Hong Kong’s security law: after one year, the city has been remade

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Hong Kong – With each passing day, the border between Hong Kong and the rest of China is fading faster.

The Chinese Communist Party is reshaping this city, permeating its once vibrant and irreverent character with more overt references to its tyrannical will. The fabric of everyday life is under attack as Beijing transforms Hong Kong into something more familiar and more docile.

Residents are now flocking to police hotlines with reports of disloyal neighbors or colleagues. Teachers were asked to imbue students with patriotic enthusiasm with 48-volume book sets called My Home in China. Public libraries have removed dozens of books from circulation, including one about Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela.

Hong Kong has always been unbearable. It was a thriving city on an inhospitable patch of land, an oasis of civil liberties under the rule of the Iron Fist. A former British colony that returned to China in 1997, the city promised freedoms of speech, assembly and press unimaginable on the mainland, in an arrangement Beijing called “one country, two systems.”

But under Xi Jinping, China’s leader, the Communist Party has grown tired of Hong Kong’s conflicting identities. For the party, they have made the city so unpredictable that it even came to the brink of rebellion in 2019, when anti-government protests erupted.

Now, armed with the expanded national security law it imposed on the city a year ago, Beijing is pushing to turn Hong Kong into another of the mainland’s major cities: economic engines in which dissent is instantly stifled.

“People from all walks of life in Hong Kong have realized that ‘one country’ is the basic and basic condition for ‘two systems’,” Luo Huining, Beijing’s chief official in Hong Kong, said this month.

Hong Kong is now a montage of scenes unfamiliar and disturbing to many. Police officers were trained step-by-step in the Chinese military style, replacing British-style contracts. City leaders regularly denounce “external elements” bent on undermining the country’s stability.

Senior officials in Hong Kong gathered, raising their right hands, to pledge allegiance to the country, just as mainland bureaucrats are regularly called to ‘Piao Tai’, Mandarin to ‘declare your position’.

When the government ordered ordinary employees to sign a written copy of the oath, H.W. Li, a civil servant of seven years, resigned.

The new requirements don’t just require loyalty professions; It also warns of termination or other vague consequences if it is violated. Mr. Lee said some supervisors bother colleagues to fill out the form on the spot, and employees compete to determine how quickly to comply.

“The rules that used to protect everyone — as employees and also as citizens — are becoming weak,” Mr. Lee said.

In some corners of society, the rules have been completely rewritten. But Beijing denies reneging on its promises to Hong Kong and insists it is strengthening them.

When China overhauled Hong Kong’s electoral system to purge candidates it deemed disloyal, Beijing described the change as “improving Hong Kong’s electoral system.” When the Apple Daily, a major pro-democracy newspaper, was forced to close after its top executives were arrested by police, the party said the publication abused its “so-called freedom of the press.” When dozens of opposition politicians organized informal primaries, Chinese officials accused them of sabotage and arrested them.

China’s power is so ubiquitous now that Chan Tat Cheng, once a hero of Hong Kong’s democratic movement, has spent the past year urging friends not to challenge Beijing.

Three decades ago, after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Mr. Chan, a Hong Kong businessman, helped lead an operation that smuggled students and academics from the mainland.

Mr. Chan said Beijing is now more developed than it was in 1989. It has exhausted Hong Kong even without sending in troops; It requires respect.

He admitted that the security law had been applied harshly, but said there was not much anyone could do.

“Some young people don’t understand it. They think the Communist Party is a paper tiger. The Communist Party is a real tiger.”

The new power of China has also declared itself in the business world of Hong Kong. For decades, the mainland economy has been racing to catch up with that of Hong Kong, the financial center so proud of its global identity that its government has dubbed it the “Global City of Asia”.

Now, the Chinese economy is booming and officials are increasingly directing Hong Kong’s global identity towards that one country.

Chinese state-owned companies are moving into offices recently vacated by foreign banks in Hong Kong’s iconic skyscrapers. In November, Meituan, the Chinese food delivery giant, scrapped the Swire Index, a British conglomerate, from the city’s main stock index. Financial analysts described it as the end of an era.

The mainland’s money rush brought some new conditions.

After Beijing this spring decreed that only “patriots” could run for office in Hong Kong, the State-owned Bank of China – a state-owned institution – published a job ad for a director-level position that said candidates should “love the country”.

The central government is trying to convince Hong Kong residents that the trade-offs are worthwhile in exchange for the mainland’s promise of prosperity. Hong Kong officials are encouraging young people to study and work in the southern Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, declaring that those who don’t go risk missing opportunities.

Toby Wong, 23, grew up in Hong Kong, and had never considered working in the mainland. Her mother came from the mainland decades ago to work. The salaries there were much lower.

But recently, Ms. Wong saw a subway ad promoting the openings in Shenzhen, where the Hong Kong government promised to subsidize nearly $1,300 of the $2,300 monthly wage — higher than many entry-level jobs at home. The presence of a high-speed train between the two cities means she can return on weekends to see her mother, whom Ms. Wong has to financially support.

Ms. Wong has applied to two Chinese technology companies.

This is not a political question. “It’s a practical question,” she said.

Ultimately, the government hopes to make the motive political. At the heart of Beijing’s campaign is a drive to nurture future generations who will never think of separating the party’s interests from theirs.

China’s clenched fist

Behind the seizure of Hong Kong: A year ago, the city’s liberties were curtailed with astonishing speed. But the crackdown has been in the pipeline for years, and many signs have not been overlooked. A challenge to US global leadership: While President Biden anticipates a struggle between democracies and their opponents, Beijing is eager to support the other side. Tourism Red Boom: New and Improved Attractions Dedicated to the History of the Communist Party, or a purified version. Of which, attracting the masses before the centenary of the party.

The Hong Kong government has released hundreds of pages of new curriculum guidelines designed to instill “affection for the Chinese people”. The lessons of geography should confirm China’s control over the disputed areas in the South China Sea. Students under the age of 6 will learn crimes under the Security Act.

Lo Kit Ling, who teaches a civics course in high school, is now eager to say only positive things about China in class. While she has always tried to offer multiple perspectives on any topic, she said, she fears that a critical point of view may be taken out of context by the student or a parent.

Ms. Lu’s topic is particularly fraught – city leaders have accused him of poisoning Hong Kong’s youth. The course encouraged students to critically analyze China, teaching the country’s economic successes along with topics such as the Tiananmen Square campaign.

Officials ordered that the subject be replaced with an abbreviated version emphasizing the affirmative.

It’s not an education. It’s just kind of brainwashed, said Mrs. Lu. She will teach an elective in Hospitality Studies instead.

Schoolchildren are not alone in being asked to monitor the opposition. In November, the Hong Kong police opened a hotline to report suspected violations of the Security Law. An official recently praised residents for leaving more than 100,000 messages in six months. Police this week arrested a 37-year-old man and charged him with sedition, after receiving reports that posters affixed to the gate of an apartment unit potentially violated the security law.

Constant surveillance through informants’ quarters is one of the Communist Party’s most effective tools of social control on the mainland. It is designed to deter people like Johnny Yue Siu Lau, a Hong Kong radio presenter, from being completely liberal in his criticism of China.

Mr. Lau said he was recently told by a producer that a listener had informed him of the broadcaster.

“It will be competition or conflict, how can Hong Kong people protect freedom of expression,” Mr. Lau said.

The other freedoms that were at the core of Hong Kong’s identity are disappearing. The government announced that it would monitor films deemed a national security risk. Some officials demanded that the artworks of dissidents such as Ai Weiwei be banned from museums.

However, Hong Kong is not just another mainland capital. The residents have proven deeply unwilling to give up freedom, and some have rushed to maintain the totems of Hong Kong’s separate identity.

Masks marked “Made in Hong Kong” have risen in popularity. The local boy band, the Mirror, has become a source of hope and pride amid renewed interest in the Kanto-pop group.

Last summer, Herbert Chow, who owns children’s clothing chain Chickeeduck, installed a seven-foot-tall statue of a protester—a woman wearing a gas mask and flying a protest flag—and other protest art in his stores.

But Mr. Zhao, 57, has come under pressure from landlords, many of whom have refused to renew his leases. There were 13 Chikidock stores in Hong Kong last year; Now there are five. He said he was not sure how long his city could continue to resist Beijing’s invasions.

He said, “Fear – it can make you stronger, because you don’t want to live in the shadow of fear.” or “It can kill your desire to fight.”

Joy Dong contributed to the research.

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