Masked activists gather in Hong Kong as China tightens grip

CHINA’S decision to impose national security reforms on Hong Kong, after decades of trying to get such changes passed through its devolved legislature, crosses a threshold from which there appears to be no turning back.

The new law presented last week at the National People’s Congress in Beijing promises tougher measures on those deemed as harbouring secessionist views, and codifies China’s right to use national troops and national security agencies in Hong Kong.

What is shocking about this new law is not the detail of its seven articles but rather the way it is being forced upon the city by the Chinese congress. It is an admission that Beijing has no faith left, after the months of street protests last year, in the administration of the city’s leader, Carrie Lam.

Speaking yesterday, Leung Chun-ying and pro-Beijing city politicians raised the prospect of new investigative powers for Beijing in comments likely to further enrage campaigners fearing the end of the financial hub’s treasured autonomy.

It came as Hong Kong was on edge last night, with an eerie calm settling over the city ahead of the first mass demonstrations planned since lockdown buried a year of turmoil and pro-democracy protests. The city’s hidden network of protesters and activists are gearing up for a banned march today.

One protester said: “They want to crush us in body and spirit. We need to focus. We can see why the Chinese Communist Party hates Hong Kong’s freedom so much.”

Another protester warned that the move by China could prompt a “next level” response from activists.

Others said they were scrubbing their social media history to get rid of anything that may lead any Chinese police to their door.

They must now tread a careful line between staying out of sight and keeping up a message to the outside world, another protester said, adding Hong Kongers can’t fight Beijing’s clampdown alone.

“It is the beginning of the end of Hong Kong as we know it,” said Professor Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at Soas University of London.

Joshua Wong, one of the most high-profile figures of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement that emerged to protect the city’s autonomy in the years since 2014, said the law would “kill future democratic movements, since all protests and other calls for democracy in the city will be classified as attempts at subversion, just like how the Beijing government does in [mainland] China”.

Speaking to reporters, he called on the people of Hong Kong to “stand up and fight this uphill battle”, Mr Wong said he believed that activists like himself, who have spoken publicly abroad and lobbied for the international community to support Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, were “probably the prime target” for a clause in the new law banning foreign intervention in the city.

That there will be protests in response to Beijing’s move is unquestionable, says Prof Tsang. “It is going to be a very hot summer in Hong Kong — if anything, I think it is going to be worse than last year.”

He described yesterday’s move as the death knell for the “one country, two systems” principle, whereby Hong Kong is seen as part of China but with its citizens enjoying freedoms and judicial independence unseen on the mainland. China’s premier, Li Keqiang, insisted yesterday that Beijing would continue to uphold the system.

“Either way,” says Prof Tsang, “it is the end of ‘one country, two systems’ — because if Hong Kongers stand up and fight the new law they will be crushed. If they don’t stand up, they don’t fight, then they will be rolled over. But it is pretty hard to see the people of Hong Kong just rolling over.”

China has been looking for a way out of the protest crisis for a long time now, he added, and the coronavirus crisis has presented “the perfect timing” to make its move, with the Western democracies that would normally speak out for Hong Kong too preoccupied with their own virus outbreaks — or “dependent on China for PPE”.

For activists like Mr Wong, the only hope now is that the international community does not look the other way.