The ‘Infinity War’ in the Streets of Hong Kong

The rise of China threatens the free world. 
By Roger Cohen

Protests continued in Hong Kong through the Christmas holiday.

HONG KONG — Carrie Lam, the lame-duck Beijing-backed ruler of Hong Kong, is unhappy that Christmas has been “ruined by a group of reckless and selfish rioters.”
Joan Shang, who works in sustainable development and has joined the pro-democracy protests, takes a different view.
“It’s an ideological war and we are at the center of it,” she said of the near-seven-month campaign. Such struggles do not take a break for Santa.
I found Hong Kong, once home to the pragmatic apolitical pursuit of money, riven and shaken.
One consultant, who thinks the city is now “a base of subversion against the Chinese central government,” told me he’d arranged for his family to stay in New York because he does not want his teenage daughters breathing the “toxic air.”
He was not referring to tear gas, but to poisonous division.
Everything from co-op meetings to dinner conversation is charged with the tension between the “yellow” protesters’ camp and the “blue” Beijing bloc.
Dialogue is near nonexistent.
The yellow-blue ideological struggle pits Hong Kong’s rule of law against China’s “rule by law,” free societies against Xi Jinping’s intensifying surveillance-state autocracy.

Persistent Hong Kong protests threaten Xi Jinping’s authoritarian project.

The confrontation will not end soon.
To say the course of the 21st century hinges on this conflict’s outcome would be a stretch, but not an outlandish one. 
“This is the infinity war,” Joshua Wong, a prominent democracy activist, told me.
“When Xi says the ‘motherland,’ it leaves me flat,” Shang said over coffee.
“I have no ties to that country. We in Hong Kong are not an authoritarian society. Psychologically, China cannot understand young people prepared to hurt their own interests for democracy. To them it’s all about money.”
Newly acquired wealth and rapid development have been the glue of Chinese society in recent decades. 
Xi — concentrating power, abolishing term limits, extending technological tyranny — has left no doubt over his determination to prolong that cohesion through diktat.
The history of China has been marked by periods of unity followed by fracture.
Xi wants to put an end to that alternation.
His ruthless assertiveness has conjured that impossible thing: overwhelming bipartisan American congressional backing for a piece of legislation. 
Such was the support for the bill last month that authorizes sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials responsible for human rights abuses in the city.
President Trump signed the bill reluctantly, but he signed.
China was furious.
The persistent Hong Kong protests threaten Xi’s authoritarian project.
The Chinese periphery looks frayed.
Taiwan, on the eve of elections next month, has taken note of the troubles in Hong Kong.
Unification on the basis of the chimera of “one country, two systems”?
No, thank you.
China has its red lines, and Hong Kong is treading close to them.
But the city is a special case; it’s dollars and oxygen.
Hong Kong affords mainland tycoons the ability to move “red capital” in and out. 
The city, the world’s third-largest financial center, provides access to international capital markets.
It even offers honest courts and judges.
And so China is likely to play a waiting game.
A second Tiananmen in Hong Kong would be a horrific gamble that perhaps only armed insurrection or an outright push for independence would provoke.
Gradual infiltration of the increasingly brutal Hong Kong police by mainland paramilitaries is an obvious alternative. 
But it’s not a solution.
Beijing’s dilemma is that “one country, two systems,” always an exercise in creative ambiguity, is broken.
The model, agreed upon for the British handover of sovereignty to China in 1997 and supposed to last until 2047, is now almost halfway through its putative life.
The limits of its internal contradictions have been reached.
It would have been one thing if China had moved in the liberal direction many expected; it’s quite another when Xi’s rule grows ever more repressive and an estimated one million Muslim Uighurs in China’s East Turkestan colony undergo Orwellian re-education in camps.
“The problem is the idea of a half-century of no change begins to feel like handcuffs,” Teresa Ma, a Hong Kong lawyer and mediator, told me.
“Our society has evolved, but our government is utterly unresponsive.”
Hong Kong’s restiveness has many roots: rising inequality, unaffordable housing, diminishing prospects for young people, dithering governance, a sense of marginalization as China rose.
The city represents 2.7 percent of Chinese gross domestic product today, compared with 18.4 percent in 1997.
Shenzhen, just over the border, was a cow town three decades ago; now it glistens and gleams, a high-tech hub.
Freedom versus repression is not the whole story of the protests.
Many frustrations have found an outlet in demonstrations that have turned violent at times.
But it is the essence of the story.
Only the tone-deaf insensitivity of Lam, the city’s chief executive, pushed Hong Kongers into open revolt in June.
Her administration’s proposal for an extradition bill would have meant game over for Hong Kong.
 This city knows as no other that the rule of law and an independent judiciary are the basis of its prosperity. 
Allowing "criminal" suspects to be sent into the one-party lawlessness of mainland China would have nixed that. 
“The spirit of the rule of law is in the blood of the Hong Kong people,” Benny Tai, an associate law professor at the University of Hong Kong, told me.
That’s why millions poured into the streets.
The bill was withdrawn, but too late.
Pandora’s box had been opened.
The genie that emerged was called freedom.
Lam, according to an audio tape obtained by Reuters, has conceded that the bill was “very unwise.” Her life, she said, “has been turned upside down.”
She’s paralyzed.
But she can’t quit.
The last thing Xi wants is a precedent for massive street protests leading to the ouster of a leader.
The protesters have five demands, including an independent investigation of police brutality and an amnesty for the thousands arrested. 
But the most intractable is insistence on the election of the chief executive through universal suffrage — in other words, real Hong Kong democracy.
The Basic Law of 1997 calls for “universal suffrage” as an “ultimate aim,” but in “accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress,” and “upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures.”
Creative ambiguity, I said, otherwise known as an impenetrable verbal fudge.
This convoluted language worthy of a Soviet bureaucrat is fast withering into irrelevance. 
Lam was chosen by a 1,200-member election committee dominated by pro-Beijing factions.
That sure worked out well!
Wong, the 23-year-old democracy activist, put it bluntly: “The fundamental problem is that, from Beijing’s perspective, universal suffrage is not far from independence.”
Regina Ip, a Hong Kong legislator and a former secretary for security, thinks the fundamental problem lies elsewhere — in the maximalist demands of the protesters.
China, she told me, agreed to a “more democratic form of government in Hong Kong,” but “not a democracy as available to an independent political entity.”
The protests had morphed into “a serious attempt to overthrow the government and split Hong Kong from China.”
I don’t think the issue is independence.
The protests, largely leaderless, coordinated through social media, ranging from flash mobs in malls to massive marches, are the furious response of a frustrated population to Xi’s ominous repressive turn and Lam’s subservience to it.
Hong Kong’s culture has changed. Once intensely pragmatic, it is now intensely values-driven. 
That could happen one day on the mainland, too.
Millennials value values.
District council elections last month, in which democracy advocates took 87 percent of the seats, suggest where Hong Kong public opinion lies.
Impatience and irritation at the disruption of the protests in a business-driven city have grown, but are far from predominant.
Legislative elections next September are likely to reinforce the pro-democracy trend.
Tai, the law professor, was unsure whether to give me his card because the University of Hong Kong is trying to oust him over his role in the 2014 political protests and could succeed soon.
He spent a few months in prison this year after being convicted on public nuisance charges.
He is now out on bail.

Protesters in Hong Kong on Christmas Eve.

“Our fight for our rights will not end,” he told me.
“The rise of China is a threat to the free world and that is what Hong Kong is resisting.” 
The city is the avant-garde of a world awakening, with a mixture of anxiety and dismay, to the full implications of Chinese ascendancy.
The most significant, perhaps the only, foreign policy achievement of the Trump administration has been to get behind the Hong Kong protesters while pressuring Xi on trade and keeping channels open to the Chinese leader. 
This American pressure, which has made Trump popular in Hong Kong, must not relent.
Mike Bloomberg, who has said Xi “is not a dictator,” and Joe Biden, who has said China “is not competition for us,” should take another look.
Universal suffrage for Hong Kong is the only endgame I can see to the “one country, two systems” impasse, short of the People’s Liberation Army marching into the city and all hell breaking loose.

Fight For Freedom, Stand With Hong Kong

Hong Kong protesters gear up at 'National Calamity Hardware Store'

By Jessie Pang

Keita Lee, 33, owner of the "National Calamity Hardware Store" poses at his shop in Hong Kong, China, September 27, 2019. 

HONG KONG -- While months of anti-government protests have taken a toll on Hong Kong businesses, from luxury retailers to hotels and restaurants, Keita Lee’s pop-up stall is thriving.
Since demonstrations escalated in mid-June, Lee, 33, has been running what he has dubbed the National Calamity Hardware Store, selling protest essentials -- hard hats, gas masks and goggles -- near rally hot spots.
Part-entrepreneur, part-activist, he has taken out short-term leases on storefronts in at least four districts, shifting to evade police and hostile landlords.
“I’ve never had a business like this before. It’s insane,” Lee told Reuters in his latest shop in the gritty district of Cheung Sha Wan on the Kowloon peninsula.
Hong Kong’s government invoked colonial-era emergency laws last week, including a ban on face masks, which have been widely used by protesters to hide their identities. 

Lee dismissed any suggestion the regulation would hurt his business, saying more protesters had come to his stall.
“The legislation of the anti-mask law only intensifies the social conflict,” he said.
“If the government can invoke emergency powers to pass certain laws or ordinances, they can use it to pass other unreasonable bills recklessly.”

‘HONG KONG HAS A FREE MARKET’
Protests against a now-withdrawn extradition law that would have allowed suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial, have evolved into a broader fight for greater democracy, plunging Hong Kong into its biggest political crisis in decades.
Most weekends, black-clad protesters throng the streets in demonstrations that have increasingly descended into violent clashes with police, who often fire tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds.
Protective equipment has become harder to find, since the Chinese government restricted sales and exports of safety equipment into Hong Kong. 

This has made Lee even more determined to keep his business going.
“Hong Kong has a free market. I am running the business without violating any law. We only announce our pop-up address one hour before we open the stall so it’s almost impossible for the police to obtain a search warrant in time,” he said.
Lee says his stall has been a constant target of the police and he has been arrested twice.
Police said in a statement to Reuters that a 33-year-old surnamed Lee, and five others, had been arrested on Sept. 30 on charges including possession of offensive weapons and inciting and taking part in unauthorized assemblies. 

They were released on bail.
Lee denies the charges.
He says it is a constant challenge to find new suppliers in Southeast Asia, Taiwan and the United States.

‘FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM’
Lee’s political views go further than some other protesters opposed to what they see as the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms by China’s Communist Party leaders. 

He openly backs independence for the territory, a taboo topic for Beijing.
“Independence can’t be finished within our generation. It will take a few generations,” he said.

Although Lee no longer protests on the front lines, he is sympathetic to the young activists and often offers discounts to hard-up customers.
“If we want to rebel against the authoritarian regime, we should do it without thinking about the price. At most, I will apply for bankruptcy. If we lose this fight, we will lose a few generations’ freedom,” he said.
Lee says his work keeps him busy at all hours and he snatches a few hours of sleep when he can.
“The only regret I have is that I don’t have time to spend with my seven-year-old daughter and five-year-old son,” he said.
“I hope they will understand one day that I’m fighting for their freedom.”

The Coming Collapse of China

Why China's Premature Bid for Hegemony Is More Fragile Than You Imagine

Everyone is starting to resist now.
by Richard Javad Heydarian

China's futile resistance

“Never trust China,” a wrathful Hong Kong protester told this author during the large-scale protests on July 14 in the Sha Tin district earlier this month.

“We are never going to give up, people are fighting to their last breath.”
What began as a focused opposition to a controversial extradition bill, which would allow Beijing to retrieve fugitives and unwanted citizens fleeing to Hong Kong, has now morphed into a generalized call for independence altogether.
Carrie Lam, the much-derided pro-Beijing Hong Kong chief executive, has offered to resign but even if she does, that won’t be enough. 

Nor would an apology and accountability for brutal police tactics against unarmed protesters. 

As protests turn increasingly violent and radicalized, there are even fears of Chinese military intervention, which could lead to a Hong Kong version of the Tiananmen massacre.

The protests in Hong Kong, however, are part of a bigger region-wide backlash against China’s premature bid for hegemony. 

From Taiwan and the Philippines to Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, a whole host of regional states are standing up against Beijing’s neo-imperial ambitions and revisionist policies. 

China’s time-tested strategy of ensuring the acquiescence of neighboring regimes through the co-optation of their corrupt elite is looking increasingly fragile. 

Moreover, Hong Kong is exhibit A of the perils of unbridled economic engagement with Beijing.

The Frontline Battle
What hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents are worried about is the preservation of the city-state’s unique political system. 

For them, Beijing has flagrantly violated the fundamental principles undergirding the so-called “One Country, Two Systems” regime, which was supposed to have governed Beijing-Hong Kong relations for five decades following the former British colony’s handover in 1997.
Under Xi Jinping’s rule, Hong Kong residents have seen the gradual emaciation of the promise of universal suffrage as well as the long-cherished freedoms of assembly and free press, and other civil liberties and political rights. 

China’s strongman leadership is obsessed with the “one country” at the expense of the “two systems” aspect of the bargain.
Critics argue, this has come about not only through the establishment of a de facto puppet regime in Hong Kong, but also the co-optation of the business elite, media, academy and the key institutions collectively governing the city-state. 

Beijing’s creeping intrusion is now literally concretely on display, thanks to massive state-of-the-art infrastructure projects, including the Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL) as well as the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge, which potently symbolize Beijing’s long reach.
Even worse, there are even fears of Beijing’s surreptitious introduction of the infamous “social credit” surveillance regime to Hong Kong. 

That system would bring dire consequences for the basic freedoms of each and every resident, including foreign journalists, academics and businessmen based in the city-state. 

Furthermore, there are even fears of Chinese military intervention. 

Ominously, China’s defense ministry spokesman Wu Qian has made it clear that it can deploy the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for quelling protests in Hong Kong if necessary.
“We are closely following the developments in Hong Kong, especially the violent attack against the central government liaison office by radicals on July 21,” Wu said during his briefing on China’s newly released White Paper in late-July. 

Wu suggested that the PLA garrison stationed in Hong Kong is on standby mode for any potential intervention. 

“Some behavior of the radical protesters is challenging the authority of the central government and the bottom line of one country, two systems. This is intolerable.”
What’s increasingly clear with the protests is the fragility of China’s time-tested strategy of purchasing the silence and loyalty of neighboring polities through economic penetration.
“The only thing I know is that no matter how much money I earn [because of Chinese investments],” a young teenage protestor told this author on July 14, “freedom is something I can [never] earn from China.”
For many Hong Kong youngsters, the benefits of closer economic ties with China are either too concentrated among the networked elite, namely the tycoons running the city, or else any benefits are offset by how they fully undermine Hong Kongers’ basic freedoms. 

In either case, Hong Kong’s youth show little support for closer economic engagement with Mainland China, which seeks to turn Hong Kong into just another major Chinese city. 

Beijing wants to this as part of a strategy of integrating Guangdong and neighboring economic dynamos into a Greater Bay Area masterplan.

The Regional Backlash
When asked about their advice to the region, a protester related: “Regional states should not only focus on economic growth… since China is just using economic ways to influence [other countries’].”
“Regional states should focus on their freedoms and own citizens,” she added with fervent conviction, pointing at Hong Kong as an example of what happens when you over-engage with China.
The Hong Kong protests are strengthening the hands of Beijing-skeptics across the region.
This is most especially the case in Taiwan, where the incumbent President Tsai Ing-Wen is facing a concerted challenge from pro-Beijing rivals ahead of next year’s elections. 

Inspired by the Hong Kong protests, Taiwanese officials have repeatedly emphasized the risks of economic entanglement with China.
“We now have more liberty to speak for our independence,” President Tsai told this author during an interview in June. 

Tsai discussed Taiwan’s economic decoupling from China, and the relocation of investments to Southeast Asia, in recent years. 

“People have to bear in mind that you need to be independent [economically too], since China uses economics as leverage.”
Surveys suggest that the pro-independence-leaning president has public sympathy on the issue. 

The latest survey by Academia Sinica shows that a majority of Taiwanese prefers an emphasis on national sovereignty over economic engagement with China.
In the Philippines, the pro-Beijing President Rodrigo Duterte is also facing massive public backlash, especially amid his blatant quiescence following the sinking of a Filipino fishing boat by a suspected Chinese militia vessel last month.
The most recent surveys show that a super-majority of Filipinos want the government to take a tougher stance against Beijing, with as many as 93 percent of Filipinos calling on the government to take back Philippine-claimed islands in the South China Sea currently occupied by China. 

More than eight out of ten Filipinos, the same survey shows, want the government to form alliances with like-minded nations and international organizations against China’s maritime expansionism.
Additionally, China’s trust rating in the Philippines is now at a new low. 

One recent survey, conducted from June 22 to 26, showed that the majority of Filipinos (51 percent) had “little trust” in China. 

Another showed that China has a net trust rating of nearly 50 percent.
These anti-China sentiments have gone hand in hand with growing fears over “debt traps” being set under Beijing’s infrastructure investments.
“We should do away with placing our government commercial assets [as] collateral,” Philippine Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, a prominent voice on the Philippine-China relations, told this author.
He has accused Beijing of negotiating questionable contracts that would allow China to seize key Philippine assets, including oil and gas in Philippine waters, in the event of a debt default.
“Let’s not be naïve [with Chinese intentions],” he added, citing the infamous case of Sri Lanka, which had to give up the control of the Hambantota port to a Chinese company following a major debt default.
Under growing public pressure, Duterte had to call for a review of all infrastructure contracts with China.
In neighboring Malaysia, however, anti-China backlash propelled an all-out regime change, as Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad rallied popular support by accusing his predecessor, Najib Razak, of selling out the nation to China under questionable multi-billion-dollar infrastructure investments.
“If you borrow huge sums of money you [will eventually] come under the influence and direction of the lender [China],” Mahathir told this author earlier this year, underscoring the threat of Beijing’s “new version of colonialism.” 

He warned of strategic “subservience” if smaller nations like the Philippines and Malaysia borrow from China beyond their “capacity to repay.”
In Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest nation, anti-China sentiments have taken a dark xenophobic turn even. 

Welcoming closer economic ties with China, incumbent President Joko Widodo repeatedly came under vicious attacks by his rivals during both his presidential campaigns, including false claims that he is of ethnic Chinese background.
In response to China’s intrusion into Indonesian waters, the Jokowi administration has stepped up its military presence in the North Natuna Sea area, while adopting a tough “sink the vessel” policy against illegal Chinese vessels. 

China’s perceived infringement on Indonesia sovereignty has led to a steep decline in its trust ratings. According to a Pew Research Center survey, favorable views of Beijing among Indonesians dropped from 66 percent in 2014 to 53 percent in 2018.
But perhaps it’s in Vietnam where Chinese is experiencing the greatest resistance. 

Recent years have seen massive, and often violent, anti-Beijing protests against Chinese investments in the country. 

One of the most protested schemes is the proposal for the establishment of a Chinese special economic zone on a ninety-nine-year-lease.
Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Vietnam has deployed several armed vessels to forestall China’s efforts to sabotage its energy exploration activities in the Vanguard Bank, an energy-rich area within Hanoi’s EEZ that is contested by China
China may be able to strong-arm each of its neighboring polities on a bilateral basis, but Beijing is bleeding credibility and trust across the region. 

No wonder then, the majority of respondents across Asia still prefer the United States over China as a regional leader. 

Even in Hong Kong, American flags were proudly on display during the protests. 

As one of the participants said: “We are not fighting to gain anything, [but] we are fighting not to lose anything. I am worried about Hong Kong becoming China.”

Hong Kong Unrest: ‘We Cannot Give Up’

As protests in Hong Kong increasingly escalate into violent clashes, demonstrators, and others reflect on where the movement is headed.
By Tiffany May, Lam Yik Fei and Ezra Cheung

Protesters during a march in Hong Kong early this month.

HONG KONG — Over the past nearly two months, hundreds of thousands of people have braved Hong Kong’s sweltering summer heat in a series of mass rallies against an unpopular bill that has come to symbolize concerns about the encroachment of the mainland Chinese government on their semiautonomous territory.
The city’s beleaguered leader, Carrie Lam, has already suspended the bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China and declared it “dead.”

But she has refused to formally withdraw it or to meet the protesters’ other demands, which include the establishment of an independent commission to investigate police conduct and the right to directly elect the territory’s leader.
Mrs. Lam’s unwavering stance has helped fuel protests that now occur regularly, some of them escalating dramatically. 

In recent weeks, protesters have stormed the city’s legislative offices, clashed with riot police officers at a luxury shopping mall and surrounded the mainland Chinese government’s offices in Hong Kong.
[For the second day in a row, thousands rallied against mob violence and what they call brutality by the police.]
We spoke to protesters and others who have been otherwise caught in the crossfire, to hear about their experiences. 

These are excerpts from their answers, edited for clarity and length:

Henry Fung, a high school student, during a protest in the Sheung Wan neighborhood this month.

Henry Fung, 17
A high schooler and antigovernment protester who believes forceful tactics are needed
I haven’t really protested before, not even in marches, but I feel that if I don’t do something to protect freedoms I ought to have, I may never recover them again. 

We want to be peaceful, but under oppression, we need to resist.
We do what peaceful protesters don’t dare to do. 

Only after we’ve occupied a street or a building do they feel that it’s safe to come out and sit there as well. 

When I walk to the front, I’m scared. 

I prepare myself mentally that I may get hurt and even arrested.
My brother supports me, but he can’t join the protests because of work. 

My father found out because my school called him when I skipped exams on June 12. 

He would say that it’s dangerous, and that protesters who are in front, hitting the police, are rioters, and to tell me not to be like them. 

I feel that that’s unfair to them, but I wouldn’t get angry at him.

Alexandra Wong, who is retired, scuffled with police officers outside the Legislative Council building last month.

Alexandra Wong, 63
Retiree who is often on the front lines of protests, waving a Union Jack flag
I wave the British flag because I want to remind middle-aged and older people to think back on 1997 (when Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese control), and what the British people have built for us. The Hong Kong government and Communist regime keep wanting to erode our freedoms, our partial democracy, core values and our rule of law.
I didn’t study politics or social science, but I simply understand how precious democracy is from life experience. 

I lived in Austria for 12 and a half years. 

I’ve lived in mainland China and was born and raised in Hong Kong, and have also been an immigrant in the United States. 

The difference in political systems can alter the people’s sense of happiness so vastly — like heaven and earth!
I need to stand at the front with the students. 

I want to resist till the end with them.

Calvin So, a cook, was walking near a protest in the town of Yuen Long when he was attacked by a mob.

Calvin So, 23
A cook who was in the town of Yuen Long on July 21 when a mob attacked protesters and bystanders
It was 9:45 p.m., and I had gotten off work and was walking along a river on my way home. 

I saw many people in white shirts holding weapons and I said, “Wow! So many people in white.” Those people came over and yelled at me right after I said that. 

One person started to hit me, then a few more. 

Then they all started to hit me as I walked further. 

There must have been around 20 people surrounding me.
These people beat me with things like rattan or hiking sticks. 

I couldn’t exactly see what they were using, but I saw other people holding these weapons. 

I felt frightened and bewildered. 

There was no way I looked like their target. 

I didn’t go to the protest.
No one helped me. 

During the attack, someone threw my mobile phone into the river. 

I just ran away and found a convenience store where I called emergency services. 

Some officers arrived and an ambulance took me to a hospital.

The artist Perry Dino at his Hong Kong studio on Wednesday.

Perry Dino, 53
Artist (real name: Perry Chan) who captures the protests with oil on canvas, even when tear gas is fired
I see my role as a witness to history, not so different from reporters. 

I’m here to stand with the students, rain or shine. 

People can take thousands of photos at a protest, but I only create one painting. 

Photos can be deleted but to destroy my paintings, you will have to burn them.
As I was painting on site, a foreigner asked me to sell him my painting but I told him no. 

I’m worried that if a painting passes through the wrong hands, it could disappear from history. 

I think they need to stay here so that the next generation can see it in an exhibit about Hong Kong’s democracy.
Not many paintings have tear gas as a raw material.

Lam Ching, a camp instructor, in Sheung Wan this month.

Lam Ching, 28
An instructor at an adventure camp who volunteers medical assistance at protests
Too many people had been injured in recent clashes between police and protesters, so I decided to come out, hoping to do my part and provide them with first aid treatment.
I feel so angry. 

It is supposed to be a political issue, but the government has turned it into a conflict between the police and Hong Kong people.
We are all Hong Kong people. 

I really hope the Hong Kong police force can remain professional. 

I genuinely hope they can regain their rationality and self-possession.

So Hiu-Ching, a high school student, at a “Lennon Wall” in the Tai Po district this month.

So Hiu-ching, 16
High school student and peaceful protester
Our society isn’t thrown into chaos because of the protests. 

There are protests because society is in turmoil. 

I really want to ask the government to think about what they did this for. 

So much has happened and so many young people’s hopes have been dashed. 

Can they take responsibility? 

Why can’t you say you will withdraw the bill?
My parents sometimes cry while watching broadcasts of the protests and would tell us, “We are very sorry.” 

I don’t want to repeat this phrase to my children. 

I want to fight for a Hong Kong that we want, and not have to tell generation after generation that we haven’t done enough. 

I’m very happy my parents understand this.
There are still some conflicts though. 

Sometimes they would say things like, “How can you battle with the government? You are doing so much, will it lead to anything?” 

But we cannot give up because we won’t win without even trying.

Hong Kong independence

Hong Kong democracy camp kicks off 2019 with protests, braces for confrontational year

AFP-JIJI

A pro-independence supporter raises an umbrella with British flags as she takes part in an annual New Year's Day march in Hong Kong Tuesday.

HONG KONG - Hong Kong’s embattled democracy advocates kicked off 2019 with a large street rally on Tuesday, lamenting what they said had been a grim year for freedoms and steeling themselves for fresh battles with Beijing.
A thousands-strong crowd — including independence activists — protested over disappearing political freedoms, rising inequality and the local government’s coziness with big business and Beijing.
Semi-autonomous Hong Kong currently enjoys liberties unseen on the mainland including freedom of expression and the press under a deal struck with Britain before the 1997 handover.
But concern is growing that those rights are being eroded by an increasingly assertive China ruled by Xi Jinping.
Last year city authorities made a series of unprecedented moves that caused alarm among activists and prompted rare criticism from Western governments.
In September a pro-independence political party was banned under an obscure national security law designed to target triad gangs.
Soon after a Financial Times journalist who chaired a talk with that party’s leader at a press club found himself effectively expelled after officials refused to renew his visa.
Authorities also continued to bar political candidates from standing for local elections if they held pro-independence views.
“We have experienced a lot in 2018 — society, politics and people’s livelihood have all regressed. I can’t see hope in 2019,” protester Kwan Chun-pong, a 47-year-old production line manager, told AFP.
The majority of Hong Kong’s democracy advocates want people to have a greater say in how their city is run, such as the ability to directly elect their leader.
Mass pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014 blockaded parts of the city for 79 days but failed to win any meaningful concessions.
A group of independence activists emerged from the failure of the 2014 protests, rattling local and mainland authorities.
Independence activists — some of them masked — attended Tuesday’s rally, followed by police officers with video cameras.
“We are still coming out today because we still love this place, we want it to change, we want the next generation to feel proud of Hong Kong’s identity,” activist Wayne Chan shouted through a loud-hailer.
The Hong Kong government rejects the suggestion that rights are slipping and says campaigning for independence contravenes the city’s mini-constitution.
The Civil Human Rights Front, which organized Tuesday’s march, does not support independence but argues the city’s free speech laws should allow others to campaign for it.
Activists face new challenges in 2019 with the government hoping to table new national security legislation and laws that would ban disrespecting China’s national anthem.
A number of 2014 protest leaders will also find out in April whether a court will jail them after they were prosecuted under a slew of little-used public order offenses.

China’s Authoritarian Export

Beijing forces the expulsion of a reporter from Hong Kong.
Wall Street Journal

Financial Times Asia Editor Victor Mallet speaks at the Foreign Correspondents' Club luncheon in Hong Kong, Aug. 14. 

Hong Kong last week refused to renew the work visa of Financial Times Asia Editor Victor Mallet and gave him seven days to leave the territory. 

The unprecedented expulsion is the latest attack on civil liberties and the rule of law in the former British colony, which was returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but with autonomy for 50 years.
The government won’t say why it expelled Mr. Mallet, but it appears to be part of a crackdown on young politicians who espouse independence or self-determination. 

On July 17 the government proposed using an anti-organized crime law to ban the Hong Kong National Party, a tiny group calling for independence from China. 

The Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club, with Mr. Mallet as acting president, invited the party’s founder to speak.
That touched off a tantrum. 

Chinese Foreign Ministry officials demanded the club cancel the event, and the Hong Kong government issued a statement that “providing a public platform for a speaker to openly advocate independence completely disregards Hong Kong’s constitutional duty to uphold national sovereignty. It is totally unacceptable and deeply regrettable.”
The FCC went ahead with the speech, which was legal, and Mr. Mallet introduced the speaker. Newspapers owned by Beijing poured vitriol on the club, and former Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying called for the FCC to be evicted from its rented premises in a government-owned building. 

The government then banned the National Party as a threat to national security.
Meanwhile, pro-Beijing figures in Hong Kong are calling for new laws against subversion. 

The government last tried to pass such laws in 2003, when more than half a million protesters took to the streets. 

Local officials seem reluctant to refight that battle. 

But in January an electoral official disqualified a legislative candidate from Demosisto, a large opposition party that calls for self-determination but not independence.
Mr. Mallet’s expulsion is also an attack on Hong Kong’s tradition as a free-press redoubt in Asia. Journalists have used Hong Kong for decades as a base to report on China, confident that they could do so freely. 

Now China is barring a journalist for no more than providing a public forum for a dissenter.
The case shows that hardline Chinese officials who staff Beijing’s Liaison Office are calling the shots in Hong Kong. 

Xi Jinping’s authoritarian crackdown is spreading from the mainland to wherever China can dominate or exert influence. 

The trend is one reason world opinion is building against China as a threat to democracy and freedom.

Oriental Despotism

Coming soon to a Hong Kong near you: creeping totalitarianism Chinese style

By Hemlock

Ten years ago in Hong Kong, any citizen could run for legislative elections with minimum fuss. 

It didn’t matter if new lawmakers added radical slogans to their oath of office. 

Activists and protesters generally accepted that law enforcement was impartial. 

Immigration officers allowed overseas human-rights activists into the city with no problem.
While some self-censorship was apparent in media and entertainment, the press was free, and no-one seriously claimed that expression of a mere opinion might be illegal.
Today in 2018, this is all changing. 

Hong Kong people are gradually losing rights they once took for granted. 

Another way of looking at it is that the sovereign power – the People’s Republic of China under the Chinese Communist Party – is reasserting and resuming its rights.

2014 – a turn for the worse
In retrospect, the rights situation for the first 15 years after the 1997 handover was fairly stable: Hong Kong made no meaningful progress towards democracy, but nor did it see its freedoms seriously deteriorate.
This changed in June 2014 when Beijing issued a ‘white paper’ on Hong Kong concerning the concepts of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ and ‘high degree of autonomy’. 

Ever since the 1980s, Hong Kong officials had encouraged the notion that these phrases meant free and pluralistic Hong Kong would be insulated from the tightly controlled mainland system of government.
The white paper explained the correct understanding: that they were not fixed, absolute guarantees of Hong Kong’s constitutional status, but optional add-ons that China could adjust or remove at will. 

This was a restrictive new definition of their meaning (and local officials modified their use of the slogans accordingly).
This was followed up a few months later by an edict that Hong Kong could elect its chief executive only if Beijing chose who was on the ballot.
Pro-democracy opposition figures bitterly complained that Beijing was breaking past promises enshrined in the Basic Law. 

They missed the whole point of these imperial proclamations: that Hong Kong ultimately comes under and within the mainland system.
Indeed, when “interpreting” the Basic Law on several occasions since 1997, the Chinese government had established the principle that it could change the meaning of the law on a whim. 

Hong Kong had been under Communist-style “rule by law” all along, though Beijing had applied it sparingly.

A woman protests Beijing’s White Paper on Hong Kong at the July 1st pro-democracy march, 2014. 

Since 2014, the trend of “mainlandisation” has been unmistakable, though incremental. 

While the local administration implements the process (and insists nothing is really changing), it is obviously following directions from Beijing officials.
Some moves, like promoting patriotism in schools or banning disrespect for the national anthem, have been controversial but are arguably compatible with Hong Kong’s freedoms. 

The weakening of lawmakers’ powers (which were being “abused by troublemakers”), has even been popular.
But other measures clearly point to creeping authoritarianism. 

The once-impartial police and prosecutions services have started to arrest and prosecute opposition activists on protest-related charges that would not have been brought in earlier years. 

Radicals are disqualified from the legislative council and the ballot on political-test grounds.
By picking on radicals in ones or twos for apparently isolated transgressions, Beijing has chipped away at rights without creating much stir among the general public.
The Andy Chan/Hong Kong National Party affair is another step on this road, using the same tactic – attacking rights and freedoms by demonising and suppressing a “public menace” that uses them. 

But this specific case looks likely to represent a milestone.

The ‘Hong Kong independence’ scare
No-one doubts Chinese leaders’ phobia about separatism, but the HKNP issue is so contrived as to be visibly embarrassing to local officials.

By picking this particular target, Beijing’s Liaison Office and other officials are in the awkward position of trying to convince us that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is genuinely petrified of this geeky not-very-inspiring Hong Kong kid.
Assuming we don’t buy that, we must conclude that the whole exercise (extensive police surveillance, faux outrage from top officials) is a pretext for measures to curtail freedom of expression for everyone – an unprecedented step.
Most local media blandly echo the official rationale about “red lines” and national security threats. But by attacking the Foreign Correspondents Club for hosting Chan, Beijing’s people have made it an international story.
For the first time, the wider world perceives a threat to Hong Kong as a free society with rule of law – an image the local administration tries hard to protect.
The decision to create a panic out of the HKNP looks misjudged and potentially humiliating for the Hong Kong authorities. 

However, if we look at the wider context, we can see why Beijing is prepared to use the Andy Chan independence issue to tighten control over Hong Kong.

It’s not about Hong Kong
The year 2014 is associated with Hong Kong’s Occupy/Umbrella protest movement, and many observers see Beijing’s subsequent clampdown in the city as a response to that. 

This confuses – or at least oversimplifies – cause and effect
The prime mover here is Xi Jinping, who became general secretary of the CCP in 2012 and head of state and of the military in 2013. 

Foreign analysts initially welcomed the new leader as a likely moderniser and reformer (glamorous wife, and family suffered Cultural Revolution purging).
But as a son of a senior revolutionary and Mao-era figure, Xi is self-consciously of the CCP aristocracy. 

His policies since assuming power suggest that he sees himself as the saviour of a party that had become stagnant and lax and must now reassert far tighter control across an unruly society or fall from power. 

He can be seen as a counter-reformist.
Xi grew up in an era when there was essentially one newspaper, one radio station, and the whole Chinese population stayed put and were assigned jobs, homes and rations.
He seems to believe that he can restore that ideologically purer and regimented order and take China forward in terms of economic and technological progress and emergence as an Asian – if not global – superpower.
Xi has purged political rivals and tamed China’s murky uber-tycoons. 

The country is now several years into an ongoing clampdown on religion, the media, academia, civil society, independent lawyers, and other centres of power and incorrect thought and identity.
Hong Kong is a relatively small item on the list of Things to Rectify. 

But judging from policies like the East Turkestan re-education camps and hubristic propaganda efforts, Xi and his underlings are comfortable erring on the side of overkill. 

We can assume that the campaign against Hong Kong dissidents and the legal and constitutional rights that protect them will continue.

What next for Hong Kong?
The main player in Hong Kong is the Chinese government’s Liaison Office, which manages local United Front activities and guides the local administration of Carrie Lam. 

Its current priority is to use the ‘independence’ scare to restrict freedom of expression.

The China Liaison Office. 

The local administration, which must do the dirty work, comprises bureaucrats hand-picked by Beijing for their lack of ideas. 

While smugly indifferent to the city’s social problems, they take on the air of frightened hostages when reciting the Beijing line on sensitive issues. 

It may be that behind the scenes they urge their mainland overseers to go easy, but to no end.
The structure does not accommodate meaningful opposition. 

Interestingly, a few business and other pro-establishment figures are voicing concerns about overseas “misconceptions” that Hong Kong’s freedoms and rule of law are in decline – a coded warning that CCP heavy-handedness could harm business confidence.
Local representative politics is increasingly just ceremonial – Beijing obviously aims to make the legislative council a mainland-style rubber-stamp body. 

Older pro-democracy figures who work within this system are powerless. 

Radicals who are outside it face increasingly harsh treatment.
Some “moderates” are hinting that Hong Kong can have universal suffrage if it also finally passes the overdue national security laws required under Article 23 of the Basic Law. 

This linkage is absurd: Beijing has left no doubt that it cannot allow anything other than a phony election in Hong Kong.
The government could float the idea to entertain the mainstream pan-democrats, who can’t resist bickering over constitutional small-print, and to distract media attention.
But given Beijing’s apparent impatience, it is more likely that the government will just move ahead within a year or so to ban pro-independence talk and other thought-crimes. 

It could be via an Article 23 national security law, though this branding is toxic.
In practice, Beijing can impose whatever it wants by fiat – through Basic Law ‘interpretation’ or the sort of National People’s Congress edict used to legitimise the extension of mainland jurisdiction at the West Kowloon rail terminus. 

It makes little difference.

The idea that the courts can be a bulwark of local freedoms is sadly mistaken. 

If necessary, Beijing can use the interpretation loophole to override the judiciary. 

From Xi Jinping’s point of view, there is no reason why CCP-style “rule by law” should stop at the Shenzhen border. 

There is only one source of power in the PRC.
So this points to the banning of organisations for their views and formal curbs on freedom of expression in Hong Kong. 

The initial targets will no doubt be young radicals like Andy Chan. 

But once Beijing’s officials start declaring dangerous ideas off-limits, they will surely see redefining “red lines” as a necessary tool of control over the city.

There’s more to come
An obvious example would be to criminalise calls for the downfall of the CCP. 

Patriotic “grassroots” groups will loudly demand more such action against national "traitors". 

To ease the slide into censorship, we expect local telecoms companies to ‘voluntarily’ censor undesirable online content.
Institutions that are already bending with the wind in various ways – like the media, academia, professional associations, faith groups, even financial analysts – will continue to adapt through pre-emptive self-discipline.
How far does this go? 

Will Hong Kong media outlets be punished or closed for endangering national security? 

Will troublesome lawyers be arrested for subverting state power? 

Will we see outspoken student leaders making televised confessions? 

Will we be monitored by a “panopticon” internal security apparatus online and through facial recognition systems in public places (no doubt already installed in parts of the West Kowloon rail station)?
All we can say is that what sounded unthinkable 10 years ago is happening now.

Establishment optimists trust that mainlandisation will stop at damaging the business environment. Certainly, local bureaucrats cling to the city’s image as a global business hub.
But this is one area where the local administration and Beijing are not on the same wavelength. 

The Chinese leadership puts its own control before the reputation of an ex-colony’s courts and bureaucracy – or foreign companies’ confidence.
That said, corporate interests that Beijing wants to co-opt or reward (probably owned by ethnic Chinese) may find new opportunities arising from Hong Kong’s ‘integration’ with the mainland. 

The Chinese elites do value Hong Kong as a zone under PRC sovereignty that has no capital controls, but the CCP has no special affection or need for many of the city’s clusters of international professional skills.
Indeed, all the international, Cantonese and pre-1949 Chinese characteristics that make Hong Kong distinct from the mainland must ultimately give way to CCP-approved quasi-Confucian Han culture. Mandarin in schools or goose-step marching by uniformed groups are just a start.
Beijing’s long-term intention should be clear from the ongoing influx of mainland immigrants, the opening of new cross-border transport links, the pushing of a ‘Greater Bay Area’ conurbation and the growing campaign to encourage young Hongkongers to move north.
This is about symbolic, psychological and actual merging of Hong Kong and the mainland. 

If it sounds grandiose, it is just a small-scale version of the top-down demographic, cultural and infrastructural strategies that the CCP has used for decades to “Sinicise” the mainland’s Muslim, Tibetan and ethnic Korean regions.

A brief optimistic conclusion
The end point, in theory, is Hong Kong as another secure CCP-controlled part of the PRC. 

This implies that Xi Jinping’s vision for China as a whole becomes reality. 

And that assumes that tighter centralised control in such a vast nation is a sustainable model that will succeed – that you can have a modern and innovative and thriving society in which the state controls the allocation of capital, decides what news and opinions everyone hears, and tells the population how many children to have.

Whether China’s economy is fundamentally sound or frail right now is a state secret known only to a perhaps-tellingly paranoid leadership. 

But history strongly suggests that a dictatorship, Leninist/state-capitalist/strongman or otherwise, is not durable.
Hong Kong’s younger people – and their counterparts throughout China – will surely see a freer future one day. 

As the venerable Jerome Cohen recently said: “I’ve been studying China for almost 60 years. This too shall pass.”

Andy Chan Ho-tin to President Trump: Kick China and Hong Kong out of the WTO

Hong Kong independence advocate also called on President Trump to suspend Hong Kong's separate treatment from the mainland under U.S. law.

By Kelly Olsen

An outspoken Hong Kong politician who advocates independence for the financial and trade hub wrote to Donald Trump, calling on the U.S. president to get China and Hong Kong expelled from the World Trade Organization.
Andy Chan Ho-tin, a member of the Hong Kong National Party, has been criticized by Chinese and Hong Kong authorities for his stance in favor of independence for his city.

His party is under threat of a ban.
Mr Chan's letter, which does not mention Trump by name, but is addressed to "Mr. President," follows a closely watched speech and press conference last week. 

In that, he accused China of treating the city as a colony, blasted local officials for enabling an erosion of local rights and autonomy since Chinese rule commenced in 1997 and called on the United States to extend its trade war with China to Hong Kong.
"We are most grateful to see that the US administration under your leadership has been determined in implementing its tariff and trade policies against China, which has abused its trade relationship with the U.S. for years," Mr Chan said in the letter, dated Saturday.
He said that Hong Kong's separate membership in the WTO effectively means that Beijing has an extra seat and vote at the organization.
"This is obviously unfair and unjustifiable," said the letter, a copy of which was provided to CNBC by the Hong Kong National Party. 

Mr Chan said in it that he had sent a previous one to the president in February last year.
"The Hong Kong government is by no means independent or autonomous in exercising its member rights, but has only given an extra arm for China to exert its influences and abuse its 'developing country' status under the WTO system," Mr Chan said.
Gaining membership in the Geneva, Switzerland-based global trade body can take years. Hong Kong has been a member since 1995 and China entered the organization in 2001.
Mr Chan's called for the U.S. to target Hong Kong as part of the trade conflict in the talk last week at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong, which Chinese and local officials tried to get cancelled. 

Mr Chan continued that theme in the letter, calling on President Trump to suspend Hong Kong's separate treatment under U.S. law, enshrined in the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992.
"For the local Hong Kong citizens to be empowered and a genuinely autonomous Hong Kong to flourish, both China and the present regime of Hong Kong, who are the enemies of civilization and fundamental rights, have to be first knocked down," he said.

Hong Kong Independence

In a speech that Beijing tried to stop, Hong Kong independence advocate Andy Chan Tin-ho lashes out
By Kelly Olsen

Andy Chan Tin-ho (center), the founder of the Hong Kong National Party, is surrounded by members of the media as he leaves the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong on August 14, 2018.

A pro-independence Hong Kong politician whose party is under threat of a ban lashed out at China in a closely watched Tuesday speech.
Andy Chan Tin-ho, a member of the Hong Kong National Party, has been at the center of controversy over free speech and Hong Kong's autonomy. 

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong, which invited him, came under pressure itself from the central government in Beijing as well as local authorities to cancel the event.
Dozens of protesters gathered outside the club in central Hong Kong amid heavy police presence as what appeared to be mostly anti-independence demonstrators held up signs and shouted slogans.
Hong Kong enjoys rights not allowed in mainland China, such as the freedom to criticize political leaders, but the central government and local authorities has drawn a red line at calls for independence and has pressured local leaders to back that up.
In his speech, Chan said his party has been "demonized as some sort of extremist group" by China for advocating independence and that he has come under harsh surveillance by authorities.
"In reality, what the National Party is chasing after is no different from what many Hong Kongers wish for: the dream of democracy," Chan said.
Chan said that Hong Kong, with its distinctive language, culture and history, is coming under the same pressure to assimilate with the nation as minority groups in the mainland.
He cited the far western region of Xinjiang, which he referred to as East Turkestan, as well as Tibet. East Turkestan is a political term that refers to Xinjiang and was also used in an East Turkestan Republic in the 1930s.
"China is a large empire," Chan said. 

"If you are different, you are wrong."
Police have requested that Chan's party be banned on national security grounds and authorities are going through the process of making a decision, which includes hearing the party's defense.

'Freedom of speech'
Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous region of China that was a British colony until 1997. 

Under a Sino-British accord, Hong Kong kept its legal system, currency and civic freedoms, famously guaranteed for 50 years under the "one country, two systems" formulation.
The city is a major global financial and trade center of about 7.4 million people and its combination of low regulation, free speech and rule of law have contributed to its status as a favored center for international banks and multinational companies.
The Hong Kong government immediately responded to Chan's Tuesday speech, issuing a statement condemning anyone publicly favoring independence and providing a venue to those who do, though it did not mention the politician by name.
The statement singled out the Foreign Correspondents' Club by name, saying the government "deeply regrets" the journalist organization hosting the talk.
Victor Mallet, president of the club, defended the invitation and the holding of the event on free speech grounds.
"The FCC does believe that its members and the public at large have the right ... to hear the views of different sides in any debate," he said just before Chan's speech began.
Some protesters came out to support Chan's right to speak out.
"I support freedom of speech," said a man who would only identify himself as a Hong Kong citizen named Johnny.
"China is killing this city," he added.

Hong Kong independence

How China's paranoia put global spotlight on Hong Kong activist Andy Chan
By Andreas Illmer

Andy Chan says China's pressure proves that Hong Kong should go it alone
A lunchtime talk by a little-known Hong Kong politician has drawn global attention to China's influence on free speech in the territory.
Andy Chan is the head of the nationalist party calling for Hong Kong's independence from China. The Hong Kong National Party is already facing a ban over its separatist stance.
When the 27-year-old politician was invited to talk at the city's Foreign Correspondent Club (FCC) this Tuesday, it sparked stern criticism from communist authorities, who asked for the event to be axed altogether.
The FCC defended the talk and will push ahead with it -- with global media attention now focused on what otherwise likely would have received little or no attention at all.

Why does Hong Kong care?
A former British colony, Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. 

But it enjoys considerably more freedoms due to the "one country, two systems" formula, under which Beijing agreed to give the region a great deal of autonomy and to preserve its economic and social systems for 50 years.
There are widespread concerns in the city that those freedoms are gradually being eroded and the extent of China's influence over Hong Kong is a sensitive issue.Hong Kong and China - one country, two systems ?

Student protests, calling for more democracy, paralysed the city for several weeks in 2014. 

Several of the protest leaders were convicted and even faced jail terms. 

Those demonstrations, however, were merely about a more democratic election process -- nowhere near as contentious as the issue of independence.

Why is China so touchy about this?
China is extremely sensitive about what it says are questions of national "sovereignty".
The two main focal points of that sensitivity are Hong Kong and the self-ruling island of Taiwan. 

In Taiwan's case, Beijing's position is crystal clear: China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that rightfully belongs to China.
In the case of Hong Kong, the situation is more blurry. 

Hong Kong is part of China but its special status and the liberties granted to its citizens can be seen as indirectly undermining Beijing's tough hand on the mainland.

Every July, students protest for more democracy in Hong Kong

China's ministry of foreign affairs has urged the FCC to cancel the event and Hong Kong's top official, Carrie Lam, has criticised it as "regrettable and inappropriate".

What do the FCC and Mr Chan say?
Freedom of speech and press freedom are among the key liberties that set Hong Kong apart from the mainland. 

So supporters of the event argue that a talk given at a press club primarily to the members of that club should not be contentious.
The FCC has defended its decision to invite Mr Chan, arguing that "Hong Kong rightly prides itself on its reputation as a place where the rule of law applies and where there is freedom of speech".
"We believe that in free societies such as Hong Kong it is vitally important to allow people to speak and debate freely, even if one does not agree with their particular views."
As for Andy Chan, the attempts to ban him from speaking didn't come as a surprise, and instead bolstered his belief that "China is treating Hong Kong as a colony".
"It proves our point that it is China who is destroying Hong Kong's rights," he told the BBC. 

"The Hong Kong authorities acted out of obedience, the Beijing authorities out of hubris."

Chinese Paranoia

No perceived slight is too small for Beijing to start throwing its weight around
By KEITH B. RICHBURG
Pro-democracy protesters open umbrellas in central Hong Kong in October 2014. 

China's Communist authorities must consider their 1.3 billion citizens as exceptionally fragile souls, prone to having their feelings hurt at the smallest slight. 

Not only are Chinese restricted from openly saying what they want, they also must be protected from any form of offensive speech that might cause undue anxiety.
As anyone who deals with or lives in the realm of the Chinese Communist Party knows, "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people" has become the common admonition against transgressors, repeated countless times since the phrase first appeared in the Communist lexicon in 1959.
What is new is how Beijing's rulers seem intent on using the country's new economic clout to extend their protective bubble globally, blocking out any and all affronts to its people's tender sensibilities. No matter how trivial or unintended the perceived insult, offenders must be punished until they acquiesce, usually with a ritualistic kowtowing public apology.
This is China's version of "soft power" as the country prepares to supplant the U.S. as the world's largest economy -- using intimidation, threats and an iron fist in place of persuasion and leading by example.
Marriott International, the hotel group, learned this lesson when it sent out an innocent Mandarin-language questionnaire in January asking customers for their home residence, and listing Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as separate "countries."
Beijing was clearly not amused. 

The questionnaire was quickly amended, Marriott's CEO apologized profusely, and the company issued an eight-point "rectification plan" to prevent future missteps. 

But even that was not enough. 

Soon, China's internet trolls discovered that a Marriott employee had "liked" a Twitter post by the pro-independence Friends of Tibet," congratulating the hotel chain for listing Tibet as a country. 

The employee was duly sacked.
This was not an isolated case. 

Companies such as Delta Air Lines, German carmaker Audi and some two dozen other international businesses have been called out recently for "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people." 

The offenses included ill-advised maps and website drop-down menus that trampled Chinese sensibilities over territories it claims.
China's sensitivities are on increasingly open display. 

Australian media reported in January that a Taiwanese woman working in a hotpot restaurant in Sydney was fired after saying to her boss that Taiwan was not part of China. 

This comes after growing warnings from Australian academics that their freedom of speech was under increasing pressure, after incidents in which mainland Chinese students in their classrooms were found to be monitoring their teachers' statements for any sign of anti-China bias.
That iron fist from Beijing -- and the Communist leaders' desire to stifle free speech outside the mainland -- has extended to Hong Kong, ostensibly an autonomous region with a separate local government, which has come increasingly under Beijing's grip.
With the help of handpicked local minions, Beijing has decided that the question of Hong Kong independence is so sensitive that the mere discussion of the topic must be officially proscribed. Students in high schools and on university campuses are not supposed to talk about it. 

And candidates for local legislative seats have found now that they must face a new kind of loyalty test on the independence question, or find themselves barred from running for office.
A pro-democracy advocate named Agnes Chow Ting, who at 21 was hoping to become Hong Kong's youngest member of the legislative council, was unexpectedly banned from running in a March 11 by-election for an open seat. 

Her offense? 

er party, Demosisto, advocated "democratic self-determination" for Hong Kong -- which in Beijing's eyes is a code word for independence.
Two other young candidates, Ventus Lau Wing-hong and James Chan Kwok-keung, were also barred from standing. 

The Hong Kong Electoral Affairs Commission said the two harbored lingering pro-independence views based on their past statements. 

Both barred candidates said they no longer supported independence. 

But their reversals were apparently not sufficiently abject to satisfy China's new candidate vetting procedures.
The banning of candidates based solely on their views -- or on authorities' perception of their views -- marks a new blow to Hong Kong's freedoms, which have been steadily eroding since the former British colony was returned to China in 1997. 

Beijing's chosen Hong Kong leaders seem intent on purging from the political scene anyone associated with the 2014 pro-democracy protests known as the "Umbrella Movement." 

Some of the young protest leaders have been jailed though were recently freed on appeal.
In almost every case -- from the Marriott mishap to the culling of Hong Kong's candidate pool -- the key issue has been China's territorial "integrity", where the Communist leadership draws its firmest red line.
Perhaps the Mandarins running China became jittery over the U.K.'s "Brexit" vote to leave the European Union. 

Maybe they saw the recent unrest in Catalonia, where Spanish police used violence to try to prevent a separatist vote, as a cautionary reason to nip independence sentiment in the bud. 

Or perhaps the lesson was from East Timor, which voted for independence in a 1999 referendum to end 24 years of Indonesian occupation.
Territorial integrity is a sensitive issue for every country, not just China. 

The U.S. fought a bloody civil war that settled the question on whether American states could secede (the secessionists lost and the Union was preserved).
But the difference is that it is not a crime in America to simply discuss secession. 

There are even secessionist political parties, like the Texas Nationalist Movement, which advocates "Texit" and claims some 350,000 supporters. 

Hawaii has a small independence movement of natives still smarting over the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. 

Giving all these movements a voice seems to make them less relevant.
Maybe thick-skinned Americans are just not as sensitive as their Chinese counterparts, and their feelings not so easily hurt. 

And just maybe, China's rulers might one day learn that the easiest way to fuel support for any idea, no matter how far-fetched, is to try to ban any talk of it.

Hey Fat Pang – shut up, eat your egg-tarts, and go home!

By Frank Siu

Dear Lord Patten,
I used to like you. I really did. 

As someone in his mid-thirties now I had the joy of living in Hong Kong through your governorship, during the period I often call Hong Kong’s “golden years”. 

Generations of Hongkongers have immense admiration for you, even youngsters who grew up after the handover and know nothing of life in the last of Hong Kong’s colonial days. 

This page alone cannot do justice to your contributions to furthering democracy in this city, so I will not even try.
Comments made during your recent visit, however, leave me wondering whether a combination of too much time spent away from Hong Kong and possibly old age have eroded your conviction in the pro-democracy movement and diminished your understanding of the territory’s current state of affairs.
On multiple occasions, you seemingly went out of your way to denounce localist sentiments and calls for independence. 

You claimed to be a “huge admirer of China”, just not of the Chinese Communist Party. 

That’s very politically correct, and is precisely where you and a growing number of Hongkongers stop seeing eye-to-eye.
Unlike you, I thoroughly detest the People’s Re-Fucking of Chee-na, and much of what it has come to represent. 

It hurts me dearly to write such a thing, to explicitly label oneself as antagonistic towards one’s own ethnicity. 

Cast aside the nostalgia that is perhaps clouding your judgement, and take a good look at what integration with China has done to Hong Kong society. 

There is really not much to like, let alone admire.
Many of the social and economic grievances that have motivated the independence movement are not related to the CCP at all. 

Hong Kong is a cosmopolitan city that receives millions of foreign visitors each year, but the Chinese in particular strut around our streets shamelessly flaunting a profound sense of “entitlement”.
One need not cite the countless cases of visitors erupting into violent nationalistic diatribes when criticized for uncouth behavior. 

Or the recent drama of a tourist beating a local grandma so badly she developed walking and speech impediments, because of a verbal argument. 

Chinese students taking up our university places bring with them scholastic aptitude but also their mainland ethics (or lack thereof), turning innocuous student council elections into bribe-fests.
Meanwhile our non-elected SAR government kow-tows to Beijing’s every whim, never finding fault with anything that originates from north of Lo Wu. 

Riot police are deployed zealously to defend their right to shop in our city. 

Billions of taxpayer dollars that could have been spent on poverty relief, public housing, or education are instead poured into a lousy theme park with a decade-long money losing streak because our mainland compatriots want more Mickey Mouse and Iron Man. 

To top it off, every single day, ubiquitous food safety scandals in China inevitably trickle down to our dinner plates, whether it be recycled moon cake or toxic hairy crab.
Is it really so difficult to understand this resentment? 

Mind you, I haven’t even gotten to the part about China kidnapping our citizens, rigging our elections, and rewriting our textbooks.
You say independence is “delusional”. It is no more delusional than tolerating the status quo as sitting ducks until 2047 when the iron curtain falls. 

The backlash against China is rational and justified. 

Not because it makes for fiery, arousing speeches but because it actually resonates with people and their immediate concerns. 

Perhaps it is still a fringe movement, but the audience for pro-independence rhetoric and actions will only broaden with time. 

Association with the mainland has only brought Hong Kong the negative externalities that accompany China’s rise, the filth that results from half a century of cultural evolution without a soul or moral compass, and the sinister machinations of a country without any respect for civility and equality. 

Why not rid ourselves of this Sick Man of East Asia?
Barack Obama wrote a book entitled the “Audacity of Hope”. 

I will admit I never read the book but I admire the title, as it aptly sums up the case for independence. The notion of a Hong Kong civil society free from Chinese elements represents a glimmer of hope when all other avenues have failed. 

The activists you label “dishonest, dishonorable, and reckless” dare to believe in the possibility of something better, no matter how unrealistic or impractical it may seem now, or how overwhelming the odds. 

You question their “moral ground” but let me tell you, they care deeply about this city.
Maybe you will recall a Chinese-language public service announcement ad on television during the 1990s that began with “Hong Kong is not the most beautiful city in the world, but it is our home” (an imperfect translation; I never managed to catch the English version.)
At a time when social discourse in Hong Kong is hampered by feelings of helplessness and inequality, these people you attack have chosen to take a leap of faith. 

And so should you. 

Otherwise, grab some of those Tai Cheung egg tarts you fancy, and go home. 

You have done your bit for Hong Kong, and we are forever grateful. 

But your part in this tale is over.