Bottom Line
- A series of protests in the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region against Beijing’s erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy have resulted in failure and the imposition of stricter controls.
- The enactment of Hong Kong’s National Security Law in 2020 has resulted in an exodus of tens of thousands of the city’s best and brightest, as well as the erosion of legal standards.
- Business confidence has been undermined, with many corporations transferring their assets elsewhere.
“This is how the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper.” The most famous line from T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” might fairly be applied to the fate of Hong Kong since 1997.
China’s slow strangulation of the fifty years of liberties it had promised to the Special Autonomous Region have been eroded by fits and starts while the democratic governments of the world look on but are painfully aware that they are powerless to affect the outcome.
The Rise and Fall of Jimmy Lai
The rise and fall of Jimmy Lai, now on trial for violating the National Security Law, mirrors the trajectory of Hong Kong itself: a population of hard-working entrepreneurial refugees creating a spectacularly successful economy under the largely benign influence of colonial British rule, then suffering perhaps irreversible downturns after it came under Beijing’s control. Lai, also known as Lai Chee-ying, was born in 1947 and arrived in Hong Kong as a penniless twelve-year-old stowaway. By dint of ingenuity and hard work he built his factory job into textile empire Giordano, with stores in an estimated thirty countries. The Tiananmen Massacre of 1989 led Lai to become politically active, founding Next magazine a year later. In 1994, Next
called Premier Li Peng a “son of a turtle egg”—a scathing insult in Chinese culture since turtles, hatched from eggs, do not know who their fathers are. The Chinese government then began closing Giordano stores and constricting operations in other ways, forcing Lai to sell the company. Undaunted and building on Next ’s success, Lai founded Apple Daily , a tabloid whose critical reporting on China made the paper an instant commercial success. But in 2021, with its bank accounts frozen and unable to operate, the board of Next Digital , which managed the publication of the paper,
announced the liquidation of the company.
Although the trial has dragged on since December 2023, the verdict is preordained. Even finding counsel was difficult: Senior British barrister David Owen was
barred from representing Lai on grounds of national security risks.
