What does China fear?

Any challenge to its authority. To maintain strict Communist Party control of its vast, modernizing nation, the increasingly authoritarian government in Beijing is cracking down on dissent and independent thought. Originally, when Britain and China were negotiating over how the bustling British colony would revert to Chinese rule in 1997, Beijing indicated that Hong Kong would have a special degree of autonomy. But China’s rulers were deeply alarmed by the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and when they drew up the Basic Law, the Hong Kong constitution, in 1990, they did not include direct democracy. Instead, they created an Election Committee—packed with pro-Beijing representatives—to select the Hong Kong chief executive, who is the equivalent of a governor. The legislature is only partly democratic, with half the lawmakers elected by the people. Direct democracy to elect Hong Kong’s leaders was supposed to be gradually introduced, but in 2014 Beijing announced that when people could finally vote directly they could choose only among two or three candidates selected by the Beijingdominated committee. That prompted the student uprising known as the

Umbrella Movement.