Because this new law formally involves the breaking of treaty agreements with the United Kingdom, we urge the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson to come out of the shell it has been hiding in on this matter and speak out for the rights of so many who were born the Queen’s subjects and who take from this inheritance their passion for freedom. Johnson’s government ought to lead the moral case against this tyranny.

The United States also has a special obligation to stand up for Hong Kong. America has made Beijing richer and more powerful than it otherwise would have been, because it opened trade relations under the pretense that treating China like a non-Communist nation would make it one. In the case of Hong Kong, China has demonstrated how its growing commercial power sets the cause of free trade against that of political freedom. The NBA’s suppression of criticism of China in the United States is just a foretaste of what is to come if Beijing is allowed to play this game forever.

The United States and its allies have a moral duty and compelling interest to pressure Beijing to withdraw this law. Americans corporations who make a show of their support for protests in the United States must be subjected to pressure from the White House and the public to support political freedom in the East. If Beijing will not relent, the intrusion into the West of its commercial arms like Huawei must be more energetically countered and turned away.