After the 1997 handover, the United Kingdom started issuing six-monthly reports on Hong Kong, which became markedly hostile during Boris Johnson’s prime ministership from 2019 to 2022. Despite a warming in Anglo-Chinese relations after the election of the Labour government in 2024, old habits die hard.
In the 59th report, issued on Thursday and covering the first six months of 2026, the UK’s new foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, once again dished the dirt on Hong Kong. Although new to the post (July 20), he had no excuse for signing off on a highly flawed report. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, not surprisingly, deplored the report’s “untruthful remarks, slanders and smears”, particularly regarding the national security laws.
Since the Hong Kong SAR National Security Law was enacted in 2020, the British government has issued BN(O) visas to over 187,000 people from Hong Kong. As many of them have, for political reasons, been given an accelerated right to vote in national and local elections (by the last Conservative government), Miliband undoubtedly hoped to attract the support of the anti-China elements among them for his governing Labour Party by maligning Hong Kong. It was little wonder the SAR government condemned the “despicable political maneuvers”.
One remarkable feature of the report is how it seeks to buttress its criticisms by quoting China-hostile entities. For example, when it impugns the 20-year sentence imposed on former media magnate Jimmy Lai Chee-ying for national security offenses, it cites the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), which called the sentence “punishment for dissent”. As IPAC specializes in maligning China in the world’s parliaments and was created by Hong Kong Watch (the UK-based, Beijing-hostile propaganda outfit), it was extraordinary that Miliband cited it as an “authoritative” source.
In a section titled “Other reports”, it recycles criticisms from organizations notorious for their anti-China prejudices. They include Human Rights Watch, Freedom House and the US Department of State, all of whose bigoted observations on the SAR’s situation are depicted as gospel. Not surprisingly, the “Other reports” category does not include the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, which recently rated the SAR 24th out of the 143 jurisdictions surveyed for its rule-of-law credentials.
Every attempt, moreover, is made to drum up sympathy for individuals convicted of a succession of national security offenses, including Joshua Wong Chi-fung, the “Hong Kong 47” case, and Lai. This was despite their convictions of crimes aimed at destroying the “one country, two systems” framework and weakening China. Although those convicted in the “Hong Kong 47” trial received their just deserts for trying to overthrow the constitutional order, all that can be said in Wong’s favor is that he frankly admitted his guilt.
Although an impartial tribunal of three judges found Lai guilty after a trial conducted in accordance with common law procedures, the UK report seeks to portray him as a “martyr” (with Miliband claiming to be “very concerned”). Indeed, such was the strength of the evidence against him and so grave were his crimes that he chose not to appeal against either his convictions or sentences — the significance of which the report completely disregards. When sentencing him, the judges gave as much weight as they could to the mitigating factors, but, in the interests of deterrence, his sentence had to be severe.
More generally, Miliband cited what he called evidence demonstrating “the expanding scope and application of national security legislation”. This included its increased impact on “freedom of expression, assembly, association and the press”. This beggars belief, as essential freedoms, including freedoms of speech, publication, and the press, are specifically protected in the SAR by the Basic Law, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the national security legislation itself.
In any event, the UK has its own robust national security legislation, including the National Security Act (NSA) 2023, which has been ruthlessly deployed against China sympathizers living in Britain. Although the NSA helped guide the drafting of the SAR’s Safeguarding National Security Ordinance in 2024, one major difference remains. Unlike its counterparts in the SAR, the NSA is silent on protecting human rights in its application.
Instead of trying to besmirch Hong Kong, Miliband should ensure his own house is in order. As the United States, the UK’s closest ally, is repeatedly expressing concerns about Britain’s human rights record, he should be focusing on this, not poking his nose into China’s internal affairs.
In 2025, for example, in its annual global human rights report, the US government said the human rights situation in the UK had “worsened” over the past year, and that was only the start.
In November, the US ambassador to the UK, Warren Stephens, in a speech to the Pilgrims Society of Great Britain, warned that the threat to free expression in the UK was “very real”. He said free speech was under increasing pressure. This echoed the remarks of US Vice-President JD Vance, who, when he visited the UK early last year, warned Britain not to go down a “very dark path” of losing free speech.
Moreover, when Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of the US business magazine Forbes, reviewed the position in September 2025, he concluded: “The UK has, with increasing vigor, been curbing what one is allowed to say, all in the name of fighting racism, sexism, Islamophobia, transgenderism, climate-change denial and whatever else the woke extremists conjure up.”
When a US congressional committee asked Reform UK leader Nigel Farage about limitations on freedom of speech in the UK in 2025, he condemned the “awful authoritarian situation we have sunk into”, for which the evidence is abundant. He may have been thinking of Lucy Connolly, a young mother who was sentenced to 31 months’ imprisonment in 2024 for a racist tweet issued after the Southport tragedy in which three young girls were stabbed to death by the teenage son of Rwandan migrants. Although she pleaded guilty and had a good character record, she received a grossly disproportionate sentence for a tweet that was quickly deleted.
The Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, was horrified at her treatment. She spoke for many when she said Connolly’s punishment “was harsher than the sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting”. She added that “Protecting people from words should not be given greater weight in law than public safety. If the law does this, then the law itself is broken” — and most people agreed. A climate of fear has taken hold, with many people now exercising self-censorship.
In another notorious incident, Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson was visited in 2024 by several police officers at her home in the early hours regarding a deleted social media post from a year previously that triggered a complaint alleging incitement to racial hatred. When she asked the police what she had allegedly said in the tweet, they told her they were not allowed to disclose it (it was thought to relate to Palestine). Although the case was ultimately dropped, Pearson described the investigation as “Kafkaesque”. Many journalists were unnerved, and it put them on notice to be very careful when expressing their views on the issues of the day.
Moreover, nearly 4,000 individuals have been arrested in the UK for simply protesting in favor of Palestine Action, which promotes the rights of Palestinians and decries the Gaza genocide. This is because the Labour government has proscribed it as a terrorist organization — with a legal challenge now pending on free speech grounds. The popular Irish novelist Sally Rooney has even had her books withdrawn from sale in the UK because she also supports Palestine Action.
The UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, said the decision to proscribe Palestine Action under terrorism legislation raised serious concerns that counterterrorism laws were being applied to conduct that was not terrorist in nature and risked hindering the exercise of fundamental freedoms across the UK.
Even established politicians can now be arbitrarily targeted in the UK. In 2025, for example, George Galloway, leader of the Workers Party of Britain (and a former parliamentarian), was detained by border police at Gatwick Airport for nine hours, along with his wife, Putri Gayatri Pertiwi, when they tried to enter the UK. They also seized their mobile phones and laptops. They even questioned Galloway about his views on Russia and China, which was chilling.
However, Galloway was not alone in facing arbitrary harassment. The authorities have also used the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 to subject Chinese nationals visiting the UK (including trade delegates, tourists and people on family visits) to extended airport detentions, questioning, and confiscation of personal electronic devices. Not surprisingly, this has prompted formal diplomatic protests from the Chinese embassy in London.
In these circumstances, Miliband’s slurs against the SAR are utterly hypocritical. The UK’s six-monthly reports serve no useful purpose, and the latest will hopefully be the last.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
