from Hacker News

‘A Form of Brainwashing’: China Remakes Hong Kong

by v77 on 8/12/21, 1:29 AM with 60 comments

• by danrocks on 8/12/21, 3:15 AM

  I live in Hong Kong. Arrived here right when the second wave of protests started, in 2018. The speed with which China is changing the face of the city since then has been incredible, if disheartening. In a mere three years, we went from having a free press, district council elections, a vibrant online community, a combative but reasonably effective LegCo.

  All that is gone.

  Head over to the South China Morning Post and see the comments in the articles. All dominated by mainland Chinese, possibly working for the central government. Companies are leaving in droves, taking valuable people with them. Schools are being told to teach National Security Law to kids as young as 5. Even international schools are facing the challenge of allowing discussion in the classroom, under the risk of breaking the NSL.

  Last week, HK won a medal in fencing at the Olympics. During the medal ceremony, at a packed shopping mall, many people booed the Chinese anthem. They were deemed to be breaking the NSL and were arrested. FOR BOOING THE ANTHEM.

  https://apnews.com/article/2020-tokyo-olympics-sports-arrest...

  The National Security Law also prohibits any kind of chants during (now non-existent) protests. People then found a creative way to protest by holding out empty signs in the streets - turns out they're outlawed now too. Yes, empty signs break the National Security Law.

  This city has been destroyed in the span of months. It's depressing and heart-breaking. I am moving out with my family next summer.

• by cletus on 8/12/21, 3:14 AM

  So here's a fun fact about the "security" laws China forced down Hong Kong's gullet recently: they apply to everyone on the planet. They're vague and "subversion" pretty much includes anything you want to include. It's anything that makes the Chinese government or Chinese officials look bad, basically.

  So, if you're not even a citizen of China and you're sitting in Europe or the USA and you make some critical post about China to such a degree that the Chinese government deems it "subversive" and you then make the mistake of transiting the Hong Kong airport, you can be arrested and sent to the Chinese mainland for trial.

  Interestingly, Qatar has a similar law but it's more limited in scope at least. If however you have a job in Qatar, I'd highly suggest you don't say anything negative about Qatar or the royal family, even on a Facebook post while in a completely different country. People can and have been arrested for this.

  Also, Qatar is one of the few countries that require an exit visa to leave the country so think twice about working there regardless of that.

  But I digress. I think it's fair to say that any notion of Hong Kong independence or sovereignty is a thinly-veiled illusion at this point.

• by vco3340 on 8/12/21, 2:03 AM

  I realize this isn't a high value comment, but I lived in Hong Kong for a couple years during the handover. The socio-political turmoil over the past few years has been painful to observe.

• by SPBS on 8/12/21, 3:24 AM

  The targeting of the education system is insidious. Hong Kong youths may be known for being outspoken about democracy today, but Hong Kong youths tomorrow will become passionate about the CCP. We are seeing a turning point in history.

• by BurningFrog on 8/12/21, 3:22 AM

  What the world can do is allow immigration from Hong Kong, while that is still possible.

• by throwawaysea on 8/12/21, 2:39 AM

  This is exactly the same playbook China used to Han-ify (Sinicize) Tibet and Xinjiang. I feel very sad that the people of all these areas are powerless to stop their culture, way of life, and right to self-determination disappear. To a lesser extent, I also see elements of the same - attempts to to police culture, thought, speech, and dissent - appearing elsewhere in the world. While the approaches may be softer and more decentralized (like deplatforming), they are nevertheless problematic. I also see increasing parallels to the loyalty pledges mentioned in the article - for example diversity pledges or corporate trainings that force people to admit their racial guilt, like a struggle session from Mao's cultural revolution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session) but without the physical violence.

  We need to value individual freedoms and protect them at every turn to retain free societies. As for China, protecting and returning self-governance to Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan is an important human rights battle that the rest of the world needs to more actively engage on. Right now, it seems like everyone is on the sidelines letting all of it happen.

• by missedthecue on 8/12/21, 3:12 AM

  China's ability to completely control the domestic narrative is really really underappreciated in my point of view.

  Not that it is positive from a personal liberties standpoint, but in that sense that it is an incredible strategic asset. Imagine if the second world war had been fought today in the era of entertainment journalism, twitter reactionism, and professional punditry. It would be laughable. The war effort would stall before it began.

  My grandfather talks to me about how he would enthusiastically walk the streets with his friends after school looking for chewing gum and cigarette wrappers in order to pull the aluminum foil out of the discarded packaging and send the resulting accumulated metal scraps to recycling centers to be made into fighter planes. Things like that would never happen today.

  25% the country would insist that Hitler doesn't actually exist, 25% would say the Axis powers are actually doing the right thing and that Pearl Harbor was deserved, 25% would maintain that all calls for intervention are propaganda from the military industrial complex looking to line their pockets at the expense of the public purse, and the remaining 25% would be branded war-mongerers by everyone else.

  China does not have that problem. Whatever the government in Beijing wants, ~1.4 billion humans also genuinely want.

• by PikachuEXE on 8/12/21, 5:11 AM

  The security laws are sometimes called "public toilet laws" in local forums: they cover so broad in terms of behaviour and apply to everyone (not just on the planet the whole Universe).

  I live in Hong Kong for over 3X years.

  Feel free to ask me questions about Hong Kong (I am monitoring replies via RSS feed).

• by ilovebiden on 8/12/21, 11:24 AM

  Born and bred Hong Kong. I am supportive of this bill as usual western media making a mole out of a hill. As usual some western shrills and expats, masquerading as an expert in China policy, continue to cry foul when they are not on the ground. More than anything else, there are Hong Kongers who want peace and security which the western world will never comprehend. Period Hong Kong is part of China.