US politicians should keep their color-hued noses out of Hong Kong: China Daily editorial
The People's Republic of China makes no secret about its sensitivity to foreign intervention in its internal affairs.
And like those of Tibet and Taiwan, Hong Kong affairs fall into the category of being China's business and no one else's.
Since the onset of the current turbulence in the special administrative region, which now threatens to paralyze the international financial hub's governance and service functions, Beijing has time and again reiterated that bottom line.
And, while expressing its confidence in the local authorities' capabilities to restore order, it has repeatedly urged foreign powers to refrain from stoking the violence by word or deed.
That, on the first day after its two-week recess, the United States House of Representatives passed four resolutions regarding China, three of them on Hong Kong, has therefore naturally provoked a robust response from Beijing.
Expressing Beijing's strong indignation, a spokesperson for the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council on Wednesday condemned the measures, saying they were motivated by "gangster logic and a hegemonic mindset".
By passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which requires the US secretary of state to certify each year that Hong Kong retains its autonomy in order to receive special treatment as a major financial center, along with a resolution reaffirming the relationship between the US and Hong Kong that voices support for the protesters, and one that would halt exports of crowd-control devices unscrupulously provide support and encourage the violent extremists in Hong Kong, the US representatives have turned a blind eye to the intensifying violence and sent a wrong message to the rioters.
Both the SAR government and the authorities in Beijing have indicated the present priority in Hong Kong is to stop the violence and restore order.
The resolutions passed by the House show that instead of trying to promote calm, US politicians have made an ideologically motivated misjudgment of the situation in Hong Kong that will only further damage its social order and economy — seemingly oblivious to the harm that will also do US businesses.
What is happening in Hong Kong is an amalgamation of past and present woes acerbated by local, regional and international factors. It involves civil rights, democratic proceedings, public administration as well as longstanding difficulties and dissatisfactions at individual and community levels, all of which entails careful, comprehensive assessment and handling. But for that to happen, there has to be calm and order.
That the US representatives have chosen to wrongly judge the situation in Hong Kong and are seeking dictate what happens by exacerbating the unrest, reveals the desire of US politicians of both parties to foment a "color revolution" in Hong Kong.
They are destined to be disappointed though.
Hong Kong's status as an international financial, trading and shipping center is the result of the toil and perseverance of its people with the strong support of mainland. It has never been and a gift granted by foreign countries, and therefore it is not something that can be withheld or taken back.
Those US politicians holding high the banner of human rights in support of the chaos in Hong Kong, either willfully ignore or are ignorant of the truth that since Hong Kong's return to the motherland, the people of Hong enjoy more extensive democratic rights and freedoms than ever before. And that these rights and freedoms are being denied people in Hong Kong by the violence of the protestors they support.
But then their banner is a very amorphous thing.
