China has met The Enemy, and He is "Us."

(Apologies to Walt Kelly)

This was made clear in a revealing op-ed piece by pro-Beijing legislator Regina Ip published in the South China Morning Post on Sunday.

Ominously for Hong Kong, the main purpose of Ip's article seems to be to lay the groundwork for so called "Article 23" anti-subversion laws, previously championed by Ip during her tenure as Secretary for Security in 2003 and scrapped in the face of massive public protest. Ip resigned along with inaugural Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa in the aftermath. In the article, Ip talks about a need for "clever legislation" to outwit these "pernicious" foreign forces by outlawing subversion and other activities "calculated to instil instability by fomenting protests and calling for the head of government to step down". (Heaven forbid people voice their views on the their leaders.)

However, Ip also let slip the real source of Beijing’s anxiety of the "foreign forces" at work in Hong Kong: "There is strong evidence that Hong Kong's "umbrella movement" -- the colour symbolism, the wording of the slogans and the mode of mobilisation -- owes much to Taiwan's student-led "sunflower" movement."

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