Hong Kong Hong Kong leader suspends extradition bill amid protest pressure

* Carrie Lam says legislation that would allow suspects to
be sent to mainland China ‘caused a lot of division’

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) – With an escalating U.S. trade war,
a faltering economy and tensions in the South China Sea vexing her
bosses in Beijing, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam appeared in no mood
to compromise on a planned extradition law at recent meetings,
according to foreign envoys and business people who met with
her.

Some of the people at those meetings in recent weeks pointed to
media reports that even Hong Kong’s usually reticent judges were
worried about the proposed law which threatened to send people for
trial in mainland China for the first time.

But Lam bluntly dismissed concerns about a Chinese justice
system that is widely criticized for forced confessions, arbitrary
detentions and one-sided trials, saying judges were not supposed to
speak.

Worries over the bill’s impact on Hong Kong’s international
standing as a financial hub with a respected legal system were
building in Washington, London and other European capitals, but Lam
stressed the need for the extradition law to help solve the murder
of a Hong Kong woman in Taiwan.

“She needed a dinghy and she deployed the Titanic,” one diplomat
who met Lam this month told Reuters, declining to be identified due
to the sensitivity of the issue.

In numerous public appearances after that, Lam was unyielding on
the need for the bill, despite huge and sometimes violent street
protests including one last Sunday that organizers said drew more
than a million people.

Then on Saturday, Lam suddenly announced the bill had been
postponed indefinitely.

She told a news conference she felt “deep sorrow and regret that
the deficiencies in our work and various other factors have stirred
up substantial controversies and disputes in society”.

Hong Kong’s self-styled Iron Lady had cracked, having apparently
created an entirely fresh crisis for President Xi Jinping – and the
city’s biggest since Britain handed it over to Chinese rule in 1997
with the guarantee its freedoms and autonomy would be
preserved.

Clues to the catalyst for the about-face may lie in a reported
meeting between Lam and China’s Vice-Premier Han Zheng.

According to Hong Kong’s Sing Tao newspaper, Lam had a
clandestine emergency meeting with Han, a member of the Politburo’s
seven-person Standing Committee, China’s top decision-making body,
across the border in Shenzhen on Thursday.

The content of the meeting is unknown. Lam on Saturday refused
to confirm or deny that it had taken place, despite repeated
questions.

BEIJING BACKDOWN
Beijing’s grip over Hong Kong has intensified markedly since
Chinese President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, and after the
city’s protracted 2014 pro-democracy street protests.

He warned in 2017 that any attempts to undermine Chinese
sovereignty were a “red line” that Beijing would not allow to be
crossed – warnings that reinforced his strongman image amongst Hong
Kongers.

Many politicians, diplomats and analysts had not expected
Beijing to allow any backdown on the bill, unlike in 2003 when
contentious national security laws were scrapped after half a
million people took to the streets.

But a source in Beijing with ties to China’s leadership who
meets regularly with senior officials, said the Hong Kong
government had handled the extradition saga badly.

And while a backdown from Beijing on the bill seemed near
inconceivable just a week ago, the violence and escalating unrest
forced their hand.

“The outcome doesn’t bear thinking about if this situation
wasn’t turned around,” the source said, also declining to be named
given the sensitivity of the matter.

The source added that Beijing now had severe doubts about Lam’s
capabilities. China’s State Council and the central government’s
liaison office in Hong Kong did not immediately respond to Reuters
requests for comment.

Steve Tsang, a London-based political scientist, said Lam had
caused Xi “major embarrassment” at a time that is not helpful for
him given trade tensions with the United States, and ahead of a
possible meeting with U.S. president Donald Trump at the month’s
end at the G20 summit in Japan.

“Xi is not a leader who tolerates failures of officials,” Tsang
said.

Retired senior Hong Kong government official Joseph Wong said he
was shocked by Beijing’s U-turn, but the situation had become so
untenable that he believed it had led to a recalculation by Han
after meeting Lam in Shenzhen.

“I suspect … he (Han) would have had to consider, are we
prepared to continue to fire rubber bullets or even real bullets in
order to get this through, and what would be the implications for
the central government internationally, vis-a-vis the U.S. So that
protest was the turning point.”

Lam has refused calls from the opposition and protestors to step
down but her ability to govern has been questioned on numerous
fronts, including her failure to gauge the pulse in Hong Kong, the
broader U.S.-China relationship, and Taiwan’s refusal to accept any
extradition bill, undermining her core argument the bill would
resolve the Taiwan murder case.

Political scientist Tsang said he did not expect Lam to last
much longer as leader.

“I think Carrie Lam’s days are numbered…Beijing cannot afford to
sack her right away because that would be an indication of
weakness. They would have to allow for a bit of decent
interlude.”

Two former post-colonial leaders, Tung Chee-Hwa and Leung
Chun-ying, were forced to truncate their terms of office from
various controversies linked to policies that stoked fears of
Chinese encroachment on the city’s freedoms.

For her part, Lam has asked for time so that the bill can be
properly deliberated.

“Give us another chance and we will do this thing well,” she
told Saturday’s news conference.

Asked about China’s leaders, she said: “They have confidence in
my judgment and they support me.”

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