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In just five years, the Chinese government has largely extinguished Hong Kong’s political and civil vibrancy and replaced it with the uniformity of enforced “patriotism” – loyalty to the Chinese Community Party.
Five years ago today, the Chinese government imposed the draconian National Security Law on Hong Kong. Since then, the Chinese government has built a new and opaque national security legal regime and bureaucracy, weaponizing the courts to hand down severe punishment for dissent.
Under the new national security regime, the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have largely dismantled freedom of expression, association and assembly, free and fair elections, fair trial rights, and judicial independence.
For decades, Hong Kong had massive pro-democracy protests, some attracting over a million people, but the authorities have not permitted any such demonstration since 2020. Protestors who participated in the 2019 protests are still being prosecuted.
The authorities have weaponized national security laws to severely punish dissent. Since 2020, 326 people have been arrested for national security offenses, and 187 people and five companies have been charged. National security trials have a nearly 100 percent conviction rate.
This has created a chilling effect on basic freedoms. Nearly 100 civil society organizations, labor unions, and political parties have disbanded due to fears or acts of government crackdown. At least 14 independent media outlets have shuttered. Self-censorship among journalists is rampant. Institutional censorship has broadened beyond the political realm to books and art.
The Chinese government sought to impose ideological control over Hong Kong students and residents. School curricula enforce “patriotism” and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party from kindergarten onwards. For example, secondary school students study “Xi Jinping Thought.” Civil servants have to pledge allegiance to the government (instead of the traditional role of serving the public); hundreds who refused to do so were fired. Increasingly, only Chinese Communist Party loyalists can occupy key positions in society, such as lawmakers and university governors.
The authorities also attempted to rewrite history, as Hong Kong’s information landscape is increasingly dominated by pro-Beijing voices. Textbooks deny that Hong Kong was ever a British colony.
In the meantime, authorities severely punish dissent.
Since 2020, the Chinese Communist Party – which is not even registered as a political party in Hong Kong – has extended its control over all levers of government in Hong Kong.
Although Beijing maintains that Hong Kong is still being ruled under the policy of “One Country, Two Systems,” it is clear that it has not been the case since at least 2020. In 2023, the Chinese Communist Party introduced a set of “institutional reforms” which further asserted the Party’s control of state institutions in China.
Today, Hong Kong governance resembles that of Xinjiang and Tibet, where the local government heads in these nominally “autonomous” regions are subordinate to Chinese Communist Party officials. Hong Kong’s governance framework has increasingly become “One Country, One System,” in which the Party is effectively running the city.
This heightened oppression may have dire long-term consequences for Hong Kong, even though some brave Hong Kongers still found subtle ways to resist tyrannical rule.
