Group now engaged in broader campaign to malign China

After the anti-China Hong Kong Watch was founded in the United Kingdom in 2017, it has, cancer-like, developed exponentially. Although its original focus was on Hong Kong, it is now engaged in a broader campaign against China, using various techniques.

Its creator, Benedict Rogers, identifies useful Sinophobes, and they are appointed as patrons and deployed when necessary. It has also, while infiltrating existing entities, established various front organizations.

One notorious instance involved the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong, which, in 2020, conducted an "inquiry" into alleged brutality by police during the insurrection of 2019. The result was never in doubt, as its vice-chairman was Hong Kong Watch patron David Alton, and it was funded by Stand with Hong Kong, an anti-police group that financed Alton's trip to Hong Kong in 2019.

When, moreover, the "Uyghur Tribunal" was created in 2021 by individuals hostile to China, another Hong Kong Watch patron, Geoffrey Nice, was given the chairmanship, and its farcical proceedings concluded with another predetermined outcome.

In 2020, Hong Kong Watch was also instrumental in creating the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which now fans anti-China sentiment in several parliaments. Once it has enlisted politicians into its ranks, they are then expected to seek the cancellation of extradition treaties with China or facilitate the sanctioning of Chinese officials.

However, despite such activities, the city has bounced back after the insurrection. Whereas, for example, the Fraser Institute adjudged Hong Kong the world's freest economy in 2021, the World Bank's Governance Indicators have rated Hong Kong as second in Asia in terms of rule of law. The World Competitiveness Yearbook 2022 ranked Hong Kong fifth in the annual ranking of the world's most competitive economies, and its future is becoming increasingly rosy, particularly as it is now clear that the "one country, two systems "policy will endure beyond 2047.

However, the city's antagonists still hope to harm it, imagining this will undermine China, and they have now focused on Reporters Without Borders, with obvious effect. In its 2022 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked Hong Kong 148th out of the 180 countries and regions surveyed for press freedom, down from 80th in 2021 and 18th in 2002. Although it highlighted the closure of several media operations, including Apple Daily and Stand News, it provided no context for these events.

In any civilized society, there needs to be responsible news reporting, and there will inevitably be consequences if abuse arises. If, as happened in Hong Kong, particular newspapers deliberately report fake news to promote their own political agendas, or sensationalize particular events to stoke public reaction, or seek to destabilize the city by soliciting foreign interference, red lines are crossed.

Having recognized Reporters Without Borders' propaganda value, Hong Kong Watch is now weaponizing it against Hong Kong. It has targeted Azzurra Moores, whom it describes as "a human rights and press freedom advocate, working as the UK Campaign Officer for Reporters Without Borders".

On April 26, when Hong Kong Watch convened a meeting in Westminster for the release of a research report on media freedom that Rogers, the organization's creator, had written, Moores was given a leading role. She announced that press freedom had fallen in Hong Kong, and even called on the UK to join with other countries in imposing sanctions on the city. As this was only days before Reporters Without Borders was due to issue its index, it revealed an extraordinary bias toward Hong Kong. Rogers invited her to join him in co-hosting another meeting on press freedom in Hong Kong on July 11 in London.

However, event participants held identical views, and since everybody agreed on everything, there were no meaningful exchanges. There was one telltale moment, nonetheless, when Moores started maligning Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. This was because, after her recent visit to China, Bachelet had not condemned its treatment of the Uygur population in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

It did not occur to any of the participants that the reason Bachelet had not criticized China was that, having visited Xinjiang and been fully briefed, she realized that the ghastly scenario of the West's anti-China propaganda machine was a chimera.

If Reporters Without Borders wishes to promote press freedom, it should be undertaking balanced assessments. Although the extent to which Moores' grandstanding was authorized by Reporters Without Borders is unknown, hopefully the group realizes that its message is lost when its operatives are manipulated by the likes of Hong Kong Watch. Quite clearly, its message should be that the best way of upholding press freedom is by using it responsibly.

The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.