Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based freelance journalist.
Three years after China imposed a wide-ranging national security law on Hong Kong, the commercial hub looks like it has returned to normalcy. The riots of 2019 are unlikely to be on the minds of people shopping in its crammed malls and eating in its packed restaurants. But the lives of all 7 million Hong Kongers have been affected by the new political order.
According to government figures, 10,279 individuals were arrested in relation to the 2019 protests, of which 2,899 were charged with offences such as rioting, wounding, illegal assembly and arson by the end of last October. About 250 people were arrested under the controversial security law after it was implemented, and 29 were convicted. But more than 6,000 people continue to await potential charges, their cases still under investigation after all this time.
Last week, an editorial by the South China Morning Post said that those people have been “left in a legal limbo.” But Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee has rejected calls for a deadline for the police to either prosecute or close the remaining cases.
Mr. Lee appears torn between his desire to restore Hong Kong as a global financial hub, and his awareness of Beijing’s intense desire to safeguard national security. That may explain his support for such policies as culling books from public libraries, an action likely to please Beijing while drawing negative comments internationally.
Hong Kong’s international image has also been affected by other government actions. Last month, the prominent Hong Kong political cartoonist Wong Kei-kwan (who goes by the name Zunzi) was told by the Ming Pao newspaper that, after 40 years, it would stop publishing his cartoons.
Before his termination, both Ming Pao and Zunzi had been excoriated by senior officials in the Lee administration, including Mr. Lee and the secretary for security, Chris Tang, who claimed that the artist had “targeted the government more than once and made misleading accusations over the past six months.”
Subsequently, the Hong Kong Journalists Association issued a statement: “Backed by abundant resources and public power, the SAR [Special Administrative Region] government repeatedly targeted a mere [cartoonist], reflecting that Hong Kong cannot tolerate critical voices.”
Mr. Tang responded that the government was willing to accept criticism, but that comments must be “based on the truth.” The government, he said, “must speak up, clarify and condemn” if someone makes misleading accusations, and “give the citizens the right to know.”
That expression – “the right to know” – is often used in the context of asserting citizens’ right to access government or corporate data. In Hong Kong, it seems, its meaning has been twisted into the government’s right to silence its critics.
In some cases, critics are choosing to censor themselves. Tim Hamlett, a British writer and commentator who had lived in Hong Kong since 1980, wrote in the Hong Kong Free Press last month that he was “giving up on Hong Kong politics.”
“I am still up for new experiences but the inside of a Hong Kong police cell is not on my bucket list,” he wrote. “Nowadays, the government has its own facts and its own version of history. Any expression which does not actively subscribe to both is to be contested and condemned.”
The government also seems to be trying to erase the memory of the bloodshed in Beijing in 1989. This June 4, marking the 34th anniversary of the military crackdown, Hong Kong’s Victoria Park – the site of commemorative events every year until the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020 – was surrounded by police. More than 20 people were arrested, and some people who even went in the vicinity of the park were stopped and searched.
Citizens are even being told which words they can use. When a reporter asked about the “2019 protests” at a news conference in early May, Mr. Lee upbraided her, saying that what happened were not “protests” but “the black violence.”
It is almost as if society has turned upside-down. The public is supposed to hold its government to account, but they appear to have changed places. If people make factually incorrect criticisms – or go against the state’s interpretation of the facts – the government can condemn them in public.
This recalls a comment made by Bertolt Brecht, the German playwright. In a satirical poem, Brecht imagined a people that had “squandered the confidence of the government, and could only win it back by redoubled work.” “Would it not be simpler,” he asked, “if the government simply dissolved the people and elected another?” The government of Hong Kong may well profit by pondering these words.