Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based journalist.
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The case of the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers, all of whom turned up in China, has rocked Hong Kong society to its core, shaking confidence in the mainland's promises of "one country, two systems."
It is also placing China under the microscope, with governments around the world accusing Beijing of rampant violation of human rights and international norms by abducting people and taking them to the mainland.
Britain, in an unprecedented move, has charged China with "a serious breach" of the Sino-British agreement that led to the handover of the British colony to China in 1997. The United States, the European Union and Japan have condemned the abductions.
China, of course, has denied any wrongdoing, arranging for the people it is believed to have abducted to appear on television to assert that they went to the mainland of their own free will. Both Lee Bo, a British national, and Gui Minhai, a Swedish national, have publicly asked their governments not to intervene. This flies in the face of reason. Why would anyone in the clutches of Chinese security officials say they don't want help from their embassies? Such assertions only serve to confirm, rather than ease, suspicions that Chinese authorities did, indeed, snatch the men from Hong Kong and take them to the mainland.
China's ability to pressure detainees into making televised confessions has been well demonstrated in the past year. It is not surprising that Mr. Gui (who disappeared last October from his home in Pattaya, Thailand, and reappeared on Chinese television in January, without apparently having gone through Thai immigration procedures) "confessed" to having voluntarily returned to China because of a guilty conscience.
But Chinese officials who rehearse their captives outdid themselves in the way they handled Mr. Lee, who, according to British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, most likely "was involuntarily removed to the mainland without any due process under Hong Kong law." Mr. Lee has met with Hong Kong police and told them that he doesn't want their help. But as long as he remains in mainland China, he is not a free agent, and Hong Kong police say they want to talk to him again after he returns.
Mr. Lee also met with the Hong Kong press and insisted that he had left Hong Kong on his own volition, although he did not describe how he was able to evade immigration control. He also told the media that he will give up his British nationality. To millions of Hong Kong residents, this is really scary, given that they had demanded British passports as an insurance policy for themselves for life in Hong Kong under Chinese sovereignty. Now, it appears, a foreign passport offers no protection.
The atmosphere in Hong Kong today is strikingly similar to that in the 1980s and 1990s, when 10 per cent of the population fled abroad to avoid life under Communist rule. Now, those who stayed, as well as those who returned with foreign passports, are again faced with a crucial decision: whether they should seek a haven overseas, since very few now believe in China's promises, even though Beijing continues to make them.
The Chinese government is in the midst of a vast effort to seek the return of fugitives who fled with ill-gotten gains to other countries, mainly to the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. Several months ago, the United States detected Chinese agents, who had entered the country on tourist or business visas, illicitly trying to strong-arm suspects to return to China. Washington demanded that such activities stop. If countries suspect that Chinese agents are violating their sovereignty through such action, those countries are likely to have second thoughts about signing extradition agreements.
China's actions will also undermine Hong Kong's efforts to sign extradition agreements with other jurisdictions. If the perception grows that Chinese agents can spirit people from Hong Kong to the mainland, the region will no longer be considered an appropriate partner in such legal arrangements. Despite Beijing's protests that it is doing everything it can to help Hong Kong, it will be dragging the territory down into the mud with it.