Hong Kong Has Become Just Another Chinese Captive

Under Great Britain, Hong Kong was a free city. Not democratic, since residents didn’t choose or control their government. Nevertheless, the then-British colony protected free thought and expression. Hong Kongers could criticize public officials and cooperate with the world. These liberties initially survived the territory’s return to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). People could even stage protests pressing Beijing to fulfill its promise to preserve the separate system of what is now called the “Special Administrative Region” (SAR).

No longer, alas. Today the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rules Hong Kong like it rules the mainland, with the partial exception of a thin veneer of a local authority. A new report from Human Rights Watch details the consequences:

Since adopting the National Security Law [NSL], the Chinese government has largely dismantled freedoms of expression, association and assembly, as well as free and fair elections, fair trial rights and judicial independence. The government has increasingly politicized education, created impunity for police abuses, and ended the city’s semi-democracy. Many of Hong Kong’s independent civil society groups, labor unions, political parties, and media outlets have been shuttered. 

The Chinese government has been building a new and opaque national security legal regime and bureaucracy, weaponizing the courts to hand down severe punishment for dissent—up to life in prison—and harassing and surveilling Hong Kongers at home and abroad.

Five years ago Beijing imposed the draconian NSL on the nominally autonomous SAR. Assurances that the measure would have only limited application proved false. China ruthlessly imposed the law, which had little to do with national security and everything to do with CCP control. At Beijing’s behest, local authorities turned the legislation into a blueprint for tyranny. Mere criticism of communist rule is now treated as a dire threat to the territory’s security and thus a criminal offense—resulting in lengthy pretrial detention, almost certain conviction, and unfairly long imprisonment.