Hong Kong’s Muzzled Generation Cries Out

How China Silenced a Movement for Democracy—Until It Couldn’t Anymore
By Suzanne Sataline
Protesters demonstrate against the extradition bill in July 2019
As cars idled bumper to bumper on one of Hong Kong’s busiest highways, a gaggle of young people clad in black darted into traffic. 

Cars swerved. Buses braked. 

Hundreds, then thousands, of teens and 20-somethings flooded the streets, their yellow construction helmets bobbing past red Toyota taxis. 

Like nimble spiders, a few dozen men used plastic ties to knit metal stanchions into road barriers. 

On nearby roads, other crews did the same. 

In roughly 20 minutes, demonstrators had choked off Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, the city’s quasi-parliament, and ignited one of the largest protests since Britain returned this former colony to China in 1997.
On June 12, lawmakers were poised to debate a bill that would have allowed Hong Kong to extradite suspected criminals to mainland China. 

The city’s Beijing-backed chief executive, Carrie Lam, said the law would prevent fugitives from taking refuge in the territory. 

Her critics feared it would erode Hong Kong’s autonomy, enabling greater interference from Beijing. Under the draft version of the bill, virtually anyone in Hong Kong—business owners, religious figures, members of the political opposition—could be transferred to the People’s Republic, where they would face an opaque and politicized legal system notoriously heedless of due process. 

Chinese prosecutors could easily dredge up past infractions or craft new charges to ensnare businesspeople or dissidents.
For months, opposition to the bill had mounted. 

Its potential sweep galvanized lawyers, students, civil rights groups, and even businesses and some foreign governments. 

In April, an estimated 130,000 people marched against the draft law. 

By early June, when a vote seemed imminent, protest organizers claimed that more than a million people had mobilized. 

But June 12 was a turning point. 

In an afternoon that shocked the city, thousands of police officers in black riot helmets fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and bean bag rounds into the crowd. 

More than 80 people reported injuries; many of those who sought medical care were arrested at hospitals.
The brutal display hardened public opinion against Lam, eventually pushing her to offer a vaguely worded apology and indefinitely suspend the law. 

The following day, on June 16, an estimated two million protesters poured into the streets to demand that Lam permanently withdraw the bill. 

It was a stunning rebuke of Beijing and its acolytes in Hong Kong, but Lam and her backers stood firm. 

Although she promised not to reintroduce the bill until certain conflicts and concerns are addressed, she refused to kill it permanently.
Protests have continued since then, most recently on July 1, when thousands of demonstrators breached the legislature, smashing windows and destroying part of the building’s façade. 

At the forefront are angry and frightened young people, who in recent years have weathered an assault on their civil and political rights. 

For them, the extradition bill has become a symbol, not just of Beijing’s creeping authoritarianism but of a sustained, years-long campaign to silence their generation. 

“We know if the bill passed, that means our generation and the next generation will be affected,” said Simon, a 22-year-old undergraduate who joined hundreds of sweaty protesters outside the Legislative Council on June 12. 

His friend Alex, a recent graduate of Polytechnic University, added later by text: “The extradition bill is a war against the whole young generation.”

A WAR ON THE YOUTH
Hong Kong dangles off the southern coast of the world’s largest and mightiest one-party state. Through an arrangement known as “one country, two systems,” brokered between Britain and China as part of the territory’s transfer in 1997, Hong Kong is supposed to manage most of its internal affairs until 2047. 

The city has never been a democracy, but its mini-constitution enshrines expansive civil liberties—to congregate and publish, to seek office and speak out—that residents celebrate with zeal. 

In 2003, massive protests thwarted a national security law that would have introduced heavy penalties for subversion, treason, and sedition. 

Then in 2012, students boycotted classes to protest a so-called “patriotic and moral curriculum,” which critics said whitewashed the history of the Chinese Communist Party. 

The plan was eventually shelved. 

And every year on July 1, the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China, residents celebrate their right to complain and seek change by marching for all manner of causes and concerns—political, social, and environmental. 

The day is a cacophonous carnival of objections and pleas, a din heard rarely in Asia and nowhere else in China.
Still, Beijing enjoys outsized influence in Hong Kong. 

The majority of Legislative Council members side with the authoritarian state, and while the city’s chief executive is formally selected through a complex electoral college, informally, he or she is handpicked by Beijing. 

Over the years, China has repeatedly rebuffed Hong Kongers’ requests for universal suffrage and for an end to mainland meddling, most recently in 2014. 

That September, what started as a brief sit-in to demand full suffrage blossomed into a vast street occupation led by university students. 

By some estimates, the Umbrella Movement, so named for the protesters’ preferred defense against police pepper spray, drew hundreds of thousands of people. 

But the Hong Kong and Beijing governments conceded nothing.
Since then, Beijing and its allies in Hong Kong have waged an effective campaign to intimidate young protest leaders. 

Young people have been denied their rights to operate political parties and seek elective office. 

They have been targeted in political prosecutions, hounded by pro-Beijing media, and subjected to online hacks and other harassment. 

As a result, the number of young people who participated in politics, or even civic causes, dwindled in 2017 and 2018.
Many of those who remained engaged in politics grew more radicalized as a result. 

Out of the failed 2014 protests a new pro-democracy movement was born. 

Some of its followers called for complete independence from China and greater pride in Hong Kong’s culture and history. 

Many also denigrated mainland Chinese visitors and recent Hong Kong transplants who spoke Mandarin, giving the movement a populist tinge. 

Mainland officials and newspapers denounced the movement’s leaders as secessionists and accused them of committing treason.
Hong Kong’s government has worked hard to keep the independence idea out of the Legislative Council, where the public chooses half of the members. 

In 2016, the election bureau barred several young candidates from seeking office because of their pro-independence views. 

One was Edward Leung, a 25-year-old rising star who had won more than 66,000 votes in a previous by-election, making him the favorite in the general election. 

Like all prospective candidates that year, Leung was required to sign an official form—never before required—that called Hong Kong an “inalienable part of the People’s Republic of China.” 

The election officer doubted Leung’s sincerity, citing his posts on Facebook promoting self-rule, and disqualified him. 

Two other candidates from another pro-independence party, Baggio Leung and Yau Wei-ching, were permitted to run. 

But after they insulted China during the swearing-in ceremony, a judge barred them from taking their seats.
As the independence movement grew, and more young people identified themselves as Hong Kongers rather than Chinese, according to polls taken by the University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Program, Beijing took note. 

On a visit to Hong Kong on July 1, 2017, marking the 20th anniversary of the handover, Xi Jinping ordered the city to hew to the nation’s interests. 

“Any attempt to endanger China’s sovereignty and security, challenge the power of the central government … or use Hong Kong to carry out infiltration and sabotage activities against the mainland is an act that crosses the red line, and is absolutely impermissible,” he said.
Not long after, a Hong Kong judge expelled four more pro-democracy lawmakers from office on the pretense that the oaths they had sworn were insincere. 

In almost every case, the disqualified candidates were under 40. 

All had been harsh critics of Beijing. 

The following year, the government for the first time banned a political group, the Hong Kong National Party, whose central tenet was to work toward Hong Kong’s independence.
The campaign against young political activists continued in the courts. 

Since 2016, judges have convicted dozens of young people for protesting, rioting, and causing disorder. 

Justices on the Court of Final Appeals, Hong Kong’s highest court, ruled that any protest that results in injuries would not be considered an act of civil disobedience but, rather, a violent gathering whose organizers could be subject to prosecution. 

Edward Leung, the thwarted legislative nominee, was convicted in 2018 of rioting and hitting a police officer. 

He was sentenced to six years in a maximum-security prison. 

What seemed like a routine prosecution to discourage street brawls had morphed into a war on the next generation of leaders.

BACK TO THE STREETS
The pall of those depressing summers of 2017 and 2018 lasted well into this year. 

Most young people stopped attending large civic events. 

The student unions at several universities, long catalysts for local and anti-Beijing-related activism, couldn’t form cabinets because so few people were willing to lead. 

Many activists involved in previous campaigns worried that they might be arrested; some chose to enroll in graduate school overseas. 

Two of Leung’s party colleagues were granted refugee status in Germany, likely the first time that Hong Kong residents had ever been granted protection from their own government.
In this fragile, feeble moment for the pro-democracy movement, Lam pushed the rendition bill. 

A quick, clean vote of approval would signal to Xi that she had Hong Kong under control. 

When the business sector objected to the bill’s lack of human rights guarantees and long list of offenses, Lam tweaked the language and promised that only people accused of serious crimes would be extradited. 

Passage looked all but certain.
Then something unexpected happened. 

After a group of lawyers launched a campaign to delay the bill, the Internet suddenly blossomed with hundreds of online petitions. 

Everyone from alumni associations to mothers’ groups demanded that the bill be stopped. 

All at once, young people were engaged again. 

Political parties led by 20-somethings posted graphics explaining why the extradition law could be dangerous. 

Activists shared details about marches, tips on protective gear, and even hand gestures for communicating during standoffs with police. 

Leung’s former party, Hong Kong Indigenous, published an online booklet with tips in case of arrest.
Once the protests began in April, Hong Kong police seemed to focus primarily on stopping the city’s youngest strikers. 

After a mass march on June 9, officers singled out young people to search them for masks, goggles, and knives. 

The night before the June 12 protest at the legislature, police charged the administrator of a Telegram chat group with 20,000 members with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. 

“I never thought that just speaking on the internet, just sharing information, could be regarded as a speech crime,” the channel’s 22-year-old administrator, Ivan Ip, told The New York Times.
Democracy advocates in Hong Kong have long despised the Beijing government. 

But Lam and her administration have ensured that many residents now hate the city government as well. 

Since her halfhearted apology, young people have coalesced around four key demands: formally withdraw the extradition bill; retract the “riot” designation of the June 12 protest, which opened the door to more serious criminal prosecutions; release and drop all charges against those who were arrested; and establish an independent inquiry to probe the excessive force by police on June 12. 

A fifth demand is that Lam step down.
So far, all five demands remain unmet. 

While protesters have done their best to keep the pressure on the government, many quietly admit that they are grasping for ways to sustain the momentum. 

Without a clear leader, and with crowds destined to shrink, many worry that this protest movement could fizzle like many previous ones. 

The young people who continue to stage sudden, short-term occupations of government buildings are taking a significant risk. 

The fewer the protesters are in number, the more vulnerable they are to criminal prosecution. 

And yet the most energized among them don’t plan to back down. 

“Many of us are thinking that continuing the protest in Hong Kong will create a certain level of pressure on the Chinese government,” said Simon, the undergraduate. 

“If you’re not going to respond to us, we’ll try to stop the government from working.”

Last Hong Kong bookshop selling titles banned in China shuts

The People’s Bookshop shut its doors after pressure from the puppet government
By Carlotta Dotto in Hong Kong

The recently closed People Book Cafe in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay district, which sold books banned by the Communist Party of China. 

The last bookshop in Hong Kong selling titles banned by the Communist Party on the mainland has closed, marking the last chapter of the city’s historic independent publishing scene.
Human rights activists and publishers have raised grave concerns over the closure of the People’s Bookstore, a tiny shop in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay district, known to be the last source of literary contraband in the city, in the latest example of China’s tightening pressure over the city.
The Guardian spoke to locals familiar with the matter who believe bookseller Paul Tang closed the shop under pressure from the government. 

A frequent visitor of the shop, who preferred to remain anonymous, said the city “was once the place where mainland readers came looking for the truth. But today, you’re afraid to even mention these forbidden topics.”
Fears that Beijing has hardened its policy on freedom of speech were raised earlier this month when the Financial Times’ Asia news editor, Victor Mallet, had his visa effectively revoked and the pro-independence Hong Kong National party was banned.
The closure follows the disappearance and detention of five city booksellers in 2015, who were linked to the Mighty Current publishing house that produced critical books about China’s leadership.
Joshua Wong, one of the leaders of the 2014 Occupy Movement, told the Guardian the closure “marks the definitive proof of Hong Kong’s lack of freedom”.
Benedict Rogers, co-founder and chair of the NGO Hong Kong Watch, said: “Hong Kong used to be a window onto China, a sanctuary for books that tell the truth about the mainland. But freedom of expression and of the press have been significantly eroded in recent years, and the closure of bookshops selling banned books is a further example of this.”
The former British colony has preserved much of its autonomy since its return to Chinese rule in 1997, including its own laws on liberal publication rights. 

Several publishing houses and bookshops flourished selling works that a couple of miles away were forbidden, attracting buyers from all over the mainland.
Tang discovered the niche market in 2004 and the boom came right after. 

“It was a crazy time,” said the bookseller, who attracted mainland customers with a portrait of Mao at the entrance of his shop. 

“Publishers printed a title after the other, and we were selling a hundred books a day,” he said.

Hong Kong bookshops pull politically sensitive titles after publishers vanish

High on the best-seller list of forbidden books were taboo topics such as politics, religion, and sex. From the private life of Mao Zedong to the history of the cultural revolution, mainland customers could leaf through books supporting the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement or essays on the struggles within the Communist party, as well as bluer topics such as oral sex bibles and sadomasochism guides.
When the Chinese government increased its pressure, “the industry experienced a significant turndown and banned book are not published any more,” said Malinda Ye, Acquisition Editor at the Chinese University Press.
“This is a very worrying situation,” said Agnes Chow Ting, social activist and member of the pro-democracy party Demosisto, who was recently banned from running for Hong Kong’s legislative council. 

“A lot of chained bookstores and book publishers in Hong Kong are controlled by liaison office of the Chinese government,” she said.
The closure of the shop leaves Hong Kong with no outlet that challenges censorship. 

Albert Cheng, renowned Hong Kong political commentator, said the concern was that “the ‘one country, two systems’ principle will gradually fade, while Hong Kong will become simply another Chinese city.”

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.

Andy Chan Ho-tin: President Trump should target Hong Kong in trade war with China

• Andy Chan Ho-tin who advocates independence said the United States should extend its trade war with China to Hong Kong
• He says that could help Hong Kong preserve its autonomy and freedoms from communist China.

By Kelly Olsen

A Hong Kong politician wants the United States to sanction his city as part of its ongoing trade war with China in hopes of somehow achieving his dream of independence and democracy.
Analysts and investors largely agree that sounds far-fetched though some wouldn't completely rule it out.
Andy Chan Ho-tin, a member of the Hong Kong National Party, says China poses an increasing existential threat to local rights and freedoms since British colonial rule ended in 1997. 

He has become a local lightning rod, criticized by many Communists for advocating independence but also seen as a symbol of free speech after Chinese and Hong Kong officials called for a public address of his this week to be canceled.
In that address, he called for the U.S. to review legislation that governs its relations with the territory, condemn Hong Kong government officials for suppressing human rights and target mainland Chinese financial assets in Hong Kong.
"Think about how much more clout the U.S. would have on China if the current trade war extends to Hong Kong," he said Tuesday in the closely watched speech to the city's Foreign Correspondents' Club, adding that such a move could strike a real "economic blow" to Beijing.
"Many of the Chinese already store their actual capital here," Chan said.

While many analysts have expressed concern over the threat to Hong Kong posed in recent years by tighter Chinese control, experts deemed the city unlikely to play a role in the trade war.
"I think the Hong Kong issue is not something that is right up there on the Trump hit list," Tim Summers, a lecturer in Chinese studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told CNBC.
"The U.S. government's basic strategic interests are in Hong Kong continuing to be treated separate from the rest of China for all sorts of economic, financial, business reasons," he said. 

"And that's why these policy instruments are in place."

'Very strong'
The United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992 allows Hong Kong to be treated as a "non-sovereign entity distinct from China for the purposes of U.S. domestic law," according to a State Department report to Congress in May, which noted the U.S. "recognizes Hong Kong as a separate customs territory."
Victoria Tin-bor Hui, an associate professor in the political science department at the University of Notre Dame, said that "no one will want to predict what Donald Trump is likely or unlikely to do," but she stressed it is important to understand the context of Chan's view on the U.S.
Hui said it reflects opinion among Hong Kong "localists" who think more U.S. pressure on China could stem growing Chinese influence, which they see as problematic even if they don't seek independence.
"The only country on earth that has any leverage on China is the U.S.," she said, describing their thinking.
The U.S. does express concern about political developments in Hong Kong, such as in the May report, which said Chinese central government actions were "inconsistent" with its promises to uphold Hong Kong's autonomy.
But that State Department report described trade relations with Hong Kong as "very strong," saying that the biggest U.S. bilateral trade surplus in the world, at $34.5 billion, is with the territory.
David Roche, president and global strategist at research firm Independent Strategy, said any hope that Hong Kong will become a pawn in the broader U.S.-China conflict shows a lack of understanding about how such geopolitical conflicts play out.
"His idea that the U.S. is going to some way ride into the equation and take measures which in some way help Hong Kong independence, that is just not on — even from Trump," Roche said.
Richard Harris, chief executive at investment manager Port Shelter, echoed the sentiment that the chances are low, but said it's not inconceivable Hong Kong could, rhetorically at least, end up in Trump's cross hairs the more protracted the conflict becomes.
"For Hong Kong, especially, I think it would be very damaging," Harris said. 

"I mean, this is a city that depends on trade, so any impact on trade is going to be negative."

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."