Who’s Afraid of Nathan Law? China - The Wall Street Journal

Chris Tang surely didn’t intend to give President Biden a plug for “The Summit for Democracy” the White House is holding this week. But the Hong Kong secretary of security did precisely that when he denounced one of the President’s invitees, former Hong Kong legislator Nathan Law.

On Tuesday Mr. Tang declared he was “extremely furious” that Mr. Law had accepted an invitation to speak. Mr. Law is a former student leader in the democracy movement who served time in jail for his part in 2014 protests, was elected to the city’s Legislative Council in 2016, but was then booted out for altering his oath of office. He now lives in exile in London and is scheduled to speak Friday.

Secretary Tang is a former Hong Kong police commissioner who has done Beijing’s bidding in the territory with gusto, and was sanctioned last year by the U.S. for his own role in cracking down on political dissent.

China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua, also attacked Mr. Biden’s summit as an attempt “to weaponize democracy and use it as a tool to maintain hegemony.” A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry objected to the Biden administration’s inclusion of a representative of Taiwan on one of its panels. The real scandal would have been if the White House had not invited a representative from Taiwan, a free and prosperous Chinese democracy.

The attacks on Mr. Law and the summit come as a Hong Kong court has convicted three pro-democracy activists— Jimmy Lai, Gwyneth Ho, and Chow Hang-tung—on charges they participated in or incited others to join last year’s June 4 vigil. Authorities claim the commemoration had been declared illegal because of concerns over Covid-19. But it’s part of a larger effort to whitewash the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

The democracy summit is getting criticism over which countries have been invited and which not—and that’s fair comment. But if the vitriolic denunciations against Mr. Law and Taiwan’s Audrey Tang are any indication, the summit has already had a constructive impact. China wants its authoritarian model to spread around the world, but those Chinese voices for democracy show how precious self-government is and how people are willing to fight for it even at great personal risk.

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source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-afraid-of-nathan-law-china-chris-tang-biden-summit-for-democracy-11639090755

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