25 years after the British handover, city is still in limbo
HONG KONG — When the British handed Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997, it was promised 50 years of self-government and freedoms of assembly, speech and press that are not allowed on the Communist-ruled Chinese mainland.
As the city of 7.4 million people marks 25 years under Beijing’s rule on Friday, those promises are wearing thin. Hong Kong’s honeymoon period, when it carried on much as it always had, has passed, and its future remains uncertain, determined by forces beyond its control.
Before the handover, many in Hong Kong worried that life would change when Beijing took over. Thousands rushed to obtain residency elsewhere and some moved abroad. For the first decade or so, such measures looked overly dramatic — this bustling bastion of capitalism on China’s southern coast appeared to keep its freedoms, and the economy was booming.
But in recent years, Beijing has been expanding its influence and control. Those moves appeared to be hastened by mass pro-democracy protests in 2014 and 2019. Now, schools must provide lessons on patriotism and national security, and some new textbooks deny Hong Kong was ever a British colony.
Electoral reforms have ensured that no opposition lawmakers, only those deemed to be “patriots” by Beijing, are in the city’s legislature, muting once lively debates over how to run the city. China has installed John Lee, a career security official, as the successor to Chief Executive Carrie Lam.
Freedom of the press has come under attack and prodemocracy newspapers openly critical of the government, such as Apple Daily, have been forced to close. Its publisher Jimmy Lai has been jailed.
Hong Kong also has banned annual protests marking China’s June 4, 1989, crackdown on the pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, with authorities citing pandemic precautions.
The city’s tourism and businesses are reeling from its adherence to stringent COVID-zero policies enforced on the mainland.
Beginning in 2020, the authorities launched a crackdown on political dissent, arresting dozens of activists and imprisoning them for unauthorized assembly, despite provisions guaranteeing freedom for such gatherings under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the city’s constitution.
“Hong Kong was going to become part of a local government of an authoritarian country ruled by a Leninist party,” said John Burns, an honorary professor of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong. “How could it be a Western-style parliamentary democracy?”