Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World
By: By L. Gordon Crovitz
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The opening of the Winter Olympics puts “sportswashing” on global display. The Chinese government has devoted vast resources to the Games, hoping that they will convey an open and appealing image of China and distract attention from the country’s totalitarian practices at home and threats abroad. Fortunately, new books about China offer a counter-narrative, detailing, among other matters, the attack on Hong Kong’s freedoms and the assault on China’s Uyghur minority.
Mark L. Clifford’s “Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World” captures how much has been wrested from Hong Kong’s people—a measure of how far Beijing is willing to go to destroy liberal institutions and democratic norms and ensure its tight lock on the power of the Chinese Communist Party. After Mao took over China, Hong Kong was a prosperous and free harbor for Chinese people, “a haven, protected by the British rule of law and run by competent and largely hands-off administrators.” When Britain handed the colony back to China in 1997—it was by then one of the world’s most dynamic financial capitals—it did so under the terms of an international treaty whose commitments Beijing has brazenly violated, especially in the past two years. Instead of respecting Hong Kong’s autonomy, China has eliminated its freedoms, jailing leading pro-democracy politicians and journalists.
“This tiny former British colony,” Mr. Clifford writes, “is a testing ground for attempts to limit the freedoms of open societies.” What Beijing did to Hong Kong it could try anywhere, if unchecked. “The Communist destruction of the territory’s liberties marks the only time in contemporary history when a totalitarian government has destroyed a free society.” The most recent crackdowns, Mr. Clifford notes, have “shuttered a free press and ended free speech and freedom of assembly, and curtailed the right to be presumed innocent, the right to a jury trial, and the right to hold private property without the government arbitrarily seizing it.”
A journalist and business executive in Hong Kong for nearly 30 years, Mr. Clifford became a human-rights activist after his experience on the board of directors of Next Digital, the publicly traded company that published Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s leading pro-democracy news outlet. (Full disclosure: I served on Next Digital’s board at the same time.) With no court order or court conviction, Apple Daily was driven out of business last year under the all-powerful National Security Law—imposed in 2020 on Hong Kong and applying globally—that treats dissent and other forms of free expression as subversion and collusion with foreign forces. Apple Daily’s founder, Jimmy Lai, has been jailed since 2020. Mr. Lai’s top journalist colleagues—the “Apple Daily 7”—are also denied bail and jailed.
When Apple Daily was under siege, Mr. Clifford witnessed the impact of the government’s extralegal actions. He is haunted, he writes, by “the memory of IT staff fleeing the building as the newspaper’s last issue was being prepared, spooked by rumors that the police were coming again. Of staff members begging us to assure their safety after the building was raided (these workers are now in jail). Of an executive in tears, confessing he’s been so broken by events that he considered suicide.” Mr. Clifford aptly concludes by wondering whether “Hong Kong can be both a global financial center and a city that holds political prisoners.”
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The Book is:
Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China's Crackdown Reveals About Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere
By Mark Clifford
I didn't notice this seed when it was posted, and assume it was posted and then wiped off the Front Page quickly by the usual number of political rants, all while I was sleeping. But I do have an opinion, and it's contrary to the author's.
In 25 years Hong Kong is going to automatically become part of mainland China, totally under the control of the CPC. It was inevitable right from day one. Great Britain walked away 25 years ago, and for at least two decades all was quiet and peaceful, was it not? Many who were very wealthy could see the handwriting on the wall, the inevitability of what was going to happen in the future and they got out. My son was going to a private school back in those days and became good friends with a Chinese classmate whose family moved from Hong Kong to China back then. I had to go pick him up at the friend's house one day - I thought I was lost and was in San Simeon because I thought the kid's home was Hearst's Castle. Back to the topic - Then, with the encouragement of the USA, the protests by those who were in opposition of the inevitable started and became vicious. They made the BLM protests look like Macy's Christmas parade. Opposing the inevitable is a completely worthless endeavour, but many in Hong Kong decided to give it a shot and I watched the rioting and destruction on TV, and it wasn't "staged". I believe the CPC wanted the transition to their control to be gradual and smooth, but the riots changed that, and I can understand why it was necessary to start getting tough. I think of myself as a realistic person. I'm 85 years old, and I doubt that I will live to 100 in my physical health situation, so there is no way I intend to make reservations for a world cruise in the year 2050, or that I'm going to go on a trip to Mars. I believe the majority of Hong Kong citizens are accepting the inevitable, and now from my living in China, I know personally that life in China is not as bad as America is trying to make it look, and I can understand why America is doing it, and it's not because of the Uyghurs. IMO the title "Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World" was chosen first of all to create the image of China emulating the Nazis, and secondly to create the fear of China having the intention to conquer the world, when in fact China has the legal right to assume Hong Kong. The third reason was make the title overly sensational in order to sell as many copies as possible. What a joke it is to try to extrapolate that China intends to conquer the rest of the world to end freedom everywhere from the fact that it has the right to add Hong Kong to the mainland.