Global Research, January 21,
2020
Region: Asia
Theme: Law and Justice
The 2019 protests in Hong
Kong were triggered by Carrie Lam‘s attempt to pass an extradition
bill between Hong Kong and Mainland China. It is unclear if this were done at
Beijing’s request (which I believe it was) or at Lam’s own initiative, but the
the Western media omitted a few important details.
1. All nations have
extradition agreements between states and provinces. The reason is that if
someone commits a crime in New York and then runs to Virginia, the NYC police
have no authority in that state and cannot simply cross the border to search
and arrest. They must rely on local law enforcement for that. Hence, the
extradition agreements.
2. China has several good
reasons for wanting such agreements with Hong Kong.
(a) More than a few Mainland
Chinese businessmen or government officials have embezzled money, then fled to
Hong Kong to live the good life free of repatriation fears. Understandably,
China would like those individuals brought back home to stand trial.
(b) A similar problem, and
perhaps larger, is that more than a few Hong Kong residents (often American or
British, but also native Hongkongese) have travelled to the Mainland, committed
fairly large numbers of imaginative and not-so-imaginative crimes, then fled
back to Hong Kong, again out of reach of the Mainland Chinese police.
In one recent unfortunate
case, a Hong Kong resident rented a car in Shanghai, was driving drunk, ran
over and killed a pregnant woman, then got on the next plane back to Hong Kong.
He was arrested some years later, when he assumed the matter had been forgotten
and returned to the Mainland for some business activity.
In another case, a British
citizen, Peter Humphrey, and his American
wife living in Hong Kong had been traveling to the Mainland to illegally collect personal
information on Chinese citizens including, among other things, personal ID,
household registration data, entry-and-exit passport data and detailed mobile
phone records.
Open Letter to US Congress: Why the
Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 Must be Opposed
They paid between 1,000 and
2,000 RMB for each personal data set and sold about 750 of these for between
20,000 and 200,000 per individual. I don’t have all the details, but no one
pays that kind of money for personal data without a large potential reward at
the end. Humphrey’s activities – very illegal in China – were run entirely out
of Hong Kong, coming to the Mainland only to collect data packages and disburse
cash, then running back to HK as a safe base. He was eventually discovered and
imprisoned, the
UK and the US of course decrying the authoritarian Chinese government for ‘lack
of human rights’.
They aren’t all as dramatic
as this, but there have been numerous telecom, data, and other frauds by people
in Hong Kong, focused on, and perpetrated on, Mainland Chinese, many involving
hundreds of millions and few with billions of RMB. Not trivial. As it stands
now, these people are legally out of reach and China objects to that.
(c) There is a third
category, one not mentioned anywhere in the media, that was the likely cause of
the US so ardently fanning the flames for this latest series of riots.
The Americans have a huge contingent
in Hong Kong (about 60,000 people, few of whom are businessmen), beginning with
the US Consulate but extending very much farther with the media, the NED, and
the entire alphabet soup of US-based NGOs, George Soros’ China Media Project at
HKU, and many more, many but not all CIA-funded, on a permanent mission to stab
at Mainland China from its underbelly of Hong Kong.
Much of what these people
do, is illegal, against HK law, Mainland China law, and international law, but
they are protected in Hong Kong by US government pressure and, without an
extradition treaty with HK, they cannot be sent to China and be brought to
trial.
The Americans couldn’t care
less about the Mainland Chinese, nor the HongKongnese. They care only about
protecting their own. They needed for their own sake to kill that extradition
bill, and they succeeded. The enormous violence they instigated will likely
ensure that bill won’t be introduced again for a long time, if ever. Well done.
*
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Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and
businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting
firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a
visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in
international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai
and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and
the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The original source of this
article is Global Research
Copyright © Larry
Romanoff, Global
Research, 2020
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