Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World

December 13, 2021
Clifford (The Greening of Asia), the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, mixes memoir, politics, and economic analysis in this detailed portrait of how the Chinese government has curtailed the freedoms of Hong Kong residents since taking control of the territory in 1997. Making a convincing case that the personal freedoms and legal protections established under British colonial rule helped make Hong Kong “one of the freest and most prosperous places in the world,” Clifford explains how the influx of mainland Chinese tourists and property buyers in recent years have contributed to staggering income disparities that helped fuel the 2019 protest movement, which was sparked by the legislature’s consideration of a bill (since withdrawn) that would have allowed for the extradition of suspected criminals to China. He interviews students, journalists, and small business owners who joined the protests, and documents the chilling effects of the National Security Law imposed by China in July 2020, which “criminalizes opposition and criticism.” Though Clifford’s argument that China is on a campaign to “extinguish free thought” around the world borders on the hyperbolic, he makes an impassioned case that “anyone who believes in democracy” should support the protest movement. This cri de coeur rings true.

Starred review from January 1, 2022
Pertinent, mournful reflections on how mainland China continues to tighten its grip on the freedoms held so dear by the Hong Kong community. Clifford, who has made his living in the city as a journalist and newspaper publisher since 1992, begins with a vital question: "How did a beacon of prosperity and freedom, a city of peaceful rallies where fathers stood vigil with their school-age children, find itself transformed into a place of firebombing and tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition?" The author begins in 2014 with the Occupy Central movement, which, after initially dying down, regained momentum in the summer of 2019 following the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4. Soon after, writes Clifford, the government, "angered at its inability to bring Hong Kong to heel and convinced that Western plots to overthrow China lay at the roots of the protests, responded by ushering in an ominous new phase with the July 1, 2020 imposition of a draconian National Security Law and subsequent arrests of dozens of leaders of the democracy movement." The author believes these crackdowns are reminiscent of the violent practices embraced during the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong, when neighbor turned against neighbor, student against teacher. In addition to a potent personal narrative, Clifford widens his scope to encompass the larger-scale, nefarious intentions of Beijing to maintain control over its satellites. The government's methods have included efforts to tamp down Hong Kong's Cantonese speakers and to lock down the film industry via censorship and plot alterations (a topic that Erich Schwartzel investigates comprehensively in his recent book, Red Carpet). An agile observer and diligent journalist, Clifford leads us through Hong Kong's fraught modern history in relation to the striving for democratic freedoms, and he reveals many stark consequences brought about by the suppression of its spirit. An intimate, eye-opening chronicle that should serve as an alarm to fragile democratic republics around the world.

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