Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
In my five minutes, I would like to explain that the Chinese government's hardline approach toward Hong Kong now is not something that's totally unavoidable. They have chosen a hard line by a clear decision. We should not forget that in 2003, when there were also half a million people going out in the streets of Hong Kong to protest a national security law being introduced, the government at the time, in both Hong Kong and Beijing, agreed to pull back from that process. Hong Kong basically returned to normal.
So there was nothing inherent in the situation in 2019 through 2020 that required this very strong hardline approach by the Chinese government. It did so because things changed. Things changed in terms of China's leadership. Xi Jinping took a very different approach from his predecessor. Things changed also because, as a matter of reality, Hong Kong is not economically as significant to China as it was in 1997 or in the 1980s, when the Chinese government agreed to give Hong Kong its special status after 1997. Hong Kong now accounts for less than 3% of the Chinese economy. Back in 1997 it was something like 20%. In the 1980s we were talking about over 30%. This change made Hong Kong dispensable.
About two years ago, the Chinese government also changed, under Xi Jinping, the way they looked at Hong Kong's place in China. Instead of seeing Hong Kong as a completely unique place, as a Hong Kong special administrative region, they started to see Hong Kong as part of what they call the Greater Bay Area, which in fact has Shenzhen at the very centre of it. They wanted Hong Kong to be part of the Greater Bay Area and to contribute to the Greater Bay Area in ways that neither Shenzhen or Guangzhou could do, but Hong Kong was no longer seen as all that special.
You had the enormous protests in Hong Kong in the summer of 2019. The Chinese government under Xi Jinping essentially saw Hong Kong as rebellious and dispensable, and therefore things would have to change. As a result of this, they introduced the state security law this year. Under the Hong Kong Basic Law, Hong Kong's constitution, the Chinese government has every right to ask Hong Kong to introduce some kind of a national security law. It is provided for in the Basic Law in article 23. But instead of doing so, the Chinese government chose to have the National People's Congress standing committee impose an external state security law to Hong Kong. I think it was deliberately to intimidate people in Hong Kong to make sure they got the message and stop protesting—or, from their perspective, stop rebelling.
From their perspective, they have succeeded. The older-generation pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong have gone quiet or have chosen to retire. The younger people have been sufficiently intimidated that we are not seeing the kinds of massive protests and demonstrations in Hong Kong, even though this is going to be a major change to Hong Kong. The state security law also has this extraterritorial application built into it, reflecting that the Chinese government really is no longer all that worried about the international responses to how it deals with Hong Kong. I think we should bear that in mind.
Mr. Chair, I am aware that I have only about 22 seconds left. I want to underline that I used the term “state” security law deliberately, because what they've introduced is not really a national security law. Hong Kong does not face a national security problem. Hong Kong faces a regime security issue.
This is what they are looking at. This is what they are dealing with. Therefore, we can expect the Chinese government to continue to take a very hard line towards Hong Kong, with all its implications for friends of the Hong Kong people, like the Canadian government.
I will stop here and hand it back to you.
Thank you very much.