THE continuing protests in Hong Kong against the Chinese government are a capsule summary of the tension between the need for order and the freedoms that most of us living in liberal democracies take for granted.

The authorities in Beijing say that the protests are "horrendous incidents" that have caused "serious damage to the rule of law".

But they originated with disquiet over proposals by the Chinese government for a new law that would allow Hong Kong citizens to be extradited to mainland China if accused of certain offences - which many residents interpreted as a way of cracking down on dissent.

The fact that the Chinese government wants to crack down on those who protest against cracking down on dissent speaks for itself.

For all its much-vaunted economic liberalisation, China remains an authoritarian - if not totalitarian - state, and it can be no surprise if the current residents of Hong Kong have shown their reluctance to live under such a system.

No system of government is perfect, and there are no doubt lots of negative things that can be said about the kind of system that we have in this country, for instance.

But the fact is that the kind of democracy that is is practised in the West is the only system of government that has even half-successfully shown any concern for ordinary un-powerful people.

This does not alter the fact that government is power, and it would be idle to pretend that there are not those here in the UK who would love to crack down on those who disagree with them in exactly the way that the Chinese have done in Hong Kong.

The best way to contain that kind of untrammelled abuse of power is to insist upon the continued supremacy of freedom of speech and of freedom of assembly.

All attempts to clamp down on either of these freedoms should be looked upon with the deepest suspicion, no matter how pure-seeming or compassionate-seeming are the proposers.

The fact that some individual or group find a given piece of speech offensive is not good enough, because there is bound to be someone, somewhere, who will find any given bit of speech offensive.

The cry of "I'm offended" must not be allowed to become a card that trumps all other freedoms.