China's new troubling security law has far-reaching design

On Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada was suspending its extradition treaty with Hong Kong, as well as ending exports of sensitive military items to the region. As reported by CBC News:

Canada's relationship with Hong Kong, including freer trade and travel than is allowed between Canada and mainland China, depends on that principle, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in a separate statement.

"This process demonstrated disregard for Hong Kong's basic law and the high degree of autonomy promised for Hong Kong under the 'one country, two systems' framework," Champagne said.

This was a noteworthy enough event, but we're now learning that there are even more reasons to sever this link between Canada's justice system and China's lack of one. As reported by Axios:

The draconian security law that Beijing forced upon Hong Kong last week contains an article making it illegal for anyone in the world to promote democratic reform for Hong Kong.

Why it matters: China has long sought to crush organized dissent abroad through quiet threats and coercion. Now it has codified that practice into law — potentially forcing people and companies around the world to choose between speaking freely and ever stepping foot in Hong Kong again.

What's happening: Article 38 of the national security law states, "This Law shall apply to offences under this Law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region."

• In other words, every provision of the law applies to everyone outside of Hong Kong — including you.

Yikes. And apparently, this seemingly alarmist take isn't overblown:

Several experts in Chinese and international law confirmed this interpretation of the law to Axios.

• "It literally applies to every single person on the planet. This is how it reads," said Wang Minyao, a Chinese-American lawyer based in New York. "If I appear at a congressional committee in D.C. and say something critical, that literally would be a violation of this law."
• This means that anyone advocating democracy in Hong Kong, or criticizing the governments in Hong Kong or Beijing, could potentially face consequences if they step foot in Hong Kong, or have assets or family members in Hong Kong.

To say that this represents something of an overreach by the Chinese government is something of an understatement. China has been flexing its economic muscle, and sometimes its military presence, for a few years now, but this security law literally criminalizes the exercise of free speech in countries other than China, and maintaining extradition links to Hong Kong, or to mainland China, would have given them the ability to extend that oppression into countries like Canada through official channels.

With this as the new global geopolitical reality, is it any surprise that countries like Canada are willing to risk their trade with China in order to preserve their basic sovereignty? Because make no mistake, that is the choice here. It's simply surreal to think that the simple act of writing this blog post from Canada now means that I can't travel to China, or to any country with an extradition treaty with either China or with Hong Kong, for the rest of my life, but that's the reality.

The world needs to start standing up to China. Donald Trump won't, and can't; for all his posturing, and the incredibly stupid one-sided trade war he started which helped precipitate this crisis, his own position is far too precarious for him to risk actually taking meaningful action now. He's alienated every single one of America's normal allies, and needs to normalize trade with China, and thus the American economy, in order to have any hope of winning reelection in November.... which he's also clearly shown is the only thing he cares about. Trump's weakness is the chum in the geopolitical waters, here; a strong America, with strong relationships with their traditional allies in the EU, and the UN, would have been able to keep China in check. Trump's America cannot, so the rest of the world must now do it without American help.

That's a daunting task, and it's going to take more than just Canada to do it. The UK, having left the EU and thus isolated themselves as well, are not going to make much of an impact by offering UK citizenship to every resident of Hong Kong, either; for one thing, most of those people are not going to be able to leave, now that China has brought the hammer down, and its unlikely that they'd want to abandon the only home they'd ever known, anyway.

What we need is for the EU to stand up, to speak with a single, unified voice, and to denounce China's actions here. This will, unfortunately, turn Trump's ill-advised trade war into a global thing, and one which will be impossible for the U.S. to resolve on its own, even if/after Joe Biden takes over as President, and we can't afford to wait for Joe Biden; if the world wants to avoid becoming nothing but vassal states to an oppressive Chinese overlord in president-for-life Xi Jinping, then they need to be willing to risk some economic pain in the name of preserving that independence. Because Xi isn't going to listen to anything else; making toothless statements, without backing them with the threat of suspended trade, clearly isn't going to sway Xi one millimeter from his chosen course here.