Hong Kong protests: The Taiwanese sending 2,000 gas masks

By Cindy Sui
Alex Ko holding a gas mask in a church storage room

Soft-spoken, bespectacled, and based 650km (400 miles) from Hong Kong, Alex Ko is far removed from the widespread protests sweeping the former British colony.
But he's exactly the kind of person China is worried about.
In recent weeks, when protesters were battling police on the streets of Hong Kong demanding universal suffrage, and their freedoms to be preserved by China, Mr Ko, 23, didn't just watch idly online.
He launched a donation drive for gas masks, air filters and helmets at his church.
He's since collected more than 2,000 sets of such gear, and sent them to Hong Kong protesters to protect them against tear gas regularly fired by the police.
"I've never been to Hong Kong, but I feel I have no reason not to care," he says.
"As a Christian, when we see people hurt and attacked, I feel we have to help them. [And] As a Taiwanese, I'm worried we may be next."
While Hong Kong is a former British colony that reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, Taiwan has been ruled separately since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

But Beijing sees the island as a province to be reunified with China one day -- by force if necessary.
Fears that China will one day control Taiwan, turning it into the next Hong Kong, have made Taiwan's government and people the strongest supporters of Hong Kong's protesters.
Taiwan's government has repeatedly urged Beijing and Hong Kong's authorities to respond positively to protesters' demand for democracy -- and fulfil their promises of maintaining freedoms and autonomy.
And Taiwanese people -- while previously more concerned about Hong Kong's Cantopop and dim sum -- have turned out in increasingly large numbers to show support for the anti-extradition-turned-pro-democracy movement.Around 300 students in Taipei formed a human chain to support the Hong Kong protesters in August

"Even though Taiwan is separated from China by the Taiwan Strait, our political status is not a Special Administrative Region like Hong Kong," Mr Ko says.
"We are not a part of China, it could invade us one day. By joining forces [with Hong Kong], we are stronger. One day we might need their help too."
Beijing meanwhile has accused Taiwan, along with the United States, of being "black hands" fomenting the protests.
While there's no evidence of Taiwan helping to organise or fund the protests at a state level, there has been contact between activists since Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement and Taiwan's Sunflower Movement in 2014. 

Both stemmed from fears of Beijing rolling back democracy in their respective societies.
Hong Kong democracy activists, such as Joshua Wong, have visited Taiwan to meet Taiwan's activists. 

The founding of Mr Wong's Demosisto party was reportedly inspired by Taiwan's New Power Party.
The recent storming and trashing of Hong Kong's parliament also mirrored a similar incident in Taipei, Taiwan's capital. 

And Taiwan's ruling party and an opposition party recently voiced support for granting asylum to Hong Kong protesters who need it.
This joining of hands by Hong Kong and Taiwan could mean double the trouble for Beijing. 

But not everyone thinks Taiwan will be the next Hong Kong.

"Taiwan has independence and democracy; what Hong Kong people are fighting for, we already have -- universal suffrage," says Yen Hsiao-lien, a retired lawyer.
Since the protests, President Tsai Ing-wen 's approval ratings have risen significantly.

President Tsai, from the pro-Taiwan independence ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is ahead of Han Kuo-yu from the opposition Kuomintang (KMT).
None of this is lost on Beijing, says academic Andy Chang.
Partly because of fears of President Tsai being re-elected, Beijing was willing to withdraw Hong Kong's extradition bill in early September when faced with large-scale protests, Mr Chang says.
"It [the Chinese government] doesn't want to give Tsai Ing-wen more advantage in the upcoming election," he says.
But China's leaders will only give in so much. 

They are more concerned about their biggest threat -- challenges to their power from within.
They think democracy movements could usurp their power or become tools for their rivals to oust them.
"They feel if they totally accept the protesters' demands, it will release the floodgates and make other places in the mainland become unstable. After all, the kid who cries gets candy," says Mr Chang.
"It doesn't want to show that people who use forceful methods to make their demands will get Beijing's support. This is totally different from how leaders in a democratic society think."
Increasingly, Beijing is taking action to discourage Taiwanese people from supporting their neighbour's fight for freedom and self-rule.

Lee Meng-chu, photographed in June 2019.

Recently, Chinese authorities arrested Taiwanese businessman Lee Meng-chu on suspicion of taking part in activities that threaten national security. 

Mr Lee's friends say he is an ordinary small trading company owner who simply visited Hong Kong protesters to cheer them up, two days before crossing the border into mainland China.
But, in a show of defiance, Taiwanese people have helped previously detained Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee raise money to reopen his Causeway Bay bookstore in Taipei.
His Hong Kong store sold politically sensitive books about Chinese leaders and mailed them to the mainland, which led to him and four colleagues to be detained in 2015. 

The store was later shut down. 

Mr Lam fled to Taiwan in April, because of the extradition bill.
In just the past week, Taiwanese donors helped him raise more than $5.4m Taiwanese dollars ($174,000; £140,000) in his crowdfunding campaign -- nearly double his funding goal.
Slowly but surely, the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan see their fate as tied.
They are the only two places in Greater China that have tasted freedom -- and some believe by joining forces, they could show the Chinese leadership and people how much democracy is worth fighting for.

China: A New World Order review – are we conniving with a genocidal dictatorship?

This documentary dared to do what politicians the world over would not, asking tough questions of Xi Jinping’s totalitarian rule 

By Stuart Jeffries

Is Xi Jinping ... creating a personality cult? 

The drink Mihrigul Tursun’s captors offered her was strangely cloudy. 

It resembled, she said, water after washing rice. 

After drinking it, the young mother recalled in China: A New World Order (BBC Two), her period stopped. 

“It didn’t come back until five months after I left prison. So my period stopped seven months in total. Now it’s back, but it’s abnormal.”
We never learned why Tursun was detained – along with an estimated one million other Uighurs of East Turkestan colony, in what the authorities euphemistically call re-education centres – but we heard clearly her claims of being tortured. 

“They cut off my hair and electrocuted my head,” Tursun said. 

“I couldn’t stand it any more. I can only say please just kill me.”
Instead of murdering one Uighur mother, China is attempting something worse – eliminating a people. 

“There’s a widely held misunderstanding that genocide is the scale of extermination of human beings,” said the former UN human rights envoy Ben Emmerson QC. 

“That’s not so. The question is: is there an intention to, if you like, wipe off the face of the Earth a distinct group, a nation, a people?” 

This, Emmerson and Barack Obama’s former CIA director Leon Panetta claimed, is what is happening to the Islamic people of East Turkestan. 

“This is a calculated social policy designed to eliminate the separate cultural, religious and ethnic identity of the Uighurs,” said Emmerson. 

“That’s a genocidal policy.”
Independently verifying Tursun’s treatment is scarcely possible, but this documentary heard claims of similar treatment in the colony.

A teacher and Communist party member told how she had been sent to teach Chinese at a detention camp for 2,500 Uighurs. 

She claimed not only to have heard detainees being tortured, but also to have learned from a nurse that women were given injections that had the same effect as the drink Tursun took. 

“They stop your periods and seriously affect reproductive organs,” she said.
What its critics call concentration camps, Beijing describes as “vocational education and training centres” resembling “boarding schools”. 

We cut to official footage of drawing, dancing and in one room a class singing in English “If you’re happy and you know it, shout ‘Yes sir!’” 

Which, while not proof of genocidal policy, was grim enough viewing.

But without doubt, since 2013 when Xi Jinping became president and there was an attack in Tiananmen Square in which Uighurs killed five people and injured 38, Beijing has cracked down on what it perceives as an Islamist threat from the province. 

That crackdown has included using smartphones and street cameras to create a surveillance state for Uighurs.
Should Britain roll out the red carpet to a country charged with crimes against humanity, of undermining freedom of speech and democracy in Hong Kong, of crushing freedom movements in Beijing, of – it was suggested here – creating a cult of personality around Xi the likes of which have not been seen since Chairman Mao? 

“Better we engage with them so we can influence them,” said the former chancellor George Osborne.
But does the UK have any influence? 

Certainly not as much as we did in in the 19th century when, instead of trying to charm them into trade deals, we militarily subdued the Chinese. 

“Very few countries have any leverage at all,” said Jeremy Hunt, the former foreign secretary. 

The rest of the world shrinks from criticising China’s human rights violations because we’re awed by its economic power and how we benefit from it, argued Panetta.
This first of a three-part series did what politicians dare not do, namely to raise hard questions, not just of Beijing, but of us. 

Are we so in thrall to consumerism, to buying cheap goods made by cheap labour in China, so intimidated by Chinese military and economic might, that we connive with what may well amount to a criminal dictatorship? 

The Chinese refer to the 19th century as the Century of Humiliation. 

Ours is becoming the Century of Moral Feebleness.
One day in 2015, while Xi was being charmed by the Queen and David Cameron, a bookseller from Hong Kong set off to see his girlfriend. 

Suddenly, Lam Wing-kee recalled, he was surrounded by 31 people. 

He spent the next five months in solitary confinement and was released only after he admitted to selling illegal books. 

“I am very remorseful,” he told his captors, clearly under duress. 

“I hope the Chinese government will be lenient to me.” 

The books he had mailed from his shop to customers in mainland China included those critical of the constitutional change that allows Xi to remain president for life.
Forget morality, it’s time for more cloudy drinks. 

While Lam Wing-kee sat in solitary, Cameron and Xi went to the pub for ye venerable nightmare of ye photo-op. 

Neither waited for their pints to settle, for clouds to resolve into clarity. 

Instead, both precipitately drank what, had the cameras not been there, I feel sure, neither would have touched. 

An emblem of Sino-British relations in the 21st century.

Freedom Fighter

Why Jimmy Lai is the only Hong Kong multi-millionaire standing up to China

By Jenni Marsh

Jimmy Lai met with US Vice President Mike Pence in July 2019.

Hong Kong --  Jimmy Lai has been a public target for decades.
It all started after the Hong Kong business tycoon — a refugee from China — reinvented himself in the mid-1990s as the founder of the city's provocative, anti-Beijing tabloid, Apple Daily.
One of the advertisements that introduced the newspaper to the world made Lai's point in the bluntest of ways: By showing Lai sitting in a dark warehouse with a red apple on his scalp, being pelted with incoming arrows fired by a shadowy figure.
Since then, Lai's role as one of Hong Kong's most prominent rabble-rousers has threatened his fortune, subjected him to death threats and made him a symbol of the city's tensions with communist China.
When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the city was guaranteed its own legal system and certain democratic freedoms until 2047, when it will likely return in total to Beijing. 

Over the past three months, millions have flooded Hong Kong's highways in marches against Beijing's aggressive encroachment on those treasured freedoms.
Apple Daily has become the city's biggest official champion of that movement. 

The newspaper of the protesters. 

Its front pages rally citizens to go out and march, it has given away posters to raise at demonstrations, and it regularly taunts the government for its failures.
In a town of tycoons, Lai is the only multi-millionaire who is prepared to openly jeopardize his fortune for Hong Kong's freedom. 

The 70-year-old is frequently seen at the marches, in the pouring rain or blazing summer heat.
To his supporters, Lai is a brave democracy fighter. 

But his detractors say that Lai and his muckraking publication are a black hand for the United States and cause chaos. 

In recent years, firebombs have been lobbed at his gated home, an obituary claiming he died from AIDS has run in a rival publication and Lai's political donations have subjected him to an anti-corruption case. 

Lai denied wrongdoing, and the case against him was ultimately dropped.
That Lai has ties with the United States is undeniable. 

Last month, he flew to Washington to discuss with US Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton how fundamental Hong Kong's freedom is to the US' standoff with China.
"The new Cold War is actually a rivalry of competing values," Lai says, framing the current US-China trade war as a standoff of between democracy and authoritarianism. 

"We in Hong Kong are fighting for the shared values of the US against China. We are fighting their war in the enemy camp."
It's a battle Lai says he's prepared to die for.

Chinese refugee
Lai had already led an extraordinary life by the time he founded Next Digital group, which owns Apple Daily, in the 1980s.
As the Great Chinese Famine gripped mainland China in 1960, Lai smuggled himself out of the southern mainland province of Guangdong and into Hong Kong in the bottom of a fishing boat. 

He arrived in the city at the age of 12 and dirt poor.
Lai says he became an odd jobs guy at a textile factory, making 60 Hong Kong dollars ($7) a month and living in an apartment with 10 others in the slum neighborhood of Sham Shui Po -- still one of Hong Kong's most impoverished districts.

The Hollywood Knitwear Factory in Kwun Tong in the 1970s when Hong Kong's textile industry was booming.

On his first day, he recalls how coworkers took him for breakfast. 

Relief from "the anxiety of hunger" was overwhelming, says Lai. 

"This freedom was the first feeling I had about Hong Kong and it never disappointed me," Lai says. "Never, until now."
After the Communists assumed power of China in 1949, Hong Kong's population swelled by 1,000 people a day during the 1950s as Chinese migrants flooded over the border. 

Most were "daring and entrepreneurial" survivors willing to take risks, Lai recalls. 

His twin sister was one of the so-called freedom swimmers, who literally swam from China to the city. 

She went on to become a major property developer in Canada.
"Hong Kong was a land of opportunity," Lai says of that era.
Within two decades, Lai had learned English, worked his way up the factory floor to the position of salesman and decided to start his own retail line. 

On one trip to New York during fabric sampling season, he bought a pizza. 

Written on the napkin was the name Giordano.
That became the name of his wildly successful, casual men's clothing chain, which made Lai his first fortune.
"I was stupid enough to think that if I called it Giordano, people would think that it's an Italian brand name," he says. 

It worked. 

By 1992, the group had 191 outlets, made 9 million garments annually and had a turnover of 1.6 billion Hong Kong dollars ($211 million).

Shoppers pass a Giordano retail store on a rainy day in Hong Kong, 22 March 2005.

"He's kind of a legend in terms of his business success," says Clement So, associate dean in the school of journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

"Not only for what he did in the news media but in other kinds of industry."
Business was booming, but two things happened in the late 1980s that would derail the course of Lai's life.
First, on June 4, 1989, tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square to disperse young pro-democracy protesters, changing China forever. 

Estimates of the death toll range from several hundred to thousands.
Lai says he wasn't political at the time, "but I always had a very strong yearning for freedom because of my experience in China."
Hong Kong was still under British rule but barreling towards reunification with China in 1997. 

As the city watched the Tiananmen crackdown in horror, Giordano began producing T-shirts with pro-student slogans.
Around the same time, Lai says he got divorced from his first wife. 

"I thought I was a very eligible guy," he says. 

"That was something shocking to me."
Shortly afterward, Lai was interviewed by local journalist Theresa Lai. 

The pair fell in love and married. 

Next, he became a media baron.

An Apple a day
Today Lai lives in a white, gated house in an upmarket nook of Kowloon. 

Security staff are stationed outside the property. 

Paparazzi from communist newspapers photograph all who leave and enter, putting pressure on Lai's personal life and looking for signs that he meets with pro-US figures.
Inside, melodious Chinese hwamei birds chirp in tall white cages, dramatic art works adorn the walls, while giant bromeliads and orchids brighten each corner. 

"I love flowers," says Lai, with intermittent clips of an upper-class British accent, as he enjoys a breakfast of strawberries and egg sandwiches served on china platters.
The figure he cuts at home, where he regularly hosts politicians, journalists and influential figures to discuss Hong Kong's democratic future -- or lack of it -- is in stark contrast to his reputation as a brash, instinct-driven, ex-factory manager whose formal education ended in primary school.
That public persona began in 1994, when Lai published an incendiary column in a magazine owned by his Next Digital group, describing then Chinese Premier Li Peng, known as the "butcher of Beijing" for his role in the Tiananmen crackdown, as "the son of a turtle's egg with zero IQ" — a profoundly offensive slur in Chinese.

Jimmy Lai with his Chinese-language Apple Daily newspaper which sparked a price war when it launched in 1995.

Beijing responded then as it might do now. 

It penalized his clothing business.
Lai says Giordano's licenses were revoked across much of mainland China. 

In 1994, Lai sold his stake in the company, and the following year he launched Apple Daily, with a 100 million Hong Kong dollar promotional campaign, two years before the British handed the city back to China.
"It's my nature to be a rebel -- to be a revolutionary," Lai says. 

"I express it in business. Whenever I am in business, I create something different from the norm. That's the reason why I have been successful more than other people. I don't believe in incremental improvement."
He applied the mass-market ethos of Giordano to his newspaper: It was low cost, populist and sensational. 

Modeled visually on USA Today, it "shook the media landscape in Hong Kong in a revolutionary way," says Clement So, the Chinese University of Hong Kong associate dean. 

The paper didn't care for balanced reporting: This was advocacy journalism, with a strong dose of saucy celebrity gossip.
On news stands, Lai sparked a citywide price war, virtually giving away the sensational title at two Hong Kong dollars (25 cents), the price vendors charged to sell it. 

"Other papers quickly imitated without much success," says So. 

"The style of writing, the use of big photos. The pagination. Everything. There was a term called 'Apple-ization.'"
The newspaper became the city's most-talked about outlet -- a reputation it has maintained through its pioneering Apple Extra platform, which controversially animates breaking news events from murders to protests. 

The publication also found big success in Taiwan, a self-governed Chinese democracy which Beijing claims as its own territory. 

"Apple Daily was very lucrative in the beginning," says Willy Lam, a professor in history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
By 2008, Lai was worth $1.2 billion, according to the Forbes rich list.

Jimmy Lai protests during 2014's Umbrella Movement for democracy in Hong Kong.

With other media moguls unwilling to risk the commercial fall out of facing off with Beijing post-1997, Apple Daily became the city's sole publication regularly criticizing China. 

"They were so afraid of the Communists, they left me an independent media market almost to myself," Lai says.
The paper's uncompromising stance coincided with swathes of Hong Kong's media becoming more pro-Beijing.

"Basically, today people choose their media depending on what is their political affiliation," says Michael Tien, a pro-Beijing lawmaker and fellow textile tycoon whose G2000 clothing chain has more than 700 outlets globally. 

Few Hong Kongers back Beijing. 

Many are pro-democracy. 

Supporters of democracy and freedom identify as "yellow ribbon."

Many make a point of defining themselves as Hong Kongers, to distinguish their identity from the Chinese living across the border.
For Lai, a Hong Konger is someone from a small Chinese island who shares the values of the West. "The Hong Kong identity this time ... has really emerged much more into our consciousness," he says. 

"We identify as Hong Konger like never before."
In early 2018, a 19-year-old Hong Kong resident allegedly killed his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan and returned to the city before being arrested. 

There was nothing Taiwanese police could do; Hong Kong had no extradition agreement with Taiwan, or any Chinese territory.
In March 2019, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam proposed a solution: an update to the city's fugitive laws that would allow criminals to be extradited to Taiwan -- and mainland China.
Lai was in the United States when the bill was announced and was warned by a US politician over breakfast about the danger it posed. 

"I really alerted myself," remembers Lai. 

"I looked at it again and said, 'Shit, this is horrible.' I knew it was going to be a big thing."
He was right. 

The bill ended up sparking nearly three months of often violent demonstrations in Hong Kong, with more than 800 mostly young people arrested on charges including "rioting". 

Protesters have paralyzed the city's airport on two occasions.
Speaking to Lai it seems that many of his defining moments were sparked by America. 

The name "Giordano" came from a New York pizza house napkin; when the brand initially struggled to make money, a trip to McDonald's inspired Lai to streamline its offerings, as the US burger chain had done; Apple Daily was modeled on the USA Today.
His top aide in Hong Kong, Mark Simon, is the son of a former CIA employee.
That last detail never fails to tantalize onlookers. 

For decades, one of the key charges against Lai has been that he is a CIA stooge, and the Apple Daily a tool of the United States.
Earlier this month, China's state-run media branded Lai and three other well-known pro-democracy figures in the city as Hong Kong's "Gang of Four" -- a reference to the group that tried to overthrow Mao Zedong and seize power from the Communist Party in the 1970s.
The People's Daily claimed Lai was part of a quartet of "secretive middlemen and modern traitors," as Beijing tried to blame the unrest in Hong Kong on foreign forces.
The pro-Beijing lawmaker Tien, for one, believes that Washington pumps money into Hong Kong's democracy movement to provide a "continuous force to destabilize China," although he admits he has no evidence to substantiate this claim.
Lai calls the idea of a US-funded color revolution "ridiculous."
"If the US is funding this the evidence would be so self-evident," he says. 

"You can't find even one person to stand up and say, 'Hey, I got money from the US.'"
But he does view Washington as a key ally for Hong Kong -- as that early warning on the extradition bill proved. 

When Lai returned from that trip, he began raising the alarm. 

Journalists at first weren't too ruffled, he says.

"Lam was flying high before this extradition law," says Lai. 

"Xi Jinping was taking her hand (at public events), she was walking in front with him, she really wanted to do something great for her boss. She knew this was a great opportunity. And actually it was almost. Because people really didn't pay attention to it at first."
But the business community was more alarmed. 

"All of them have had to pay something to get the protection of the people that control them in mainland China," says Lai. 

More than that, they understood the law could be used by Chinese contacts as a tool for blackmail; if a Chinese partner wanted to control their Hong Kong counterpart they could potentially report them to the authorities across the border, where there is a 99% conviction rate.
Opposition to the bill slowly mounted, starting with a march of 12,000 people on March 31, led by Lam Wing-kee, a bookseller who was kidnapped from Hong Kong by mainland Chinese agents in 2015, after selling tomes critical of Beijing. 
Lam steamed ahead.
The marches continued: 160,000 people, then 1 million. 

Still the bill remained set to go through the city's top legislative body, Legco, in early June. 

Finally an estimated 2 million people took to the streets on June 16. 

The bill was suspended, but it was too late to quell the anger it had stirred.
Tien concedes it's unlikely that Washington engineered a 2-million-man march, but as demonstrators increasingly wave American flags in the protests -- something Lai says is just a publicity play to attract international TV cameras -- the pro-Beijing politician wants an independent inquiry into whether the CIA is funding a color revolution in the city.
A senior US administration official has denied that Washington is sponsoring or inciting the demonstrations, and President Donald Trump also appeared to reject the suggestion last week, when he tweeted that "many are blaming me, and the United States, for the problems going on in Hong Kong. I can't imagine why?"

Freedom over fortune
Founding Apple Daily, and taking on Hong Kong's fight for democracy, gave Lai "a meaning in life that I never had" as a textile tycoon. 

"The mission," he says, "it has such a wonderful meaning."
The city's other tycoons have avoided wading into the crisis. 

"If you're a business person in Hong Kong, it is difficult to avoid the China market," says Lam, the history professor. 

"And once you are in the China market your investment becomes a hostage, which the Chinese government is never shy of using as a means to exert influence."
The closest that Hong Kong's richest man Li Ka-shing, who is worth over $31 billion according to Forbes, has got to commenting on the political crisis was publishing two cryptic messages in the many of the city's newspapers this month (Apple Daily wasn't one of them). 

The cryptic nature of his advice to exercise caution was unmistakable -- across the city, readers speculated about whether he was addressing the protesters or Beijing, or both.
"No other tycoon is willing to" be so outspoken against China as Lai, says Clement So, the Chinese University of Hong Kong professor. 

"That's what has made Lai so unique."
That outspokenness doesn't come without dangers.
In 2015, Molotov cocktails were hurled at the headquarters of Next Media and Lai's home in the early hours of the morning. 

"We're not shocked. Unfortunately, violence has become a regular feature of Hong Kong now in the political discourse. That's just a simple fact," Mark Simon, Lai's assistant, told CNN at the time.
Today, Lai has a personal security detail at his home, but the self-confessed troublemaker says he has never forgotten what it was like to be poor, and he has no intent on abandoning the masses in the crusade they share with him for democracy.
"The young people see no future for themselves -- everything is expensive," says Lai. 

"Even to live in a small room is too expensive for them." 

The land of opportunity that entrepreneurs like Lai and Li Ka-shing thrived in when they arrived in Hong Kong has long disappeared.
"With this extradition law people thought, Okay, that's the last straw, we have to fight. We have to fight in front of this last frontier," he says.
That fight might not be good for the finances of Apple Daily.
The extent of Lai's personal wealth today is unknown, but he fell off the Forbes Hong Kong Rich List in 2009. 

Big corporations with interests in mainland China, such as Cathay Pacific or Li's CK Hutchison Holdings, never advertise in Apple Daily. 

Hong Kong's previous chief executive, CY Leung, who the publication has long antagonized for his close ties to Beijing, regularly posts pictures on his Facebook page of companies that advertize in Apple Daily. 

"Apple Daily is public enemy number 1 for CY Leung," says Lam, the history professor.
Operating in this political landscape, coupled with a general decline in print sales and advertising, has squeezed Apple Daily financially. 

The newspaper's circulation is now 200,000 a day, two-thirds of what it was a decade ago, with 1.5 million readers online. 

Its daily ad revenue has halved over the past three years. 

Next Digital has posted a net loss for the past three years.
Earlier this year, the newspaper introduced a pay wall of three Hong Kong dollars for access until September. 

Next month, the publication is hoping that people will pay 50 Hong Kong dollars a month to subscribe.
"The timing is good for Apple Daily because people want news," says Clement So, the media expert. "Lai would like to get financial support from online readers, if he can do it would throw him a lifeline. But if not successful, it is a real worry whether he cannot sustain his operation in the long run."
Meanwhile, bootstrapping online outlets, such as Stand News and HKC News, are growing competitors in the pro-democracy space. 

By shooting chat shows on smartphones and employing a small staff, they keep overheads low enough to avoid needing Beijing-tied advertisers.

2047 on the horizon
To many, the year 2047, when Hong Kong will likely return to full Chinese rule,once felt like a futuristic date. 

But now that it is just 28 years away, it's something Hong Kongers can imagine in their lifetime. 

The fight for democracy has become more urgent, more controversial -- but potentially less achievable, as China's economic rise gives Beijing more political power to resist democracy.
"I don't know where (the protests are) going to end," Lai says, "but one thing I know, with the world watching over us ... I think Trump, the US, cannot back off (from supporting Hong Kong) now. They can only go further and further. Not financially, but politically and morally."
Earlier this month, Pence said that chances of a trade deal with China would diminish if Hong Kong's laws were violated by Beijing, and criticized the country's human rights violations as antithetical to American ideals. 

Trump also tweeted that Chinese dictator Xi Jingping should meet with protesters.
If mounting international pressure coincides with an economic slowdown and job losses, China could change, speculates Lai. 

"That doesn't mean that the Communist Party will collapse," he adds. 

"But it might mean that Xi would have to step down and a more liberal government will take over and slowly we will be on the right way." 

But there is no sign of this happening anytime soon.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong's economy is taking a hit across the tourism, aviation and retail sectors from the disruption. 

Michael Tien, the pro-Beijing lawmaker, says that sales for his retail business were down 40% in August. 

"Nobody feels good anymore to come out and consume," he says. 

The Hong Kong government has announced a $2.4 billion stimulus package to help the economy grow amid the unrest.
For Lai, if the financial hub's economy has to suffer for freedom, so be it: The prospect of a struggle doesn't give people "an excuse not to fight."
"If we fight, we might have a miracle happen," he says. 

"If we don't fight, we have to submit to the tyranny. I just think that if we have been able to eliminate slavery we have the ability to eliminate tyranny, too. That's hopeful."

Rogue Nation

How China Uses Forced Confessions as Propaganda Tool
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

BEIJING — In the unpolished video that appeared on state television one October morning in 2015, Wang Yu, one of China’s most prominent lawyers, denounces her own son.
While she was herself under arrest, the young man had been detained after leaving the country without permission or the proper papers. 

He first flew to the southern province of Yunnan and then rode on the back of a motorcycle into Myanmar, his movements captured on closed circuit cameras.
“I strongly condemn this type of behavior,” Ms. Wang says in a monotone, sitting inside a featureless room. 

“This kind of action is very risky and is illegal.”
It was all a lie, as her colleagues suspected when the video first aired.
Ms. Wang’s videotaped contrition was merely an example of how the Chinese authorities routinely coerce detainees into making statements that serve the government’s propaganda needs.
A human rights organization, Safeguard Defenders, has now detailed her case and others like it to draw attention to a practice it says violates fundamental due process and international legal standards — and to call out the media organizations in China and in Hong Kong that abet the practice by circulating the “confessions” and in some cases even participating in them.
Critics have long assumed these televised acts of confession and contrition were frauds. 

The organization’s report, released this week, analyzes 45 high-profile examples recorded and broadcast between July 2013 and February 2018.
More than half of them involved lawyers, journalists and others involved in promoting human rights in China. 

Many were shown “confessing” even though the formal legal proceedings against them had not yet begun, ignoring the presumption of innocence that is embedded even in Chinese law.
In 12 cases, the organization’s researchers interviewed those who were forced to record confessions, documenting in detail how the videos were carefully scripted and then broadcast.
What follows are examples of how the security forces use the confessions to demonstrate their raw jurisdictional power and to score propaganda points in an effort to deflect criticism at home and abroad. 

They ultimately show how powerless detainees are once they are swept into the Chinese legal system.
“I don’t expect everyone to understand,” Ms. Wang said, explaining the agonizing decision she made to agree to the interrogators’ demands in exchange for her release. 

“I just want to say that my son is everything to me. Perhaps I had no other choice.”

Confessions send a message
Lam Wing-kee was the manager of Causeway Bay Books in Hong Kong, a store that sold titles that displeased the authorities in Beijing. 

In 2015, he was arrested as he crossed the border from Hong Kong to the mainland, swept up in a series of cases against booksellers that continue to reverberate in Hong Kong, the special administrative region of China feeling the heavy hand of the central government.
Mr. Lam reappeared in February 2016 on Chinese television, where he “confessed” that his books — which included titillating descriptions of the private lives of Chinese leaders — were sensationalized and misleading.
In the report, Mr. Lam told researchers that he had to make a dozen recordings before those holding him were satisfied. 

He said they were made to seem like interviews and, in one case, a court proceeding, with a police officer posing as a witness. 

When Mr. Lam was released, he held an explosive news conference in Hong Kong, after which the authorities broadcast more recordings in an effort to embarrass him further.
Confessions are “much more than simple admissions of guilt,” the report said. 

They are meant as warnings to others who would challenge the state, and to discredit accusations of abuses of power by the Communist Party or the state security organs.
“China’s televised confessions are reminiscent of violent and degrading episodes of political persecution from history,” the report added, noting Stalin’s show trials and the public shaming sessions that were characteristic of China’s Cultural Revolution.

Deflecting international criticism
Gui Minhai, a Swedish citizen, was another of the booksellers caught up in the sweep in 2015. In his case, he was abducted from his vacation home in Thailand and returned to China. 

There he faced charges under mysterious circumstances that provoked international condemnation and the involvement of the government of Sweden.
Mr. Gui has since appeared in three recorded videos. 

In the first, he declared that he had returned voluntarily, which his relatives and colleagues strongly dispute.
The latest, shown in February, came after a bizarre turn of events. 

Mr. Gui, who was released from prison last year but kept under close scrutiny in the city of Ningbo, near Shanghai, was arrested in January aboard a train traveling to Beijing while he was accompanied by Swedish diplomats, who were ostensibly escorting him to medical treatment.
In a video broadcast on state television, Mr. Gui appeared tense, often pausing or repeating himself, saying that the Swedes were using him as a pawn. 

He was also shown being interviewed by the media in Hong Kong. 

The video here appeared on the website of The South China Morning Post. 

The newspaper faced criticism for its role but later said the interview was done without preconditions, with the "cooperation" of the authorities.
Mr. Gui’s daughter, Angela, who has campaigned for his release, told the report’s researchers that it was painful to watch. 

“It’s the kind of thing nobody should ever have to experience,” she said, “so there shouldn’t be words for it.”

Han Terrrorism

China detained bookseller Gui Minhai to stop him from telling his story
By Oliver Chou, Mimi Lau and Catherine Wong

China snatched a Swedish citizen and former Hong Kong-based bookseller to prevent him from telling his story before a trial over his alleged involvement in “illegal book trading” wraps up, his former employer said, citing a source.
Publisher Lau Tat-man, founder and chief editor of Ha Fai Yi Publication, where Gui Minhai was a freelance writer and editor for seven years, believes Gui’s dramatic arrest on Saturday at a train station near Beijing – under the watch of Swedish diplomatic staff – was a bid to stop him from leaving the country.
“The case of Causeway Bay Books has yet to be settled in an official trial, so Gui heading towards Beijing with Swedish diplomats could have been part a plan to get him out of the country,” Lau, citing a reliable source, told the South China Morning Post.
Gui was one of five people who went missing from 2015, all of whom were associated with the bookshop that released titles critical of Beijing. 

Gui was in Thailand when he disappeared for the first time, then resurfaced in custody across the border. 

He was freed from prison in October on a drink-driving charge.
Lau could not confirm whether Gui was released on the condition that he stay within the city of Ningbo, in Zhejiang, but he said “I’m sure there are conditions attached to his release”.
“Gui has stayed low-profile since his release in October and the only person he’s had contact with is a long-time acquaintance in Shanghai,” he said.
The European Union joined Sweden’s call on Wednesday for the immediate release of Gui, which Beijing said was “unreasonable”.
The missing booksellers case made international headlines at the time, and although not much had been heard about the booksellers recently until Gui was taken away on Saturday, Lau said the authorities had continued to keep him under tight surveillance.
“Lee Po has stayed quiet and Lui Por and Cheung Chi-ping are in their Shenzhen homes and are not free to travel – that shows the officials are still worried that these people will speak out like Lam Wing-kee did once they are set free,” he said, referring to the bookstore manager who revealed details of his detention on the mainland when he returned to Hong Kong.
Lau called on the Swedish government to take the lead for the West and stand firm on international law and human rights.
“Many Western countries have kowtowed to China because of economic gains – it’s time for the West to wake up,” he said.

Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström said on Tuesday that Gui “was at the time of his arrest in the company of diplomatic staff, who were providing consular help to a Swedish citizen in need of medical care”.
“This was perfectly in line with basic international rules giving us the right to provide our citizens with consular support,” she said in a statement.
“The Chinese authorities have assured us on numerous occasions that Mr Gui Minhai has been free since his release having served a sentence for a traffic-related offence, and that we can have any contact we wish with our fellow citizen.”
In Beijing on Wednesday, the European Union’s ambassador to China Hans Dietmar Schweisgut said the EU “fully supports” Sweden’s efforts to resolve the issue with China, Reuters reported.

Magnus Fiskesjö, an associate professor at Cornell University who was a Swedish diplomat in Beijing and has known Gui since the 1980s, said the incident was “not only wrong but also damaging to China’s international image”.
“When China disrespects our country by mistreating a citizen of ours, we have to stand up for our citizen – there is no other option for it,” he said.
“It has outraged people and goes beyond the bounds of international law in a repeated and offensive manner. When people hear about this news in Sweden, they feel that this is China bullying a small country like us.”
Fiskesjö said the Swedish embassy and consulates in China had sought access to Gui since 2015 on multiple occasions since he was first detained but “with long delays and long waits”.

Bookseller Gui Minhai 'half free' after being detained in China for two years

Hong Kong publisher who specialised in books about China’s political elite vanished from Thailand in 2015
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Earlier this week Chinese authorities claimed Gui had been released on 17 October although his daughter disputed that claim. 

A Swedish bookseller who spent more than two years in custody after his abduction by Chinese agents is now “half free”, a friend has claimed, amid suspicions he is still being held under guard by security officials in eastern China.
Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong-based publisher who specialised in books about China’s political elite, mysteriously vanished from his Thai holiday home in October 2015. 

He later reappeared in mainland China where he was imprisoned on charges relating to a deadly drunk-driving incident more than a decade earlier.
Gui’s disappearance – and that of four other booksellers, including one British citizen – was seen as part of a wider crackdown on Communist party opponents that has gripped China since Xi Jinping took power in 2012.
Details of Gui’s two-year detention have remained murky but he is understood to have been held for at least part of that time in the eastern port city of Ningbo. 

Earlier this week Chinese authorities claimed he had been released on 17 October, although Gui’s daughter, Angela, disputed that claim on Tuesday, telling the Guardian he had yet to contact her and appeared still to be in “some sort of custody”.
On Friday, after several days of uncertainty about Gui’s whereabouts, reports emerged that appeared to confirm his partial release.
Bei Ling, a Boston-based dissident writer and friend, said Gui was in Ningbo and living in rented accomodation. 

He said Gui held a 40-minute phone conversation with his daughter on Thursday night. 

However, Bei told the Hong Kong Free Press website that his friend was only “half free”.
Angela Gui told the Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK there were “many things that need to be clarified” about her father’s situation and declined to comment further. 

“She said she had received a phone call, but did not confirm it was from her father,” RTHK reported.
A spokesperson for Sweden’s foreign ministry said: “We have received reports from the Chinese authorities that Gui Minhai has been released and we’re doing our best to obtain more information.”
Activists suspect that rather than completely freeing Gui, Chinese authorities have moved him from a detention centre into what they call China’s “non-release release” system. 

Under this Kafka-esque system, regime opponents are nominally freed but in fact continue to live under the watch and guard of security agents.
“Non-release release” has been the fate of a number of those targeted as part of Xi’s campaign against human rights lawyers, which has seen some of the country’s leading civil rights attorneys spirited into secret detention before “reappearing” in a different form of captivity.
Bei told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post Gui had informed relatives he wanted to travel to Germany: “But for now, he is not sure if the Chinese authorities will allow him to leave China.
“He will only enjoy true freedom if he is allowed to leave China. If he cannot leave China, he could end up just like Liu Xia,” Bei added, referring to the wife of the late Nobel laureate who has also been living under the watch of security agents since her husband’s death in July.

Speaking on Tuesday, the bookseller’s daughter said she was deeply concerned about his wellbeing: “He has allegedly been released but it looks like he is still in some sort of custody... the fact that nobody can contact him and nobody knows where he is, legally constitutes an enforced disappearance, again.”

Exactly what happened to Gui and his bookselling colleagues and why they were targeted remains a mystery. 

However, in June last year, one of the other abducted men, Lam Wing-kee, claimed he had been kidnapped by Chinese special forces as part of a coordinated effort to silence criticism of China’s leadership.
Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based activist for Amnesty International who is following the case, said: “Definitely he is still under surveillance otherwise the whole thing wouldn’t be so mysterious.”
“We still need to see whether the authorities will allow him to go [to Germany] and it seems to me that he will still be under surveillance for some time before he is allowed to go.”
Poon said it was also unclear whether Chinese authorities had placed conditions on Gui’s release such as “not disclosing what happened to him during his time in detention [or] requiring him not to talk about his case when he leaves China”.

Rogue Nation: Where is Bookseller China ‘Released’?

The Chinese government has a history of lying about the condition of its political prisoners. 
www.hrw.org

Gui Minhai, the Swedish bookseller who was forcibly disappeared by the Chinese government in October 2015. 

Two years after Swedish national Gui Minhai vanished in Thailand on October 17, 2015, his whereabouts remain a mystery. 

Last week the Chinese government—which abducted Gui outside its borders and has detained him in China—told Swedish diplomats that Gui has been “released” after serving his sentence for an alleged traffic offense. 

Yet the Swedish authorities have not seen him, nor has his family. 

Gui may indeed have been freed – but until he is accounted for he remains forcibly disappeared.
Days after Gui’s “release,” a man claiming to be Gui called the Swedish Consulate in Shanghai, saying he would get in touch with them later because he wished to be with his sick mother. 

But Gui’s daughter says her grandmother is not ill, nor has she seen him.
Gui Minhai is the last of the five booksellers from Hong Kong Mighty Current Media who were abducted and detained in 2015 still missing. 

 One bookseller, Lam Wing-kee, revealed after his release that he was secretly detained and interrogated about the workings of the store, which sold books on the private lives of China’s top leaders.
The Chinese government has a history of lying about the condition of its political prisoners.

It claims that Liu Xia, the wife of late Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, is free, when the available information indicates otherwise. 

Twenty years after it took into custody the 6-year-old Panchen Lama—Tibet’s second most important religious figure—Beijing insists that he is “living a normal life.” 

Yet nobody else has seen or heard from him.
Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallström, tweeted this week that she welcomed the news of Gui’s release. 

But until Swedish authorities can fully ascertain that Gui has been unconditionally released—­that means a private visit—they should assume he remains disappeared and raise the matter directly with senior Chinese officials and in international forums.
This case has implications beyond one person’s freedom. 

The Chinese government has not only violated Gui Minhai’s fundamental human rights – it has done so across international borders. 

This should be a matter of grave concern not only for Sweden, but for all countries that care about the security of their citizens.

Hong Kong bookseller released by China is missing -- daughter

BBC News

Angela Gui said she was still waiting to hear from her father a week after his release

Sweden says its citizen Gui Minhai, one of the five jailed "Hong Kong booksellers", has been released from prison in China.
But Mr Gui's daughter, Angela, said no-one had seen him or spoken to him a week after his supposed release.
Mr Gui's Hong Kong publishing house sold books about the personal lives of China's political elite.
He disappeared in Thailand in October 2015 before mysteriously turning up in detention in mainland China.
Mr Gui was officially in prison after confessing to a fatal road accident which allegedly took place in 2003. 

His daughter says the confession was forced.
The four other members of the publishing company detained in China were previously released. Three remained silent about their detention.
But one, Lam Wing-kee, who has no family on mainland China, said the confessions shown on Chinese television were forced, read from a script written by Chinese officials.
He also alleged one of the men, Lee Bo, had been abducted from Hong Kong against his will.
Allegations that Mr Lee and Mr Gui were abducted across international borders in an extrajudicial process sparked international concern.
Chinese officials say he and the four other men detained all went to China voluntarily.

'No idea where'
On Tuesday, after Mr Gui's release was announced, his daughter Angela Gui said: "I still do not know where my father is."
A spokeswoman for the Swedish foreign ministry confirmed that information about Mr Gui's release had come from the Chinese authorities and said Sweden was seeking clarification.
No other official details were available.
Ms Gui, who lives in the UK, released a statement saying the Swedish embassy had been told, in advance that her father would be released on 17 October.
She said that when Swedish officials arrived on the morning of his release, they were told by prison officials that he had already left at midnight.
"They were also told that he was 'free to travel' and that they had no idea where he was," she added.
"Neither I nor any member of my family nor any of his friends have been contacted. It is still very unclear where he is. I am deeply concerned for his wellbeing."

Hong Kong pro-democracy July 1 march takes over streets on 20th anniversary of city’s handover

Thousands join annual march from Victoria Park, which kicked off a few hours after Xi Jinping ended his visit to the city, but rain causes cancellation of rally
By Ng Kang-chung, Emily Tsang, Rachel Blundy, Julia Hollingsworth, Elizabeth Cheung, Jane Li, Nikki Sun

The march marks the anniversary of the city’s handover to Chinese rule. 

Protesters were assaulted by police at July 1 march

Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters took part in a march on Saturday afternoon marking the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from British to Chinese rule.
Organisers said 60,000 had taken part, but the police estimate – which tends to be lower than organisers’ – was not available.
Au Nok-hin, convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front, which organises the annual march, conceded that turnout this year had been “lower that what we announced in the past few years”.
“But I appreciate those who took to the streets today as protesters nowadays are facing more risks than before, “ he said, adding that rain had affected turnout.
Au described the freedom of assembly in Hong Kong as being under threat, pointing to the detention of a dozen pro-democracy activists for staging a rally during the just-concluded three-day visit of Xi Jinping.
Bad weather was partly to blame for turnout not hitting the 100,000 predicted by organisers, who had to abort a planned public rally outside government headquarters at Tamar Park, the end of the route.
Rain-soaked marchers dispersed quickly after arriving, swamping the concourse of Admiralty MTR station. 

The last of the protesters reached Tamar at 7.10pm.
The 3km march started at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay.
Participants set off shortly after 3pm, two hours after Xi concluded his three-day visit to the city.
At 3.10pm, Lam Wing-kee, one of the five Causeway Bay booksellers controversially taken into mainland custody in 2015, made a speech on the stage.
Banners laid out for the pro-democracy march

A coalition of pro-Beijing groups also held events in the park, while other opponents of the pan-democrats swamped the alleys nearby, condemning the bloc and “anti-China elements”.
Au said more and more people were getting frustrated by the increasing influence of Beijing on the city, which is supposed to enjoy a high degree of autonomy.
Au said that growing concerns over jailed mainland dissident Liu Xiaobo and Beijing’s recent claim that the Sino-British Joint Declaration “no longer has any realistic meaning” could spark more people to take to the streets.
He was referring to the remarks of the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman who on Friday said the joint declaration of 1984 no longer had practical significance or binding force on Beijing.
Liu, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his writings promoting political reform in China, was recently granted parole to be treated for late-stage liver cancer.
The pro-democracy marches, which have been held annually on handover day since 1997, became increasingly significant in 2003 after half a million protesters came out against a government plan to introduce an antisubversion law.
Turnout was lowest in 2005 when only 21,000 people took part, according to the organisers.
The front had used pitches at Victoria Park, which can accommodate tens of thousands of people, as the starting point for marches since 2004.
But this year it was forced to kick things off on the park’s lawn, because the six football pitches were booked by the Hong Kong Celebrations Association, a group of about 40 pro-Beijing groups and business chambers.
Regular marchers looked confused by the switch when they entered the park as usual.
Volunteers and marshals soon directed them to make a 5-minute walk to the starting point.
Ms Kwan carried a sign with a message for the government. 

One of the marchers was 70-year-old poet Ms Kwan, who said she’d been going to the annual march since 1997.
“I don’t understand politics, and don’t really want to comment on it,” she said. 

“But how can I not come out, seeing my beloved city shrinking in terms of freedom of speech?”
She said it had taken her an hour to make the Chinese calligraphy board she carried, which had a message for the government.
“We are not begging for sympathy but seeking justice. One country, two systems has been cheating Hongkongers for 20 years,” one of the lines read.
Hongkonger Wong Ting-kwok, 67, said he had also been coming to the march for 20 years. 

He said he continued to come out every year to remind people that the mainland government made promises about the city’s autonomy, but he said the political situation was getting worse.
“In the beginning we did have hope for change,” he said, adding that those hopes had faded because of the situation on the mainland.

Isaac Cheng, of Demosisto, was also on the march.
He said he did not expect Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to do much for Hong Kong, saying she had achieved little in her previous political roles.
Isaac Cheng Ka-long, 17, who is a standing committee member for political party Demosisto, said he joined the pro-democracy movement a year ago because he wanted universal suffrage.
“When Hong Kong has a more democratic situation, everyone will be more willing to listen to the voices of our people,” he said. 

“Some people think we are just creating chaos for Hong Kong, but actually we are not. We want to gain universal suffrage.”

Singers Anthony Wong and Denise Ho were at the march.
There were also some famous faces on the route.
Well-known Canto-pop singer and democracy advocate Denise Ho Wan-sze said it was her sixth year of going to the march.
Also an LGBT rights campaigner, Ho said she had been trying to push the government to pass several bills on the issue since 2012, but with little progress.
“I wish Carrie Lam to bring some change to the situation, but it seems not very likely,” she said.
Ho was joined by 55-year-old singer Anthony Wong Yiu-Ming, also a vocal LGBT rights activist.
He said he had been disappointed by Xi’s visit.

Gregory Wong Chung-yiu.
“Xi only talked to those politicians from the establishment camp, and tycoons, but not those from the grassroots communities in Hong Kong. I was really disappointed by that,” he said.
And actor Gregory Wong Chung-yiu was seen at the end of the throng, at the junction of Hennessy Road and Fleming Road.
“I think the July 1 march is something Hongkongers should do,” he said.
“We just want to tell the others we want more self-determination. I hope the function of Legislative Council will not worsen.”
Mei Lee, 40, and administrative worker, and Leo Chim, who is 39 and works at a digital agency, are a married couple. 

They said they had been at the march for the past few years.
“Many Hong Kong people are tired of politics and think there’s no use in coming out today,” Chim said.
“The government is arranging other celebration events to cover our voice. Our voice will become smaller and smaller in the future.”

Perfidious Albion

Britain is looking away as China tramples on the freedom of Hong Kong – and my father

By Angela Gui

Angela Gui: ‘My father’s case is only one out of many that illustrate the death of the rule of law in Hong Kong.’ 

Iam too young to remember the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and its promise for the new world I would live in. 

But I have lived to see that promise trampled.
The Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed to pave the way for the handover, was supposed to protect the people of Hong Kong from Chinese interference in their society and markets until 2047. 

Yet as the handover’s 20th anniversary approaches, China muscles in where it promised to tread lightly while Britain avoids eye contact.

Gui Minhai: the strange disappearance of a publisher who riled China's elite
As Xi Jinping has consolidated his grip on Chinese politics since he took office in 2013, Beijing has increasingly ignored the principle of “one country, two systems” on which the handover was based and actively eroded the freedoms this was supposed to guarantee.
In October 2015, my father Gui Minhai and his four colleagues were targeted and abducted by the agents of the Chinese Communist party for their work as booksellers and publishers. 

My father – a Swedish citizen – was taken while on holiday in Thailand, in the same place we’d spent Christmas together the year before. 

He was last seen getting into a car with a Mandarin-speaking man who had waited for him outside his holiday apartment. 

Next, his friend and colleague Lee Bo was abducted from the Hong Kong warehouse of Causeway Bay Books, which they ran together. 

Lee Bo is legally British and, like any Hong Konger, his freedom of expression should have been protected by the terms of 1997.
Their only “crime” had been to publish and sell books that were critical of the central Chinese government. 

So paranoid is Beijing about its public image, that it chooses to carry out cross-border kidnappings over some books. 

Causeway Bay Books specialised in publications that were banned on the mainland but legal in Hong Kong. 

The store’s manager, Lam Wing-kee, who was taken when travelling to Shenzhen, has described Causeway Bay Books “a symbol of resistance”. 

In spite of Hong Kong’s legal freedoms of speech and of the press the store is now closed because all its people have been abducted or bullied away. 

Other Hong Kong booksellers are picking “politically sensitive” titles off their shelves in the fear that they may be next; the next brief headline, the next gap in a family like my own.
I continue to live with my father’s absence – his image, messages from his friends, the cause he has become. 

Turning 53 this year, he spent a second birthday in a Chinese prison. 

Soon he will have spent two years in detention without access to a lawyer, Swedish consular officials, or regular contact with his family.
My father’s case is only one of many that illustrate the death of the rule of law in Hong Kong. 

Earlier this year, Canadian businessman Xiao Jianhua – who had connections to the Chinese political elite – disappeared from a Hong Kong hotel and later resurfaced on the mainland. 

In last year’s legislative council elections, six candidates were barred from running because of their political stance. 

The two pro-independence candidates who did end up getting elected were prevented from taking office. 

If “intolerable political stance” is now a valid excuse for barring LegCo candidates, then it won’t be long before the entire Hong Kong government is reduced to a miniature version of China’s.
The Joint Declaration was meant to guarantee that no Hong Kong resident would have to fear a “midnight knock on the door”. 

The reality at present is that what happened to my father can happen to any Hong Kong resident the mainland authorities wish to silence or bring before their own system of “justice”. 

Twenty-one years ago, John Major pledged that Britain would continue to defend the freedoms granted to Hong Kong by the Joint Declaration against its autocratic neighbour. 

Today, instead of holding China to its agreement, Britain glances down at its shoes and mumbles about the importance of trade. 

It is as if the British government wants to forget all about the promise it made to the people of Hong Kong. 

But China’s crackdown on dissent has made it difficult for Hong Kongers to forget.
Theresa May often emphasises the importance of British values in her speeches. 

But Britain’s limpness over Hong Kong seems to demonstrate only how easily these values are compromised away. 

I worry about the global implications of China being allowed to just walk away from such an important treaty. 

And I worry that in the years to come, we will have many more Lee Bos and Gui Minhais, kidnapped and detained because their work facilitated free speech. 

Hong Kong’s last governor, Lord Patten, has repeatedly argued that human rights issues can be pushed without bad effects on trade. 

Germany, for example, has shown that this is entirely possible, with Angela Merkel often publicly criticising China’s human rights record. 

With a potentially hard Brexit around the bend, a much reduced Britain will need a world governed by the rule of law. 

How the government handles its responsibilities to Hong Kong will be decisive in shaping the international character of the country that a stand-alone Britain will become. 

I for one hope it will be a country that honours its commitments and that stands up to defend human rights.

Joshua Wong, the student who risked the wrath of Beijing: ‘It’s about turning the impossible into the possible’

He was still a geeky teenager when he led Hong Kong’s 2014 umbrella protests. Since then Beijing’s grip has tightened, but he’s not giving up the resistance

By Tania Branigan

Joshua Wong, Hong Kong activist and face of the umbrella movement.

Cometh the hour, cometh the boy. 

Very much a boy: 17 and looking even younger behind his black-rimmed spectacles, with baggy shorts accentuating his skinniness and shaggy hair in need of a trim. 

Bright, well-mannered and slightly geeky, everyone’s son was about to become an international celebrity.
In September 2014, an unprecedented wave of civil disobedience swept Hong Kong, with tens of thousands of people pouring on to the streets to call for democratic reforms. 

The shock wasn’t just seeing riot police deployed in the heart of a city regarded as apolitical, money-focused and essentially conservative. 

It was the numbers and sheer youth of these peaceful demonstrators, umbrellas held aloft to ward off teargas and pepper spray, as they confronted – peacefully, tidily and very, very politely – the wrath of Beijing.
The Face of Protest, in the words of Time’s cover, was teenager Joshua Wong. 

Fortune named him one of the world’s greatest leaders. 

It was the detention of Wong and other student protesters – for storming into the blocked-off government complex – that first brought sizeable crowds to the streets of Central district, and the heavy-handed response of police that catalysed that extraordinary, exhilarating moment known as the umbrella movement. 

But when I tracked him down after his release he dodged personal questions and, indeed, most others. He didn’t like the idea of movements getting hung up on stars.
Two-and-a-half years on, the battle has shifted from the streets to the polling booths. 

Wong, now 20, has co-founded a new party, Demosisto, and is studying for a politics degree, although, he says: “Sometimes it feels as if I major in activism and minor in university.” 

Earlier this month he was in Washington, testifying before the cameras to US senator Marco Rubio’s congressional-executive commission on China. 

When I meet him, in London, he is promoting the modestly titled Netflix documentary Joshua: Teenager vs Superpower. 

“Being famous is part of my job,” he suggests in the film. 

He’s even smartened up, with shorn hair and a rather dapper jacket.

Police fire teargas at pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong in September 2014. 

“We’re working on it,” says his friend and fellow Demosisto founder Nathan Law, with a grin. 

He means the makeover, but portrays Wong’s profile as a collective, pragmatic decision too: “It is always a team play ... What we wanted to project through Joshua’s story is that as long as the city is undemocratic, and there’s underprivilege, and people’s interests are neglected, we will keep going.”
Wong judges the documentary, which won a Sundance Audience award, “a good platform to get people internationally – especially people who watched the umbrella movement and have maybe forgotten it already – more interested in the situation. In 2014, of course, it wasn’t necessary to have much focus on myself ... It’s been really hard to maintain people’s interest.”

The upsurge of protest was, in a way, as surprising to Wong as anyone.
“At school, the teachers told us: Hong Kong people are economic animals, focused on investment and the stock market. There was a sense that business development was the most important thing,” he says.
He comes from a quiet, middle-class family, not especially political, although his parents are supportive and, because of their faith, encouraged him to take an interest in the city’s poor. 

“I’m a Christian and my motivation for joining activism is that I think we should be salt and light,” he says – the salt of the Earth and the light of the world – “but a lot of politicians in Hong Kong say they are guided by the Bible. I think it’s ridiculous: how can you say your judgment fully represents God?”
His moral seriousness helps to explain why, aged just 14, he co-founded a group called Scholarism to protest against national education, a “patriotic” curriculum that critics attacked as pro-Beijing brainwashing. 

The small bunch of schoolchildren sparked huge protests: Wong shot to local attention – and the government backed down. 

Then came the umbrella movement.
There are obvious parallels with youthful, social media-fuelled protests elsewhere, as the original name of Occupy Central suggests, but when I ask about his political inspirations, he dismisses the idea: “No. No,” he says at once.
Wariness probably plays a part; it would do them no favours to be seen as influenced by foreigners. But his explanation is pragmatic. 

There are things to be learned from other movements, he concedes – “strategy, dealing with pressure, dealing with people. But it’s hard to follow tactics because they’re a different generation and different circumstance. Martin Luther King and Gandhi emphasised civil disobedience; but in their context that was very different from Hong Kong in 2014.”

Wong (right) with Nathan Law.

Can young people fuming at Brexit or Donald Trump’s presidency learn anything from him?
“I’m not saying everyone should be Joshua Wong or follow my journey. But at least it proved that activism is not just related to experienced politicians or well-trained activists who have been working for NGOs; it can also be students and high-schoolers,” he says.

The comedown from his moment of glory was swift and harsh. 

The protests dragged on for 79 days, losing goodwill and producing no immediate result as the National Education protests had. 

Recriminations flew: the leaders were too radical; or not radical enough. 

Middle-aged Hong Kongers had voiced their shame that it took young people to spur them into protest. 

Now some began to see them as naive, almost accidental heroes.
More punishing was Beijing’s reaction. 

The trigger for the protests was electoral reform proposals; but the deeper impetus was pushing back against the rapid erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms. 

When Britain handed the territory back to China in 1997, the countries agreed that its way of life would continue unchanged for 50 years, with Hong Kong retaining a high degree of autonomy under the “one country, two systems” framework. 

Then, 2047 seemed a long way off. 

China needed to protect Hong Kong’s stability for the sake of its own economy, and might itself liberalise. 

Beijing promised universal suffrage. 

Wong, born the year before handover, will be 51 when the deal ends – but in Washington this month, he suggested it was already “one country, one and a half systems”. 

“China has betrayed the joint declaration,” he says.
Hong Kong is now trapped in an irresolvable contradiction. 

Many residents are staunchly pro-Beijing; and for an even larger tranche, the priority is stability. 

But the young generation, in particular, increasingly see their identity as “Hong Kong” rather than “Chinese”; chafe at Beijing’s dictates; and are pushing back to reassert the region’s autonomy. 

Every such move intensifies Beijing’s fears and tightens its grip. 

Hong Kong’s institutions – the media, judiciary, universities – have come under ever greater pressure since the umbrella movement. 

Most chillingly, in 2015, five booksellers known for provocative works on China’s leaders vanished – only to resurface on the mainland, in custody, over book smuggling. 

And with each move by Beijing, the antagonism increases.

Lam Wing-kee, one of the Hong Kong booksellers who was taken into custody in mainland China. 

In part, Wong’s fame always rested on its sheer implausibility, captured in the title of the documentary. 

But he is more than a symbol. 

He isn’t glamorous and is no dazzling orator. 

Yet he has a knack for saying just the right thing at the right time in a way that people relate to, and for seeing the broader picture: “One person, one vote is just the starting point for democracy. What I hope is that politics shouldn’t be dominated by the pro-Chinese elite; it should be related to everyone’s daily life,” he says.

His group has, on the whole astutely, weighed and responded to each political shift. 

They have not stopped working. 

And against the odds, they have notched up significant wins.
Last September, Law became Hong Kong’s youngest legislator at 23 (Wong was too young to stand). It proved they could do more than protest: these days, they talk about bus routes as well as democracy. 

It also proved that it was not just about Wong. 

But that victory, too, is in doubt: the government wants to disqualify Law and other young activist-legislators from straying from their oath of office. 

If the courts rule against him this month, he will not only lose his seat but go bankrupt, saddled with the government’s costs.
“As young activists the unique advantage is that we have less burden; we don’t need to worry so much about salary or managing the situation with families,” Wong says.
But the advantage is relative. 

The young activists have sharply curtailed their future career options. 

He and Law were convicted over their initial 2014 protest under unlawful assembly laws and there have been fresh arrests over the 2014 protests. 

Wong was detained for 12 hours while trying to enter Thailand, and he and Law have been attacked by pro-Beijing protesters.
“We expected that maybe in future we may be put in jail. But how it’s created a threat to daily life is not easy to handle,” he says. 

“If at 14 I could foresee my future and this kind of pressure – I think it would be hard for me [to commit to it].”
In the documentary, he admits to moments where he has wept and thought he couldn’t go on. 

But he insists he enjoys it too: “I think its valuable, even if sometimes it’s quite boring and exhausting. I’m working up to the second I go to sleep.”
Law says – with affection – that Wong is a robot, without a second life: “His growing-up time was in politics. All the thoughts in his mind, as a teenager, were about how to change society. He can’t drag himself away to private life.”

That sounds like fun for his girlfriend, I say. 

Wong looks embarrassed: “I met her in Scholarism. So she strongly supports this.” 

He still plays video games and goes to the movies, he says. 

But clearly not very often.

Wong (centre) in Hong Kong in October 2014, as thousands of pro-democracy supporters occupied the streets surrounding the financial district.

The truth is that they keep fighting, in part, because they are already down a path with very few exits: “If I continue with activism, maybe in 10 or 20 years it will be one country one system – and then I will have to leave Hong Kong. And I was born and live in Hong Kong and I really love Hong Kong,” he says.

“Since 2015, I’ve travelled to different places, and every time I just miss the food. The milk tea, the breakfast in the cha chaan teng [a kind of cheap local restaurant]. I love those things. I don’t know why people love fish and chips. At all. No idea.”
He is really exercised now: “Visiting New York and DC – having lunch with think-tank leaders and just grabbing a sandwich and a Coke, without any rice or hot food – why they can accept these things every day for their lunch I just don’t know. I love Hong Kong very much.”
It’s the most expansive he has been, which isn’t as incongruous as it sounds. 

The fuel for the umbrella movement was never detached idealism, but a visceral attachment to a way of life that Hong Kong’s residents see fast disappearing, thanks to the flood of mainland wealth and the surge in migration as well as Beijing’s political grip.
Critics say the movement accelerated the cycle of clampdown and pushback with its rejection of electoral reform proposals. 

Beijing offered one person, one vote – but only if the slate of candidates for chief executive was under its control. 

That was pointless, said the activists; it offered no meaningful choice.
“In the long term, the erosion of Hong Kong autonomy is a given,” says Steve Tsang, the head of the Soas China Institute, who was raised in Hong Kong. 

“The game is how you slow down and minimise that. You don’t do it by going to war with Beijing – because you can’t win. They would rather destroy Hong Kong.”
China is the world’s second-largest economy; the region is no longer economically indispensable. 

But 30 years are left on the agreement’s clock, and, as Tsang says, a lot could change in China in that time. 

Saying yes to electoral reform would have given residents some say and encouraged Beijing to ease up.

Demonstrators protest at Wong’s detention as he tried to enter Thailand last year. 

The counter view is that without resistance there is little cost to Beijing’s encroachments, and that Hong Kong was sleep walking into a wholly different future. 

Suzanne Pepper, a long-time Hong Kong resident and researcher, says the original – much older – conveners of the civil disobedience wanted a wake-up call for Beijing. 

It was the students who turned it into a wake-up call for Hong Kong.

Now, as the cycle continues, ever more radical voices are emerging. 

Talk of independence in Hong Kong was once the preserve of an extreme fringe; last year, a survey found 17% of residents wanted it – rising to 40% among 15-to-24-year-olds – though more than 80% judged it impossible. 

Demosisto says it wants self-determination; and that, of course, is just as unacceptable to Beijing.
They are, as Law says, “walking on a high wire, careful of every step”. 

They have dodged obvious traps: being pushed into more extreme positions, or, equally, being distracted into battles within pro-democracy ranks. 

Wong admits that decisions become harder as their influence grows, but is strikingly confident in his own judgment: “I still have strong beliefs and know what’s the next step.”
There have been potential missteps; Pepper says Wong’s testimony to Rubio’s committee makes it easier for opponents to push the idea that he is the dupe of hostile foreign forces. 

A pro-Beijing paper has attacked him as a “race traitor”. 

But they need to keep international attention and, says Wong, “Hong Kong is a global and open city. It’s normal to reach out ... We hope the international community will keep its eyes on Hong Kong and support this movement.”
That looks particularly optimistic given the UK’s reluctance to challenge China in any but the most muted way over the erosion of promises in the joint declaration. 

Hong Kong’s former governor Chris Patten warned recently that Britain was “selling its honour”. Wong says he has been shocked by its silence at critical moments and is scathing overall: “It just focuses on trade deals.”
And that, perhaps, is the subtext of the new documentary’s title. 

It’s not so much investing Wong with superhero status as asking why a bunch of teenagers and twentysomethings have been willing to confront the might of China, at considerable cost, while governments are craven. 

That question becomes all the more important as the 20th anniversary of the handover approaches this summer. 

Xi Jinping is expected to make his first visit to the region as Chinese president to mark it: another potential flashpoint.
Beijing’s grip is continuing to tighten and the outlook for activists is, on any rational reading, grim. But Wong sees that as an admission of defeat before the struggle has even begun. 

“Don’t be afraid or scared for the future of Hong Kong,” he insists. 

“My starting point was founding Scholarism: at that moment, I couldn’t expect 100,000 people in the streets. I couldn’t imagine the umbrella movement when it began. I couldn’t imagine Demosisto. It’s always about turning things that are impossible into the possible. The enjoyable moment is creating the miracle.”

• Joshua: Teenager vs Superpower is released on Netflix on 26 May.