An angry mob’s storming of the U.S. Capitol has been received as a gift in Beijing, where a senior Chinese diplomat cited the crisis to justify the communist regime’s repression of Hong Kong.
“I believe that for many people, seeing those scenes in the United States has brought back a sense of deja vu, though they brought out some quite different reactions from certain people in the United States, including from some media,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.
With that statement, the envoy sought to draw an analogy between the attempt to stop Congress from affirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and the Hong Kong protests against a bill that would allow the mainland Chinese Communist regime to take custody of Hong Kong residents based on flimsy evidence. Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents protested the measure, which they regard as a “legalized kidnapping” bill, but Beijing responded with more aggressive anti-sedition legislation that culminated this week in the mass arrest of opposition leaders.
“What’s happened in Hong Kong is very clear,” Hua insisted. “For such a similar scene, I would like to ask these Western countries, what have they said and done about what’s happening in the United States? On the issue of human rights, democracy, and freedom, there should only be one set of standards in the world, and double standard [sic] should be discarded.”
Chinese authorities arrested dozens of opposition leaders this week on the grounds that their attempt to win a majority in the Hong Kong legislature amounted to an attempt to “overthrow” the government.
“Those arrested are guilty of nothing but exercising the democratic rights promised to them by treaty, and due to them through virtue of their humanity,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement released after midnight Thursday morning. China’s repression of Hong Kong has outraged European powers, but the timing of the opposition leader round-up, which practically coincided with the riot at the Capitol, allied leaders to direct their condemnations of anti-democratic assaults east to Beijing and west to Washington simultaneously.
“The mass arrest of politicians and activists in Hong Kong is a grievous attack on Hong Kong’s rights and freedoms as protected under the Joint Declaration,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, referring to the agreement by which the United Kingdom relinquished control of Hong Kong. “These arrests demonstrate that the Hong Kong and Chinese authorities deliberately misled the world about the true purpose of the National Security Law, which is being used to crush dissent and opposing political views.”
Russian diplomats struck a similar note, comparing the riot to the 2014 protests against Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, who fled the country and was removed from office by his nation’s legislature after his security forces opened fire on the protesters. “Quite Maidan-style pictures are coming from DC,” Russian Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky tweeted Wednesday.
European leaders defended the integrity of American democracy while nonetheless directing their rhetorical fire at President Trump.
“All my life, America has stood for some very important things. An idea of freedom, an idea of democracy,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Thursday. “I believe what President Trump has been saying about that has been completely wrong, and I unreservedly condemn encouraging people to behave in the disgraceful way that they did in the Capitol.”
