WSJ Rebukes 'Hong Kong Illusionist' Paul Chan

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has lashed out at Financial Secretary Paul Chan for claiming Hong Kong has a “high degree of autonomy”, accusing Chan of “invoking a system that no longer exists”.

In a letter written by Chan and published in the newspaper on Wednesday, the minister argued that Hong Kong should continue to be included in the Index of Economic Freedom, after the Heritage Foundation dropped the SAR from the annual ranking, citing Beijing’s increasing control over the city's economic policies.

The finance chief had described the think tank’s explanation for the move as “flawed and inexplicable”, insisting that Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of autonomy under the Basic Law and "One Country Two Systems".

However, the WSJ Editorial Board wrote back on the same day, striking down Chan’s arguments in an article titled “Hong Kong Illusionist”.

“Chan has the impossible task of denying what everyone can plainly see: China’s Communist Party is remaking Hong Kong in its own mainland image,” it wrote.

While the Sino-British Joint Declaration laid out the terms of Hong Kong’s autonomy under the “One Country, Two Systems” framework, the board said foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang had in 2017 declared the historical document void.

“Hongkongers have every reason to believe him after watching China ram through an unpopular national-security law whose provisions include allowing Beijing to take some Hong Kong cases to China for trial,” the article said.

“Mr Chan wants readers to believe that economic freedom continues no matter the political repression. But China is not Singapore. In China dissenters simply disappear. Foreign businessmen can be arrested and held as diplomatic hostages… economic freedom? Tell that to Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai, who remains in jail because the government has invoked the national-security law, overturning the presumption of bail in the common law that supposedly governs Hong Kong.”

“Our advice to Mr Chan is to stop trying to convince the world that Hong Kong is what it was and accept that he’s now flacking for the man who really runs Hong Kong: Chinese President Xi Jinping,” the editorial concluded.