Hong Kong’s Next Media founder Lai Chi-ying, a felon in chains, is taken to court for a hearing, highlighting the deterioration of the situation in Hong Kong, Dec. 12, 2020.
After an unrelenting and creative anti-Sino protest movement in 2019, Hong Kong will be hit in 2020 by a public health crisis brought on by the new coronavirus outbreak and the collapse of “one country, two systems” under the National Security Law. The once-vigorous protest movement gradually fell silent under the dual effects of the new coronavirus restrictions and the National Security Law, replaced by waves of police arrests of pro-democracy activists and court hearings and trials of protest participants. The promise of “one country, two systems” for 50 years has finally been torn away from the veil of hypocrisy, and the free port that was once the focus of the world’s attention is now in a state of panic. In 2020, Hong Kong is fast losing its unique status and becoming an ordinary city under Chinese sovereignty. It is also the year when this international city becomes the front line of confrontation between the Xi Jinping regime, determined to achieve a so-called national renaissance, and the US-led Western democratic world.
Free Space Tightens Across the Board
The most obvious difference between Hong Kong and mainland Chinese cities is the civil liberties it enjoys. This includes freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. However, all of this is changing at an accelerating pace.
On the first day of New Year 2020, tens of thousands of Hong Kong people took to the streets, as in previous years, to voice their demands for protest. According to organizers’ statistics, the number of rallies once again exceeded one million, just as the first million-man march on June 9 six months ago. the escalating violence of the anti-sending protest movement in 2019 over the amendment of the Hong Kong government’s Fugitive Offenders Ordinance has apparently not yet worn away the determination of Hong Kong people to fight for democracy. Although the amendment to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance has been withdrawn, the escalating police violence has left too much bitterness in the hearts of countless Hong Kong people day by day. The New Year’s Day march was held with the slogan “Don’t forget your promise, stand shoulder to shoulder”. However, the police dispersed the event before the end of the application period and arrested about 400 people.
It was the first and last major rally approved for Hong Kong people this year. Hong Kong was once the only city in China where the June 4 victims could be publicly commemorated. Since 1990, Hong Kong people have lit memorial candles in Victoria Park year after year, and in 2020, for the first time, Hong Kong police refused to approve a rally application on the grounds of epidemic prevention. The annual march organized by the Hong Kong Civil Human Rights Front on July 1, the anniversary of the handover of sovereignty, since 2003, was also denied approval for the first time.
Meanwhile, arrests and arraignments of protesters seem to be becoming the new norm in Hong Kong society. Wave after wave of Hong Kong people have been brought to court on various charges, including “unauthorized assembly,” and the news is dizzying. On Dec. 12, the image of media mogul and founder of the Next Media Group, 73-year-old Lai Chi-ying, appearing in court in chains like a felon, underscored the somber atmosphere in Hong Kong at this time. On this day, he was charged with “colluding with foreign countries or forces outside the country to endanger national security. The day before, 19-year-old Chung Han-lam, the convenor of the disbanded pro-independence group Students’ Motivation, was found guilty of insulting the national flag and unlawful assembly. On December 2, Huang Zhifeng, Zhou Ting, and Zheng Langyan, the youth leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, were sentenced to 7 to 13 and a half months in prison for “unauthorized assembly. Huang, 24, was sentenced for the fourth time for his participation in the protest movement. …… According to government figures, more than 10,000 Hong Kong people have been arrested since the start of the anti-China campaign last year, with more than 2,300 of them facing judicial prosecution.
There is an unprecedented slaughter of the speech space in Hong Kong. The slogan of the anti-Send-China movement, “Restoration of Hong Kong, Revolution of the Times,” and the song “May the Glory Return to Hong Kong” have become grounds for criminalization. On the eve of the enforcement of the National Security Law, protesters deleted their accounts and statements from the Internet; political parties formed after the Umbrella Movement announced their disbandment; public libraries even began to take down books by prominent democrats such as Huang Zhifeng …….
In the early morning of August 10, more than 100 police officers arrested Apple Daily founder Lai Chi-ying and entered the newspaper’s building for nearly nine hours. Before that, public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong‘s current affairs satire program “Headline News” was under pressure and decided in mid-May not to continue, and dropped some of its past controversial programs. A few months later, the station’s TV department’s “Clanging Collection” writer-director Choi Yuk-ling was arrested by police on Nov. 3 for her participation in an investigative program about the July 21 attack in Yuen Long during the anti-sending campaign. A year ago, on July 21, there was a serious violent incident at Yuen Long Station in which white men wielded sticks and beat people indiscriminately, and the police were slow to intervene, leading to public suspicion that the police were indulging in violence and even colluding with the triads. In early December, the pay-TV “Limited News” suddenly announced that it would lay off more than 40 employees on financial grounds. The award-winning investigative reporting team “News Stinger”, which had repeatedly touched on sensitive topics, was wiped out, and the China team was also affected. ……
On July 28, Dai Yaoting, an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong who launched the peaceful Occupy Central initiative for universal suffrage in 2013, was dismissed from his position by the university council. Earlier, Shao Jiazhen, a lecturer at Baptist University who was sentenced to prison for his participation in Occupy Central, was also told his contract would not be renewed ……
One country, two systems framework completely collapses
2020 is also the year in which the legislative mechanism that guarantees Hong Kong’s autonomy will completely collapse.
On May 22, the National People’s Congress (NPC) announced that a national security law for Hong Kong would be enacted, and on June 30, the NPC passed the relevant bill, which was immediately implemented and incorporated into the Hong Kong Basic Law. Throughout the process, the Legislative Council was completely excluded, and Chief Executive Carrie Lam herself seemed to be unaware of the contents of the bill until it was announced and implemented.
The Legislative Council was supposed to hold a general election vote on September 6. the results of the District Council elections in late November 2019 have increased the pro-democracy camp’s confidence in winning half of the seats in the new Legislative Council, and have made the Hong Kong government, and Beijing in particular, not uncommonly concerned about the changing pattern of political power in the Legislative Council. on July 11 and 12, the pro-democracy camp organized a primary election campaign for the Legislative Council elections, and over 600,000 Hong Kong people ignored the already effective and implemented More than 600,000 Hong Kong people defied the pressure of the National Security Law, which is already in force, and voted in the heat, which shows that Hong Kong people are looking forward to this election campaign. However, after announcing the rejection of 12 pan-democratic candidates one after another, the Election Committee, seemingly still worried about the difficulty of controlling the election results, announced on July 30 that it would postpone the voting campaign and extend the term of the current Legislative Council by one year, citing the epidemic. on November 11, the National People’s Congress authorized the Hong Kong government to revoke the qualifications of four pro-democracy legislators, on the grounds that they were considered “are not truly loyal to the HKSAR.” This decision was arguably the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Other pro-democracy legislators in the Legislative Council immediately resigned en masse in protest. There has been no more opposition voice in the Legislative Council since then, no different from the National People’s Congress, which only had a yes vote.
At this point, Chief Executive Carrie Lam was becoming more and more like a puppet with no way to move forward or backward. Faced with the rapid onset of the new coronavirus epidemic, she was slow to announce the closure of the border to mainland visitors, putting the Hong Kong medical system under great pressure. By the end of the year, Hong Kong was already facing the fourth wave of the epidemic. Hong Kong people have been complaining about the government’s delay in closing the border, while Beijing is unhappy with Hong Kong’s lack of prevention, which may lead to the epidemic hitting the mainland. In late August, 12 Hong Kong people attempting to smuggle themselves to Taiwan were intercepted by mainland police in Shenzhen waters and detained until now. detained to date. No one knows exactly in which waters and under what circumstances they were arrested. Their families in Hong Kong are not allowed to visit them, nor can they hire lawyers for them, and they have to let the authorities impose official lawyers on these Hong Kong people who have no knowledge of the judicial operation in the mainland. Carrie Lam’s inability to do anything about this sits at the heart of all the distrust that Hong Kong people have in 2019 about the amendments to the Hong Kong government’s fugitive offenders ordinance.
An independent judicial system is an important pillar of what makes Hong Kong what it is. In early September, the Hong Kong government and Beijing made a high-profile rebuttal to the “separation of powers” argument, and pro-Beijing forces began to campaign for judicial reform, highlighting the dilemma facing Hong Kong’s legal profession today. Authorizing the Hong Kong government to strip four legislators of their parliamentary seats, the government has completely ignored the judicial process in Hong Kong ……
Hong Kong: The Frontline of Dictatorship vs. Democracy
But Hong Kong is still not an ordinary Chinese city after all.
If the high degree of autonomy granted to Hong Kong by the Basic Law has been eroded in the 23 years since the transfer of autonomy, the passage and implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong has clearly declared that the framework of “one country, two systems” exists in name only. But “one country, two systems” for 50 years is an international commitment made by China within the framework of the Sino-British Joint Declaration reached in 1984. The passage of the National Security Law in Hong Kong has made it impossible for Western democracies to turn a blind eye to the situation in Hong Kong. In addition to the statement of condemnation, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Germany announced one after another the suspension of extradition agreements with Hong Kong, and France also announced the suspension of the approval of extradition procedures with Hong Kong; the United Kingdom introduced measures one after another to relax the entry and residence conditions of Hong Kong people. On July 1, the first day of the promulgation of the Hong Kong National Security Law, the U.S. Congress passed the Hong Kong Self-Government Act in the House and Senate one after another. At this point, the Trump administration had officially initiated steps to remove the special trade status granted to Hong Kong in 1992. A few days later, the Trump administration announced that since November 10 this year, all Hong Kong-made goods exported to the United States, the origin label must be marked “Made in China”, and no longer “Made in Hong Kong”. After some hesitation, the European Union announced a series of countermeasures on July 28. On the one hand, it is willing to provide more relaxed asylum and immigration policies for Hong Kong people, on the other hand, it also suggested that member states implement export controls on sensitive equipment and technology to Hong Kong. The Trump administration announced sanctions against seven senior Hong Kong government officials, including Chief Executive Carrie Lam, and four Chinese officials on Hong Kong-related matters, including Luo Huining, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in early August. On December 8, the U.S. government announced a new list of sanctions, with 14 Chinese vice president-level officials of the National People’s Congress (NPC) on the list. All 14 are NPC vice chairmen who are suspected of being involved in the NPC’s decision to disqualify four pro-democracy members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council ……
The Hong Kong of 2020 is accelerating its transformation into an ordinary city within the framework of China. Hong Kong was once the model for China’s economic takeoff and a window and bridge to the outside world, but against the backdrop of a world increasingly wary of China’s economic expansion, the authorities in Beijing are now pushing ahead with the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, seeing Shenzhen as a “major engine”. But while Hong Kong’s economic advantages may be fading, and Beijing’s tightening grip on the city has undoubtedly shaken business confidence in it, its status as a major Asian financial center does not seem to be easily replaced by Tokyo or Singapore, let alone Shenzhen or Shanghai. Now more and more Hong Kong people are leaving the city they have been defending for years and embarking on a journey of exile.
Under the pressure, the pro-democracy movement has undoubtedly reached a low point. But will Hong Kong people really give up the courage they have shown over the past few years to do something they know they cannot? Time will give the answer.
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