This Friday (1st) China celebrates the 25th anniversary of the resumption of control over Hong Kong. More significantly, it commemorates the 2 years in which it imposed its version of what the territory it received back from the British after a century and a half of colonial domination should look like.
It does so in style, with leader Xi Jinping’s first trip outside the communist dictatorship’s mainland area since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Shortly after arriving at the high-speed train station from neighboring Shenzhen, Xi spoke quickly and set the tone.
“After the storms, Hong Kong rose from the ashes and emerged with vigorous vitality. The facts demonstrate that the principle of ‘one country, two systems’ is full of vitality,” said the leader.
It is a rational summary for some, cynical for others, of what has happened since Xi was last there, in 2017. The so-called “storms”, the political upheaval of 2019, when thousands took to the streets in protests that ended in violence democratic guarantees, changed Hong Kong forever.
“I miss my homeland, and I hope to return one day. But it is not possible to negotiate with Beijing because this is a totalitarian regime that cannot give people any freedom,” Stanley Ho, 37, said in a message. the regime still hates what happened in 2019.”
Ho was a local councilor for a moderate party, elected in the pivotal November 2019 election that sealed the death of pro-democracy movements in the territory, which had won a significant victory and signaled a path of resistance within the system. He, who had suffered a brutal attack by Chinese nationalists that year, told the Sheet at the time to believe that little by little Hong Kong would take on another facet.
He won, but not the one he wanted. In August 2020, a month after Beijing implemented the harsh National Security Law, all opposition China politicians resigned in the territory. “A year later, I left Hong Kong. The message we got was that we would be in big trouble, we would be arrested or killed, if we insisted on doing what we did in the past”, says he, who lives in Cardiff (UK).
The repression of what was perceived by Beijing and Hong Kong’s economic elite as a destabilization impossible to accept ended up killing, in practice, the system praised by Xi on this Thursday as it had been conceived.
As the protests were radicalized by calls for independence at various times, fears that this would be seen as an example for other regions and even for Taiwan, an island that Xi seeks to absorb and that the West sees as a potential Ukraine, was evident.
In 1984, the agreement between the British and Chinese provided that the territory would be returned in 1997. From then on, 50 years would pass under “one country” (China) and “two systems” (communist on the mainland, liberal capitalist on the territory). .
“It was a relationship that was always tense, from the beginning. It is necessary to remember that the English were the enemies in the minds of many Hong Kong people, especially those who did well financially. For those who only wanted freedom, however, it ended up being the exchange of English for huh [etnia majoritária no continente, enquanto Hong Kong é 92% cantonesa]”, says John, a western journalist who has lived in the city for 30 years and asks to use a fictitious name.
China was favoured. Hong Kong has become its trading post with the world, with about 65% of the flow of foreign investment in and out of the country passing through. Highly unregulated capitalism has also made the city an international financial center.
Turbulence has always occurred, as in 2003 or 2014, but 2019 proved to be a milestone because it was more than six months of acute crisis and with US interference. Hong Kong became part of Washington’s Cold War 2.0 campaign against Xi’s assertiveness, and in Beijing tight control became a political necessity.
With that, the “two systems” were eroded, with the intervention in the Legislative Council, which now can only elect “patriots”, compulsory quotes, and had its composition changed to reduce access by direct vote. The judiciary, whose autonomy was the centerpiece of the arrangement, now sees Chinese secret police operating freely in the territory, and draconian law has landed hundreds in prison.
Illustratingly, all the activists with whom the report spoke in 2019 are now either in prison or in exile. Citizens who chose to stay hide their identity and talk through indirect electronic means, fearing the surveillance installed.
As John says, Hong Kong today is on the way to being a Chinese city like any other, although its DNA does not allow this in a calm way. Its economic role remains important, but divided: in 2021, despite having recorded the largest inflow of foreign investment in history, it was basically Chinese.
And there was a reduction in their relative weight: before the capital of IPOs (public offerings of shares), Hong Kong registered only 15 in the first quarter of this year, 90% less than in the same period of 2021. Shenzhen and Beijing made 85 from January to March.
Economically, however, perhaps Hong Kong will resist and reinvent itself along the lines designed by Beijing. From a political point of view, it seems difficult to accommodate the demands. John claims that the vitality that attracted him as a 20-year-old to the city has “completely gone”, replaced by “tension and mistrust”.
“We have no hope now. Many of the enlightened Hong Kong people have left. Others are in prison. I believe that social and political issues will not be dissolved and will get worse because people with a talent for solving problems have left,” says Ho, who works as head of communications for a Welsh trade union network with 400,000 members and wants to study in the US next year.
He exemplifies his vision with the selection of former Hong Kong security chief John Lee as the replacement for Carrie Lam, the territory’s unpopular chief executive since 2017. bad decisions, and now he has received support from Beijing. He will only follow orders”, says the activist.
Lee and Lam have dinner with Xi this Thursday. The Chinese leader, in fact, will leave the territory at the end of the night and return on Friday, the official day of the resumption of Hong Kong, when more positive speeches will be made.
Politically and for the time being, the dictatorship won, and 25 years ahead of the deadline, the cards are fully dealt with. “Today, the democratic movement lives in different countries. We hope that people will show solidarity and put pressure on the Chinese Communist Party”, he says, without exactly conviction about a timetable for action. “We are still thinking about strategy and tactics to stand for freedom and liberate Hong Kong,” he says.
