency has largely been for China to go out and bring that knowledge back into China and where there have been scientific breakthroughs in China it has often been difficult to get information on them out of China. Peter Mattis commented on the idea of national unification where China has historically sought the “reunification” of Macau and Hong Kong with the mainland and the west supported this idea thinking that it would lead China to honor treaty commitments, but the reality especially recently has been quite different. Rick Switzer also highlighted that Hong Kong was an easier place for academics saying “Hong Kong is just a place where it’s easier to come in and insinuate yourself into the Hong Kong University of Science Technology…That was a place you could come in and do really easy work. It was easy to bring in your sort of students and postdoc fellows who could come in ways that are almost impossible for any number of reasons in the PRC.” Switzer went on to suggest that Hong Kong was a better breeding ground for AI research than mainland China because of the Great Firewall’s presence on the mainland and that a lot of key Chinese companies including Bytedance who is responsible for TikTok’s algorithm owe their success to AI research groups based in Hong Kong. Shannon Van Sant noted that this same AI research is being applied to more nefarious purposes as well such as tracking Western reporters when they are present at Tiananmen Square. Peter Mattis noted Hong Kong has provided a venue for China to tap into basic research that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
The discussion went on to consider how the recent political crackdowns in Hong Kong have affected this technology and knowledge transfer. Rick Switzer argued “Whatever they [China] thought they gained by going after Hong Kong and trying to like force their political will on the Hong Kong people, they lost tenfold…in this special role, this special carve out that Hong Kong had for customs or trade or…innovations for firms for technology. So many things that Hong Kong played this incredibly powerful role that drove the creation of China’s innovation system were now in jeopardy because of that.” After being asked about loopholes that China is exploiting to get American technology access, Peter Mattis suggested that the biggest loophole is that we don’t apply the same entity designations to Hong Kong that we have to China. Ultimately the panelists concluded that at this point from a national security perspective, Hong Kong and China present a distinction without a difference.
Conclusions
Ultimately, none of these issues are going away any time soon. China has made it clear that they are if anything ramping up further crackdowns on Freedom of the Press. Russia will continue to seek sources for key American and western parts necessary to its war effort and even if they don’t rogue nations like North Korea and extremist groups in the middle east will continue to seek those parts both for their own use and for sale to their allies and client states. And finally China is a global industrial state and their hunger for new technology won’t be dissipated even as they try to maintain tight controls on their populace and the unfortunate populations living under them. But what is important to remember here is that there are advocacy groups like The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation watching, creating reports on these critical issues, supporting journalists at risk trying to get the truth out, and advocating for real change that could be affected by governments and by private industry. The CFHK ran an exceptional event with brilliant guest speakers, thought provoking discussion, and poignant human stories. JURIST will continue to follow the CFHK with interest and can’t wait to see their symposium again next year.
