A flag-raising ceremony is held by the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland, at the Golden Bauhinia Square in Hong Kong, south China, July 1, 2022. Photo:Xinhua

The UK should shake off its "colonial mentality" and respect the fact it has no responsibility nor the power to interfere with affairs of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), experts said after British officials fired intensive and wrong comments over Hong Kong. They believe that pointing fingers at Hong Kong reflects those British politicians' reluctance to accept the UK's status as a "declining empire" and it is an act of overestimating its strength.

A few countries and politicians act like clowns and are obsessed with smearing Hong Kong whenever there are major events or important occasions in the special administrative region. Their tricks are by no means for the good of Hong Kong, but to undermine Hong Kong's prosperity and stability and contain China by using Hong Kong as "a card." Lies cannot hide the truth, the spokesperson of the Commissioner's Office of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the HKSAR said on Saturday.

The remarks came after the secretary of state of the US, foreign ministers of the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and a few EU officials threw mud at Hong Kong and the Chinese central government at the crucial juncture of the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong returning to the motherland. 

Recently, a slew of foreign diplomats, especially those from the UK, made reckless slander about Hong Kong, an attempt experts sais meant to "overshadow the great festival of the city," and shows their "sour grapes mentality" after seeing the city prosper after its return.

On Friday, a spokesperson from Chinese Embassy in the UK slammed UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Liz Truss, after the two claimed that the UK's "historic commitment to Hong Kong and its people" endures and made yet further irresponsible comments on China's policies in Hong Kong. 

The Chinese Embassy spokesperson said those remarks of the UK side disrespect facts, confuse right and wrong, grossly interfere in China's internal affairs, and gravely breach the basic norms governing international relations.

The UK's interference shows that it is still clinging to its "colonial mentality" and is immersed in the illusion that it still shoulders responsibility for Hong Kong, Li Xiaobing, an expert on Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan affairs from Nankai University, told the Global Times on Sunday. Li noted that because the UK has faced a series of quagmires in recent years and lost its sheen of "The empire on which the sun never sets," it is eager to take Hong Kong to reinstate its "power." 

This is such an overestimation of the UK's strength, so voicing wrong comments at this juncture is extremely inappropriate, Li said.

Those foreign forces also hired Hong Kong secessionists to "cooperate with their performance." Secessionist and fugitive Nathan Law, who fled to the UK in 2020, also said in an interview on Thursday that "this 'new Hong Kong' has lost its resonances, we are still yearning to go back [to our old Hong Kong]."

Experts branded Law's remarks as "hypocritical," and reflects a few Hong Kong people's servility of a return to the ear when Hong Kong was under British colonial rule. They see Law as a clown and not worth mentioning. 

Some experts also pointed out the UK's frequently cited Sino-British Joint Declaration becomes ineffective after the city returned to the motherland.

In an exclusive interview with the Global Times previously, Lau Siu-kai, deputy head of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong & Macao Studies, said that "the West repeatedly claims that the joint declaration remains effective after Hong Kong returned to the motherland. However, this claim lacks a legal basis. In fact, the Constitution is the legal basis of the "one country, two systems" arrangement and the Basic Law, not the joint declaration."