Rebel City. South China Morning Post Team

over Hong Kong’s status as a separate jurisdiction had lingered since 2015, when five men linked to Causeway Bay Books – which sold salacious publications on the private lives of China’s top leadership – went missing in various places, only to emerge in mainland custody. The saga climaxed when the shop’s owner was taken from Hong Kong to the mainland, without any official record of his departure, sparking fears that he had been abducted by government agents.

      Then, in 2017, billionaire Xiao Jianhua mysteriously vanished from a luxury hotel in the city, with many, including local government sources, believing he had been spirited across the border by mainland agents.

      So when the extradition bill was introduced in February 2019, many saw it as an attempt to fully remove the firewall between Hong Kong and the mainland. Pan-democratic lawmakers warned that Beijing could use the law to pursue political dissidents, white-collar criminal suspects and even visitors passing through the city, perhaps by trumping up charges so that its extradition requests were granted.

      They said that once Hong Kong surrendered a fugitive to the mainland – or indeed any other jurisdiction with a dubious human rights record – it would no longer be able to ensure that individuals received a fair trial or adequate legal representation.

      At the core of these objections lay a deep mistrust of the legal process on the mainland, where many cases take years to come to trial and even then the conviction rate is unnervingly high – reportedly 99.9 per cent in 2014.

      “Are we really confident of handing over an accused person to be tried on the mainland?” asked legal sector lawmaker Dennis Kwok. “The law there stipulates that cases have to be heard within six months, but many defendants have been held incommunicado for three, five or even seven years.”

      Judges judge

      Lam and her officials dismissed such criticisms, insisting that the courts would play a gatekeeping role in scrutinizing extradition requests and that there were robust safeguards. But many among the legal community – including 12 current and former chairs of the Bar Association – felt this “often repeated claim” about gatekeeping was misleading.

      They said extradition hearings were too limited in scope to allow them to probe whether requests were justified, and that even if they did so they could come under political pressure from Beijing.

      What was more, they argued, the law preventing extraditions to mainland China was not a gap that needed filling, but a necessary safeguard because the two legal systems were fundamentally different and there were concerns over Beijing’s track record on human rights.

      As Professor Albert Chen Hung-yee, a member of the Basic Law Committee, put it, Hong Kong courts would be left in the “difficult and invidious” position of deciding whether the mainland’s legal system complied with human rights standards.

      Essentially, the lingering doubt was whether Hong Kong would be able to say no to Beijing. And if it could not, what did that mean for the “one country, two systems” model under which the city has been governed since the handover from British rule? Could it still claim to have a high degree of autonomy?

      “The one country, two systems model stems from our lack of trust in the mainland’s judicial model,” said Democratic Party chairman Wu Chiwai. “Once the firewall is gone, there will only be one country, one system.”

      Down to business

      While Lam and company seemed to weather the criticism from lawmakers and legal eagles, they found it harder to ignore another section of society.

      Business leaders wanted the bill changed to exempt people suspected of white-collar crimes and they made clear that their concerns centered on the possibility of extradition to mainland China.

      The American Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong’s most influential US network, warned that the bill would damage the city’s reputation as a haven for international business. The problem was the mainland’s flawed justice system, said the chamber. There was no independent judiciary, detention was arbitrary and trials were often neither public nor fair.

      James Tien Pei-chun, honorary chairman of the business-friendly Liberal Party, said the bill threatened Hong Kong’s competitiveness. “Do you think investment banks like JP Morgan and Citibank, or AIA, would still set up their headquarters in Hong Kong if anyone could easily be extradited to the mainland?” he asked.

      Significantly, there was opposition even among pro-Beijing business figures attending China’s biggest annual political event, the “Two Sessions” of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. One of them, Hong Kong’s former No 2 official Henry Tang Ying-yen said that while Hongkongers supported plugging legal loopholes that allowed fugitives to shelter in the city, only those accused of the most serious crimes should be extradited.

      Meanwhile, two Hong Kong business groups backed a suggestion to allow transfers for the most serious crimes, but to exempt 15 whitecollar crimes, including those relating to taxes, fraud and money laundering.

      Even the European Union weighed in, criticizing Lam’s government for not conducting a more in-depth public consultation on such a sensitive issue – and for not consulting the 20 jurisdictions with which it already had extradition agreements.

      Lam stews

      On March 19, Lam hinted that the government’s stance was softening. A week later, she agreed to exempt nine economic crimes included in the original proposal. Her cabinet then endorsed a revised bill that would allow extraditions only for offenses punishable by at least three years’ imprisonment, rather than one as originally proposed.

      The revised bill also excluded white-collar crimes related to taxes, securities and futures trading, intellectual property, company offenses and the unlawful use of computers, but retained those related to bribery, fraud and money laundering. Thirty-seven crimes remained on the list, down from the original 46.

      Announcing the changes, Lam maintained that the death of Poon in Taiwan had been her government’s only motivation in wanting the law changed. “All this huge amount of work done by my colleagues is driven only by empathy and sympathy,” she said.

      Was that enough to cut the mustard with critics? Well, the answer depended on whom you asked.

      The business sector generally welcomed the changes. Others remained unconvinced if not mistrustful, criticizing Lam for heeding the concerns of a small, privileged sector of the community while refusing to address broader issues, such as the lack of a guarantee of fair trials on the mainland.

      Even Cross, the former director of public prosecutions who supported the bill in its original form, was concerned about the amendment. “It is clearly illogical that some people suspected of serious crime should be liable to surrender if apprehended in Hong Kong, whereas others can enjoy safe haven,” he said. “After all, criminal justice is all about equality of treatment.”

      For Lam, there were bigger problems ahead. Opposition to the bill was snowballing, leading to protests that would continue for the rest of 2019.

      Even after she amended the bill again in May, then suspended it in June, declared it dead in July and withdrawn in September, and formally removed it from the legislative agenda in October, the protests continued.

      Coincidentally, later that month, Chan – the convicted money launderer and murder suspect whose case the bill had been meant address – completed his jail sentence and walked out a free man. As he left the prison gates, Chan apologized to the Hong Kong public for all the fuss he had caused and vowed to turn himself in voluntarily to the Taiwanese authorities.

      But still the protests did not skip a beat. After all, things were no longer about Chan, Poon and her grieving parents. Ironically, they were no longer about the killed bill either.

Chaos in Legco: The