In the 1990s Hong Kong was a gateway for Asia to the world
Then Britain gave it back to China...
...with the agreement that China’s leaders would respect Hong Kong’s free and open society...
...for at least the next 50 years
But just 25 years on, Hong Kong is now a police state...
...with thousands arrested, jailed or forced to flee
So what happened?
I’m Sue-Lin Wong, China correspondent for The Economist
I’ve spoken to a number of those exiled...
...to find out how China managed to crush Hong Kong
In 1989 Chinese troops opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators...
...near Tiananmen Square...
...killing hundreds, if not thousands
Every year since then Hong Kongers have gathered on June 4th in Victoria Park...
...to remember the massacre
But for the past two years, the park has stood empty
Instead the protests have spread to other cities such as here in London
Hong Kong used to be the only place on Chinese soil...
...where you could commemorate the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre
But over the past few years, the political situation...
...has become worse, and more and more people have been arrested...
...the authorities have also banned any commemoration
The ruling Communist Party of China used the military to indiscriminately murder...
...innocent people in the capital city of Beijing with live ammunition
One of the attendees is Dr Chung Kim-wah, an academic and a pollster
And among Hong Kongers, he’s a bit of a celebrity
But just a couple of months ago...
...he made the difficult decision to flee Hong Kong for his own safety
Today, Dr Chung is on the move once more...
I come to the UK in a rush...
...so I stayed with my friend for six weeks and now I find my own place
Of course, I’m not that willing to move away from my home town...
...the place where I grew up
I always think that that is my motherland...
...and I have to stay there and try to improve the situation
He hopes one day he’ll return
But as China’s grip on Hong Kong gets ever tighter...
...that hope grows dimmer by the day
After all, China’s ambition to take full control of Hong Kong goes back many years
From the moment the trading port was ceded to the British in 1842...
...the expectation was that Hong Kong would one day be...
...a part of China once more
Renowned journalist Ching Cheong grew up in Hong Kong...
...in the 1950s and 60s
We all consider ourselves as Chinese because at that time...
...Hong Kong, to many of us, seems to be a place not belonging to us
Eventually, we will return to China
But in the 1950s, China was weak
Its leader, Mao Zedong, had unleashed violent and destructive policies...
...that killed millions and left the country in tatters
We came to the understanding that...
...the mainland China has a completely different system...
...and quite repressive as well...
...because we have seen all the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution
At that time, the mass killing in China...
...sent many dead bodies flowing from the rivers in Guangdong to Hong Kong
From that time onward...
...nobody is thinking of returning to China one day
But Ching Cheong was still curious to see China up close
So in the 1970s, he became a journalist for a pro-Beijing newspaper
When I went to China...
...poverty is still very rampant
Everybody has to possess coupons in order to be able to buy food
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, rapid industrialisation...
...and free trade meant that business was booming
In 1997, the tiny territory’s GDP was one-fifth of China’s
China needed the business connections...
...and financial expertise that Hong Kong brought...
...or at least it did then
I remember as early as 1983, I told my wife...
...who was with me in Beijing, quietly, that unless China scrap its current...
...political system,when China gets rich one day...
...it will pose a threat to the world
And in the 1990s and 2000s, China did indeed get richer
The ruling Communist Party cultivated China’s global image...
...opening up trade routes and foreign investment
Its GDP grew rapidly
By the mid-2000s, the economic power balance had been well and truly reversed
And then in 2012, Xi Jinping effectively became the leader of China...
...and increased the party’s grip on power
He introduced a law in the mainland...
...which clamped down on any form of dissent
And then set his sights on Hong Kong
To Xi, it was no longer a city of growth...
...but a threat to his dominance
Over the next few years, the screws tightened on Hong Kong
In 2019, Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed chief executive Carrie Lam...
...introduced a bill...
...which would have allowed criminal suspects in Hong Kong to be tried on the mainland
This is a very important piece of legislation that will help to uphold justice
Hong Kongers like Anna Kwok were horrified
I was definitely very angry
Like, how dare you do something like that before 2047...
...when we were supposed to still have our autonomy
I was quite worried that people were not going to respond
To my surprise, actually, eventually people came out onto the streets and on June 9th...
...there was a million people marching on the street
But always in the back of my mind...
...I was always so concerned that how long is this going to last?
And if the government decides to use violence...
...or if the government decides to push hard on us...
...to silence us, are people going to fight back?
The people did fight back, but the huge demonstrations didn’t derail...
...the Communist Party’s crackdown
In 2020, it imposed a national security law...
...which effectively ended Hong Kong’s autonomy...
...this time resistance was minimal
Huge sections of Hong Kong’s society—from business leaders to civil servants—were silent
Why?
Because the party had been preparing for this day for a very long time...
In the 1980s and 90s...
...the Communist Party started laying the foundations...
...for taking full control of Hong Kong
According to one estimate, more than 80,000 officials from the mainland...
...entered Hong Kong using fake identities
The aim was for them to infiltrate every sector of society...
...by placing them in key civil service roles...
...and creating underground party cells
The Communist Party even tried to recruit Ching Cheong
Twice I was offered party membership and twice I declined
The party used a shadowy department known as the United Front...
...to try to cultivate individuals and organisations
Hong Kongers were offered money, power and women in return for co-operation
One of the United Front’s main target was business...
...a politically powerful constituency in Hong Kong
Businessmen might be granted special favours across the border...
...in return for their loyalty
Well businesses, they want a bigger slice of the market...
...and China posed a very big market to them
Naturally, they would be happy to co-operate with them
It wasn’t just businesses
Decades of infiltration meant the police, customs...
...and immigration were also in the pocket of the party...
...so when the security law came in, the loyalty of Hong Kong’s security forces...
...was never in doubt
It also tried to cultivate relationships...
...with those who made up Hong Kong’s vibrant civil society...
...journalists, teachers, lawyers and academics like Dr Chung
For many decades, he’s been contacted by so-called middlemen
So what is this?
This is a guy who’s kept in touch with me for at least six years
And whenever he comes to Hong Kong...
...he would come to Hong Kong probably to see me...
...and have a dinner or a lunch to talk on different issues
He looks very friendly
He wishes you happy Chinese New Year....
...Happy Mid-Autumn festival
Yeah always like that
Dr Cheung’s experience isn’t unusual
Many of the Hong Kongers...
...I spoke to said they’d been contacted by middlemen
For decades, the middleman were courteous and friendly, even
But once China imposed the national security law in Hong Kong...
...the middlemen became a lot more intimidating
Someone who was close to the pro-establishment...
...he told me that you are regarded...
...as someone who is not obedient enough, so you will be in trouble
Of course I took that as a signal and later...
...he sent me another message and asked me...
...would you consider leaving Hong Kong for a while to take a rest?
Over the past two years, Dr Cheung was approached by the police several times...
...but he was reluctant to leave his homeland
One of my best friends and my colleague, he was sentenced to prison for three weeks
He was always gentle...
...moderate, of course firm
And he was sent into prison
It was a very important warning signal
And I realise that going to prison is...
...not as simple as we imagine
My parents are quite aged
I imagine a situation. Is it tolerable for myself...
...to see my age-old parents come to Stanley prison to see me?
I would say that...
...that imagination is quite saddening
He fled
Now in Britain, Dr Chung continues to be outspoken
With his friend, a radio producer...
...they host a weekly podcast discussing what’s going on in Hong Kong
When I make a decision to move to the UK...
...I always say that I refuse to switch off my mic
...and keep writing and keep talking
Even though he’s no longer in Hong Kong...
...the middlemen continue to contact him
Anna Kwok is exiled in Washington, DC
She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to return to Hong Kong
Part of me thinks that...
...even if I go back to Hong Kong...
...even if I get jailed for, let’s say...
...five years or ten years...
...I thought it could be worth it just because that is where I grew up...
...and that is my home, right?
But then, you know, it was a very hard struggle because you have to decide...
...if you do want to go back...
...that means that you kind of have to silence yourself
She now works for an advocacy group called the Hong Kong Democracy Council
We try to guide the policy discussions so that we can drive...
...future developments that can discourage...
...the Chinese Communist Party from further eroding our freedoms
The world should realise...
...first that even though things may seem to be happening...
...just locally in Hong Kong...
...actually they are also trying to use their economic influence as a leverage...
...to control what people in the free world can say or cannot say
Three years on from the Hong Kong protests...
...thousands of Hong Kongers have gathered...
...in Parliament Square in London
Our true identity is always a Hong Konger
Many Hong Kongers I’ve spoken to say that Hong Kong isn’t just an isolated incident
And in fact, there are many lessons for the rest of the world...
...from what has happened to Hong Kong, from the way the Chinese Communist Party...
...has crushed liberalism in the city over the past three years
Please don’t take freedom and democracy for granted
All the strategies...
...China used to convert Hong Kong...
...to convert Hong Kong from a free society into an authoritarian one...
...are in operation in your society
So caring for Hong Kong is no longer for Hong Kong’s sake, but for your own sake
To read more about how China crushed Hong Kong click on the link
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