羅冠聰Durham大學 Q&A｜Durham University speech | Nathan LAW | #紀元英國 #EpochNewsUK

Beijing was given the 2008 Olympics on the basis of improving its human rights, yet the human rights have deteriorated. After being given the Winter Olympics, what leverage do you think the West still has on the CCP? How can the CCP be made accountable for its crimes against humanity? The 2008 Beijing Olympics for China was a big success. They had amassed a lot of reputation, global status, and none of the global leaders or global organisations came and said that they should be ashamed of that because they violated all the pledges on the human rights promises of the Olympics and they continue to suppress these people. And I think 14 years later the situation changed completely. There have been a lot of campaigns urging at least diplomatic boycotts and a lot of sponsors are really reluctant to promote for the Olympics with a high profile and its viewership is much less than the previous ones. So I think we've indeed created an environment that the IOC and the other organisations who are complicit to Beijing's human rights violations, they feel embarrassed and discouraged to the current situation. And I think if we do more, they can make sure Beijing won't get the next Olympics, or at least in decades' time. Do you expect or experience support from peers from mainland China that live or study abroad? I think this is a very good question. I often have talks in universities and it's always after the talks that there were students from mainland China came and tell me that they were very sympathetic about the protest or even supported the protest, but they are unable to show them because they know there are people watching them and maybe they will be reported if they show their support on the talk. And I think that is the tragedy. We of course, our stance is very clear. We are going against a regime, a totalitarian regime, but not its people. We don't conflate the concept of a country, a regime and the people. And we made very clear that actually Chinese people could be the ones who suffer from the Chinese totalitarianism. Let us just look at the Chinese human rights lawyers and all those human rights defendants who just fight for social justice and social issue and they end up being jailed or being persecuted in maybe a more terrible term than the Hong Kong protesters. So I think for me, I would definitely be more welcomed if there are Chinese students, they really wanted to talk about things like this, or I would expect them if they receive education overseas, they are not in that kind of information bubble provided by the Chinese Communist Party in order to prevent them from thinking independently. These interactions are much more welcomed. But the reason why I said it is a tragedy is because they are supposed to study in a free environment. Universities are supposed to protect them from being hunted as long as they are willing to get in touch with the outer world, right? But for now, the university failed to do so. As we all know, I was in multiple occasions that Chinese students came up to me and said that they are clearly being watched. It is an open secret that they will be reported every single action, but there had not been any actions taken by schools, by authority, or any other institutions. And for us, for example, when a figure like me proposed those problems, the Chinese government would say that, oh, you are witch hunting, that you are trying to stigmatize us, you are trying to stigmatize the Chinese organizations. But in fact, those who are suffering are the Chinese students who are with independent thinking and who are being educated in more liberal terms. That is why I think it is a tragedy. I think institutions, education institutions should take responsibility, should block those infiltration and those cultures of turning each other out and that kind of surveillance from the Chinese Communist Party. We just have to make our schools and environments more safe for people who are facing all these persecutions. What would you suggest that those not from Hong Kong do to help your situation, maybe specifically as a Brit? Well, I think it is not in particular helping my situation, but I think at least for a lot of Hong Kong people, they also face a lot of difficulties and probably more pressure than I when they had to leave. When we look at the figure, we have already got more than 9,000 applications for the scheme for Hong Kong people to come to the UK, and the Home Office is estimating there will be more than 320,000 Hong Kong people who come to the UK in five years. It is the largest resettlement plan in recent UK history, and how we can utilise our resources to help them to be settled and incorporate them into the larger community so that Hong Kong people do not feel like they are being isolated. I think this is a really important thing to do, and it starts with understanding. It starts with you understanding what Hong Kong people went through, and whenever you talk to them, you kind of understood the reason why they leave and why they end up in the UK. It helps a lot for them to feel accepted and to feel understood. That is why I think it is really important. For us in the UK, we have also got a responsibility to know a bit of Hong Kong, because we are going to have communities with visible Hong Kong existence, and if we don't know about them, then it is impossible for us to welcome them in a positive way. I think it starts with all of us doing our part. Of course, for Hong Kong people, we face, especially in Hong Kong, we will face a lot of persecution like cultural annihilation, protest memory erasing, things like this. A lot of protest movies in Hong Kong, the documentaries about 2019 Hong Kong protests, they are now banned from screening in Hong Kong. In our history book, a lot of crucial incidents are being rewritten. A lot of our history is being morphed into a way that benefits the Beijing narrative. Our diasporic Hong Kong community also shows a certain responsibility to preserve those truths, to preserve those protest memories and the culture that truly represents our spirits. That is something that we all can do to help the Hong Kong community and to help to sustain Hong Kong as a concept and as an identity. Why do you think the CCP has been allowed to get away with breaking its one country two systems contract in Hong Kong? How do you feel about that? As I said, the world has not developed mechanisms to hold China accountable and allow them to I think for Hong Kong people it is really disheartening to see things unfold in that way. We really need to take our stories as a reminder to the world that we just have to do more to hold these authoritarian countries accountable. Not only because Hong Kong people are suffering, but actually the world is also facing the consequence of allowing a country like the PRC under the Chinese Communist leadership to continue to expand their influence and corrupt our own values. So I think we definitely show the responsibility to tell the story and to appeal for coordinated and global actions from diplomatic countries. Can I just add one more thing to that? What are your hopes or fears for Hong Kong this year? In the scope of Hong Kong's future, one year may seem short. But if it is a lunar new year for Hong Kong people, I wish them to be as safe as possible and preserve our energy. I do believe that China will face a lot of problems and challenges, especially on its legitimacy, where we are seeing that they are emerging in an ageing society, they are having problems in industrial transformation, they are being isolated on the international stage. It may not take a few years for this to really go to a steep downhill, but I do believe that China has peaked and they will face a lot of problems. You mentioned throughout the 80s and 90s Hong Kong was sort of renowned for their vibrant way of life, very unique to Hong Kong. And of course throughout that period the Sino-British talks were happening and a lot of British officials and diplomats were accused of sort of kowtowing to China throughout that period. I was wondering, do you think the UK could have ensured the continuation of Hong Kong's freedoms more than they did? And if so, what further guarantees do you think they could have implemented? Well, thank you so much, that's a really good question. A lot of officials came and they also mentioned about what they could do more in Hong Kong before 1997 in order to ensure their freedom. I think it's really easy for us to just look back and say that there are a lot of things that they could do. But also for me I would rather take a sense of looking at what their restrictions were. I remember I read articles about a patch of unfrozen classified documents just in prison for a few years and some of the negotiations was covered in those documents. And actually at that time the British government proposed multiple proposals for how to best preserve Hong Kong's autonomy. But whenever it comes to implementing democracy, which they indeed proposed, and as we could see the last government of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, he implemented election reform that maximised the elements of democracy. And it was actually the most democratic election, the last election of Hong Kong, under the British ruling, it was actually the most democratic election ever taken place in Hong Kong in its legislature. But whenever democracy becomes an option, the Chinese government's response would be, do you want to see the liberation army rolling in town? They were literally using military intimidation to force the British government not to do anything, while it's clear to the British government that they had no ability to defend Hong Kong when China wants to do it in that way. So I think taking that into consideration and it really not only answering your question but correlating to a lot of criticism, like the Chinese government wants to say, oh, you guys didn't have democracy in British ruling, so how come you're fighting now? And the answer has been clear, that the Chinese government has been the one who has been blocking all the democratic process in Hong Kong. It makes no difference before 1997 and after 1997. Hi, do you think that the extent of the Chinese repression against contrary values in Hong Kong and Xinjiang represents a form of strength or weakness in the shape of these ideologies? I think it represents a form of confidence. Like compared to a decade ago, they are much more confident over its totalitarian system. The narrative of catching the West has no longer been a central part of how they narrate things, and for now they are entering the phase of competing with the liberal order and crafting their own. So I think it's difficult to say whether it is strong or weak, because you can see it in different ways. Maybe they are getting weaker on the international level when it comes to its relationship with some other powerful countries, but of course they really feel like the way that they amass power and suppress people are indeed helping them to continue to survive as the sole party in mainland China. So I think it really reflects that Hong Kong used to be the freest city and there was a reason for that. China wanted it to be an example of the country walking towards the liberal system that the international community recognised, so that they preserve a certain part of Hong Kong to be free and they can't pretend that they were keeping promises. But when that needs of proving them walking towards a liberal system is gone, then the restraint for them to put a much heavier approach on Hong Kong will also lift. So I think it really reflects Beijing's confidence, and when it has growing confidence, their target is no longer in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is of course part of this, but they are eyeing the whole world and how to expand and sustain their influence. Last night during the debate at the Durham Union, it was repeatedly mentioned that the UK is involved in trades with China, large amounts of money were involved. Do you think that the international community is going to be held back by self-interest when they assist Hong Kong or assist those being oppressed in China? Do you think there is a dilemma between self-interest and promoting human rights or protecting people's human rights? It's always a process of negotiation. When you look back to 2014, the Amarillo movement in Hong Kong, I don't know whether you all remember, but there were much fewer international coverage than we had in 2019. And for example, the US government, the UK government didn't really speak loudly about it. Because for example, the UK government was in a golden phase, the golden era with the Chinese government. And because of that geopolitical reasons, they had spoken very little about the protests in 2014 and in support of Hong Kong. And the same applied to the US government, that they had a really good relationship with China, they were building up a buddy system. So, doing international advocacy work or getting support for Hong Kong, getting support for any major human rights causes, it must be impacted by geopolitical and some other factors. Business is one of them. So for me, the only thing that Hong Kong people could do is, if we can ride with the wind, then we ride with it. But if we cannot, then we try to create our own. And the most important thing is, before we propose things like this, we must understand the limitation and the negotiation in between all those factors. Economy is one. Of course, we wanted to move to a direction that we can reduce our reliance on China, that we can reduce the possibility for them to do economic coercion and punishment towards our economic system, whenever they feel they are uncomfortable over our criticism. But you also have to have a process to provide incentives for corporations to do it. For example, there has been funds for the Japanese governments and the US governments to help corporations to remove their operations from China. And those are the policies that may not sound juicy, but it's actually helping the cause. So for me, rather than to say that being vocal to China or doing business in China is in a dilemma or shall we pick one of them, I would say that we should actually really think about how we could provide incentives to decrease the reliance on China and how we can be more independent and have more freedom to talk what we want and to act in the way that we prefer. I'm afraid the time is limited and we will take the last two questions from... Yeah, thank you. So as you all can tell now, the Hong Kong situation is deteriorating day by day. It's extremely radical now, and the police enjoy the privileges and the abuse of power, or Chinese-funded comedies are all around the business environment. So to be honest, it seems like it is impossible to bring democracy to Hong Kong, or pessimistically speaking, it would soon be the next Macau or another province in China for the next five years. So as a lobbyist, what exactly are you pursuing through the lobby? Is it to raise awareness or to build a new Hong Kong elsewhere, or is it to bring full democracy to Hong Kong? If it is the last one, what exactly is the procedure to do that? Like, Professor Benitai had made ten steps into gaining legislative majority a few years ago, so what exactly is the procedure to achieve full democracy? Well, thank you for your question, and I must declare I'm not a lobbyist. There is a very strict and political definition to become a lobbyist. You have to register and you have to go through a whole procedure. So I'm not a lobbyist. I'm in no way doing the narrowly defined lobbying work. I'm raising awareness and I'm an activist. I think you have posed a very valid question. If we want democracy, how do we achieve that? And for me, I must confess my incapacity of thinking a blueprint for us to achieve what we want. For me, it's definitely fighting for democracy. It's definitely blunting China's influence. It's definitely making China into a way that they are so uncomfortable with their current system that they must change, whether in a way that there is no Communist Party or in a way that there can be more parties competing for control or they're respecting more to autonomous regions. I think there are a variety of changes that could come, and I don't think, well, to be honest, I don't think any one of us could provide a blueprint of what we're heading to. It's basically impossible because if we are talking about not only China-Hong Kong relationship, but in a broader term, that how the world could contain China's influence and how the world to exert its influence in order to make China or Hong Kong into a more democratic place. There are just so many factors and so many players in that equation. But for me, I think, as I said, it's all factors. The least thing that we could do is continue to raise awareness. I don't think it's possible for us to change government's attitude if we don't have grassroots support. We're in a democratic country. Parliamentarians have to be responsible to their voters, and they have to be responsible for the political consequence of their decision. If we don't have that idea of supporting Hong Kong ingrained in the society, then there's no way for us to change the politics. Furthermore, we have to build a much stronger presence in the way to influence politics, not in a narrower term, not necessarily to be 10 Hong Kongers becoming parliamentarians that speak for Hong Kong. But we must allow the practitioners to know that we've got a visible presence, we've got influence, we are a force of good, and they would take our preference into consideration. For me, we propose a lot of things, whether to build a new Hong Kong, whether to get food democracy, etc. I think sometimes they are not contradictory. For example, if we're thinking about our identity as our strongest weapon, we definitely have a part of preserving that, given that in Hong Kong, a lot of things that really built our identity will be erased. We would continue to preserve our culture, preserve our identity, we would continue to do advocacy work around these things in order to make an impact. So for me, yes, I must confess I'm unable to provide a blueprint, but I know what I can do now, and I know what my role best suits, and I would just keep doing it, and to hope that it opens up a certain window that maybe in a few years' time we could definitely see the path going back home. I would like to thank Nathan once again, and please give Nathan another round of applause.