Hong Kong’s new police state

Beijing is establishing a police state in Hong Kong – even if it risks destroying the international city.

“Beijing will not be able to establish iron rule over Hong Kong without destroying the territory.”  Or so I wrote in late 2019. By 2021, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seems bent on doing  whatever it takes to make the “city of protest” safe for the regime, no matter the cost.

On June 30, 2020, the eve of the 23nd anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese rule, Beijing imposed a national security law (NSL) – or, more accurately, a regime security law – to “prevent, stop, and punish” the crimes of “secession,” “subversion,” “terrorism,” and “collusion with foreign forces.” These terms are vaguely defined to cover any form of dissent…

This is Beijing’s response to the explosion of anger and frustration in 2019: If Hong Kongers do not want to be extradited across the border to mainland China, the central government simply brings its secret police and public security agents to openly operate in the city. The NSL effectively abrogates Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, which states that “no department of the Central People’s Government… may interfere in the affairs” of the special administrative region. The NSL established the Office for Safeguarding National Security to “guide, oversee, and supervise” local officials, with a budget of over US$1 billion for 2020-21. Within weeks, Beijing officials and agents swiftly moved into the Metropark Hotel in Causeway Bay, where most protests traditionally started. The office has since expanded so fast that it further took over the Island Pacific Hotel in April 2021.