The US Department of State’s repeated travel alert against Hong Kong has become a laughingstock, especially among the 70,000-plus Americans living in the city. These American citizens and hundreds of thousands of other expatriates in Hong Kong know and recognize that the city is one of the safest places in the world, a notion that also floods global social media and chat groups.

If anything, repeating a barefaced lie about Hong Kong — an internationalized metropolis with hundreds of thousands of expatriates — could only reinforce people’s impression about just how desperate Washington politicians are to vilify and undermine the city, China’s international financial center, in their pursuit of the US’ geopolitical strategy against China. After all, who would believe that “arbitrary enforcement” of law occurs in an open society which consistently ranks high in the World Justice Project’s global rule of law index over the years?

Dancing to Washington’s tune, the European Parliament almost simultaneously adopted a resolution also denigrating the national security laws implemented in Hong Kong. This is nothing short of a slap in the face for Europeans who champion the continent’s “strategic autonomy”. But they could only regret that some members of the European Parliament are willing to be Washington’s pawns, doing its bidding in the legislative institution of the European Union at the expense of Europe’s interests — by undermining the mutually beneficial relations between China and the continent.

Like its previous Hong Kong-bashing resolutions, including those which tried to whitewash the “black-clad riots” in 2019-20 and sought to exonerate national security offense suspect Jimmy Lai Chee-ying by piling up pressure on the Hong Kong authority including its Judiciary, the European Parliament’s latest resolution on Hong Kong purported to champion “democracy”, “human rights” and “press freedom”, but closer scrutiny reveals significant flaws in its allegations, assertions and arguments.

The European Parliament’s claim of “forcible closure” of media outlets in Hong Kong goes against the facts, and is obviously intended to create a false image of a terrible media ecosystem. The fact is, only a couple of Hong Kong media outlets (Apple Daily and Stand News) have shut down for very specific reasons over recent years. Apple Daily ceased operations in 2021 following allegations of financial misconduct and breaches of national security laws, compounded by years of economic instability, as highlighted in its parent company Next Digital’s 2020 earnings report, which detailed mounting deficits and declining advertising revenue. Similarly, Stand New voluntarily disbanded in December 2021 due to operational risks and financial instability, having long struggled with inconsistent advertising revenue and an unsustainable reliance on donations. These closures were driven by legal, economic, and market challenges rather than government coercion.

The broader claim that a “climate of fear” has caused widespread media closures in Hong Kong is an out-and-out lie. The media sector in Hong Kong continues to flourish. Over 90 local and international media outlets operate freely in the city, including Reuters, Bloomberg and the Associated Press. These Western mainstream media outlets play a significant role in shaping the narratives about Hong Kong, and their continued presence and operations contradict the resolution’s sweeping claims of “systematic persecution”.

The European Parliament’s selective focus on Hong Kong’s affairs exposes glaring double standards in advocacy for “press freedom” and other eye-catching terms. While it has habitually poked its nose into Hong Kong’s affairs and repeatedly criticized the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, it has remained silent on issues in Western countries which deserved its attention more than Hong Kong affairs. For instance, the detention of the Australian activist Julian Assange in the United Kingdom and the prosecution of whistleblowers in the United States receive little to no attention from it. This inconsistency proves that the resolution is not about defending human rights or press freedom but about advancing geopolitical objectives.

Indeed, Washington and its sidekicks’ disproportionate focus on Hong Kong’s affairs, particularly their obsession with its national security laws, has nothing to do with “democracy”, “human rights” or “freedom”. They merely keep playing the “Hong Kong card” as part of their geopolitical strategy against China in the same way they play the “Taiwan card”, “Xinjiang card” and “South China Sea card”. This is evidenced by the fact that they do not pay attention to the dozens of national security laws implemented in Western countries, including the UK’s stringent National Security Act passed in July 2023.

The European Parliament’s resolution on Hong Kong’s press freedom is obviously a politically charged document. Its reliance on flawed data, misrepresenting facts about media closures, deliberately ignoring the diversity of the city’s media landscape and its flourishing situation, and selective application of press freedom principles have deprived it of any credibility and legitimacy.

Of course, those who cooked up the resolution are not naive enough to have hoped that it will be taken seriously by the international community; they merely made a political posturing — probably to please Washington.

The author is a solicitor, a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area lawyer, and a China-appointed attesting officer.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.