“NOBODY CAN SAY NO TO BEIJING”
HONG KONG’S VICTORIA PARK WAS largely empty that day—unlike last year, and the year before that, and the 28 years before that. Usually on June 4th the park is thronged with crowds commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, perhaps the most infamous single atrocity committed by the Chinese Communist Party since the death of Mao Zedong nearly a half-century ago.
Hong Kong and Macau—the two semi-autonomous regions of China—are the only places in the country that have been allowed to mark an event the Party has tried to scrub from the national memory: the killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pro-democracy activists by Chinese soldiers. But this year, for the first time, Hong Kong authorities refused permission for the Victoria Park event. They cited concerns about the coronavirus. For pro-democracy activists, though, the cancellation was a portent of Hong Kong’s dark future, one in which Beijing extends ideological control over the former British colony despite mass protests and international condemnation.
Democracy advocates already foresee the end of a Hong Kong with (relatively) free speech and free trade. Chinese legislators recently approved draft national security legislation that would effectively criminalize anti-Beijing dissent in the restive territory.
Members of China’s rubberstamp National People’s Congress burst into applause in Beijing as the legislation was approved at the Chinese Communist Party’s annual meeting. Hong Kongers took to the streets once again to continue their long, losing battle against encroachment from the mainland.
The implications of Hong Kong’s plight are far-reaching. China-skeptics are coalescing in the face of Beijing’s unapologetically authoritarian march to superpower status, warning that what Hong Kong faces now is what others—Taiwan, among the first—may face in the future.
The national security law—expected to be introduced before September—will target secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference in
