According to a report published in the Wall Street Journal, China’s police repression and the new draconian laws are succeeding in crushing the pro-democracy aspirations in Hong Kong.
With President Joe Biden in the White House, Communist China is moving “with a scope and speed few here anticipated,” the WSJ noted. “Everything that’s happening in Hong Kong today was unimaginable a year ago,” a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist told the business newspaper.
The WSJ reported:
Just eight months after Beijing imposed a new national security law to quell a pro-democracy movement, this freewheeling former British colony has all but been brought to heel.
Moving with a scope and speed few here anticipated, authorities have used the law to stamp out street protests, ban activists from lobbying foreign governments, gut the city’s legislature and arrest most of the opposition.
“Everything that’s happening in Hong Kong today was unimaginable a year ago,” political satirist Sam Ng, whose show was taken off air by a government broadcaster last year, told his 250,000 YouTube followers in January.
Beijing is signaling that this is just the start, outlining more institutional changes to ensure complete control over the city’s governance and eject opponents. China’s leaders are planning to revamp election rules that select Hong Kong’s top officials as well as grass-roots legislators. The proposals are expected to be formalized at its annual legislation meeting in early March.
Hong Kong can be governed only by “patriots” who aren’t opposed to the Communist Party’s leadership, Xia Baolong, the chief of Beijing’s office on Hong Kong affairs, said in a policy speech this week in Beijing. “Those who violate Hong Kong’s national security law aren’t patriots.”
China, waging a genocidal campaign in the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, regards the liberties enjoyed by the former British colony residents as a threat to the Communist order.
Beijing has little support among the people of Hong Kong. In the 2019 Hong Kong elections, pro-Beijing candidates won just 60 out of 452 seats, losing 17 out of 18 city councils. The embarrassing defeat only intensified China’s suppression of the pro-democracy movement.
While the world was occupied with the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic, the regime unleashed the security forces to crush the pro-democracy movement. In July 2020, the Chinese Communist Party enacted a “National Security Law” for the region and created a special security apparatus to target dissidents.
The National Security Law strips the former British colony of the citizenship rights previously guaranteed under the Hong Kong constitution based on Anglo-Saxon law. Beijing promised to respect Hong Kong’s autonomy under the “one country, two systems” policy when it acquired Britain’s territory in 1997.
In line with the new legal provisions, Beijing now deports anti-regime activists to the mainland and puts them on show trials under the Chinese Communist laws.
President Donald Trump’s administration revoked the territory’s special economic status after Beijing started dismantling its democratic structures.
“A free Hong Kong was one of the world’s most stable, prosperous and dynamic cities,” then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in July 2020. “Now it will be just another communist-run city where its people will be subject to the party elite’s whims.”
President Trump also took a firm stand against Communist China over the crackdown in Hong Kong. His strong anti-Beijing policies made him a popular figure among the pro-democracy demonstrators.
“Thousands of protesters … sang the Star Spangled Banner and called on U.S. President Donald Trump to “liberate” the city. They waved the Stars and Stripes and placards demanding democracy,” CNBC reported in September 2019.
Pompeo: Hong Kong ‘Just Another Communist-Run City’ Now
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