Nearly six years after Beijing imposed the National Security Law, Hong Kong — once a symbol of China’s promise that global finance and political control could coexist — has been pulled deep into the mainland system. Detentions, arrests and trials have done their work, ushering in the atmosphere of fear and self-censorship the Chinese leadership sought. The city that used to serve as the People’s Republic’s outward-facing business hub — a magnet for expats and Western firms, loud, plural and comparatively free — has been largely remade. Now Xi Jinping is trying to restore Hong Kong’s international sheen, but “with Chinese characteristics.” And a dispute with an Italian angle offers a window into how Beijing is rewriting rules and institutions for a Chinese-led global order. In a quiet corner of Rome, on Via Panisperna in the palatial Villa Aldobrandini, sits an obscure-sounding body with outsized influence: Unidroit, the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law. Since the 1920s, the organization has helped its 65 member states — including the United States and China — modernize and harmonize private law, especially commercial law, across borders. When countries need model rules, conventions or treaty language, Unidroit is often where the drafting begins. Unidroit is not a United Nations agency, and its governance has its own quirks. The president presides over the General Assembly of member states, with decisions typically taken by simple majority. Day-to-day power, however, rests with the secretary-general, who sets the agenda and appoints independent experts to review proposals. Since 2018, that position has been held by Ignacio Tirado, a Spanish professor who has recently started his second term — and who has become the champion of what insiders describe as an unusually enthusiastic institutional makeover: opening Unidroit’s first outpost outside Rome, a liaison office in Hong Kong. The initiative originated in Beijing, according to people familiar with the discussions. China began courting the project early, inviting Tirado to Hong Kong in 2024 and offering to cover the operating costs of a new office. Throughout 2025, Unidroit leaders and Hong Kong officials stayed in close contact despite objections from several member states, who warned that the move risked lending international legitimacy to a city whose autonomy has been steadily hollowed out since 2020. In July, Hong Kong’s secretary for justice, Paul Lam, traveled to Rome to sell what he called the territory’s “unique advantages” under the “one country, two systems” framework to local legal and business circles. On Dec. 11, Unidroit’s General Assembly authorized the creation of an “Asia-Pacific” liaison office in Hong Kong, set to open in the coming weeks. According to information gathered by Il Foglio, the vote was added to the calendar at the last minute, and many representatives from countries opposed to the plan were not present. The episode also intersects with Washington’s changing posture toward international organizations. When the Trump administration announced in early January that the United States would withdraw from 66 international bodies, Unidroit was not on the list — a decision that, according to people familiar with internal deliberations, took into account an assessment of Chinese influence within the institute. For Beijing, the point of the Unidroit office is not simply practical. It is aesthetic and propagandistic: to turn a city whose promised autonomy has been dismantled — and where the rule of law has been sharply eroded, as the prosecution of media tycoon Jimmy Lai illustrates — into a showcase for “international law with Chinese characteristics.” The offer of a free Hong Kong office came just months after another telling step. In May last year, China announced the creation of the International Organization for Mediation (IOMed), headquartered in Hong Kong, an initiative inaugurated in October with 33 signatories — many already tied to Beijing through the Belt and Road Initiative. The new body is pitched as a venue for resolving international disputes, but one designed around China’s preferred legal and political assumptions. Tirado attended the inauguration. Taken together, the two moves are part of a broader effort to keep Hong Kong recognizable to global elites — fluent in the language of finance and international legal cooperation — while ensuring that the institutions operating there ultimately reflect Beijing’s priorities. In today’s Hong Kong, even the architecture of “international” governance is being redesigned.
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