As of: February 29, 2024, 7:50 p.m
By: Sven Hauberg
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The flags of Hong Kong and China fly at the harbor of the former British crown colony.
© Isaac Lawrence/AFP
Once upon a time, no Chinese city was as free as Hong Kong.
But the metropolis is increasingly falling into Beijing's pincer grip.
Activists feel this just as much as the economy.
It takes a lot of courage to take to the streets in Hong Kong.
Especially when you can't simply blend into the crowd, as was the case during the mass protests in 2019 and 2020. At that time, hundreds of thousands demonstrated against the government of the Chinese Special Administrative Region.
This Tuesday there were only a handful of people who gathered in front of a government building, closely watched by two dozen plainclothes police officers.
“The whole of Hong Kong is gripped by fear, this is the worst,” one of the demonstrators told a television camera.
“People used to openly criticize the government, but today very few do that, even if they are dissatisfied.”
The mini-protest was directed against a new security law that Hong Kong's Prime Minister John Lee is planning - and which, critics fear, will further restrict the freedoms that already hardly exist in the former British crown colony.
Article 23 of the Hong Kong Constitution, the so-called “Basic Law” of 1997, provides for corresponding legislation. Hong Kong should adopt laws “to prevent treason, secession, sedition, subversion” against the central government and the “theft of state secrets”. it says there, among other things.
What is meant by this remains vague.
As is often the case when “national security” is discussed in China.
Because what is not precisely defined can be interpreted by the authorities at their own discretion.
Hong Kong security law: Democracy activists targeted
Hong Kong wanted to introduce its own Article 23 security law once, in 2003.
But then up to half a million people took to the streets and the government backed down.
17 years later there was a national security law for Hong Kong, passed by those in power in Beijing.
They had previously bloodily suppressed the mass protests and the Hong Kong democracy movement.
The new security law now planned for Hong Kong is intended to supplement national legislation - or, as critics fear, to tighten it up.
A consultation paper on the project is more than 100 pages long and Hong Kong citizens were able to submit their objections until mid-week.
There is no doubt that the law is coming.
Thomas Kellogg, an expert on Chinese law at Georgetown University, speaks of the “wrong law at the wrong time.”
It offers the government an “even more extensive set of tools” than the existing national security law “to maintain control over Hong Kong”.
The law would initially target democracy activists in Hong Kong, but it would also target activists abroad, Kellogg said recently at an event hosted by the US think tank CSIS.
A few months ago, the Hong Kong government put a bounty on activists who had fled abroad.
“Atmosphere of fear” in Hong Kong
Yaqiu Wang from the human rights organization Freedom House speaks of an “atmosphere of fear” that has spread in Hong Kong.
This is particularly noticeable in the business world.
There is great concern there that mere criticism of the weakening Chinese economy could be seen as a violation of national security.
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Johannes Hack doesn't want to go that far.
The President of the German Chamber of Foreign Trade in Hong Kong believes that “access to information and the exchange of opinions in Hong Kong remains good and is much freer” than on the Chinese mainland.
“So far we have not seen any restrictions in reporting on the economy and companies.” The problem, however, is that the planned legislation does not really define what is meant by “state secrets”.
Companies from the financial and consulting sectors in particular could feel this, Hack told
IPPEN.MEDIA
.
According to the
Financial Times,
two major consulting firms, KPMG and Deloitte, have instructed their employees to leave their business cell phones at home when traveling to Hong Kong for security reasons.
Hong Kong cracks down on press freedom
Since the introduction of the National Security Law in 2020, not only individual companies have relocated their headquarters to Singapore.
An estimated half a million people have also left the city.
By the end of last year, according to official figures, more than 170 people had been charged under the law, and the approximately 100 cases that had already been completed all ended in a guilty verdict.
The trial against the well-known media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, who is accused, among other things, of “conspiring with forces abroad” has been running for a good two months.
The trial is “a message to anyone who dares to work as a journalist in Hong Kong,” his lawyer recently told the specialist service
Table.Media
: “If you don’t stay silent, you’ll be next.”
Hong Kong is becoming more and more of a Chinese city.
Security has long reigned supreme on the Chinese mainland.
State and party leader Xi Jinping subordinates everything to it, even economic growth.
At the beginning of the week, a law on the disclosure of state secrets was expanded, and the year before an anti-espionage law was tightened.
Xi Jinping speaks of a “holistic” concept of security, and the expression now also appears several times in the consultation paper on the Hong Kong security law.