'Fugitives Bill Weakens World's Trust In China'

An international relations scholar, Kenneth Chan, said on Friday that even though the extradition bill saga in Hong Kong may not push the US President Donald Trump to talk openly about the SAR with President Xi Jinping, it already has a great impact on the world’s trust in China.

“Very unfortunately, however hard China tries to acquire 'soft power', the world hasn’t actually considered that very favourably,” Chan said.

The Baptist University associate professor, who's also a former lawmaker from the Civic Party, said that Beijing “wants to be respectable” but has failed to win respect.

Chan said the bill points to a "governance crisis" for the central government in its failure to uphold the One Country, Two Systems principle.

In recent years, for example, he said Beijing has tightened its grip on elections here in Hong Kong, such as the disqualification of lawmakers over oath-taking a few years ago.

“It is [basically] mission impossible for the China to go around the world to say, ‘trust us’,” he said after attending an RTHK radio programme.