On Wednesday, as pro-freedom protesters in Hong Kong continue to fight for their lives and their liberty, the New York Times published an op-ed titled “Hong Kong is China, Like it or Not.” Its subhead reads, “After months of chaos in the city, something had to be done, and the Chinese government did it.”
The author of the article, it turns out, is Hong Kong Executive Council member Regina Ip, known as Beijing’s enforcer in Hong Kong.
Walter Duranty, whom the New York Times did not denounce until 1990 for peddling pro-Soviet agitprop in the outlet’s pages, would be proud.
“No amount of outcry, condemnation or sanctions over the Chinese government’s purported encroachment in Hong Kong’s affairs will alter the fact that Hong Kong is part of China and that its destiny is intertwined with the mainland’s,” Ip writes.
She adds, “Hong Kongers who wanted the city promptly to return to peace thought the authorities’ handling of the situation, which dragged on for months and grew more and more violent, was incompetent. … Something had to be done, and the Chinese authorities did it.”
That “something” is known as the onerous, anti-democratic Hong Kong national security law. And beyond that, Ip’s account is a lie. Hong Kongers were not angling to suppress pro-democracy protesters, as the subsequent and overwhelmingly anti-Beijing election results in Hong Kong demonstrated. What they wanted was for China to stop meddling in Hong Kong’s affairs.
Ip, however, writing in the pages of the New York Times, praises China for its efforts to quash the “scale and frequency” of “antigovernment protests.” She goes on to brag that “several prominent democracy advocates have since announced their retirement from politics, disbanded their parties or fled the city.” And this is a good thing, she argues, because these people have “done great harm to the city by going against its constitutional order and stirring up chaos and disaffection toward our motherland.”
Ip goes on and on, blaming the pro-freedom protesters for tarnishing Hong Kong’s reputation “as one of the best places in the world in which to do business.”
As for China’s national security law for Hong Kong, she writes, you all need to calm down. Only 28 people have been arrested, and only one person has been charged for secession and terrorism. She adds that rather than imposing Beijing’s will through force, Beijing’s national security law is actually “ensuring that Hong Kong does not become a danger to China.”
Remember when the New York Times wrestled a resignation from its editorial page editor and attached a groveling note of apology to Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s “Send in the Troops” op-ed, claiming the article was not vetted properly? Remember how the New York Times bemoaned that Cotton’s op-ed, which argued that military force should be used to assist the police departments overwhelmed by the George Floyd riots, was too “needlessly harsh” given the “life-and-death importance of the topic, the senator’s influential position and the gravity of the steps he advocates, the essay should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny?”
That was all nonsense. The New York Times has proven, with Ip’s essay, that it has no standards at all. The New York Times will publish pro-Taliban agitprop authored by an honest-to-goodness Taliban terrorist. It will publish pro-Chinese Communist propaganda, going as far as to promote members of the regime’s cheer squad as China gears up for a sequel to the Tiananmen Square massacre. But the New York Times draws the line at the senator from Arkansas arguing for a position most people agreed with at the time.
