S imply put, “2047 has arrived.” These are the words of Nathan Law, a Hong Kong democracy leader, now in exile. Hong Kong was supposed to have 50

Hong Kong, Snuffed Out

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2021-07-20 02:30:04

S imply put, “2047 has arrived.” These are the words of Nathan Law, a Hong Kong democracy leader, now in exile. Hong Kong was supposed to have 50 years, starting with the “handover” on July 1, 1997: 50 years of democratic life, 50 years of autonomy. The relevant slogan was “One country, two systems.” Hong Kong would be a little exception in vast, Communist-ruled China.

Cruelly, however, Hong Kong got half its allotment — not even that. Hong Kong is now a Chinese city like any other, more or less. In other words, it is unfree, and horrifying.

At the end of June, Vivian Wang and Alexandra Stevenson of the New York Times filed a dispatch from Hong Kong. The subheading of their dispatch read, “Neighbors are urged to report on one another. Children are taught to look for traitors. Officials are pressed to pledge their loyalty.” Here was one detail, among many — not the most horrifying, by a long shot, but striking all the same: “Police officers have been trained to goose-step in the Chinese military fashion, replacing decades of British-style marching.”

Question: Did they have to do it? Did the British have to hand the city over to the Chinese government, which is to say, the Chinese Communist Party? Yes, answers Nathan Law, and almost everyone else. The handover was inevitable. For one thing, the party could have sent the PLA — the People’s Liberation Army — into Hong Kong. What could Britain, and the “world,” have done then?