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undone. When the territory was returned
to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 under an
agreement called “one country, two sys-
tems,” it was guaranteed a high degree of
autonomy meant to safeguard its way of
life for 50 years. This craggy outpost on
the South China Sea, home to 7.3 million
people, is known as “Asia’s World City”
because of its cosmopolitan nature. At
the time a capitalist enclave in a com-
munist empire, the regional finance hub
once served as the conduit for almost
all commerce between East and West.
Its clean governance, independent judi-
ciary, freedoms of religion, expression
and assembly—all but vanished on the
mainland—are cherished by its citizens.
Over the past 22 years, Hong Kongers
have periodically mounted the barricades
to defend their city’s essential spirit. In
2003, an estimated half-million people
took to the streets and successfully sty-
mied a national- security bill outlawing
sedition and treason. In 2012, a student
protest movement led by then 15-year-old
activist Joshua Wong scuttled Beijing’s ef-
forts to impose a “patriotic” school cur-
riculum broadly viewed as brainwashing.
Two years later, not long after Xi came to
power, the Umbrella Movement brought
their fight to the world’s attention. The
79-day occupation of a busy commercial
district was sparked by outrage over im-
ages of police blasting pepper spray at stu-
dent protesters, again led by Wong, who
had reclaimed a public square fenced off
by the government.
The sight of kids screaming in painand being dragged away by officers in
riot gear moved tens of thousands of
people to join a march, planned earlier
by more established pro- democracy fig-
ures, against a proposal by Beijing to vet
candidates for the city’s chief executive
role. The battle was ultimately lost, and
colorful tent cities were slowly demol-
ished amid dwindling public support.
The crackdown came later, in the
form of death by a thousand cuts. The
disappearance of five booksellers in
2015, known for peddling salacious texts
about the Communist Party, sounded
the first alarm. Several young activists
elected to public office the following
year were disqualified because the way
they said their oaths was deemed “insin-
cere.” (Some refused to pledge allegiance
to China and used offensive language.)
Not long after that, ringleaders of the
protests— including Wong—were dealt
prison sentences and labeled interna-
tionally as Hong Kong’s first prisoners of
conscience. In retrospect, there’s a sense
among the city’s democrats that the kids
were right all along, but that not enough
people believed them when they warned
of a slide toward authoritarianism.
Since then, the erosion of the city’s
freedoms has sped up. Members of the
pro- democratic camp have warned of
the patient and insidious takeover of po-
litical mechanisms by the United Front,
a coalition of political parties tasked
with exporting the Communist Party’s
agenda. Trade unions and influential
professional associations are stacked
with Beijing- friendly executives, often
through coercive methods. Mainland
conglomerates have bought up publish-
ing houses and distributors, choking out
banned content that used to be freely
available in bookshops at the airport and
throughout the city.
In September 2018, a political party
that advocated for independence, the
Hong Kong National Party, was banned
and a Financial Times journalist denied a
visa after appearing at a press club event
with its leader.
“There was never before this sense
that there were sensitive topics you
couldn’t talk about publicly, or write
freely and publish about,” says Antony
Dapiran, a lawyer and author of the
book City of Protest: A Recent History of
Dissent in Hong Kong. Only a few years^
Travelers wade through crowds of
antigovernment protesters at Hong
Kong International Airport