---
title: "Hong Kong: Swallowed By the Chinese Dragon"
description: "The Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong has long been an anomaly within communist China. Designated as a functionally autonomous city, Hong Kong spent over two decades under the so-called \"One Country, Two Systems\" formula, a series of laws that kept China's political system and social authoritarianism largely out of this one small pocket of the country. From 1997 through the late 2010s, Hong Kong quite happily enjoyed its status as a global center of finance, and a bastion of capitalist enterprise. It was globally hailed as a moderating force on one of the world's most hardline communist regimes, a critical check and balance to a country that might otherwise have taken a sharper authoritarian turn long ago.\n\nBut all that changed in 2019, when a seemingly minor change in municipal law set off a powder keg inside the city. In a fast-growing, expansive series of protests, Hong Kong suddenly found itself in a battle for its own soul, battling against a central Chinese government that had finally lost patience with its freewheeling little sibling. And although the battles waged on Hong Kong's city streets were fierce, although Hong Kong and its people fought tooth-and-nail to preserve what they had…they lost.\n\nOn today's episode of Places, we'll be digging into Hong Kong's difficult regional history, its brief few years of triumph, and the story of how a city so globally vital could be swallowed up into the belly of the Chinese dragon.\n\n## Hong Kong's Golden Age\n\nHong Kong sits on the banks of the Pearl River estuary, surrounded to the east, west, and south by the South China Sea. On its northward side, it backs up on China's Guangdong Province, specifically the city of Shenzhen, China's third-most-advanced city behind Beijing and Shanghai. Hong Kong itself sprawls across Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon Peninsula, and a network of other small islands and pockets of mainland territory, for a total land area of a bit over one thousand square miles. The city is nestled into a landscape of hills and low mountains, blanketed in woodland and plains, and it boasts a thriving natural ecosystem even today. Hot and humid, with a long rainy season in the summertime, Hong Kong is every bit a tropical southeast-Asian city, choked with smog, haze, and well over seven million souls.\n\nThe city has been part of China for millennia, but its history as an independent entity began much later, when in 1841, Hong Kong Island was ceded to Great Britain at the end of the First Opium War. A few years later, the Second Opium War would see British-held Hong Kong only grow bigger, tacking on part of the Kowloon Peninsula and, in 1898, 235 nearby islands along with a patch of land called the New Territories. During the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Hong Kong would enjoy its status as a growing entrepreneurial and trade center in East Asia, with foreign money streaming into the city at high rates. The city endured four years of occupation under Imperial Japan from 1941 to 1945, being overwhelmed on the same day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. But after the war's end, Hong Kong enjoyed a steady stream of incoming migrants fleeing the Chinese Civil War, and its population boom led to major infrastructural and anti-corruption initiatives that set Hong Kong apart as a thriving, modern city of the times.\n\nIn these decades of industrial expansion, Hong Kong led the way for the so-called Four Asian Tigers, alongside Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Amidst an economic boom, the city became highly competitive as a global manufacturing player, before eventually transitioning into a new role as a financial hub in the 1990s, after rising costs pushed heavy industry elsewhere. In those same years, the city was a focal point for ongoing political discontent, as something of a contested territory around the question of mainland China and Taiwan, and questions about Hong Kong's own future outside its status as a British protectorate were equally relevant. Peaceful protest became a frequent instrument for Hong Kong's population to express their will en masse, marked by occasional, but brutal massacres when protest turned to riot.\n\nIn 1997, Britain's lease of Hong Kong formally expired, after over a decade of advance work that was meant to try and smooth the process between the British and the Chinese. China had agreed to become signatory to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which China pledged to preserve Hong Kong's political and economic autonomy for another fifty years, but even before the 1997 transfer of authority took place, the people of Hong Kong openly expected a double-cross. The 1990s saw mass groups of people leave Hong Kong in anticipation of broad and potentially violent crackdowns, and the territory was forced, for a time, to be administrated by a British governor named Christopher Patten, whose rather imperialist style of rule and his clear, rather open contempt for China raised fears of a backlash when China did take command. Things only got worse following the transfer; from 1997 to 2003, Hong Kong weathered the Asian financial crisis, an outbreak of avian flu, a crash of the housing market, and a SARS epidemic and a resulting economic slump.\n\nBut in the early years under Chinese rule, the anticipated crackdowns ended up being substantially less severe than Hong Kong's people had initially feared. The \"One Country, Two Systems\" policy that China went with, allowing Hong Kong to retain most of its autonomy, had actually been offered to Taiwan all the way back in 1979, in a pitch by then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping to bring back the Republic of China under the CCP's leadership. When that was unsuccessful, he'd pivoted that concept to Hong Kong, probably hoping to take advantage of an opportunity to model just how forgiving China was willing to be. It's a fairly simple idea: show leniency in Hong Kong, and hope that Taiwan becomes a bit less hesitant. Of course, we could sit here and poke holes in that logic all day; after all, it's not exactly difficult to put on a friendly face until both Hong Kong and Taiwan are under the CCP's control, and then lock both territories down with all the brutality Hong Kong's expatriates were scared of. But with Taiwan still strongly against coming to the negotiation table, Hong Kong was poised to spend years, and perhaps even decades, living under the CCP's leniency in order to convey a positive message.\n\nThat show of surprising tolerance, plus the added benefit of finally being rid of the British, contributed to a transition that was, in some circles, even taken favorably by the people who chose to remain in Hong Kong. As American investment banker William Overholt, who worked as a strategist in Hong Kong during the transition, described it: \"Local celebrations of the handover were among the best parties I have ever attended. People considered it a wonderful omen when rain drenched the ceremony on the last day of British rule but sunshine brightened the first day of Chinese rule.\" As Overholt described, the city's elite spent little time talking about ideas like independence or fully autonomous self-rule, preferring instead to focus on preserving the city's economic power during the tumult and trials of early Chinese rule.\n\nNow, even from the start of Hong Kong's status as a Chinese special administrative zone, it was clear that China wasn't exactly falling over itself to make all of Hong Kong's dreams come true. China's interpretation of vaguely written laws around the city's governance, and its own vague pledges to guarantee democratic principles of self-administration, weren't ignored, but they were followed in a very literal sense, with China making it fairly clear that they intended to interpret their own writings in a way that served the CCP without going outside the language they'd used. It didn't take long for these emerging patterns to start tempering the enthusiasm Hong Kong's citizens had felt at the beginning of Chinese rule, and while their goodwill didn't exactly turn into outright animosity, the goodwill itself didn't last.\n\nBy 2003, it was time for the CCP to rotate out its uppermost leadership, with Vice President Hu Jintao moving into the presidency. Hu Jintao had made his mark in the preceding years with crackdowns on Tibetan separatist movements and civilian dissenters, and he took the same tack with Hong Kong. But in the city, the \"dissent\" that Hu Jintao was so worried about mostly took the form of neat, orderly protests, ones that very rarely spiraled into anything more menacing than a stroll through a few city squares. Paranoid and touchy after dealing with separatism in the western provinces, the CCP interpreted Hong Kong's calls for increased democratization as a precursor to independence movements that simply didn't exist, and had a tendency to interpret the presence of strongly anti-China, niche political leaders in Hong Kong as an expression of the will of the average person there, instead of the fringe outliers they were. This basic lack of understanding of one of China's own territories inhibited the CCP's ability to effectively administer to Hong Kong, and the regime under Hu Jintao took no steps to rectify the situation. No committees were formed, nobody from Jintao's innermost circle came to tour the city or speak to its people, and when pro-democracy groups in the US became more active in amplifying anti-China voices in Hong Kong, often without the approval of the US government, China interpreted their involvement as an attempt to spark Tiananmen Square-style protests in Hong Kong.\n\nThese tensions all came to a head when a legislative proposal to implement so-called \"anti-subversion laws\" was introduced to the Chinese government for review. The legislation addressed a part of Hong Kong's constitution, the Basic Law, called Article 23, which is going to become very important over the rest of this story. Under Article 23, Hong Kong had agreed to enforce a series of internal laws that criminalized acts of treason, sedition, and secession against China's central government in Beijing, but in a practical sense, those commitments had gone mostly unfulfilled. The introduction of the new law, set forth in the summer of 2003, was met with immediate backlash in Hong Kong, and after half a million people took to the streets in protest, the proposal was shelved.\n\nBut even after that particular issue was dealt with, the people of Hong Kong were gearing up for broader initiatives to push back against China's perceived overreach into their territory. As the city's economy bounced back from its tough last few years, and Hong Kong's economy became more intertwined with that of China writ large, especially nearby Shenzhen, Hong Kong's political sphere began to call more and more loudly, more and more frequently, for democratic reforms. For a while, these protests were successful; Hong Kong's Legislative Council, or LegCo, was modified so that a full half of its seats were dedicated to elected representatives from geographic areas of the city, even though its other half was still selected from businesses and other economic sectors. In 2006, pro-democracy rallies in the city attracted tens of thousands of people, this time advocating a transition to full democracy, and when the then-leader of Hong Kong, Donald Tsang, was reelected a year later, he announced his own plan to push for a full, democratizing overhaul for the territory.\n\nNow, we've got to take a moment and examine exactly what was going on during this time, because for all Donald Tsang's talk of democratization, he actually wasn't an opposition candidate. He was selected by an electoral college that was made up of predominantly pro-Beijing electors, beating out a challenger who had been seen as even more pro-democracy, and while Tsang's commitments were, indeed, in favor of broader democratization, it was a sort of democratization that came with the express approval of the CCP. Tsang's job was to walk a tightrope, feeding Hong Kong's pro-autonomy political majority, while reconciling their wishes with the demands of Beijing and its representatives inside the city. Tsang made pledges to bring Hong Kong toward universal suffrage, he pushed toward full constitutional development, and he urged infrastructural and educational advancements along with initiatives to help low-income families. All things considered, Tsang appeared to be a promising candidate to move Hong Kong forward, and potentially improve the tenuous balance that had kept the city afloat so far.\n\nWith Tsang's arrival came good news from Beijing: in addition to the presence of this mutually agreeable leader, Hong Kong was to be granted the power to choose its own leader, rather than have its leader chosen by Beijing's handpicked electoral college, in 2017, ten years after the announcement was issued. So, too, would they get a fully self-elected legislature three years later, in 2020. A year after that 2007 announcement, Hong Kong's pro-democracy parties picked up enough seats in the territory's Legislative Council to grant themselves veto power, meaning that actively repressive legislation proposed by Beijing probably wouldn't get through. For a few years, Hong Kong was able to enjoy its status as a growing bastion of East Asian democracy; they hosted major sporting events in 2008 and 2009, including some events for the Olympics, and its financial sector, its construction sector, and its tourism sector all enjoyed a major boom.\n\nBut before long, civil unrest would grip Hong Kong again, when in 2012, the Hong Kong Education Bureau issued a proposal that pretty clearly seemed to come from Beijing. What they proposed was a new, mandatory class that was to be taken by every child enrolled in Hong Kong's public schools: Moral and National Education. Now, here in the 2020s, we're more than familiar with other, similar initiatives by the Chinese government: social credit scores, and all that. But they weren't so familiar at the time, and they sounded no less like indoctrination back in 2012 than they do now. The proposal prompted mass protests across Hong Kong, in response to curricula that would praise and whitewash what the CCP considered to be its highest achievement, and contrast them to systems of multi-party rule like the US or, well, Hong Kong, which would be derided as inferior forms of governance. The Communist Party was to be described as \"progressive, selfless, and united\", and the many failings of China's Cultural Revolution would be glossed over or ignored outright. Hong Kong's teachers and parents took particular umbrage to the concept, condemning it outright as an attempt at brainwashing—and to be fair, that term wasn't even all theirs. In the words of one member of the pro-CCP China Civic Education Promotion Association in Hong Kong, \"A brain needs washing if there is a problem, just as clothes need washing if they're dirty, and a kidney needs washing if it's sick\". Firstly, wow, and secondly, statements like that didn't help Beijing's case. Before long, the people of Hong Kong were successful: the proposal was dropped and the curriculum was made optional for the city's schools.\n\nBut two years later, and utterly unsurprisingly, Beijing was at it again. If you remember back to that promise we described a moment ago, that starting in 2017 Hong Kong would be able to elect its own leader…well, that promise was taken back in August of 2014, when the CCP declared a return to their prior expectation that only Beijing-backed candidates would be eligible to fill Hong Kong's top post. By now, it really should not be a surprise that Hong Kong's answer was, again, mass protest, this time in the form of the Umbrella Movement. In this particular show of strength, protesters—predominantly students—shut down government buildings, financial districts, and major roads across the city, carrying umbrellas to protect themselves from police pepper spray. In typical fashion, these protests were meant to appear exceedingly nonviolent; protesters made a habit of distributing free food and water to everyone who was participating, and keeping up with their studies and Hong Kong's recycling policies even as they took to the streets. But this time, the protesters struggled to settle on any sort of alternative to propose to Beijing—and with nothing to discuss, Beijing was all too happy to sit back and wait the protesters out. Eventually, students had to start going back to school, other protesters had to return to work, and the city grew frustrated with the economic and traffic disruptions the Umbrella Movement were causing. Seventy-nine days after the protests began, the Hong Kong police took action to remove the last protesters who remained, putting an end to the first big Hong Kong protest to basically fail outright.\n\nPerhaps it was that last fact that emboldened Beijing—that they'd proven to themselves that they could rely upon inaction long enough that all these nuisance protests would simply peter out on their own, instead of intensifying with time. When it came time for another back-and-forth with Hong Kong's citizens, this time in 2016, Beijing was eager to test that theory. In 2016, the issue at hand was unlicensed food vendors in Hong Kong, specifically people selling a snack called fishballs in the district of Mong Kok. When Beijing-backed authorities entered the district to shut down vendors who didn't have approval from the government to operate, basically on grounds of health and sanitation, it quickly turned from a dispute about snack foods into one about Hong Kong's identity—similar to trying to take Philly cheesesteaks out of Philadelphia, or take poutine out of Quebec, or, well, take all the palatable foreign food out of London. But this time, police fired warning shots at protesters, further inflaming tensions, and the situation began to get more violent than what Hong Kong had seen in recent years.\n\nBefore long, these protests morphed into a platform for Hong Kong's so-called \"localists\"—people who advocated for an expansion of Hong Kong's autonomy, or even pursuit of formal independence from China. In August of that same year, the people of Hong Kong rallied under explicit calls for independence for the first time, something that had been brewing since the Umbrella Revolution had gone south. The rallies had been set off when the city's pro-Beijing electoral commission had banned six pro-independence candidates from running for election, a reflection of the fact that all sides, including Beijing, could feel the independence question hanging heavier and heavier in the air. But they also represented a changing reality for Hong Kong: that peaceful protest was not the instrument of change that it once was, and that if Beijing was going to start tightening its grip, then Hong Kong would have to really start fighting for air.\n\nIn the years from 2017 to 2019, both sides would ratchet up the pressure, with Hong Kong's calls for independence, and the proportion of Hong Kongers who supported those calls, both swelling rapidly. At Hong Kong's annual memorials for the Tiananmen Square massacre, the only such memorials that were allowed to take place in all of China, attendance went through the roof. In response, the Beijing-backed government criminalized the Hong Kong National Party, which had previously been a major voice for independence. The international community began to take notice; in one unprecedented step, two political activists from Hong Kong were granted refugee status in Germany, implicitly acknowledging that political freedom in the city was not what it once had been. Back in Hong Kong, several booksellers who'd stocked anti-CCP content were disappeared, and a well-regarded foreign journalist, Victor Mallet, was even asked to leave the territory after chairing a talk with the Hong Kong National Party's founder. Compared to what citizens in mainland China faced, this was still, by all accounts, fairly mild treatment…but for Hong Kong, it was getting to be time to really be concerned.\n\n## When it All Went South\n\nBy this point, the cycle Hong Kong had found itself in for decades should be fairly clear. Hong Kong gets a fair amount of autonomy and self-representation for its people, Beijing continues exerting a heavier hand than Hong Kong would like, the CCP chips away at Hong Kong's autonomy in constant, small ways, and when they come in with something really out of pocket, the people of Hong Kong take to the streets and preserve their way of life. But Beijing's tightening hold, and the growing role of independence movements and civil actions in Hong Kong, were moving toward a boiling point, with international media of the time openly speculating about just how soon Hong Kong might be to falling apart.\n\nThe spark that lit the powder keg would come in February 2019. By then, former leader Donald Tsang had long since left power, and his replacement, too, had been replaced, by a lifelong civil servant named Carrie Lam. Lam had come into power in 2017, pledging to unite Hong Kong's disparate parts under clear leadership, but she was absolutely a favorite of Beijing, and she wasn't a favorite in Hong Kong. Public polling clearly showed that she was not the people's preferred candidate, and her public statements, both before and after she was sworn in, seemed to have a lot more to do with the idea of getting Hong Kongers on the same page than it did about specifying whether or not her idea of unity involved preserving Hong Kong's semi-autonomous status.\n\nThe first couple of years of Lam's leadership were more of the same: pro-democracy legislators being disqualified from their posts due to having taken their oaths of office in a way deemed insulting to Beijing, and some of their colleagues later being thrown out because of calls for self-determination. Pro-independence parties were banned and accused of sedition, important corruption investigations were closed prematurely in order to protect pro-China former politicians, and a decision to raise Hong Kong's Social Security eligibility age were predictably, and extremely, unpopular. Taken together, this series of decisions had only served to continue the ongoing rise in tensions, so when Hong Kong was faced by what came next, the city detonated all at once.\n\nMeet Amber Poon Hiu-Wing, a twenty-year-old from Hong Kong who decided to take a vacation to Taiwan's capital city, Taipei, in February of 2018. She had traveled with her boyfriend, Chan Tong-Kai, a 19-year-old from Hong Kong's neighbor city of Shenzhen, who she'd dated for about a year and a half and gotten pregnant in the process. On the night before Poon and Chan were due to fly back to Hong Kong, the young couple had a dispute over how to pack a suitcase they'd bought, and over the course of the night, their arguments devolved as Poon revealed past infidelity. In a rage, Chan violently assaulted Poon, eventually killing her in their Taipei hotel room before disposing of her body amidst the shrubs in a nearby river.\n\nThe case immediately became a problem for Hong Kong authorities after Chan flew back to the city as scheduled. Although Poon's body was eventually found, and Chan confessed to killing her, Chan could not be prosecuted for any crimes relating to her death since after all, Chan hadn't committed the murder in Hong Kong. He'd committed it in Taiwan, where he could have been charged for murder and illegal disposal of a human body, but since Hong Kong's federal administrator, China, and Taiwan don't keep any formal ties—and, just do a quick Google search if the reasons for that are unclear—there were no treaties or agreements in place that could have seen Chan sent back to Taiwan to face consequences.\n\nThe problem was that according to Beijing, Chan actually committed the murder on Chinese territory, since China considers Taiwan a rogue, breakaway province. As a result, Beijing would have been more than happy to prosecute Chan themselves—but that brought up another, equally thorny issue, which is that under Hong Kong's autonomy agreements, it has no obligation to hand over any person accused of a crime to China. This has been a critical element to the way that Hong Kong self-administers; put simply, it was incredibly important to the people of Hong Kong that they could not be simply sent to China for prosecution at the whims of their government. After all, the people of Hong Kong did things every day in their autonomous territory that would have seen them followed and potentially even charged in Beijing.\n\nIt was a Pandora's Box that simply could not be opened, so naturally, Beijing took a crowbar to it. Once it became clear to the CCP that the issue of Chan Tong-Kai could not be resolved through the usual back-room dealings with Hong Kong, the regime saw to it that Hong Kong's leader, Carrie Lam, would introduce a legislative proposal to change the rules. Under this new bill, Hong Kong would be granted the ability to detain and extradite people to foreign countries and territories where extradition treaties don't exist—but since this would include Taiwan, which Hong Kong's overlords in Beijing considered to be China, then it would also include China proper. It was a highly opportunistic move, one that might not have come along except for one act of violence that could then be exploited, but Beijing locked onto the situation as soon as it arose.\n\nAnd for Beijing to have its way would have absolutely massive implications for Hongkongers, who could now very easily be sent to China to be prosecuted for things like, say, criticizing Xi Jinping, or speaking out against the treatment of Tibetans and Uighur Muslims. In Hong Kong, these offenses weren't punishable, but if China could be granted an extradition and then have charges waiting when a detainee arrived, then it wouldn't matter. Anybody in Hong Kong could be scooped up, detained, tried, and even potentially disappeared in communist China, just the same as anyone else in the country—and you can bet that the extradition laws were going to be applied to political activists too.\n\nWhen the bill was introduced, it included only thirty-seven crimes that would open an offender to extradition, none of which were political charges—but that didn't much matter. Once the law itself was passed, amending it would be very simple, and given the loose and very clearly pro-Beijing interpretations that Hong Kong had used in the enforcement of its other laws, there was no guarantee that an amendment would even be required. By simple re-interpretations of the rules they'd already written, the CCP could easily justify assigning one of those thirty-seven crimes to an action that was…well, anything but. And with decision-making power over who gets extradited resting with the hand-picked leaders Beijing had installed in Hong Kong, there was no real path to dispute any miscarriages of justice that did take place. As the people of Hong Kong saw it, this was the last step in dismantling the city's autonomous status. After all, threaten that any perceived dissenters in Hong Kong might be extradited to China, and it would rightfully become very difficult to find any Hongkonger willing to take the risk of protesting at all.\n\nAfter the first organized protest against the extradition bill, the Hong Kong government began to send out signs and signals that this round of unrest wouldn't be treated so gently as the others had been. Several leaders of the Umbrella Movement were given prison sentences, including two who were sentenced to sixteen months—a small stretch of time according to some countries, but way, way beyond what any peaceful protester had ever been sentenced to in Hong Kong before. But this just seemed to inflame the protest movement more; four days after those sentences were handed down, 130,000 people rallied in the streets. A bit over a month later, a candlelight vigil for the Tiananmen Square Massacre drew a stunning turnout, and a bit over a week after that, the really large-scale protests began. On June 9, 2019, over a million people took to the streets, prompting an immediate statement from the government that, like it or not, their extradition bill would move ahead as scheduled.\n\nTensions boiled over three days later, when a protest of a hundred thousand surrounded Hong Kong's Legislative Council building in order to prevent a reading of the bill. From the government's perspective, this appears to have been a bridge too far; although the second reading of the bill was cancelled, police responded harshly to the protests, launching tear gas and firing rubber bullets and beanbag rounds in order to clear the area. Eighty-one protesters were injured, alongside twenty-two police, and stories began to emerge of police engaging in the deliberate assault of numerous protesters, including journalists. The Hong Kong Police Commissioner took the rare step of labeling the protesters 'rioters', a charge that carries a different and much more severe range of potential legal repercussions. A few days later, Carrie Lam herself would use that same term to describe the protesters—and the same night that she did, the 2019 protests got their first fatality: Marco Leung Ling-Kit, later known as the \"raincoat man\", who fell to his death while protesting on the roof of a mall.\n\nThe day after Leung's death, two million people marched through the streets of Hong Kong, in an act that this time, police seemed to have no real will to oppose. Two days later, the protest movement issued its four demands. The Lam government would have to completely withdraw its extradition bill, investigate the Hong Kong police for their brutality against protesters, free every protester and drop the charges against them, and issue a full retraction of the statements condemning the prior June 12 protests as a 'riot'. Although it wasn't an official fifth demand, many Hongkongers also called loudly for the resignation of Lam and the other ministers who had been involved with the government's response to the protests. Unfortunately, it should be no surprise that the government rejected each of these demands, ensuring that the protests would only continue.\n\nWith each side having drawn its line in the sand, there was nothing left for Hong Kong to do but to settle its internal differences the hard way. Protesters began targeting the city's police headquarters for their demonstrations, besieging it on multiple occasions. So, too, did several hundred protesters storm the Legislative Council building and vandalize its interior, also issuing their fifth and final demand in a speech from the floor of the chamber. The protesters were demanding full and genuine universal suffrage in Hong Kong, so that the city's people would be able to choose their own Chief Executive and their own Legislative Council. Symbols of the resistance, referred to as Lennon Walls, sprung up all across the city, and so-called 'district marches', featuring the local communities of each of Hong Kong's boroughs, drew crowds of over a hundred thousand in Kowloon and Sha Tin.\n\nOn July 21, the next inflection point came: a march on Hong Kong Island, attended by nearly half a million people, that intended to reach the Hong Kong government headquarters. This was the first protest in which police attempted to place restrictions on where protesters could move. Not only were those restrictions ignored, but the protesters also ended up defacing the headquarters of the mainland Chinese Communist Party building on the island, in what would be the first attack on a PRC target. It wasn't the only one to happen that night; as word of the vandalism circulated on social media, protesters across the city began to tear down PRC flags wherever they flew. But the retaliation was swift that night; by late evening, well over a hundred armed counter-protesters had massed near citizens in the Yuen Long district, attacking them with metal rods and wood sticks in an act that saw forty-five people hospitalized. Police took over half an hour to respond to the incident, and were observed having cordial conversations with the attackers while at the scene, and not a single arrest was made that evening.\n\nIt's important to note that there wasn't even an active protest in the area at the time of the attack; just ordinary Hongkongers, some of whom were no doubt supportive of the protests, but many who likely weren't involved. Regardless, it didn't take long for police to blame the whole incident on manufactured claims that protesters had provoked this armed mob into an attack. Six days later, the people of Hong Kong tried to march in protest against police inaction around the attack, but found their march banned. It was the first time that a civilian protest march had been outright prohibited by the authorities, although such bans would happen many more times in the following months. Nearly three hundred thousand people marched anyway. The following day, related to a different set of protests, forty-nine people would be arrested, and nearly all of them would be tried on riot charges.\n\nThe following weeks turned into months of the same cycle: the Hong Kong police set down new restrictions on the rights of protesters, protesters protested those restrictions, and police crackdowns grew ever harsher. Protesters began to weather attacks by police after deviating from established march routes; massive strikes led to more and more overtly threatening statements from the government; Chinese police in nearby Shenzhen staged and publicized massive anti-riot drills as a show of force; and the numbers of protest attendees continued to grow. One brief show of contrition from the Hong Kong government, an announcement by Carrie Lam that the extradition bill would be withdrawn in mid-autumn, was largely taken as too little, too late, to address the growing anti-government sentiment that all of Lam's prior decisions had allowed to fester, and after that announcement had only a minimal effect on the rate or strength of protests, police banned marches outright.\n\nFrom September to December, at least ten protests would be attacked by police, even as attendee numbers remained in the multiple hundreds of thousands. More protesters were arrested on charges of rioting, and on October the first, an eighteen-year-old protester was shot in the chest at point-blank range with lethal ammunition. The young man was lucky enough to survive, and was promptly charged with rioting. Also in October, a new ordnance banned the use of facial coverings at protests, something that seemed to be done with the intent to discourage protesters from coming out under threat of identification, but instead prompted even bigger protests in response. In those protests, a fourteen-year-old boy would also be shot at close range; the next day, he was arrested and charged with rioting. On November the eighth, a 21-year-old would die after a fall under unexplained circumstances during a police clearance operation, and on the following day, seven pro-democracy members of the Legislative Council would be arrested.\n\nIn the November rounds of protests, clashes between the protesters and police grew all the fiercer, with protesters now responding en masse to the police use of tear gas and rubber bullets with their own use of bricks and petrol bombs. Protesters seized the campuses of several Hong Kong universities, and laid roadblocks all across the city. In the latter part of the month, one university would be besieged by police for twelve days, with hundreds arrested when the siege eventually broke. Elections for Hong Kong's District Council, around the same time, saw seventeen of eighteen city districts swept by pro-democracy candidates, taking over eighty-five percent of seats citywide in a stunning, unprecedented show of just how complete public support for the protests really was. The political statement seemed to chill police for a brief moment, with December's round of protests being quite a bit less eventful, but by January of 2020, both sides were back at it.\n\nBut January 2020 would also see the most major disruption to the protests yet: the emergence of the novel coronavirus. Immediately, protesters began focusing on what they felt was an inadequate government response to the threat of the virus entering Hong Kong by way of mainland China, and calling for closure of the border with the PRC. Despite public outcry, the Hong Kong government refused to heed those calls, although they'd ban arrivals to Hong Kong from protester-friendly South Korea a month later. For the protesters, the arrival of coronavirus was precisely the wrong development at the wrong time, a change that strongly disincentivized the large-scale marches that had been gaining in power previously. Rather than gathering in the streets, the protest movement transitioned online, including via popular video games like Animal Crossing, which would be banned in China as a result. As they did so, prominent activists were arrested, including millionaire publisher Jimmy Lai, and the founder of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, then-81-year-old Martin Lee.\n\nIn these months, both the police and the Hong Kong government were able to consolidate their victories and reorient themselves in preparation for the inevitable return to protests when it eventually came. That moment arrived in early May, with coronavirus cases popping up only infrequently across the city, and protesters feeling comfortable in taking to the streets again. But this time, the government was quick to issue strong condemnations of the rallies, with CCP officials stating plainly that Hong Kong would 'pay' for the actions of its protesters. Mass protests on the tenth of May led to multiple hundreds of arrests, and eleven days later, the Chinese government in Beijing proposed a National Security Law that would bypass Hong Kong's authority entirely. The law would have given Beijing the right to target acts it deemed terrorism, which very clearly could be applied to Hong Kong's protest movement, and although the law was internationally condemned as an attempt to end the One Country, Two Systems policy, it received the ringing endorsement of the Lam government inside the city. The law set off even bigger protests, reminiscent of what had taken place before the COVID-19 pandemic, but these only seemed to hasten the CCP's decision-making. One week after its national security law was introduced, the Chinese parliament approved it with overwhelming consensus: 2,878 votes for, one vote against, and six abstentions. To add insult to injury, another law was then passed, this one in Hong Kong; it banned \"insults to the national anthem of China\".\n\nThe new legal developments in Beijing signaled that Hong Kong's protest movement had now reached the eleventh hour, a true do-or-die moment in which failure to change the government's collective mind would spell the end to the freedoms Hong Kong had enjoyed for decades. The city's annual Tiananmen Square Massacre memorial vigil was banned for the first time, although many people still came out to show support for the event, and throughout the month of June, protests cropped up in large numbers again as world powers worked overtime to try and convince Beijing to show restraint. But the National Security Law finished working itself through Beijing's bureaucracy by the 30th of June, when the Chinese National People Congress officially passed it into law, effective immediately. The full text of the law was posted online for the first time at 11:00 PM local time, June 30, 2020, and at that moment, Hong Kong's autonomous status under One Country, Two Systems functionally ceased to exist.\n\n## Changing Times\n\nIn the hours following the National Security Law's passage, numerous prominent pro-democracy leaders withdrew from their posts or shuttered their political organizations, unwilling to take the risk that their continued peaceful leadership could land them in Chinese prison for a span of decades. The following day, tens of thousands of people attempted to protest, and were met with water cannons and nearly four hundred arrests, including ten that saw the detainees charged with offenses under the hours-old national security law. Protesters took to holding up blank sheets of paper in order to not be arrested for displaying now-outlawed slogans, while prominent activists began leaving Hong Kong en route to Europe. The Hong Kong Education Bureau mandated that schoolchildren be instructed on the new law from the age of kindergarten upward, and libraries began trimming out books and other materials that could have been perceived as violations, at the same time as schools began purging non-compliant material of their own. In perhaps the most chilling development yet, word emerged from pro-China sources that DNA samples had been collected from the first group of detainees charged with violating the new law, around the same time as the Beijing-led National Security Office set up shop inside a luxury hotel in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay.\n\nThe new law also set off a mass exodus of foreign interests from Hong Kong, with everything from prominent international banks, to press organizations, to VPN companies choosing to move their bases of operations elsewhere. Other financial organizations began to pick through their members, vetting their social media and even their personal lives to ensure that they would only hold funds for individuals deemed acceptable to the Chinese regime. A number of nations around the world ended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong, citing an unwillingness to extradite someone to Hong Kong and have them face charges under the CCP. Academics began seeking ways out of the city, as did independent writers and artists, while marches in the streets began to shrink in size. By August, a new ban on outdoor gatherings of more than two people and a resurgence of COVID in the city were enough to keep most people out of the streets.\n\nThen, there's the matter of Jimmy Lai, a name we've already mentioned once before in this video. A dominant tycoon in Hong Kong's media industry, Lai had spent decades as a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, and his most successful publications, the Apple Daily tabloid and Next Magazine, had a reach within the city that eclipsed what most media magnates could hope of achieving. Lai had found himself a target of Hong Kong's attention all through the protest movement, but now, he was easy pickings for the government to identify and persecute a high-profile Hongkonger who could be charged with violations of the national security law. On the tenth of August, 2020, Lai was arrested in a move that prompted forceful international condemnation, on the same day as numerous other prominent pro-democracy activists found themselves in handcuffs too. Lai would eventually be charged with allegations that he had colluded with foreign forces to endanger China's national security, with the evidence against him resting mainly on citations of his Twitter posts, and within a few months, all his assets had been frozen. Lai continued to endure more and more charges, eventually being sentenced to nearly six years in prison over one of his cases in late 2022, plus another thirty-three months for other charges, and whether that sentence will be extended further, we just can't say. In all likelihood, Beijing is doing its best to time the death of 75-year-old Lai, in order to ensure he spends his last days in prison, without handing down a sentence that would appear so unfair as to confine him for decades.\n\nThe rest of 2020 was more of the same. The few protests that did take place were met with even more harsh crackdowns than before; more and more Hongkongers began to be detained and spirited away by Chinese authorities; and overall, the city basically concluded its year of fierce resistance, accepting, however begrudgingly, that Beijing had won. As CCP control consolidated over the city, Hong Kong grew increasingly isolated from the West, with more and more companies pulling the plug on operations there, and foreigners living in the city deciding that now was the time to make a quiet exit. When New Year's Day came around in 2021, Hong Kong had no marches take place, for the first time in a decade. Several countries accepted Hong Kong protesters as refugees, and the global West began issuing sanctions and closing down their former diplomatic agreements with the city. The Canadian government, in particular, explored the possibility of mass evacuations of its 300,000 Canadian citizens living there, in what would have been an incredibly geopolitically fraught exercise if it had had to take place.\n\nThe next major affront to the autonomy Hong Kong had once enjoyed was a speech made by China's head of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Xia Baolong, who seemingly decided that February 22, 2021 was a good day to start saying the quiet parts out loud. As Xia explained, it was the government's desire to ensure that only so-called \"patriots\" be allowed to lead Hong Kong, and if there's any confusion about what he meant by \"patriots\", we'll let him tell you himself: \"Being patriotic means loving the People's Republic of China\". Also in his criteria: love for the Chinese constitution, and love for the Communist Party. So, too, would members of the judiciary have to be patriots as well. For a not-so-autonomous region that had been led by Beijing's handpicked candidates for decades, it wasn't much of a surprise that this was what a party official was thinking to himself. But to have it announced so decisively was a clear indicator that the CCP no longer believed that the people of Hong Kong had the will or the ability to defend their aspirations for universal suffrage. Xia's comments were taken internationally as an indicator that the CCP had no intention of allowing opposition parties, what Xia himself referred to as \"anti-China troublemakers\", to enter politics at all. His comments were quickly picked up by Hong Kong's leaders, including Carrie Lam herself, who provided this gem of a quote in response to concerns that dissenters may be oppressed under such a system: \"If we must use the word oppress, it's oppressing those who advocate Hong Kong independence, who attempted to push Hong Kong into the abyss of violence and those who forget their ancestry, do not recognise themselves as Chinese, who collude with foreign political organisations to destroy Hong Kong\".\n\nIn 2022, Hong Kong learned precisely what the CCP's comments about pro-China candidates had meant. In that year, only one candidate was allowed to run for Lam's post of Chief Executive: John Lee, a former deputy police chief. In the Legislative Council, the number of directly elected members went down to twenty, with seventy members being chosen by the CCP, and when the pro-democracy movement, seeing that all was lost anyway, decided to boycott the elections, all ninety legislative council seats went to pro-Beijing candidates. In this year's upcoming 2023 district elections, the rules have been changed again, to prevent what John Lee has described as Hong Kong's electoral system being \"manipulated and paralyzed [by people promoting] separatism and violence\". Lee's answer is apparently to reduce the number of elected district seats to twenty percent, with forty percent chosen by indirect elections, and forty percent appointed by Lee himself. It's one step short of what many international observers believe to be the Chinese government's true endgame: a future in which those remaining twenty percent of democratically elected representatives are eventually whittled down until there are none left at all.\n\nAnd since Lee came into power, the story has largely been about punishments against those who made the decision to speak out in defense of Hong Kong, back when things weren't quite so dire. Since 2022, the government has been hard at work prosecuting those who are alleged of protest-related crimes, including hosts of websites that were used by protest movements, and journalists native to Hong Kong who had made their choice to stay. The Hong Kong Justice Department has also started to show another troubling tendency: if Protester X was present at, let's say, three protests, and serves a sentence for several years as a penalty for being present at the first of those three…then upon their release, they're likely looking at a pretty short countdown before they're arrested again, hauled back in, and thrown in jail for the second—and so on.\n\n## Life in Hong Kong\n\nIn 2023, Hong Kong has been the site of a re-launch campaign, run by the city itself in order to rehabilitate its global image following years of crackdowns. After enforcing strict COVID restrictions for far longer than the rest of the world, most likely as a convenient way to prohibit gatherings in public that might otherwise have become protests, the city lifted its restrictions early in the year and announced that five hundred thousand airline tickets were up for grabs for anybody in the world who wanted to come visit. Billing itself as \"Asia's world city\", Hong Kong and current Chief Executive John Lee opened the city for business under the \"Hello Hong Kong\" banner.\n\nNow, we could talk about the strange launch ceremony, featuring, for some reason, a breakdancing display done by people in airline uniforms and business suits. But it's far more relevant to highlight the way that the city's ceremonies have largely harkened back to its age under late British rule, while functionally omitting the decades Hong Kong spent as an autonomous territory. For all intents and purposes, the idea of \"waking up\" Hong Kong after the COVID-19 pandemic means outright replacing the life Hongkongers knew before the crackdowns, with one that echoes the convenient narratives Beijing wishes to tell.\n\nBut \"Hello Hong Kong\" has unashamedly taken place against a backdrop of continued, and well-publicized crackdowns, including everything from the mass resignations of teachers, to the mass trials of people charged with subversion as punishment for taking part in an unofficial primary election, to streaming platforms like Disney removing content that's deemed offensive, to the city plummeting downward on international lists ranking press freedom, freedom of expression, respect for human rights, and democratic rule. All these issues are, of course, kept well-and-truly separate from the experience of a person visiting Hong Kong with their free airline tickets, but just like the governments of war-torn Syria or repressive Nicaragua can entice Instagram influencers to amplify their preferred message, the fact that China can do the same in Hong Kong doesn't mean it's not rather insidious.\n\nIn terms of political expression, the ordinary Hongkonger's rights to express opinions that don't directly align with the wishes of the CCP are sharply curtailed. The possession of pro-democracy, pro-independence, or pro-suffrage stickers, banners, tee shirts, or flags are grounds for arrest and are likely to see an offender be charged. So, too, is the possession of blank white pieces of paper, after they were adopted as symbols of resistance following bans on protest signs. Maximum penalties for acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces include life imprisonment, but between how those laws are written and how they're interpreted by the CCP, they're used broadly enough that even minor affronts to Beijing are grounds for an extremely harsh sentence. By example, an organization that accepts a donation from a Western country has now opened itself to charges of collusion with foreign forces, and attending even a peaceful protest may fall under either secession or terrorism, depending on how the CCP is feeling that day.\n\nOnce a person is accused of a crime, another part of the National Security Law dictates that suspects can be moved, at the will of the authorities, to mainland China to face their charges. This allows a Hongkonger to be tried under Chinese mainland law, sentenced to serve their time in mainland Chinese prisons, and subjected to all the interrogations, torture, and forced disappearances that the Chinese justice system is known for. Detainees in mainland China do not have the right to contact their loved ones or their lawyers in some conditions, and they can be held outside the legal detention system for up to six months, during which time…all bets are off on the ill treatment they might experience while in custody. Even in Hong Kong, citizens are no longer afforded the right to withhold self-incriminating information no matter the personal cost, functionally eliminating the basic right to stay silent. And when they're investigated, it might be by Hong Kong's authorities, or it might be by the CCP's Office for Safeguarding National Security, an arm of the law that is free to operate with impunity in Hong Kong, but is not subject to any legal oversight or even basic laws of the city.\n\nThe city's schools, too, now prohibit any discussion of political issues in classes, as well as other political messaging by students or teachers alike. Reading materials have been sharply censored and otherwise restricted, and the CCP's programs of patriotic education have become widespread across the city. Beijing's interpretation of the 2019 and 2020 protests in Hong Kong has identified schools as a breeding ground for ill will toward the government, and in response, it's schools that receive a large share of scrutiny from the government. Students are taught the definitions of \"secession\", \"subversion\", \"terrorist activities\", and \"collusion with a foreign country\" from a young age, and classes on \"citizenship and social development\", functionally a primer in how to act loyally toward Hong Kong's and China's systems of authority, have become commonplace. Teachers are expected to self-censor, as well as touring China and passing an exam on national security when they qualify for their positions, and they can, and will be held responsible for any statements that are taken to be criticisms of the government—even when they're reported by their own students. And it's not just classroom teachers who are at risk; in September 2022, five speech therapists were found guilty of charges that they'd published children's books deemed to be \"seditious\" by the Chinese government. In response to the changing situation, many parents in Hong Kong have sent their children abroad to study, although families that don't have the resources to do so have no other choice but to allow their children to keep studying what Beijing dictates in curriculum.\n\nFor adults online, the situation is no better. The National Security Law granted Hong Kong's law enforcement entities the right to remove online content that is deemed contrary to the regime, and access the data of individual users with no need for a warrant. Although Western platforms like Meta and Google have refused to process Hong Kong's requests for user data, not all apps—and, in fact, not all popular apps—have done the same. More broadly, Hong Kong has not yet been subsumed under China's online Great Firewall, but speculation has only grown in recent years about just how long Hong Kong has left before it, too, is subject to the firewall's controls. Until then, Hong Kong's netizens will continue to suffer the removal of increasing numbers of individual websites, especially those that monitor human rights abuses inside the territory.\n\nAnd lastly, there's one more little kicker for the rest of us watching around the world: The restrictions that Hongkongers are subject to under the National Security Law don't just apply to the people of Hong Kong. In fact, the law is written in a way that applies to every person on Earth—meaning that if a non-resident of Hong Kong, who's never been to the city or any other Chinese jurisdiction, decides to set foot there for any reason, they are immediately subject to detention and prosecution like any Chinese citizen on Chinese soil. Suffice to say, neither I nor the writer for this video are going to Hong Kong anytime soon, because, well, this is exactly the sort of speech that the National Security Law is designed to curtail—so while we're at it, let's violate that anthem law we discussed earlier. Chinese Communist Party, your national anthem sucks.\n\n## Future Under Xi Jinping's Boot\n\nWhen we look at the future of Hong Kong, we'll begin with its status as a global center of trade, finance, and international culture—a status that hasn't totally gone away, but has certainly diminished. After the mass exodus of a long list of Western companies, the city has become far less of a player in the cutting-edge business innovation that it was historically known for, with initial public offerings, or IPOs, coming from the territory being slashed to well under a tenth of their normal annual worth in 2022. Put simply, the city is no longer a target for international movers and shakers in the business world, and though it'll almost certainly remain relevant as a very well-connected banking town compared to the rest of China, it's not likely to climb back to its former glory anytime soon.\n\nAnother potential long-term complication comes in the form of brain drain, a phenomenon that takes place worldwide when educated, qualified professionals from an undeveloped, less-developed, or repressive nation decide to take their education elsewhere and emigrate, rather than use it to make their own homelands better. Hong Kong is facing this problem in spades, as parents who remember what Hong Kong once was seek to send their high-performing children elsewhere for their education, and where disillusioned young professionals are all too happy to get the hell out when an opportunity arises. The city has attempted to tackle this problem; John Lee's administration has lowered property taxes and presented new visas for foreigners. But over 200,000 foreigners and locals alike have left the city since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and those numbers are only going to grow higher as trends of emigration take root among Hong Kong's younger population.\n\nPredictably, the city's media environment has gotten no better, and will almost certainly get worse over time. The few independent journalism outlets left in Hong Kong can, quite frankly, only be described as free press if we're feeling rather generous, and it's unclear how long those media entities are going to be able to stay afloat. In the void that Hong Kong's former free press has left behind, pro-Beijing media is filling the gap, in print, radio, television, and more. On the individual scale, a February 2023 decree that all SIM cards—new and existing—must be registered under the real name of their owners has prompted widespread concern that it'll be even easier for Hong Kong authorities to track their citizens in the future. One prediction we're more than comfortable in making is that Hong Kong will fall under the shroud of China's Great Firewall at some point in the next few years, essentially blocking out foreign social media and subjecting the people of Hong Kong to the ceaseless deluge that is mainland Chinese online discourse. So, too, do we expect China's overreaches into the personal lives of its citizens to grow ever deeper inside the city, until eventually, even that aspect of life resembles that of any other Chinese city. Whether that includes some of China's most extreme elements of social control, like its Social Credit System, remains to be seen.\n\nOn a grand scale, Beijing's slow erosion of the city of Hong Kong is directly in line with how the Chinese Communist Party does things. They're happy to play the long game if it means minimizing risk; they'll spend years to lay the groundwork for one successful week if need be; and they don't go gambling unless they've stacked the deck in their own favor. In Xi Jinping's government, the house always wins, and over the grand view of Hong Kong's last few years, it's unmistakably obvious that that's precisely what has happened. Beijing could have marched troops into the city a decade ago, but didn't; they could have brought the hammer down harder at any one of a thousand inflection points ever since. They didn't. Instead, they chipped away at Hong Kong slowly enough that the number of lives lost is in tens rather than thousands, and the number of concrete victories for Beijing is in the thousands rather than in the tens.\n\nAs it appears from the outside, the eventual endgame in Hong Kong appears to be to just transform it into any other Chinese city. Beijing is glad to slowly force out its international residents, to accept the loss of global commerce and economic power, and even to say farewell to its own citizens if they aren't friendly to Beijing. So far as we can tell, they simply aren't interested in tolerating citizens who aren't willing to get on board with the CCP, and if those citizens decide to remove themselves rather than demanding valuable CCP time in arresting and prosecuting them…then all the better. What's left, in the aftermath, is a Hong Kong that is well-and-truly under Beijing's thumb, and within one or two generations more, the city might not even remember that it's been oppressed at all.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- Hong Kong's autonomy under 'One Country, Two Systems' was gradually eroded by Beijing.\n- Protests in 2019 marked a significant turning point, leading to increased CCP control.\n- The National Security Law, implemented in 2020, effectively ended Hong Kong's autonomy.\n- Media freedom and political expression have been severely curtailed in Hong Kong.\n- The future of Hong Kong involves further integration into China's political and social systems.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What is the 'One Country, Two Systems' formula?\n\nThe 'One Country, Two Systems' formula is a series of laws that allowed Hong Kong to maintain its political and economic autonomy within communist China, keeping China’s political system and social authoritarianism largely out of Hong Kong.\n\n### When did Hong Kong become a part of China?\n\nHong Kong has been part of China for millennia, but its history as an independent entity began in 1841 when Hong Kong Island was ceded to Great Britain at the end of the First Opium War.\n\n### What was the significance of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration?\n\nThe 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration was an agreement where China pledged to preserve Hong Kong’s political and economic autonomy for another fifty years after the 1997 transfer of authority from Britain to China.\n\n### What was the Umbrella Movement?\n\nThe Umbrella Movement was a series of protests in Hong Kong in 2014 where protesters, predominantly students, shut down government buildings, financial districts, and major roads to demand universal suffrage. The movement is named for the umbrellas protesters used to protect themselves from police pepper spray.\n\n### What was the extradition bill that sparked protests in 2019?\n\nThe extradition bill proposed in 2019 would have allowed Hong Kong to detain and extradite people to foreign countries and territories where extradition treaties don’t exist, including mainland China. This raised concerns about the potential for political activists to be extradited to China for prosecution.\n\n### What was the National Security Law passed in 2020?\n\nThe National Security Law passed in 2020 gave Beijing the right to target acts it deemed terrorism, secession, subversion, and collusion with foreign forces in Hong Kong. This law effectively ended Hong Kong’s autonomous status under the 'One Country, Two Systems' policy.\n\n### What is the current political situation in Hong Kong?\n\nAs of 2023, Hong Kong is under tight control by the Chinese government. Political expression is sharply curtailed, and the city has seen a mass exodus of foreign interests and residents. The government has implemented strict measures to suppress dissent, including the National Security Law.\n\n### What is the impact of the National Security Law on Hong Kong's education system?\n\nThe National Security Law has led to strict censorship and control in Hong Kong's education system. Schools prohibit political discussions, and students are taught to be loyal to the government. Teachers are required to pass exams on national security and can be held responsible for any criticisms of the government.\n\n### What is the future outlook for Hong Kong under Chinese rule?\n\nThe future outlook for Hong Kong under Chinese rule involves further integration into mainland China's political and social systems. The city is likely to see continued suppression of dissent, a decline in international influence, and a potential implementation of mainland China's online censorship and social control measures.\n\n### What is the significance of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong?\n\nThe 2019 protests in Hong Kong were significant because they marked a major turning point in the city's struggle for autonomy. 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[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/09/hong-kong-schools-in-crisis-as-teachers-and-students-flee-toxic-political-climate](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/09/hong-kong-schools-in-crisis-as-teachers-and-students-flee-toxic-political-climate)\n- [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/fears-of-online-censorship-in-hong-kong-as-rights-group-website-goes-down](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/fears-of-online-censorship-in-hong-kong-as-rights-group-website-goes-down)\n- [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/hong-kong-national-security-law-10-things-you-need-to-know/](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/hong-kong-national-security-law-10-things-you-need-to-know/)\n- [https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-opinion-how-livable-are-cities-three-years-after-start-of-covid/hong-kong.html](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-opinion-how-livable-are-cities-three-years-after-start-of-covid/hong-kong.html)\n- [https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/brain-drain-solution-is-staring-hong-kong-face-2022-10-19/](https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/brain-drain-solution-is-staring-hong-kong-face-2022-10-19/)\n- [https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/19/business/hong-kong-business-investment-covid-reopening-intl-hnk/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/19/business/hong-kong-business-investment-covid-reopening-intl-hnk/index.html)\n- [https://www.csis.org/analysis/hong-kong-2022](https://www.csis.org/analysis/hong-kong-2022)\n- [https://freedomhouse.org/country/hong-kong/freedom-world/2023](https://freedomhouse.org/country/hong-kong/freedom-world/2023)\n- [https://www.reuters.com/world/china/whats-changed-or-stayed-same-since-hong-kong-returned-china-2022-06-28/](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/whats-changed-or-stayed-same-since-hong-kong-returned-china-2022-06-28/)\n- [https://thediplomat.com/2022/06/hong-kong-is-unrecognizable-after-2-years-under-the-national-security-law/](https://thediplomat.com/2022/06/hong-kong-is-unrecognizable-after-2-years-under-the-national-security-law/)\n- [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/30/hong-kong-timeline-1997-to-2022](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/30/hong-kong-timeline-1997-to-2022)\n- [https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown)\n- [https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/hong-kong/](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/hong-kong/)\n- [https://www.britannica.com/place/Hong-Kong/Postwar-Hong-Kong](https://www.britannica.com/place/Hong-Kong/Postwar-Hong-Kong)\n- [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-61948005](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-61948005)\n- [https://medium.com/chatham-house/the-future-of-hong-kong-five-key-questions-answered-2e41def365b1](https://medium.com/chatham-house/the-future-of-hong-kong-five-key-questions-answered-2e41def365b1)\n- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Stonecutters_Bridge_and_Kwai_Tsing_Container_Terminals_Hong_Kong_2024_dllu.jpg) by Daniel Lu (User:dllu) / openverse, by-sa.\n\n## Related Coverage"
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The Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong has long been an anomaly within communist China. Designated as a functionally autonomous city, Hong Kong spent over two decades under the so-called "One Country, Two Systems" formula, a series of laws that kept China's political system and social authoritarianism largely out of this one small pocket of the country. From 1997 through the late 2010s, Hong Kong quite happily enjoyed its status as a global center of finance, and a bastion of capitalist enterprise. It was globally hailed as a moderating force on one of the world's most hardline communist regimes, a critical check and balance to a country that might otherwise have taken a sharper authoritarian turn long ago.

But all that changed in 2019, when a seemingly minor change in municipal law set off a powder keg inside the city. In a fast-growing, expansive series of protests, Hong Kong suddenly found itself in a battle for its own soul, battling against a central Chinese government that had finally lost patience with its freewheeling little sibling. And although the battles waged on Hong Kong's city streets were fierce, although Hong Kong and its people fought tooth-and-nail to preserve what they had…they lost.

On today's episode of Places, we'll be digging into Hong Kong's difficult regional history, its brief few years of triumph, and the story of how a city so globally vital could be swallowed up into the belly of the Chinese dragon.

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<!-- aeo:section start="hong-kong-s-golden-age" -->
## Hong Kong's Golden Age

Hong Kong sits on the banks of the Pearl River estuary, surrounded to the east, west, and south by the South China Sea. On its northward side, it backs up on China's Guangdong Province, specifically the city of Shenzhen, China's third-most-advanced city behind Beijing and Shanghai. Hong Kong itself sprawls across Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon Peninsula, and a network of other small islands and pockets of mainland territory, for a total land area of a bit over one thousand square miles. The city is nestled into a landscape of hills and low mountains, blanketed in woodland and plains, and it boasts a thriving natural ecosystem even today. Hot and humid, with a long rainy season in the summertime, Hong Kong is every bit a tropical southeast-Asian city, choked with smog, haze, and well over seven million souls.

The city has been part of China for millennia, but its history as an independent entity began much later, when in 1841, Hong Kong Island was ceded to Great Britain at the end of the First Opium War. A few years later, the Second Opium War would see British-held Hong Kong only grow bigger, tacking on part of the Kowloon Peninsula and, in 1898, 235 nearby islands along with a patch of land called the New Territories. During the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Hong Kong would enjoy its status as a growing entrepreneurial and trade center in East Asia, with foreign money streaming into the city at high rates. The city endured four years of occupation under Imperial Japan from 1941 to 1945, being overwhelmed on the same day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. But after the war's end, Hong Kong enjoyed a steady stream of incoming migrants fleeing the Chinese Civil War, and its population boom led to major infrastructural and anti-corruption initiatives that set Hong Kong apart as a thriving, modern city of the times.

In these decades of industrial expansion, Hong Kong led the way for the so-called Four Asian Tigers, alongside Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Amidst an economic boom, the city became highly competitive as a global manufacturing player, before eventually transitioning into a new role as a financial hub in the 1990s, after rising costs pushed heavy industry elsewhere. In those same years, the city was a focal point for ongoing political discontent, as something of a contested territory around the question of mainland China and Taiwan, and questions about Hong Kong's own future outside its status as a British protectorate were equally relevant. Peaceful protest became a frequent instrument for Hong Kong's population to express their will en masse, marked by occasional, but brutal massacres when protest turned to riot.

In 1997, Britain's lease of Hong Kong formally expired, after over a decade of advance work that was meant to try and smooth the process between the British and the Chinese. China had agreed to become signatory to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which China pledged to preserve Hong Kong's political and economic autonomy for another fifty years, but even before the 1997 transfer of authority took place, the people of Hong Kong openly expected a double-cross. The 1990s saw mass groups of people leave Hong Kong in anticipation of broad and potentially violent crackdowns, and the territory was forced, for a time, to be administrated by a British governor named Christopher Patten, whose rather imperialist style of rule and his clear, rather open contempt for China raised fears of a backlash when China did take command. Things only got worse following the transfer; from 1997 to 2003, Hong Kong weathered the Asian financial crisis, an outbreak of avian flu, a crash of the housing market, and a SARS epidemic and a resulting economic slump.

But in the early years under Chinese rule, the anticipated crackdowns ended up being substantially less severe than Hong Kong's people had initially feared. The "One Country, Two Systems" policy that China went with, allowing Hong Kong to retain most of its autonomy, had actually been offered to Taiwan all the way back in 1979, in a pitch by then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping to bring back the Republic of China under the CCP's leadership. When that was unsuccessful, he'd pivoted that concept to Hong Kong, probably hoping to take advantage of an opportunity to model just how forgiving China was willing to be. It's a fairly simple idea: show leniency in Hong Kong, and hope that Taiwan becomes a bit less hesitant. Of course, we could sit here and poke holes in that logic all day; after all, it's not exactly difficult to put on a friendly face until both Hong Kong and Taiwan are under the CCP's control, and then lock both territories down with all the brutality Hong Kong's expatriates were scared of. But with Taiwan still strongly against coming to the negotiation table, Hong Kong was poised to spend years, and perhaps even decades, living under the CCP's leniency in order to convey a positive message.

That show of surprising tolerance, plus the added benefit of finally being rid of the British, contributed to a transition that was, in some circles, even taken favorably by the people who chose to remain in Hong Kong. As American investment banker William Overholt, who worked as a strategist in Hong Kong during the transition, described it: "Local celebrations of the handover were among the best parties I have ever attended. People considered it a wonderful omen when rain drenched the ceremony on the last day of British rule but sunshine brightened the first day of Chinese rule." As Overholt described, the city's elite spent little time talking about ideas like independence or fully autonomous self-rule, preferring instead to focus on preserving the city's economic power during the tumult and trials of early Chinese rule.

Now, even from the start of Hong Kong's status as a Chinese special administrative zone, it was clear that China wasn't exactly falling over itself to make all of Hong Kong's dreams come true. China's interpretation of vaguely written laws around the city's governance, and its own vague pledges to guarantee democratic principles of self-administration, weren't ignored, but they were followed in a very literal sense, with China making it fairly clear that they intended to interpret their own writings in a way that served the CCP without going outside the language they'd used. It didn't take long for these emerging patterns to start tempering the enthusiasm Hong Kong's citizens had felt at the beginning of Chinese rule, and while their goodwill didn't exactly turn into outright animosity, the goodwill itself didn't last.

By 2003, it was time for the CCP to rotate out its uppermost leadership, with Vice President Hu Jintao moving into the presidency. Hu Jintao had made his mark in the preceding years with crackdowns on Tibetan separatist movements and civilian dissenters, and he took the same tack with Hong Kong. But in the city, the "dissent" that Hu Jintao was so worried about mostly took the form of neat, orderly protests, ones that very rarely spiraled into anything more menacing than a stroll through a few city squares. Paranoid and touchy after dealing with separatism in the western provinces, the CCP interpreted Hong Kong's calls for increased democratization as a precursor to independence movements that simply didn't exist, and had a tendency to interpret the presence of strongly anti-China, niche political leaders in Hong Kong as an expression of the will of the average person there, instead of the fringe outliers they were. This basic lack of understanding of one of China's own territories inhibited the CCP's ability to effectively administer to Hong Kong, and the regime under Hu Jintao took no steps to rectify the situation. No committees were formed, nobody from Jintao's innermost circle came to tour the city or speak to its people, and when pro-democracy groups in the US became more active in amplifying anti-China voices in Hong Kong, often without the approval of the US government, China interpreted their involvement as an attempt to spark Tiananmen Square-style protests in Hong Kong.

These tensions all came to a head when a legislative proposal to implement so-called "anti-subversion laws" was introduced to the Chinese government for review. The legislation addressed a part of Hong Kong's constitution, the Basic Law, called Article 23, which is going to become very important over the rest of this story. Under Article 23, Hong Kong had agreed to enforce a series of internal laws that criminalized acts of treason, sedition, and secession against China's central government in Beijing, but in a practical sense, those commitments had gone mostly unfulfilled. The introduction of the new law, set forth in the summer of 2003, was met with immediate backlash in Hong Kong, and after half a million people took to the streets in protest, the proposal was shelved.

But even after that particular issue was dealt with, the people of Hong Kong were gearing up for broader initiatives to push back against China's perceived overreach into their territory. As the city's economy bounced back from its tough last few years, and Hong Kong's economy became more intertwined with that of China writ large, especially nearby Shenzhen, Hong Kong's political sphere began to call more and more loudly, more and more frequently, for democratic reforms. For a while, these protests were successful; Hong Kong's Legislative Council, or LegCo, was modified so that a full half of its seats were dedicated to elected representatives from geographic areas of the city, even though its other half was still selected from businesses and other economic sectors. In 2006, pro-democracy rallies in the city attracted tens of thousands of people, this time advocating a transition to full democracy, and when the then-leader of Hong Kong, Donald Tsang, was reelected a year later, he announced his own plan to push for a full, democratizing overhaul for the territory.

Now, we've got to take a moment and examine exactly what was going on during this time, because for all Donald Tsang's talk of democratization, he actually wasn't an opposition candidate. He was selected by an electoral college that was made up of predominantly pro-Beijing electors, beating out a challenger who had been seen as even more pro-democracy, and while Tsang's commitments were, indeed, in favor of broader democratization, it was a sort of democratization that came with the express approval of the CCP. Tsang's job was to walk a tightrope, feeding Hong Kong's pro-autonomy political majority, while reconciling their wishes with the demands of Beijing and its representatives inside the city. Tsang made pledges to bring Hong Kong toward universal suffrage, he pushed toward full constitutional development, and he urged infrastructural and educational advancements along with initiatives to help low-income families. All things considered, Tsang appeared to be a promising candidate to move Hong Kong forward, and potentially improve the tenuous balance that had kept the city afloat so far.

With Tsang's arrival came good news from Beijing: in addition to the presence of this mutually agreeable leader, Hong Kong was to be granted the power to choose its own leader, rather than have its leader chosen by Beijing's handpicked electoral college, in 2017, ten years after the announcement was issued. So, too, would they get a fully self-elected legislature three years later, in 2020. A year after that 2007 announcement, Hong Kong's pro-democracy parties picked up enough seats in the territory's Legislative Council to grant themselves veto power, meaning that actively repressive legislation proposed by Beijing probably wouldn't get through. For a few years, Hong Kong was able to enjoy its status as a growing bastion of East Asian democracy; they hosted major sporting events in 2008 and 2009, including some events for the Olympics, and its financial sector, its construction sector, and its tourism sector all enjoyed a major boom.

But before long, civil unrest would grip Hong Kong again, when in 2012, the Hong Kong Education Bureau issued a proposal that pretty clearly seemed to come from Beijing. What they proposed was a new, mandatory class that was to be taken by every child enrolled in Hong Kong's public schools: Moral and National Education. Now, here in the 2020s, we're more than familiar with other, similar initiatives by the Chinese government: social credit scores, and all that. But they weren't so familiar at the time, and they sounded no less like indoctrination back in 2012 than they do now. The proposal prompted mass protests across Hong Kong, in response to curricula that would praise and whitewash what the CCP considered to be its highest achievement, and contrast them to systems of multi-party rule like the US or, well, Hong Kong, which would be derided as inferior forms of governance. The Communist Party was to be described as "progressive, selfless, and united", and the many failings of China's Cultural Revolution would be glossed over or ignored outright. Hong Kong's teachers and parents took particular umbrage to the concept, condemning it outright as an attempt at brainwashing—and to be fair, that term wasn't even all theirs. In the words of one member of the pro-CCP China Civic Education Promotion Association in Hong Kong, "A brain needs washing if there is a problem, just as clothes need washing if they're dirty, and a kidney needs washing if it's sick". Firstly, wow, and secondly, statements like that didn't help Beijing's case. Before long, the people of Hong Kong were successful: the proposal was dropped and the curriculum was made optional for the city's schools.

But two years later, and utterly unsurprisingly, Beijing was at it again. If you remember back to that promise we described a moment ago, that starting in 2017 Hong Kong would be able to elect its own leader…well, that promise was taken back in August of 2014, when the CCP declared a return to their prior expectation that only Beijing-backed candidates would be eligible to fill Hong Kong's top post. By now, it really should not be a surprise that Hong Kong's answer was, again, mass protest, this time in the form of the Umbrella Movement. In this particular show of strength, protesters—predominantly students—shut down government buildings, financial districts, and major roads across the city, carrying umbrellas to protect themselves from police pepper spray. In typical fashion, these protests were meant to appear exceedingly nonviolent; protesters made a habit of distributing free food and water to everyone who was participating, and keeping up with their studies and Hong Kong's recycling policies even as they took to the streets. But this time, the protesters struggled to settle on any sort of alternative to propose to Beijing—and with nothing to discuss, Beijing was all too happy to sit back and wait the protesters out. Eventually, students had to start going back to school, other protesters had to return to work, and the city grew frustrated with the economic and traffic disruptions the Umbrella Movement were causing. Seventy-nine days after the protests began, the Hong Kong police took action to remove the last protesters who remained, putting an end to the first big Hong Kong protest to basically fail outright.

Perhaps it was that last fact that emboldened Beijing—that they'd proven to themselves that they could rely upon inaction long enough that all these nuisance protests would simply peter out on their own, instead of intensifying with time. When it came time for another back-and-forth with Hong Kong's citizens, this time in 2016, Beijing was eager to test that theory. In 2016, the issue at hand was unlicensed food vendors in Hong Kong, specifically people selling a snack called fishballs in the district of Mong Kok. When Beijing-backed authorities entered the district to shut down vendors who didn't have approval from the government to operate, basically on grounds of health and sanitation, it quickly turned from a dispute about snack foods into one about Hong Kong's identity—similar to trying to take Philly cheesesteaks out of Philadelphia, or take poutine out of Quebec, or, well, take all the palatable foreign food out of London. But this time, police fired warning shots at protesters, further inflaming tensions, and the situation began to get more violent than what Hong Kong had seen in recent years.

Before long, these protests morphed into a platform for Hong Kong's so-called "localists"—people who advocated for an expansion of Hong Kong's autonomy, or even pursuit of formal independence from China. In August of that same year, the people of Hong Kong rallied under explicit calls for independence for the first time, something that had been brewing since the Umbrella Revolution had gone south. The rallies had been set off when the city's pro-Beijing electoral commission had banned six pro-independence candidates from running for election, a reflection of the fact that all sides, including Beijing, could feel the independence question hanging heavier and heavier in the air. But they also represented a changing reality for Hong Kong: that peaceful protest was not the instrument of change that it once was, and that if Beijing was going to start tightening its grip, then Hong Kong would have to really start fighting for air.

In the years from 2017 to 2019, both sides would ratchet up the pressure, with Hong Kong's calls for independence, and the proportion of Hong Kongers who supported those calls, both swelling rapidly. At Hong Kong's annual memorials for the Tiananmen Square massacre, the only such memorials that were allowed to take place in all of China, attendance went through the roof. In response, the Beijing-backed government criminalized the Hong Kong National Party, which had previously been a major voice for independence. The international community began to take notice; in one unprecedented step, two political activists from Hong Kong were granted refugee status in Germany, implicitly acknowledging that political freedom in the city was not what it once had been. Back in Hong Kong, several booksellers who'd stocked anti-CCP content were disappeared, and a well-regarded foreign journalist, Victor Mallet, was even asked to leave the territory after chairing a talk with the Hong Kong National Party's founder. Compared to what citizens in mainland China faced, this was still, by all accounts, fairly mild treatment…but for Hong Kong, it was getting to be time to really be concerned.

<!-- aeo:section end="hong-kong-s-golden-age" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="when-it-all-went-south" -->
## When it All Went South

By this point, the cycle Hong Kong had found itself in for decades should be fairly clear. Hong Kong gets a fair amount of autonomy and self-representation for its people, Beijing continues exerting a heavier hand than Hong Kong would like, the CCP chips away at Hong Kong's autonomy in constant, small ways, and when they come in with something really out of pocket, the people of Hong Kong take to the streets and preserve their way of life. But Beijing's tightening hold, and the growing role of independence movements and civil actions in Hong Kong, were moving toward a boiling point, with international media of the time openly speculating about just how soon Hong Kong might be to falling apart.

The spark that lit the powder keg would come in February 2019. By then, former leader Donald Tsang had long since left power, and his replacement, too, had been replaced, by a lifelong civil servant named Carrie Lam. Lam had come into power in 2017, pledging to unite Hong Kong's disparate parts under clear leadership, but she was absolutely a favorite of Beijing, and she wasn't a favorite in Hong Kong. Public polling clearly showed that she was not the people's preferred candidate, and her public statements, both before and after she was sworn in, seemed to have a lot more to do with the idea of getting Hong Kongers on the same page than it did about specifying whether or not her idea of unity involved preserving Hong Kong's semi-autonomous status.

The first couple of years of Lam's leadership were more of the same: pro-democracy legislators being disqualified from their posts due to having taken their oaths of office in a way deemed insulting to Beijing, and some of their colleagues later being thrown out because of calls for self-determination. Pro-independence parties were banned and accused of sedition, important corruption investigations were closed prematurely in order to protect pro-China former politicians, and a decision to raise Hong Kong's Social Security eligibility age were predictably, and extremely, unpopular. Taken together, this series of decisions had only served to continue the ongoing rise in tensions, so when Hong Kong was faced by what came next, the city detonated all at once.

Meet Amber Poon Hiu-Wing, a twenty-year-old from Hong Kong who decided to take a vacation to Taiwan's capital city, Taipei, in February of 2018. She had traveled with her boyfriend, Chan Tong-Kai, a 19-year-old from Hong Kong's neighbor city of Shenzhen, who she'd dated for about a year and a half and gotten pregnant in the process. On the night before Poon and Chan were due to fly back to Hong Kong, the young couple had a dispute over how to pack a suitcase they'd bought, and over the course of the night, their arguments devolved as Poon revealed past infidelity. In a rage, Chan violently assaulted Poon, eventually killing her in their Taipei hotel room before disposing of her body amidst the shrubs in a nearby river.

The case immediately became a problem for Hong Kong authorities after Chan flew back to the city as scheduled. Although Poon's body was eventually found, and Chan confessed to killing her, Chan could not be prosecuted for any crimes relating to her death since after all, Chan hadn't committed the murder in Hong Kong. He'd committed it in Taiwan, where he could have been charged for murder and illegal disposal of a human body, but since Hong Kong's federal administrator, China, and Taiwan don't keep any formal ties—and, just do a quick Google search if the reasons for that are unclear—there were no treaties or agreements in place that could have seen Chan sent back to Taiwan to face consequences.

The problem was that according to Beijing, Chan actually committed the murder on Chinese territory, since China considers Taiwan a rogue, breakaway province. As a result, Beijing would have been more than happy to prosecute Chan themselves—but that brought up another, equally thorny issue, which is that under Hong Kong's autonomy agreements, it has no obligation to hand over any person accused of a crime to China. This has been a critical element to the way that Hong Kong self-administers; put simply, it was incredibly important to the people of Hong Kong that they could not be simply sent to China for prosecution at the whims of their government. After all, the people of Hong Kong did things every day in their autonomous territory that would have seen them followed and potentially even charged in Beijing.

It was a Pandora's Box that simply could not be opened, so naturally, Beijing took a crowbar to it. Once it became clear to the CCP that the issue of Chan Tong-Kai could not be resolved through the usual back-room dealings with Hong Kong, the regime saw to it that Hong Kong's leader, Carrie Lam, would introduce a legislative proposal to change the rules. Under this new bill, Hong Kong would be granted the ability to detain and extradite people to foreign countries and territories where extradition treaties don't exist—but since this would include Taiwan, which Hong Kong's overlords in Beijing considered to be China, then it would also include China proper. It was a highly opportunistic move, one that might not have come along except for one act of violence that could then be exploited, but Beijing locked onto the situation as soon as it arose.

And for Beijing to have its way would have absolutely massive implications for Hongkongers, who could now very easily be sent to China to be prosecuted for things like, say, criticizing Xi Jinping, or speaking out against the treatment of Tibetans and Uighur Muslims. In Hong Kong, these offenses weren't punishable, but if China could be granted an extradition and then have charges waiting when a detainee arrived, then it wouldn't matter. Anybody in Hong Kong could be scooped up, detained, tried, and even potentially disappeared in communist China, just the same as anyone else in the country—and you can bet that the extradition laws were going to be applied to political activists too.

When the bill was introduced, it included only thirty-seven crimes that would open an offender to extradition, none of which were political charges—but that didn't much matter. Once the law itself was passed, amending it would be very simple, and given the loose and very clearly pro-Beijing interpretations that Hong Kong had used in the enforcement of its other laws, there was no guarantee that an amendment would even be required. By simple re-interpretations of the rules they'd already written, the CCP could easily justify assigning one of those thirty-seven crimes to an action that was…well, anything but. And with decision-making power over who gets extradited resting with the hand-picked leaders Beijing had installed in Hong Kong, there was no real path to dispute any miscarriages of justice that did take place. As the people of Hong Kong saw it, this was the last step in dismantling the city's autonomous status. After all, threaten that any perceived dissenters in Hong Kong might be extradited to China, and it would rightfully become very difficult to find any Hongkonger willing to take the risk of protesting at all.

After the first organized protest against the extradition bill, the Hong Kong government began to send out signs and signals that this round of unrest wouldn't be treated so gently as the others had been. Several leaders of the Umbrella Movement were given prison sentences, including two who were sentenced to sixteen months—a small stretch of time according to some countries, but way, way beyond what any peaceful protester had ever been sentenced to in Hong Kong before. But this just seemed to inflame the protest movement more; four days after those sentences were handed down, 130,000 people rallied in the streets. A bit over a month later, a candlelight vigil for the Tiananmen Square Massacre drew a stunning turnout, and a bit over a week after that, the really large-scale protests began. On June 9, 2019, over a million people took to the streets, prompting an immediate statement from the government that, like it or not, their extradition bill would move ahead as scheduled.

Tensions boiled over three days later, when a protest of a hundred thousand surrounded Hong Kong's Legislative Council building in order to prevent a reading of the bill. From the government's perspective, this appears to have been a bridge too far; although the second reading of the bill was cancelled, police responded harshly to the protests, launching tear gas and firing rubber bullets and beanbag rounds in order to clear the area. Eighty-one protesters were injured, alongside twenty-two police, and stories began to emerge of police engaging in the deliberate assault of numerous protesters, including journalists. The Hong Kong Police Commissioner took the rare step of labeling the protesters 'rioters', a charge that carries a different and much more severe range of potential legal repercussions. A few days later, Carrie Lam herself would use that same term to describe the protesters—and the same night that she did, the 2019 protests got their first fatality: Marco Leung Ling-Kit, later known as the "raincoat man", who fell to his death while protesting on the roof of a mall.

The day after Leung's death, two million people marched through the streets of Hong Kong, in an act that this time, police seemed to have no real will to oppose. Two days later, the protest movement issued its four demands. The Lam government would have to completely withdraw its extradition bill, investigate the Hong Kong police for their brutality against protesters, free every protester and drop the charges against them, and issue a full retraction of the statements condemning the prior June 12 protests as a 'riot'. Although it wasn't an official fifth demand, many Hongkongers also called loudly for the resignation of Lam and the other ministers who had been involved with the government's response to the protests. Unfortunately, it should be no surprise that the government rejected each of these demands, ensuring that the protests would only continue.

With each side having drawn its line in the sand, there was nothing left for Hong Kong to do but to settle its internal differences the hard way. Protesters began targeting the city's police headquarters for their demonstrations, besieging it on multiple occasions. So, too, did several hundred protesters storm the Legislative Council building and vandalize its interior, also issuing their fifth and final demand in a speech from the floor of the chamber. The protesters were demanding full and genuine universal suffrage in Hong Kong, so that the city's people would be able to choose their own Chief Executive and their own Legislative Council. Symbols of the resistance, referred to as Lennon Walls, sprung up all across the city, and so-called 'district marches', featuring the local communities of each of Hong Kong's boroughs, drew crowds of over a hundred thousand in Kowloon and Sha Tin.

On July 21, the next inflection point came: a march on Hong Kong Island, attended by nearly half a million people, that intended to reach the Hong Kong government headquarters. This was the first protest in which police attempted to place restrictions on where protesters could move. Not only were those restrictions ignored, but the protesters also ended up defacing the headquarters of the mainland Chinese Communist Party building on the island, in what would be the first attack on a PRC target. It wasn't the only one to happen that night; as word of the vandalism circulated on social media, protesters across the city began to tear down PRC flags wherever they flew. But the retaliation was swift that night; by late evening, well over a hundred armed counter-protesters had massed near citizens in the Yuen Long district, attacking them with metal rods and wood sticks in an act that saw forty-five people hospitalized. Police took over half an hour to respond to the incident, and were observed having cordial conversations with the attackers while at the scene, and not a single arrest was made that evening.

It's important to note that there wasn't even an active protest in the area at the time of the attack; just ordinary Hongkongers, some of whom were no doubt supportive of the protests, but many who likely weren't involved. Regardless, it didn't take long for police to blame the whole incident on manufactured claims that protesters had provoked this armed mob into an attack. Six days later, the people of Hong Kong tried to march in protest against police inaction around the attack, but found their march banned. It was the first time that a civilian protest march had been outright prohibited by the authorities, although such bans would happen many more times in the following months. Nearly three hundred thousand people marched anyway. The following day, related to a different set of protests, forty-nine people would be arrested, and nearly all of them would be tried on riot charges.

The following weeks turned into months of the same cycle: the Hong Kong police set down new restrictions on the rights of protesters, protesters protested those restrictions, and police crackdowns grew ever harsher. Protesters began to weather attacks by police after deviating from established march routes; massive strikes led to more and more overtly threatening statements from the government; Chinese police in nearby Shenzhen staged and publicized massive anti-riot drills as a show of force; and the numbers of protest attendees continued to grow. One brief show of contrition from the Hong Kong government, an announcement by Carrie Lam that the extradition bill would be withdrawn in mid-autumn, was largely taken as too little, too late, to address the growing anti-government sentiment that all of Lam's prior decisions had allowed to fester, and after that announcement had only a minimal effect on the rate or strength of protests, police banned marches outright.

From September to December, at least ten protests would be attacked by police, even as attendee numbers remained in the multiple hundreds of thousands. More protesters were arrested on charges of rioting, and on October the first, an eighteen-year-old protester was shot in the chest at point-blank range with lethal ammunition. The young man was lucky enough to survive, and was promptly charged with rioting. Also in October, a new ordnance banned the use of facial coverings at protests, something that seemed to be done with the intent to discourage protesters from coming out under threat of identification, but instead prompted even bigger protests in response. In those protests, a fourteen-year-old boy would also be shot at close range; the next day, he was arrested and charged with rioting. On November the eighth, a 21-year-old would die after a fall under unexplained circumstances during a police clearance operation, and on the following day, seven pro-democracy members of the Legislative Council would be arrested.

In the November rounds of protests, clashes between the protesters and police grew all the fiercer, with protesters now responding en masse to the police use of tear gas and rubber bullets with their own use of bricks and petrol bombs. Protesters seized the campuses of several Hong Kong universities, and laid roadblocks all across the city. In the latter part of the month, one university would be besieged by police for twelve days, with hundreds arrested when the siege eventually broke. Elections for Hong Kong's District Council, around the same time, saw seventeen of eighteen city districts swept by pro-democracy candidates, taking over eighty-five percent of seats citywide in a stunning, unprecedented show of just how complete public support for the protests really was. The political statement seemed to chill police for a brief moment, with December's round of protests being quite a bit less eventful, but by January of 2020, both sides were back at it.

But January 2020 would also see the most major disruption to the protests yet: the emergence of the novel coronavirus. Immediately, protesters began focusing on what they felt was an inadequate government response to the threat of the virus entering Hong Kong by way of mainland China, and calling for closure of the border with the PRC. Despite public outcry, the Hong Kong government refused to heed those calls, although they'd ban arrivals to Hong Kong from protester-friendly South Korea a month later. For the protesters, the arrival of coronavirus was precisely the wrong development at the wrong time, a change that strongly disincentivized the large-scale marches that had been gaining in power previously. Rather than gathering in the streets, the protest movement transitioned online, including via popular video games like Animal Crossing, which would be banned in China as a result. As they did so, prominent activists were arrested, including millionaire publisher Jimmy Lai, and the founder of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, then-81-year-old Martin Lee.

In these months, both the police and the Hong Kong government were able to consolidate their victories and reorient themselves in preparation for the inevitable return to protests when it eventually came. That moment arrived in early May, with coronavirus cases popping up only infrequently across the city, and protesters feeling comfortable in taking to the streets again. But this time, the government was quick to issue strong condemnations of the rallies, with CCP officials stating plainly that Hong Kong would 'pay' for the actions of its protesters. Mass protests on the tenth of May led to multiple hundreds of arrests, and eleven days later, the Chinese government in Beijing proposed a National Security Law that would bypass Hong Kong's authority entirely. The law would have given Beijing the right to target acts it deemed terrorism, which very clearly could be applied to Hong Kong's protest movement, and although the law was internationally condemned as an attempt to end the One Country, Two Systems policy, it received the ringing endorsement of the Lam government inside the city. The law set off even bigger protests, reminiscent of what had taken place before the COVID-19 pandemic, but these only seemed to hasten the CCP's decision-making. One week after its national security law was introduced, the Chinese parliament approved it with overwhelming consensus: 2,878 votes for, one vote against, and six abstentions. To add insult to injury, another law was then passed, this one in Hong Kong; it banned "insults to the national anthem of China".

The new legal developments in Beijing signaled that Hong Kong's protest movement had now reached the eleventh hour, a true do-or-die moment in which failure to change the government's collective mind would spell the end to the freedoms Hong Kong had enjoyed for decades. The city's annual Tiananmen Square Massacre memorial vigil was banned for the first time, although many people still came out to show support for the event, and throughout the month of June, protests cropped up in large numbers again as world powers worked overtime to try and convince Beijing to show restraint. But the National Security Law finished working itself through Beijing's bureaucracy by the 30th of June, when the Chinese National People Congress officially passed it into law, effective immediately. The full text of the law was posted online for the first time at 11:00 PM local time, June 30, 2020, and at that moment, Hong Kong's autonomous status under One Country, Two Systems functionally ceased to exist.

<!-- aeo:section end="when-it-all-went-south" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="changing-times" -->
## Changing Times

In the hours following the National Security Law's passage, numerous prominent pro-democracy leaders withdrew from their posts or shuttered their political organizations, unwilling to take the risk that their continued peaceful leadership could land them in Chinese prison for a span of decades. The following day, tens of thousands of people attempted to protest, and were met with water cannons and nearly four hundred arrests, including ten that saw the detainees charged with offenses under the hours-old national security law. Protesters took to holding up blank sheets of paper in order to not be arrested for displaying now-outlawed slogans, while prominent activists began leaving Hong Kong en route to Europe. The Hong Kong Education Bureau mandated that schoolchildren be instructed on the new law from the age of kindergarten upward, and libraries began trimming out books and other materials that could have been perceived as violations, at the same time as schools began purging non-compliant material of their own. In perhaps the most chilling development yet, word emerged from pro-China sources that DNA samples had been collected from the first group of detainees charged with violating the new law, around the same time as the Beijing-led National Security Office set up shop inside a luxury hotel in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay.

The new law also set off a mass exodus of foreign interests from Hong Kong, with everything from prominent international banks, to press organizations, to VPN companies choosing to move their bases of operations elsewhere. Other financial organizations began to pick through their members, vetting their social media and even their personal lives to ensure that they would only hold funds for individuals deemed acceptable to the Chinese regime. A number of nations around the world ended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong, citing an unwillingness to extradite someone to Hong Kong and have them face charges under the CCP. Academics began seeking ways out of the city, as did independent writers and artists, while marches in the streets began to shrink in size. By August, a new ban on outdoor gatherings of more than two people and a resurgence of COVID in the city were enough to keep most people out of the streets.

Then, there's the matter of Jimmy Lai, a name we've already mentioned once before in this video. A dominant tycoon in Hong Kong's media industry, Lai had spent decades as a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, and his most successful publications, the Apple Daily tabloid and Next Magazine, had a reach within the city that eclipsed what most media magnates could hope of achieving. Lai had found himself a target of Hong Kong's attention all through the protest movement, but now, he was easy pickings for the government to identify and persecute a high-profile Hongkonger who could be charged with violations of the national security law. On the tenth of August, 2020, Lai was arrested in a move that prompted forceful international condemnation, on the same day as numerous other prominent pro-democracy activists found themselves in handcuffs too. Lai would eventually be charged with allegations that he had colluded with foreign forces to endanger China's national security, with the evidence against him resting mainly on citations of his Twitter posts, and within a few months, all his assets had been frozen. Lai continued to endure more and more charges, eventually being sentenced to nearly six years in prison over one of his cases in late 2022, plus another thirty-three months for other charges, and whether that sentence will be extended further, we just can't say. In all likelihood, Beijing is doing its best to time the death of 75-year-old Lai, in order to ensure he spends his last days in prison, without handing down a sentence that would appear so unfair as to confine him for decades.

The rest of 2020 was more of the same. The few protests that did take place were met with even more harsh crackdowns than before; more and more Hongkongers began to be detained and spirited away by Chinese authorities; and overall, the city basically concluded its year of fierce resistance, accepting, however begrudgingly, that Beijing had won. As CCP control consolidated over the city, Hong Kong grew increasingly isolated from the West, with more and more companies pulling the plug on operations there, and foreigners living in the city deciding that now was the time to make a quiet exit. When New Year's Day came around in 2021, Hong Kong had no marches take place, for the first time in a decade. Several countries accepted Hong Kong protesters as refugees, and the global West began issuing sanctions and closing down their former diplomatic agreements with the city. The Canadian government, in particular, explored the possibility of mass evacuations of its 300,000 Canadian citizens living there, in what would have been an incredibly geopolitically fraught exercise if it had had to take place.

The next major affront to the autonomy Hong Kong had once enjoyed was a speech made by China's head of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Xia Baolong, who seemingly decided that February 22, 2021 was a good day to start saying the quiet parts out loud. As Xia explained, it was the government's desire to ensure that only so-called "patriots" be allowed to lead Hong Kong, and if there's any confusion about what he meant by "patriots", we'll let him tell you himself: "Being patriotic means loving the People's Republic of China". Also in his criteria: love for the Chinese constitution, and love for the Communist Party. So, too, would members of the judiciary have to be patriots as well. For a not-so-autonomous region that had been led by Beijing's handpicked candidates for decades, it wasn't much of a surprise that this was what a party official was thinking to himself. But to have it announced so decisively was a clear indicator that the CCP no longer believed that the people of Hong Kong had the will or the ability to defend their aspirations for universal suffrage. Xia's comments were taken internationally as an indicator that the CCP had no intention of allowing opposition parties, what Xia himself referred to as "anti-China troublemakers", to enter politics at all. His comments were quickly picked up by Hong Kong's leaders, including Carrie Lam herself, who provided this gem of a quote in response to concerns that dissenters may be oppressed under such a system: "If we must use the word oppress, it's oppressing those who advocate Hong Kong independence, who attempted to push Hong Kong into the abyss of violence and those who forget their ancestry, do not recognise themselves as Chinese, who collude with foreign political organisations to destroy Hong Kong".

In 2022, Hong Kong learned precisely what the CCP's comments about pro-China candidates had meant. In that year, only one candidate was allowed to run for Lam's post of Chief Executive: John Lee, a former deputy police chief. In the Legislative Council, the number of directly elected members went down to twenty, with seventy members being chosen by the CCP, and when the pro-democracy movement, seeing that all was lost anyway, decided to boycott the elections, all ninety legislative council seats went to pro-Beijing candidates. In this year's upcoming 2023 district elections, the rules have been changed again, to prevent what John Lee has described as Hong Kong's electoral system being "manipulated and paralyzed [by people promoting] separatism and violence". Lee's answer is apparently to reduce the number of elected district seats to twenty percent, with forty percent chosen by indirect elections, and forty percent appointed by Lee himself. It's one step short of what many international observers believe to be the Chinese government's true endgame: a future in which those remaining twenty percent of democratically elected representatives are eventually whittled down until there are none left at all.

And since Lee came into power, the story has largely been about punishments against those who made the decision to speak out in defense of Hong Kong, back when things weren't quite so dire. Since 2022, the government has been hard at work prosecuting those who are alleged of protest-related crimes, including hosts of websites that were used by protest movements, and journalists native to Hong Kong who had made their choice to stay. The Hong Kong Justice Department has also started to show another troubling tendency: if Protester X was present at, let's say, three protests, and serves a sentence for several years as a penalty for being present at the first of those three…then upon their release, they're likely looking at a pretty short countdown before they're arrested again, hauled back in, and thrown in jail for the second—and so on.

<!-- aeo:section end="changing-times" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="life-in-hong-kong" -->
## Life in Hong Kong

In 2023, Hong Kong has been the site of a re-launch campaign, run by the city itself in order to rehabilitate its global image following years of crackdowns. After enforcing strict COVID restrictions for far longer than the rest of the world, most likely as a convenient way to prohibit gatherings in public that might otherwise have become protests, the city lifted its restrictions early in the year and announced that five hundred thousand airline tickets were up for grabs for anybody in the world who wanted to come visit. Billing itself as "Asia's world city", Hong Kong and current Chief Executive John Lee opened the city for business under the "Hello Hong Kong" banner.

Now, we could talk about the strange launch ceremony, featuring, for some reason, a breakdancing display done by people in airline uniforms and business suits. But it's far more relevant to highlight the way that the city's ceremonies have largely harkened back to its age under late British rule, while functionally omitting the decades Hong Kong spent as an autonomous territory. For all intents and purposes, the idea of "waking up" Hong Kong after the COVID-19 pandemic means outright replacing the life Hongkongers knew before the crackdowns, with one that echoes the convenient narratives Beijing wishes to tell.

But "Hello Hong Kong" has unashamedly taken place against a backdrop of continued, and well-publicized crackdowns, including everything from the mass resignations of teachers, to the mass trials of people charged with subversion as punishment for taking part in an unofficial primary election, to streaming platforms like Disney removing content that's deemed offensive, to the city plummeting downward on international lists ranking press freedom, freedom of expression, respect for human rights, and democratic rule. All these issues are, of course, kept well-and-truly separate from the experience of a person visiting Hong Kong with their free airline tickets, but just like the governments of war-torn Syria or repressive Nicaragua can entice Instagram influencers to amplify their preferred message, the fact that China can do the same in Hong Kong doesn't mean it's not rather insidious.

In terms of political expression, the ordinary Hongkonger's rights to express opinions that don't directly align with the wishes of the CCP are sharply curtailed. The possession of pro-democracy, pro-independence, or pro-suffrage stickers, banners, tee shirts, or flags are grounds for arrest and are likely to see an offender be charged. So, too, is the possession of blank white pieces of paper, after they were adopted as symbols of resistance following bans on protest signs. Maximum penalties for acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces include life imprisonment, but between how those laws are written and how they're interpreted by the CCP, they're used broadly enough that even minor affronts to Beijing are grounds for an extremely harsh sentence. By example, an organization that accepts a donation from a Western country has now opened itself to charges of collusion with foreign forces, and attending even a peaceful protest may fall under either secession or terrorism, depending on how the CCP is feeling that day.

Once a person is accused of a crime, another part of the National Security Law dictates that suspects can be moved, at the will of the authorities, to mainland China to face their charges. This allows a Hongkonger to be tried under Chinese mainland law, sentenced to serve their time in mainland Chinese prisons, and subjected to all the interrogations, torture, and forced disappearances that the Chinese justice system is known for. Detainees in mainland China do not have the right to contact their loved ones or their lawyers in some conditions, and they can be held outside the legal detention system for up to six months, during which time…all bets are off on the ill treatment they might experience while in custody. Even in Hong Kong, citizens are no longer afforded the right to withhold self-incriminating information no matter the personal cost, functionally eliminating the basic right to stay silent. And when they're investigated, it might be by Hong Kong's authorities, or it might be by the CCP's Office for Safeguarding National Security, an arm of the law that is free to operate with impunity in Hong Kong, but is not subject to any legal oversight or even basic laws of the city.

The city's schools, too, now prohibit any discussion of political issues in classes, as well as other political messaging by students or teachers alike. Reading materials have been sharply censored and otherwise restricted, and the CCP's programs of patriotic education have become widespread across the city. Beijing's interpretation of the 2019 and 2020 protests in Hong Kong has identified schools as a breeding ground for ill will toward the government, and in response, it's schools that receive a large share of scrutiny from the government. Students are taught the definitions of "secession", "subversion", "terrorist activities", and "collusion with a foreign country" from a young age, and classes on "citizenship and social development", functionally a primer in how to act loyally toward Hong Kong's and China's systems of authority, have become commonplace. Teachers are expected to self-censor, as well as touring China and passing an exam on national security when they qualify for their positions, and they can, and will be held responsible for any statements that are taken to be criticisms of the government—even when they're reported by their own students. And it's not just classroom teachers who are at risk; in September 2022, five speech therapists were found guilty of charges that they'd published children's books deemed to be "seditious" by the Chinese government. In response to the changing situation, many parents in Hong Kong have sent their children abroad to study, although families that don't have the resources to do so have no other choice but to allow their children to keep studying what Beijing dictates in curriculum.

For adults online, the situation is no better. The National Security Law granted Hong Kong's law enforcement entities the right to remove online content that is deemed contrary to the regime, and access the data of individual users with no need for a warrant. Although Western platforms like Meta and Google have refused to process Hong Kong's requests for user data, not all apps—and, in fact, not all popular apps—have done the same. More broadly, Hong Kong has not yet been subsumed under China's online Great Firewall, but speculation has only grown in recent years about just how long Hong Kong has left before it, too, is subject to the firewall's controls. Until then, Hong Kong's netizens will continue to suffer the removal of increasing numbers of individual websites, especially those that monitor human rights abuses inside the territory.

And lastly, there's one more little kicker for the rest of us watching around the world: The restrictions that Hongkongers are subject to under the National Security Law don't just apply to the people of Hong Kong. In fact, the law is written in a way that applies to every person on Earth—meaning that if a non-resident of Hong Kong, who's never been to the city or any other Chinese jurisdiction, decides to set foot there for any reason, they are immediately subject to detention and prosecution like any Chinese citizen on Chinese soil. Suffice to say, neither I nor the writer for this video are going to Hong Kong anytime soon, because, well, this is exactly the sort of speech that the National Security Law is designed to curtail—so while we're at it, let's violate that anthem law we discussed earlier. Chinese Communist Party, your national anthem sucks.

<!-- aeo:section end="life-in-hong-kong" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="future-under-xi-jinping-s-boot" -->
## Future Under Xi Jinping's Boot

When we look at the future of Hong Kong, we'll begin with its status as a global center of trade, finance, and international culture—a status that hasn't totally gone away, but has certainly diminished. After the mass exodus of a long list of Western companies, the city has become far less of a player in the cutting-edge business innovation that it was historically known for, with initial public offerings, or IPOs, coming from the territory being slashed to well under a tenth of their normal annual worth in 2022. Put simply, the city is no longer a target for international movers and shakers in the business world, and though it'll almost certainly remain relevant as a very well-connected banking town compared to the rest of China, it's not likely to climb back to its former glory anytime soon.

Another potential long-term complication comes in the form of brain drain, a phenomenon that takes place worldwide when educated, qualified professionals from an undeveloped, less-developed, or repressive nation decide to take their education elsewhere and emigrate, rather than use it to make their own homelands better. Hong Kong is facing this problem in spades, as parents who remember what Hong Kong once was seek to send their high-performing children elsewhere for their education, and where disillusioned young professionals are all too happy to get the hell out when an opportunity arises. The city has attempted to tackle this problem; John Lee's administration has lowered property taxes and presented new visas for foreigners. But over 200,000 foreigners and locals alike have left the city since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and those numbers are only going to grow higher as trends of emigration take root among Hong Kong's younger population.

Predictably, the city's media environment has gotten no better, and will almost certainly get worse over time. The few independent journalism outlets left in Hong Kong can, quite frankly, only be described as free press if we're feeling rather generous, and it's unclear how long those media entities are going to be able to stay afloat. In the void that Hong Kong's former free press has left behind, pro-Beijing media is filling the gap, in print, radio, television, and more. On the individual scale, a February 2023 decree that all SIM cards—new and existing—must be registered under the real name of their owners has prompted widespread concern that it'll be even easier for Hong Kong authorities to track their citizens in the future. One prediction we're more than comfortable in making is that Hong Kong will fall under the shroud of China's Great Firewall at some point in the next few years, essentially blocking out foreign social media and subjecting the people of Hong Kong to the ceaseless deluge that is mainland Chinese online discourse. So, too, do we expect China's overreaches into the personal lives of its citizens to grow ever deeper inside the city, until eventually, even that aspect of life resembles that of any other Chinese city. Whether that includes some of China's most extreme elements of social control, like its Social Credit System, remains to be seen.

On a grand scale, Beijing's slow erosion of the city of Hong Kong is directly in line with how the Chinese Communist Party does things. They're happy to play the long game if it means minimizing risk; they'll spend years to lay the groundwork for one successful week if need be; and they don't go gambling unless they've stacked the deck in their own favor. In Xi Jinping's government, the house always wins, and over the grand view of Hong Kong's last few years, it's unmistakably obvious that that's precisely what has happened. Beijing could have marched troops into the city a decade ago, but didn't; they could have brought the hammer down harder at any one of a thousand inflection points ever since. They didn't. Instead, they chipped away at Hong Kong slowly enough that the number of lives lost is in tens rather than thousands, and the number of concrete victories for Beijing is in the thousands rather than in the tens.

As it appears from the outside, the eventual endgame in Hong Kong appears to be to just transform it into any other Chinese city. Beijing is glad to slowly force out its international residents, to accept the loss of global commerce and economic power, and even to say farewell to its own citizens if they aren't friendly to Beijing. So far as we can tell, they simply aren't interested in tolerating citizens who aren't willing to get on board with the CCP, and if those citizens decide to remove themselves rather than demanding valuable CCP time in arresting and prosecuting them…then all the better. What's left, in the aftermath, is a Hong Kong that is well-and-truly under Beijing's thumb, and within one or two generations more, the city might not even remember that it's been oppressed at all.

<!-- aeo:section end="future-under-xi-jinping-s-boot" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="key-takeaways" -->
## Key Takeaways

- Hong Kong's autonomy under 'One Country, Two Systems' was gradually eroded by Beijing.
- Protests in 2019 marked a significant turning point, leading to increased CCP control.
- The National Security Law, implemented in 2020, effectively ended Hong Kong's autonomy.
- Media freedom and political expression have been severely curtailed in Hong Kong.
- The future of Hong Kong involves further integration into China's political and social systems.

<!-- aeo:section end="key-takeaways" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="frequently-asked-questions" -->
## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is the 'One Country, Two Systems' formula?

The 'One Country, Two Systems' formula is a series of laws that allowed Hong Kong to maintain its political and economic autonomy within communist China, keeping China’s political system and social authoritarianism largely out of Hong Kong.

### When did Hong Kong become a part of China?

Hong Kong has been part of China for millennia, but its history as an independent entity began in 1841 when Hong Kong Island was ceded to Great Britain at the end of the First Opium War.

### What was the significance of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration?

The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration was an agreement where China pledged to preserve Hong Kong’s political and economic autonomy for another fifty years after the 1997 transfer of authority from Britain to China.

### What was the Umbrella Movement?

The Umbrella Movement was a series of protests in Hong Kong in 2014 where protesters, predominantly students, shut down government buildings, financial districts, and major roads to demand universal suffrage. The movement is named for the umbrellas protesters used to protect themselves from police pepper spray.

### What was the extradition bill that sparked protests in 2019?

The extradition bill proposed in 2019 would have allowed Hong Kong to detain and extradite people to foreign countries and territories where extradition treaties don’t exist, including mainland China. This raised concerns about the potential for political activists to be extradited to China for prosecution.

### What was the National Security Law passed in 2020?

The National Security Law passed in 2020 gave Beijing the right to target acts it deemed terrorism, secession, subversion, and collusion with foreign forces in Hong Kong. This law effectively ended Hong Kong’s autonomous status under the 'One Country, Two Systems' policy.

### What is the current political situation in Hong Kong?

As of 2023, Hong Kong is under tight control by the Chinese government. Political expression is sharply curtailed, and the city has seen a mass exodus of foreign interests and residents. The government has implemented strict measures to suppress dissent, including the National Security Law.

### What is the impact of the National Security Law on Hong Kong's education system?

The National Security Law has led to strict censorship and control in Hong Kong's education system. Schools prohibit political discussions, and students are taught to be loyal to the government. Teachers are required to pass exams on national security and can be held responsible for any criticisms of the government.

### What is the future outlook for Hong Kong under Chinese rule?

The future outlook for Hong Kong under Chinese rule involves further integration into mainland China's political and social systems. The city is likely to see continued suppression of dissent, a decline in international influence, and a potential implementation of mainland China's online censorship and social control measures.

### What is the significance of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong?

The 2019 protests in Hong Kong were significant because they marked a major turning point in the city's struggle for autonomy. The protests were sparked by the extradition bill and grew into a broader movement demanding democratic reforms and resistance against Chinese government overreach.

<!-- aeo:section end="frequently-asked-questions" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="sources" -->
## Sources

- [Original Places video: Hong Kong: Swallowed By the Chinese Dragon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgfk6uVS5cI)
- [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-16517764](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-16517764)
- [https://www.britannica.com/place/Hong-Kong/](https://www.britannica.com/place/Hong-Kong/)
- [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-election/now-the-hard-part-for-hk-leadership-winner-tsang-idUSHKG13540020070326](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-election/now-the-hard-part-for-hk-leadership-winner-tsang-idUSHKG13540020070326)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/world/asia/thousands-protest-chinas-curriculum-plans-for-hong-kong-schools.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/world/asia/thousands-protest-chinas-curriculum-plans-for-hong-kong-schools.html)
- [https://time.com/4440708/hong-kong-independence-china-localist/](https://time.com/4440708/hong-kong-independence-china-localist/)
- [https://time.com/5606212/hong-kong-history-mass-demonstrations-protest/](https://time.com/5606212/hong-kong-history-mass-demonstrations-protest/)
- [https://time.com/5425653/victor-mallet-hong-kong-china-ft-media-freedom-fcc/](https://time.com/5425653/victor-mallet-hong-kong-china-ft-media-freedom-fcc/)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/hong-kong-extradition-bill.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/hong-kong-extradition-bill.html)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/hong-kong-extradition-bill.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/hong-kong-extradition-bill.html)
- [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hong-kongs-25-years-china-protests-politics-tightening-laws-rcna36284](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hong-kongs-25-years-china-protests-politics-tightening-laws-rcna36284)
- [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50148577](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50148577)
- [https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/overholt_hong_kong_paper_final.pdf](https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/overholt_hong_kong_paper_final.pdf)
- [https://kongtsunggan.medium.com/a-timeline-of-the-hong-kong-protests-1d13422ce006](https://kongtsunggan.medium.com/a-timeline-of-the-hong-kong-protests-1d13422ce006)
- [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-timeline/timeline-key-dates-in-hong-kongs-anti-government-protests-idUSKBN23608O](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-timeline/timeline-key-dates-in-hong-kongs-anti-government-protests-idUSKBN23608O)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-arc.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-arc.html)
- [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/hong-kong-protests-explained/](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/hong-kong-protests-explained/)
- [https://www.hrw.org/blog-feed/hong-kong-protests](https://www.hrw.org/blog-feed/hong-kong-protests)
- [https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9708/hongkong.html](https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9708/hongkong.html)
- [https://www.economist.com/china/2023/08/24/the-world-should-study-chinas-crushing-of-hong-kongs-freedoms](https://www.economist.com/china/2023/08/24/the-world-should-study-chinas-crushing-of-hong-kongs-freedoms)
- [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/22/china-official-hints-at-electoral-reform-to-ensure-patriots-run-hong-kong](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/22/china-official-hints-at-electoral-reform-to-ensure-patriots-run-hong-kong)
- [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/09/hong-kong-schools-in-crisis-as-teachers-and-students-flee-toxic-political-climate](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/09/hong-kong-schools-in-crisis-as-teachers-and-students-flee-toxic-political-climate)
- [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/fears-of-online-censorship-in-hong-kong-as-rights-group-website-goes-down](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/fears-of-online-censorship-in-hong-kong-as-rights-group-website-goes-down)
- [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/hong-kong-national-security-law-10-things-you-need-to-know/](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/hong-kong-national-security-law-10-things-you-need-to-know/)
- [https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-opinion-how-livable-are-cities-three-years-after-start-of-covid/hong-kong.html](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-opinion-how-livable-are-cities-three-years-after-start-of-covid/hong-kong.html)
- [https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/brain-drain-solution-is-staring-hong-kong-face-2022-10-19/](https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/brain-drain-solution-is-staring-hong-kong-face-2022-10-19/)
- [https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/19/business/hong-kong-business-investment-covid-reopening-intl-hnk/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/19/business/hong-kong-business-investment-covid-reopening-intl-hnk/index.html)
- [https://www.csis.org/analysis/hong-kong-2022](https://www.csis.org/analysis/hong-kong-2022)
- [https://freedomhouse.org/country/hong-kong/freedom-world/2023](https://freedomhouse.org/country/hong-kong/freedom-world/2023)
- [https://www.reuters.com/world/china/whats-changed-or-stayed-same-since-hong-kong-returned-china-2022-06-28/](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/whats-changed-or-stayed-same-since-hong-kong-returned-china-2022-06-28/)
- [https://thediplomat.com/2022/06/hong-kong-is-unrecognizable-after-2-years-under-the-national-security-law/](https://thediplomat.com/2022/06/hong-kong-is-unrecognizable-after-2-years-under-the-national-security-law/)
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- [https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown)
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- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Stonecutters_Bridge_and_Kwai_Tsing_Container_Terminals_Hong_Kong_2024_dllu.jpg) by Daniel Lu (User:dllu) / openverse, by-sa.

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## Related Coverage
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