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It happens in fits and starts, bursts of draconian repression punctuated by periods of deceptive calm. But the direction is clear: Hong Kong’s democratic scaffolding of civil society is dismantling with astonishing speed.
Make no mistake: Hong Kong was never a real democracy. The international treaty that framed its transfer from British colonial rule to Chinese sovereignty guaranteed the city’s rule of law and the protection of human rights. But embodied in the Hong Kong Basic Law, the constitution that sets the parameters for the city’s existence under Chinese rule, there were levers with which Beijing could exercise ultimate control.
For two decades, the city was suspended between the hope of a democratic reform that hung over their heads and the ominous potential of a total takeover by the authoritarian regime in Beijing. That takeover is now nearly complete, after Beijing effectively expelled all opposition from the city legislature.
Many steps have paved the way to where Hong Kong is now, where dissent has been essentially outlawed and all aspects of life are increasingly subject to state scrutiny and control. There are headlines like the expulsion of opposition lawmakers, the arrests of activists, the defamation of the press, and the use of history as a weapon. But fouling this path to lack of freedom are a number of less dramatic, though no less significant developments: banned slogans, censored songs, teachers fired, books removed, and spurious arrests on sham charges.
Over time, even seemingly small changes, such as a museum renovation, raise the fear that something will be lost forever.
In The power of the powerless, Czech writer and former president Václav Havel writes that one form of opposition is “living within the truth.” That may be the only avenue of opposition still available to Hong Kongers: clinging to their values and refusing to be sucked into the state’s all-encompassing edifice of repression, and the official version that nothing bad is happening and all. it’s happening. penalty fee.
