The Downfall of Democracy in Hong Kong

8 Andrew Daniels, “Conspiracists Say This 5G Chip Is in the COVID Vaccine. It’s Just a Guitar Pedal,” Popular Mechanics, January 5, 2021, accessed March 16, 2021, https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/ a35122832/. 9 Bobby Allyn, “Researchers: Nearly Half of Accounts Tweeting about Coronavirus Are Likely Bots,” National Public Radio, last modified May 20, 2020, accessed March 26, 2021, https://www.npr.org/sections/ coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/20/859814085/. 10 Allyn; Robin Emmott and Anastasia Teterevela, “Russia Deploying Coronavirus Disinformation to Sow Panic in West, EU Document Says,” ed. Mark Heinrich, Reuters, last modified March 18, 2020, accessed March 16, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/ idUSKBN21518F. 11 Emmott and Teterevela. 12 Nick Huss, “How Many Websites Are There around the World? [2021],” Siteefy, last modified March 19, 2021, accessed March 26, 2021, https://siteefy.com/ how-many-websites-are-there/. 13 Allen Grogan, “ICANN Is Not the Internet Content Police,” ICANN Blogs, entry posted June 12, 2015, accessed March 26, 2021, https://www.icann.org/en/ blogs/details/icann-is-not-the-internet-content-police12-6-2015-en. 14 Kit Smith, “60 Incredible and Interesting Twitter Stats and Statistics,” Brandwatch Blog, entry posted January 2, 2020, accessed March 26, 2021, https://www. brandwatch.com/blog/twitter-stats-and-statistics/. 15 Joseph Cox, “I Bought a Russian Bot Army for under $100,” The Daily Beast, last modified September 13, 2017, accessed March 16, 2021, https://www. thedailybeast.com/i-bought-a-russian-bot-army-forunder-dollar100. 16 Natasha Lomas, “Study: Russian Twitter Bots Sent 45k Brexit Tweets Close to Vote,” TechCrunch, last modified November 15, 2017, accessed March 25, 2021, https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/15/study-russiantwitter-bots-sent-45k-brexit-tweets-close-to-vote/. 17 Cornell University Library, “Fake News,” LibGuides at Cornell University. 18 Hadas Gold, “Instagram Now Lets Users Flag Misinformation,” CNN Business, last modified August 16, 2019, accessed March 28, 2021, https://www.cnn. com/2019/08/16/tech/instagram-misinformation-intlscli.

19 NewsGuard Technologies, Home page, NewsGuard, accessed March 28, 2021, https://www.newsguardtech. com/.

By Sarah Miller

China is known today as an authoritarian-style communist government where Western democratic rights and freedoms are often suppressed. China does its best to enforce its own values on its people, although one place where this narrative has faltered is Hong Kong, an island off China’s southeastern coast. Hong Kong currently enjoys democratic rights and freedoms, as well as a capitalist economy, although recent actions by China have led to growing uncertainty over the future of the island. Hong Kong’s century-old democracy is now in danger due to increased infringement on its democratic process and citizens’ rights by Beijing. Hong Kong spent 99 years under British rule, as it was leased to Great Britain as the price of defeat after the Opium Wars in 1898.1 As a result, Hong Kong thrived under a capitalist nation and developed its culture and economy separately from the rest of mainland China. Hong Kong became a hub of capitalist

trade and culture, whereas China became communist in 1949. As the lease came to a close, Hong Kong wanted to ensure that it would be able to keep its culture, economy, and rights even after returning to Chinese rule. The Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed by China and Britain in 1985, laid out what Hong Kong’s economy, culture, and government would look like and established the “one country, two systems” doctrine describing China’s relationship with Hong Kong.2 This agreement guaranteed that even though Hong Kong would be under Chinese rule, it would remain autonomous to a large extent especially with regard to its economy and culture, which China was not to interfere with for 50 years.3 Hong Kong also adopted its own constitution, known as Basic Law, which establishes the Hong Kong legal and governing system, as well as protecting the rights of citizens, such as the freedoms of speech, expression, and press.4 Hong Kong also became a Special Administrative Region of China after the lease to Britain ended in 1997 to ensure that it would be able to continue to enjoy its freedoms within communist China.5 Under this system, Beijing still maintains a good deal of control over the island. Only a minority of Hong Kong’s government officials are actually democratically elected by the people, and the island’s politics are dominated by officials loyal to Beijing.6 This drastically limits the power of Hong Kongers within their own government. China also has authority over matters of diplomacy and defense, as well as the power to interpret Basic Law, thus allowing China to severely restrict the freedoms guaranteed to Hong Kong citizens.7 Since 1997, there has been constant tension between Hong Kong and the mainland, as Beijing has made many attempts to infringe upon Hong Kong’s autonomy. Initially, these efforts were met with enough popular opposition to dissuade many of these initiatives from actually being implemented. In 2003, a law was proposed that would ban any speech or action that could be construed as treason, sedition, secession, or subversion against the Chinese government.8 This law would, in effect, eliminate all opposition to the mainland government through suppression of free speech and expression. This legislative proposal was met with massive popular protests in Hong Kong which stopped its passage. Beijing continued its attempts to meddle in Hong Kong’s affairs, a noticeable example of this being in 2012, when Beijing made an effort to reform the Hong Kong school curricula to include the promotion of Chinese national identity. This was also met with massive protests, as the Hong Kong population was opposed to such obvious propaganda efforts meant to repress Hong Kong’s culture and identity. The Chinese government once again made an effort to increase its influence over the Hong Kong government in 2014 by proposing a law that would guarantee universal suffrage for Hong Kong, but would only allow them to vote for candidates that had been approved by Beijing.9 This proposed change would have eliminated any support for democracy within the government, as only candidates that were Beijing loyalists would be approved. What followed became known as the Umbrella Movement, a mass protest movement calling for true democracy in Hong Kong. Although no true democracy was established, the proposal that led to the protests was put aside.10 Until this point, the mass protests in Hong Kong had been enough to keep Beijing from implementing the most suppressive measures. However, after the Umbrella

Movement, the Chinese government did more to suppress opposition movements than ever before. Leaders of the protest movement were prosecuted and expelled from government.11 These protests marked a shift in Hong Kong’s paradigm, as it showed how much Beijing was willing to do to suppress democracy in Hong Kong.

Beijing’s most recent crackdowns have posed the most serious threat yet to Hong Kong’s autonomy, and its future as a capitalist democracy is in jeopardy. In 2019, Beijing proposed a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China, which sparked another wave of mass protests.12 This particular bill was significant as it would have vastly limited the power of Hong Kong’s independent judiciary, which had been established in its Basic Law.13 The 2019 protests were massive in scale, as approximately a quarter of the island’s total population took to the streets. China responded with even harsher crackdowns, as since the protests, 2400 people have been charged with “unlawful assembly” and jailed.14 Beijing continued its dismantling of the opposition in Hong Kong in June of 2020, when the same national security bill that had been met with protests in 2003 became law.15 This law was imposed on the island by the Chinese government without any input from the Hong Kong legislative body, which sets a dangerous precedent for future action by Beijing. One effect of the law that has been widely protested is the power it gives Beijing over who can run in Hong Kong elections.16 Tensions continued to escalate after four pro-democracy lawmakers were forcefully removed from government in November 2020, a move which violated the system set up in the Basic Law. The rest of the pro-democracy faction of the legislature promptly resigned in protest of their colleagues’ removal.17 This move was incredibly dangerous for Hong Kong, as now there are none left in their government who support democracy and oppose Beijing’s restrictions of freedoms within Hong Kong. This lack of opposition has solidified Beijing’s control over the island, and has put the future of Hong Kong into jeopardy. The tensions between communist China and Hong Kong have drastically escalated in recent years, and Hong Kong’s special status within China is now more fragile than ever. Beijing has become increasingly hostile and aggressive, and does not seem to be backing down. A continuation in this direction by Beijing, if left unchecked, could mean the end of all hopes for real democracy in Hong Kong. This would be not only disastrous for the inhabitants of the island, but could signify more aggression by the Chinese in other areas, such as the South China Sea and Taiwan.

1 Erin Blakemore, “How Hong Kong’s Complex History Explains its Current Crisis with China,” National Geographic, Aug. 7, 2019, https://www. nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/hong-konghistory-explain-relationship-china/. 2 Ibid. 3 Louisa Brooke-Holland, “Hong Kong: the Joint Declaration,” House of Commons Library, July 5, 2019, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/researchbriefings/cbp-8616/. 4 “Chapter II Fundamental Rights and Obligations of Citizens,” Full Text of the Constitution and the Basic Law, April 29, 2020, https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/ basiclawtext/index.html. 5 Blakemore. 6 Lindsay Maizland and Eleanor Albert, “Hong Kong’s Freedoms: What China Promised and How It’s Cracking Down,” Council on Foreign Relations, Feb. 17, 2021,