The News
Radio Free Asia, a U.S. government-funded news outlet, said on Friday that it was closing its Hong Kong offices, in an early sign of the chilling effect a new national security law could have on foreign media outlets in the city.
The new law, known as Article 23, came into force on Saturday and carries the risk of severe punishments for collusion with foreign or external forces. Some have called it “the end of Hong Kong”.
“Actions by Hong Kong authorities, including referring to Radio Free Asia as a ‘foreign force,’ raise serious questions about our ability to operate in safety with the enactment of Article 23,” RFA President Bay Fang said
The new security law supplements existing national security legislation imposed on the city by Beijing in 2020 following anti-government protests. That legislation dramatically changed the climate in the semi-autonomous Chinese city, giving China’s central government sweeping new powers to police subversive activities.
Hong Kong’s free press has already been seriously stifled in the past few years, with Beijing wielding the previous national security law against multiple news organizations, forcing them to shut down or move and leaving hundreds of journalists out of work.
The new law highlights how drastically how Hong Kong — once a thriving gateway between East and West and guaranteed special freedoms under the One Country, Two Systems policy of governance — has succumbed to Beijing’s grip.
SIGNALS
Crackdown on Hong Kong carries echoes of Xinjiang repression
When China’s ethnic oppression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang began intensifying in 2017, many Uyghurs began discarding or burning copies of the Quran, books written in Arabic, or T-shirts demonstrating their connections to other Turkic countries out of fear of being jailed for disloyalty to Beijing, Human Right Watch’s Maya Wang explained in The New York Times. “Today, it’s Hong Kongers who are disposing of dangerous books and T-shirts,” Wang wrote. She recounted a friend calling her to ask if she should dispose of old copies of Apple Daily — which was one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy newspapers until it was forced to close in 2021 and its founder arrested. Other friends are leaving online group chats that include foreigners out of fear of wrongful association. The 2019 protest slogan “today’s Xinjiang is tomorrow’s Hong Kong” is no longer just “hyperbole,” she wrote.
Hong Kong’s thriving business community feels the chill as foreigners flee
Hong Kong’s once-thriving foreign business community is quietly expressing reservations about the city’s new national security law and its vague definition of what constitutes the theft of “state secrets,” Al Jazeera reported. The law imposes tough prison sentences for crimes linked to state secrets — defined broadly as military, diplomatic and security secrets, as well as classified information related to technological or economic issues that involve the governments of China and Hong Kong, Reuters reported. Foreigners have departed the city en-masse ever since Beijing imposed its first version of the national security law and organizations have pulled employees out, leaving business centers and neighborhoods catering to expats in economic turmoil. Some have seen business volume drop by 90% since 2020, according to China-focused news outlet The Initium. In Beijing’s Hong Kong, “political control trumps all else, including the economy,” one Hong Kong-based economist told Al Jazeera.
Could artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency help save Hong Kong’s economy?
Rattled by years of protests, COVID lockdowns, and political oppression, Hong Kong has been desperately trying to revamp its economy and rebrand itself as a tech hub for Asia, particularly in the development of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. China’s government made crypto trading and mining illegal in 2021, but Hong Kong — with implicit support from Beijing — has taken a “surprisingly contrarian view” to China’s stance on bitcoin and others, embracing digital assets and making it easier for firms to start crypto mining operations, journalist Hugh Harsono wrote for The Diplomat. Meanwhile, Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia have signaled their continued support for Hong Kong’s business environment despite the new national security law, while Hong Kong AI firms are looking to expand into Kuala Lumpur through new bilateral agreements. “Hong Kong will always be an international city,” Malaysia’s top diplomat in Hong Kong told the South China Morning Post.