Hong Kong’s Civil Society: From an Open City to a City of Fear

“Hong Kong’s civil society used to be captured by images of mass protests that appeared on headline news. On January 1, July 1, and October 1, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions, dressed in either all black or all white, as instructed by organizers, slowly flowed out of Victoria Park and inched toward the central government offices. On June 4, the sea of lighted candles that flickered in Victoria Park sent a message to the world that ‘we will never forget.’

“Behind news cameras, each annual demonstration required member groups to boost turnout by setting up street booths, hanging street banners, distributing pamphlets, holding seminars, collecting signatures, and coordinating resources. For the rest of the year, civic organizations remained active by meeting regularly to discuss government policies and shared concerns, write policy recommendations, conduct training, and share ideas with like minds.

“Hong Kong could enjoy a liberal society without democracy because of the government’s blessing. Government officials were eager to bargain with civic groups both to enhance governance and to respect the promise of ‘Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong’ under ‘one country, two systems.’ Civic groups fighting for a variety of causes, from universal suffrage to economic justice and equality for minorities, blossomed and won some policy changes. The flip side is that, as soon as those in power stop practicing political tolerance, the civil society easily loses its way.”

—A former convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front

“The Confederation of Trade Unions was formed in 1990 by leaders of a group of independent trade unions, supported by the Christian Industrial Committee which had been helping workers to organize in the 1980s. At the time, Hong Kong’s factories relocated across the border and left behind unpaid workers. Once established, the confederation worked not just with blue-collar laborers, but also white-collar workers such as teachers, social workers, medical staff, civil servants, and other professionals. This laid down the human and knowledge infrastructure for the wave of unionization from 2019 to 2020.”

—A union organizer since the 1980s

“The civil society allowed the rest of Hong Kong to function smoothly. Civic groups contributed to social stability by bringing together citizens who needed help and those who could contribute money, time and expertise. They also improved governance by serving as conduits between officials and communities and channeling complaints to responsible offices.”

—A Protestant minister and veteran civil society leader

“Good old Hong Kong was an ecosystem that had something to offer everyone: efficient and clean bureaucracy, courteous and professional police, an excellent education system for locals and expats, world-class universities, free media, an exciting arts scene, and cultural events.

Hong Kong was a great place for China-watching. It was where journalists, academics, international non-governmental organizations, local groups, and China-based ones gathered to learn from one another, exchange ideas, receive training, and just to have fun. Liberal Chinese would come to seek education and carry out human rights work, while corrupt officials would come park their dirty money. Of course, it had plenty to offer those who worked in international finance.”

—William Nee, Research and Advocacy Coordinator at China Human Rights Defenders

“The National Security Law means the end of political space for civil society organizations. The Chinese Communist Party thinks that it is in a life-and-death struggle with foreign forces in Hong Kong. It is determined to make the civil society collapse.

“I was alarmed that the National Security Law adopts the same language, almost verbatim, as the mainland national security legislation on registration of non-governmental organizations, religious affairs, internet security, and more.

“The National Security Law is intentionally vague—the vaguer the law is, the easier it is to control people as they are left to second guess what could get them arrested and thus exercise self-censorship. By creating a highly intimidating environment, authorities have everyone worried that she will be next.

“The police are making arrests not only under the National Security Law, but also for sedition.[36] Sedition is a speech crime, similar to incitement in mainland China, under Hong Kong’s own colonial-era law. Almost anything can fall under sedition. Alan Au Ka-lun, a moderate but widely popular public intellectual, was arrested for sedition.[37] Six people were arrested for clapping hands in court to show support for Chow Hang-tung, a leader of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China.[38]

“This repression takes an approach shocking to Hong Kong but familiar in mainland China: targeting the most influential first and then working down the list, making mass arrests at 6 a.m., putting on mass trials, and denying bail. Hong Kong is not yet as bad as mainland China in that the arrested still have access to family and lawyers, but it is heading toward more and more ‘mainlandization.’”

—Patrick Poon, Visiting Researcher, Institute of Comparative Law, Meiji University, Tokyo

“The crackdown came so fast and so heavy-handed that Hong Kong people were not prepared for it. For example, the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China had barely begun discussions as to whether they should dissolve on their own or resist to the end. Before they had a chance to come to a decision, key officers were arrested, forcing the closure of the organization as well.”

  —A professor with expertise in civil society

“After the imposition of the National Security Law, I continued to set up street booths to distribute pamphlets and connect like-minded residents. However, I was followed, my phone was hacked. A friend whose dad was a civil servant warned me that I must stop or I would be arrested. The arrests of all five members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists that published children’s books mocking suppression sent chills down my bones.[39] No one wanted to be the key person of any organization anymore.”

—A former student leader

“Hong Kong experienced the strongest wave of unionization in history in 2019 and 2020 when about 4,000 unions were registered. The enthusiasm was driven by the protest, as earlier general strikes had had limited results, and street movements were hitting a bottleneck.

“Soon, the Labour Department’s Registry of Trade Unions came after various unions. The Registry used to never ask questions about membership and activities. They created new positions filled by trusted individuals to review all unions. The registry has the power to demand that unions hand over membership data and review whether a union has taken actions not consistent with registration purposes. They sent letters asking us to explain activities deemed political and unrelated to union registration, including strikes, street booths, film screenings, and participation in the primary. These unions disbanded, and organizers left Hong Kong.”

—Ivan Law, former Vice Chair of Hospital Authority Employees Alliance

“The Hong Kong Government has been cutting off media’s and civic organizations’ access to funds as a tactic to suppress civil society.

“In the crackdown, the police have targeted Apple Daily and its parent company Next Digital, the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, the Good Neighbour North District Church, and many other organizations that were successful at crowdfunding. They arrested 612 trustees, investigated the church’s funds for ‘money laundering,’ and froze their bank accounts. In addition, there are concerns over whether individuals contributing to the above civil society organizations will be held criminally liable. Although small organizations, independent journalists, and news platforms can still rely on crowdfunding to continue their operations, government officials have already suggested that they would tighten public fund-raising.”

—Simon Lee, former executive with Next Digital (parent company of Apple Daily)

“In essence, anyone who refuses to be bought or yield to the powers that be but insists on professional principles and critical thinking is seen as an enemy.”

—An activist doctor

“People talk about how they do not know where the red line is. What we face is worse than a red line, it is a ‘red net’ widely cast to catch as many as possible. This ‘red terror’ in Hong Kong is worse than Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship known as the ‘white terror’ in Taiwan.[54] Chiang wanted to maintain the façade of freedom under international pressure; thus, he still allowed local elections and suspended repression during campaign times. In Hong Kong, the government abolished free and fair elections after the District Council elections in 2019. Now, ‘elections’ are held only to rubber-stamp handpicked ‘patriots.’”

—Patrick Poon, Visiting Researcher, Institute of Comparative Law, Meiji University, Tokyo

“The Chinese government’s crackdown on Hong Kong today is worse than the British Hong Kong government’s repression of the communist riots of 1966 and 1967. There was a political unit in the police that targeted the opposition, but there was no criminalization of speech.

“As an illustration of who is in command today, party-controlled newspapers Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po attack individuals and organizations and then the national security police follow orders and make arrests.” [55]

—A former democratically elected legislator

“Authorities have tightened the leash on professions that provide human services. As it turned out, the very existence of a professional organization has made it easy for authorities to interfere, not just though licensing and qualification requirements, but also through election of governing boards. This is how lawyers, teachers, social workers, accountants, surveyors, doctors, nurses, architects, and more are kept in check.”

—A former legislator from a functional constituency

“Hong Kong people were not psychologically prepared for the total collapse of the rule of law and the co-optation of judges. With the Umbrella Movement, the courts still put on the public face of justice. With the 2019 cases, the courts have fully followed political orders. Thus, if we want to understand why the civil society collapsed so quickly, we first need to understand why the rule of law, which once seemed to be well established in Hong Kong, could be so readily compromised.”

—A professor with expertise in civil society

“Many Hong Kongers were not originally that fearful of the National Security Law. Based on what happened to the Umbrella Movement of 2014, they thought that the coming arrests would be limited to the most prominent public figures. While they knew that the Department of Justice would readily follow orders to prosecute as many people as possible with the heaviest charges, they still believed in the independence of judges. They expected to be released on bail while pending trial, that trial would be based on evidence, and that sentences would conform to international human rights standards as stipulated in the Basic Law. Their faith was shaken by the mass arrests of the 47 involved in an election primary on February 28, 2021, and denial of bail to the majority.[68]

—Patrick Poon, Visiting Researcher, Institute of Comparative Law, Meiji University, Tokyo

“Hong Kong’s rule of law has been turned into a fiction. There is no fair trial for political cases. Whatever the prosecution asks, it gets. Whatever the defense asks, it gets shut down. It is heartbreaking to see judges inflict injustice in the name of justice.

“The turning point was the case of Jimmy Lai, publisher of the shuttered Apple Daily, before the Court of Final Appeal in December 2020: the prosecution threatened that, if Lai was granted bail, they would re-arrest him and send him across the border.

“In protest-related cases, conviction is guaranteed unless a defendant can prove himself or herself innocent. A defendant can be convicted of rioting for merely possessing a respirator or goggles or wearing black, without any need for evidence that she or he committed violent acts.

“Given that conviction is almost a foregone conclusion, defense lawyers face a moral dilemma. Do we advise our clients to plead guilty to get the one-third reduction in sentence? Or do we advise them not to plead guilty to crimes that they did not commit?

“In National Security Law cases, defendants believe that handpicked judges are certain to convict them. Many of those who have been denied bail for over a year have lost the stomach to fight. However, the same offence carries two to three categories of sentencing: ten years to life imprisonment for principal offenders, three to ten years for active participants, and short-term detention up to three years for other participants. The conventional one-third sentencing discount cannot reduce the actual sentence to less than the minimum of each category. If a defendant is put in the lower category, it may make sense to plead guilty. But if a defendant is deemed to have committed an offence of a grave nature, then one should not plead guilty. Yet defendants do not know which category they are in ahead of trial. Because of this, lawyers do not know how to advise clients. It is so unfair.

“How did we come to this? In early trials of 2019 cases, some defendants were given the benefit of the doubt and were acquitted or given sentences along traditional standards. Then trouble followed. Prosecutors would seek review of acquittal and review of sentences. Soon, judges who had presided over such cases were not assigned new cases, transferred to other positions, or made to retire early. In contrast, conviction-minded judges were readily rewarded with more cases and promoted to higher courts.

“The situation is the same in the Department of Justice. Public prosecutors who insisted on longstanding professional principles have left for private practice. Those still on the job have aggressively pursued prosecutions.

“Thus, interference with judicial independence has taken place not in ways that people think. Government officials or the national security office do not have to call up judges and instruct them on how to adjudicate. Judges know what is expected of them. There is no need for direct interference.

“The profession will be brought to its knees. Many colleagues have left. Some of us have stayed on to represent our clients. We sometimes do wonder: Are we merely giving a veneer of legitimacy to the broken rule of law?”

—A defense lawyer

“On April 22, 2022, I applied to the Court of Final Appeal (CFA) seeking to overturn my unlawful conviction and imprisonment. But on May 10, the CFA’s registrar replied and refused to even grant a hearing, despite the case plainly meeting the low legal standard for CFA review (presenting a ‘reasonably arguable claim’). On June 5, I applied again, this time bypassing the registrar and applying directly to the Appeal Committee made up of judges. I am currently waiting for a ruling on that application, but it increasingly appears that the CFA has decided to avoid hearing controversial cases where it could be forced to rule against Beijing’s interests.”

—Samuel Bickett, American lawyer, human rights activist [80]

“I had worked for the pro-Beijing media outlet Wen Wei Po for 15 years.

“Beijing’s United Front campaign began as soon as the Sino-British Joint Declaration was inked in 1984. The director of the New China News Agency Xu Jiatun started with a friendly approach by wining and dining newspaper owners and executives. He successfully won over Sing Tao Daily, a formerly pro-Taiwan newspaper, and Ming Pao, a mainstream newspaper with well-educated readers. In 1989 during the Tiananmen protests, even the Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po rebelled. In the 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party sent trusted media personnel to various media to exert direct control over editorial policy. For example, Robert Kuok acquired the English-language South China Morning Post. Bill Chan, a pro-Beijing news executive, subsequently took over and reined in TVB News and NOW TV news. The Hong Kong Economic Journal was left as the only paper that would not tone down criticism, until its founder Lam Hang-chi sold his control in 2006.

“Hong Kong’s independent media scene would have been rather subdued by the 1990s if not for Jimmy Lai’s Apple Daily, which emerged as the most prominent pro-democracy outlet.”

—Ching Cheong, veteran journalist

“The authorities always wanted to rein in the independent press in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, the 2021 crackdown signals a drastic change of policy: constrain those media that could be controlled and exterminate those that could not. The former includes Cable TV China News, Now TV, and Radio Television Hong Kong. The latter are Apple Daily, Stand News, Citizen News, and the Hong Kong Journalists Association. This distinction is based on each organization’s editorial position; it does not matter what they actually publish.

“The Apple Daily experienced a crackdown ahead of other media because of Jimmy Lai’s pro-democracy position. In 2013, the paper began to suffer from an advertising boycott. In 2014, gangsters surrounded the paper’s building. At the time, we could still call the police and seek redress through legal channels. In 2019, the paper’s website was repeatedly attacked. Staff’s Hong Kong IDs, staff cards, and photos were put on offshore websites. It is noteworthy that the photos were identical to those on our Home Return Permits to mainland China, suggesting that Chinese authorities could be involved.

“After the imposition of the National Security Law in 2020, the Apple Daily moderated its news and commentaries. But this did not help avoid extermination.

“On August 10, 2020, 200 police raided the Apple Daily headquarters. They arrested Jimmy Lai and four senior executives on suspicion of conspiracy to commit fraud, because the newspaper’s premises were used as a mailing address for another firm. The police’s hidden intention was to seize 25 boxes of documents. Apple Daily had a charity fund to help pay tuition for students in need, especially students who fell out with their parents because of political differences. The police suspected that the paper paid students to make petrol bombs. The police also wanted to check if those charged with rioting were on our list.

“During that raid, we at the news section were not too worried. The police cordoned off the news desks. We thought that the escalated suppression was limited to using unreasonable charges to harass the newspaper. We thought that all we had to do was strictly follow regulations. It didn’t occur to us that the regime’s ultimate goal was extermination.

“There was a sharp turn from bad to worse on December 2, 2020. Jimmy was re-arrested and denied bail. He was granted bail briefly but was soon denied again. Even then, we thought that authorities were targeting Jimmy only, and that there would still be space for news.

“In April 2021, pro-establishment people were spreading the word that the national security police were going to shut down the Apple Daily and make arrests. By then, it had become clear that the paper itself—not just Jimmy—was framed as the enemy. Staff conducted seminars and consulted with lawyers on how we should respond. Should Apple Daily keep printing or fold on its own? The decision was to keep printing while dropping sensational stories and adding pro-establishment figures in interviews. I was more worried than others. Lawyers and colleagues based their assessment on past experience. But the National Security Law presents a whole new game without any bottom line. If the authorities could arrest 47 election candidates on February 28 and deny most of them bail, they clearly wouldn’t care about any ramifications from taking down Apple Daily.

“After Apple Daily’s closure, rumor spread that Stand News would be next. But friends at Stand News thought that Apple Daily’s problem was Jimmy’s alleged collusion with foreign forces. They should be able to survive so long as they stayed clear of collusion. In the end, police took down Stand News with sedition charges in late December 2021. Former Apple Daily executives were also charged with sedition. As sedition involves a much lower bar for arrests and convictions, there was clearly no space for news. Citizen News thus decided to close down on its own in early January 2022.”

—A former editor at Apple Daily with more than 20 years of experience in journalism

“Before its closure, Apple Daily, a subsidiary of Next Digital, had more than 600,000 paid subscribers and a cash balance sufficient to sustain the operation financially. On June 20, 2021, Next Digital announced the decision to shut down the group’s newspaper, publications, and all online presence in Hong Kong as a direct result of the banks freezing the company’s funds on the order of the Hong Kong government.

“The authorities did not stop there. Less than a month after the closure of Apple Daily, the Hong Kong government’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan made use of a provision under the Company Ordinance to appoint a public accountant, Clement Chan, as a special inspector to scrutinize Next Digital’s accounts. In September 2021, the Financial Secretary decided to present a winding-up petition to liquidate Next Digital based on the inspector’s interim report, citing public interest.

“The liquidators appointed by Hong Kong’s High Court have further tried to take over Apple News Taiwan, which has been running independently. In June 2022, the court-appointed liquidators attempted to block the sale of Apple News Taiwan to a Taiwan consortium, saying it was an ‘unauthorized sale.’”

—Simon Lee, former executive with Next Digital (parent company of Apple Daily)

“Radio Television Hong Kong was built up as a public broadcaster over half a century but was abruptly turned into a propaganda tool in just three months under the previous broadcasting director, Patrick Li Pak-chuen.[94] Before Li’s appointment, the Public Affairs team had editorial autonomy to produce programs on any controversial issues, including the Liaison Office’s interference in Hong Kong and police abuse. These days, the management exercises micro-censorship over every interviewee, every interview, every quote, every line, every caption, every piece of footage. The programs at Radio Television Hong Kong may look the same, but the spirit is not there anymore.

“I resigned because I didn’t want to take the oath for civil servants and effectively become a party cadre. The oath and the new code of conduct together mean that you could be easily fired for simply posting a pro-democracy message on your Facebook account.

“Staff who stay know that they can no longer produce programs or interview people as before but only follow dictates from above. They hope that they do not have to do anything evil. If they can defend this bottom line, that alone would be a significant contribution.”

—A former staff member of Radio Television Hong Kong

“I am an American investigative journalist with three decades of experience in Hong Kong and China. I left Hong Kong as it had become impossible to do my work.

“In 2019, after I emerged from an interview with Jimmy Lai [publisher of the shuttered Apple Daily] at his residence, I was rudely followed and had my photo taken by reporters from the pro-Beijing Oriental Daily News. After that, my phone calls would be cut off whenever I mentioned some sensitive words, especially ‘Huawei’ (I had written articles critical of Huawei). When I was walking with pro-democracy figures to cover a demonstration in the summer of 2019, pro-establishment reporters aggressively took photos of me. When I interviewed a well-known author on Hong Kong at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, someone was standing outside the window watching us. This scared the interviewee who no longer wanted to be quoted. I led hiking trips that attracted pro-democracy hikers; then pro-establishment people inquired about our conversations. All this created incredible stress for me. If I couldn’t talk to people, it would be difficult to do investigative reporting. I also didn’t want to cause trouble for people without the ability to do anything to help. I felt relieved when I landed at Dulles Airport. Then, one day later, a former colleague, who worked for Huawei in Shenzhen and with whom I had had no contact for a long time, suddenly sent me a message asking me where I was and how I was doing. This suggested that they lost track of me when I left Hong Kong, and perhaps only knew when I landed in the U.S. and turned on my phone.”

—An investigative journalist with a global media organization

“I grew up in Hong Kong and I am a permanent resident there. But I do not think that it is safe for me to return, given the subject matter of the books that I have written—Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong, and The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited.[95] It’s very hard to cover Hong Kong nowadays because the very fact of communication with foreign journalists is being used in court cases to deny bail requests. That means there’s a degree of risk to the interviewee in even reaching out to ask for an interview.”

—Louisa Lim, journalist and Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne

“Liberal Studies has been blamed for flaming protests since its introduction in 2009. It is worth noting that the subject was promoted by the first Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa, and defended by subsequent governments until 2019.

“What mattered most was that political issues could be legitimately and systematically debated in the classroom. A Chinese University study shows that Liberal Studies did not radicalize students or mobilize political participation. Rather, the critical thinking requirement encouraged students to think outside of their social status and identity politics, and to discuss public issues from multiple perspectives.

“In 2019, the Education Bureau began to follow up on anonymous complaints about teachers. Some colleagues used Apple Daily stories as teaching materials, and they received complaints. Some teachers were also investigated for personal posts on social media.

“Under the National Security Law, I still felt that I could continue to stick to the professional practice of examining issues from multiple perspectives. With sedition charges against Stand News, however, it became impossible to teach critical thinking. Any words we uttered in the classroom could be picked on. For teachers, it is not physical repression that hits us, but the psychological pressure to teach the National Security Law ‘through our own mouths.’

“I left Hong Kong in 2021 because of the rapidly deteriorating situation in education and politics. The stress took a toll on my mental health. I was worried that I would make wrong decisions with serious consequences.”

—A former Liberal Studies teacher

“Young people over the age of Form Three [equivalent to 9th grade] who personally experienced the movement should be able to preserve the memory. Little kids could be more vulnerable to ‘patriotic education.’”

—A professor with expertise in civil society

“A teacher friend’s 3-year-old kindergartener came home one day and said that he wanted to become a police officer when he grew up. My friend was in a bind. If he said that the police beat people, then he was worried that the kid would repeat the line in school and get the family into trouble. If he didn’t correct his son, then the boy would be subject to deeper and deeper brainwashing. Indeed, another month later, he began to spontaneously sing the national anthem at home.”

—A Christian cleric knowledgeable about the Catholic Church in Hong Kong

“A friend said that his 5-year-old boy came home one day declaring that he loved the People’s Republic’s national flag and felt emotionally attached. When the son was asked why he felt that way, he replied that schoolteachers told students to report back if parents criticized the flag. Small kids are white sheets of paper; it is scary that the authorities could write anything on them.”

—A pastor on the front lines of protests

“With over 2,000 schools and principals enjoying much autonomy in running each school, it may look like the school system is too decentralized to rein in one by one.

“However, the government has infiltrated schools by simultaneously undercutting and co-opting sponsoring bodies. As early as 2004, the government imposed a ‘school-based management policy’ with the ‘Education (Amendment) Ordinance’ to wrest control over individual schools from churches. At the same time, success at influencing churches has facilitated interference with individual schools. When authorities hold sway over a school principal, they can shape not just the curriculum, but also the church on campus.

“The Liaison Office has not shied away from winning over principals of elite schools one by one by wining and dining them. Some principals privately said that they have been invited to join the Chinese Communist Party and attend training in Shenzhen: ‘If you come, you will see a lot of friends there’—meaning that other principals have joined.”

—A Christian cleric knowledgeable about the Catholic Church in Hong Kong

“All the universities have surrendered. The government has intervened in university administration through appointments and funding. The president is beholden to the Chief Executive. The president can then dominate the university council, faculty heads, and department heads.

“Research freedom on Hong Kong politics will likely be restricted unless you can work on safe topics such as public policy or public administration.

“The most nerve-racking moment for me was when the national security police arrested four Hong Kong University students in August 2021. They were charged with ‘advocating terrorism’—which carries up to 10 years in jail—simply because they took part in a student union meeting that passed a motion mourning a man who had killed himself after stabbing a police officer.[114] The students had apologized and retracted the motion. They had already been punished with suspension by the university.”

—A Social Sciences professor in exile

“Authorities are cleansing the academic sector. Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po have attacked academics as academics, along with academic institutions. Although Professors Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man were attacked and arrested in 2014, it was in their role as movement organizers rather than as academics. The current crackdown is a new phenomenon.

“The most chilling is a surgical operation against the University Grants Council that is fundamental to academic productivity. The goal is to challenge the very criteria of academic assessments that determine resource allocation and promotion. The Council long followed international standards, with foreign academics as reviewers. Assessments are based on having publications in English-language journals and having publishers with international rankings. The use of international standards is what has given Hong Kong academics a certain degree of autonomy in their professional pursuits. Now the Chinese government wants to change the game of academic assessment altogether, rewriting who gets to make standards of assessment, what counts as good scholarship, who gets hired, and who gets tenure.”

—A professor with expertise in Chinese and Hong Kong politics

“Department and university student unions have long been training grounds for civil society activists. The forced closure of student organizations will cut off the continuous supply of new blood to any remaining civic groups.”

—A former convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front

“In today’s Hong Kong, Christian buildings still stand. They still look the same on the outside. However, they have been taken over inside. There is no need to shut down the church like the Apple Daily.

“The Chinese Communist Party has long infiltrated the Catholic Church. Since at least 2010, silently chosen seminarians from the ‘patriotic church’ in mainland China have been taken to the Philippines for further education and sent to work as priests in Hong Kong. At this moment, there are around 20 young mainland Chinese priests serving in the Diocese of Hong Kong. Given the lack of local-born clergy, the increasing number of mainland clergy will eventually assimilate the Church in Hong Kong into the mainland patriotic church system. Local priests have no power to resist.

“To illustrate the extent of successful co-optation, the Catholic Church in 2018 had prepared teaching materials for 1st grade students that say that Jesus was a Jewish patriot and so Chinese Catholics should be Chinese patriots.

“The current bishop, Stephen Chow Sau-yan, tries to strike a balance between not voicing any criticisms and totally surrendering. The Anglican Church’s Secretary General Rev. Peter Koon Ho-ming is an example of total submission. He has become a political loyalist by serving on the ‘patriots’-only Legislative Council. However, in dealing with the Chinese Communist Party, there is no middle ground—the bottom line will only be pushed further down. The diocese’s statement on Cardinal Zen’s arrest is illustrative: ‘We have always upheld the rule of law. We trust that in the future we will continue enjoying religious freedom in Hong Kong under the Basic Law.’ Cardinal Zen grew up in Shanghai and personally experienced how the Communist Party took over the church and persecuted clerics. The church has failed to heed his warnings.

“On June 4, 2022, the police monitored at least two churches that traditionally held the annual vigil mass. Police officers stood by the entrance and listened in to what the priests said in daily mass. Out of fear of the National Security Law, all priests will dutifully exercise self-censorship and avoid preaching against the government.

“On July 5, Reuters reported that Monsignor Javier Herrera-Corona, the top Vatican diplomat in Hong Kong, told Catholic missionaries in the city that they should prepare for tighter control over the Church in Hong Kong.[130] Hong Kong is no longer the Catholic beachhead it used to be. The Vatican has transferred half a tonne of files from its Hong Kong archive to Rome in the past three years. These files contain private communications with underground mainland clerics, missionary activity, and details of persecution of Catholics in the mainland. This is alarming, as it is the first time ever that a Vatican official acknowledged that Hong Kong’s religious freedom is under severe threat.”

—A Christian cleric knowledgeable about the Catholic Church in Hong Kong

“Hong Kong’s Protestant churches were once united in their support for Chinese students’ fight for democracy and freedom in 1989. In a statement issued on May 21, 1989, 16 churches issued a bold open letter:

‘As Christians, we believe that freedom and human rights are God given, and that democracy is a necessary condition for realizing freedom and human rights. As members of the Chinese nation, we are united with the people in mainland China. We must shoulder the burden of national responsibilities in concrete ways, participating to advance China’s political reform and clamping down on corruption so as to facilitate China’s march toward a brighter future.’[131]

“However, after the June 4 massacre and Deng Xiaoping’s designation of the protests as ‘counter-revolutionary riots,’ various churches withdrew from pro-democracy groups. Many church leaders were conservative to begin with and became more so in the aftermath. The Anglican Church has since become staunchly pro-establishment. Others turned silent on Hong Kong politics in the hope of protecting their work inside China. There are fewer and fewer of us who have maintained a pro-democracy stance. In 2019, many disillusioned young people left the church.

“It is thus immensely important that Cardinal Joseph Zen has served as an icon for Hong Kong’s democracy movement over the years. And it is a major indicator that even Zen was arrested. We thought that Zen’s international stature and moral authority could offer some protection for the pro-democracy Christian community under the crackdown. The regime has demonstrated that they exercise no restraint in repressing critics.

—A Protestant minister and veteran civil society leader

“I participated in the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 Anti-Extradition Protest.

“Many churches in Chinese communities, in Hong Kong or Taiwan or North America, teach a narrow and misleading interpretation of separation of religion and politics that is divorced from society. Churches in Hong Kong discourage, even disallow, political participation and political discussion. The Christian faith is restricted to the spiritual sphere. I grew up feeling puzzled. I later learned that the Bible is full of political accounts, and that the history of the church is filled with political leaders driven by the Christian faith such as Martin Luther King. It is thus my conviction to serve as a voice for the prophets.

“The two Christian associations—the Hong Kong Christian Council and the Hong Kong Chinese Christian Churches Union—have long been pro-establishment. The former’s membership is based on denominations while the latter is based on individual churches. In 2019 and 2020, some of us set up the Hong Kong Pastors Network based on individual pastors. We garnered over 3,000 signatures for the ‘Hong Kong 2020 Gospel Declaration’:

‘In the face of a totalitarian regime that distorts facts, controls the media, and buries the truth, the Church courageously rejects all falsehood, and points out what the regime has done wrong.’ [132]

“Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po attacked the organizers by name for violating the National Security Law.

“In this intimidating environment in which the government tells lies every day, there is no more space to point out truths versus lies. The church will survive only because pastors continue to preach Christianity as merely a spiritual matter.”

—A pastor on the front lines of protests

“I volunteered in both the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 anti-extradition protest.

“I found that I could do something for Hong Kong simply by holding up my social worker ID and speaking into a megaphone. In 2014, I successfully defused tensions between protesters and counter-protesters. In 2019, many colleagues volunteered alongside me.

“We put on identifiable vests at protest sites. We tried to calm the temperature between police and protesters. Social workers on the front lines have to maintain neutrality. We don’t tell people what to do and what not to do. We don’t tell them to leave or stay. We explain options and consequences. People in confrontation with the police may panic and make wrong judgements that they later regret. In addition, we provided first aid, emotional counseling, and support for the arrested. Protesters trusted us and would seek us out when they needed assistance.

“The situation changed after July 21, 2019. Before then, the police’s aim was to disperse crowds and so they let us facilitate protesters’ retreat. From then on, they wanted to arrest as many protesters as possible. Social workers who tried to defuse tensions between police and protesters thus risked getting arrested for obstruction. We then focused on helping those already arrested: we asked for their names, ID numbers, and family telephone numbers to locate family and lawyers for them.

“Social workers served protesters over the years in our personal capacity and on our own time. Now those in power no longer make any distinction between what we do on the job and what we do on our own time.

“Like other professions, the government is proposing legal changes to undermine our self-governing authority in certifying qualifications.”

—A former social worker on the front lines of protest

“Under the National Security Law, social work will go down like journalism. It will lose its soul. It will no longer be able to do advocacy work.

“The profession’s code of conduct specifies that social workers promote human rights and social justice. We should follow the call of our conscience.

“In this sector, social welfare organizations are dependent on government funding and refrain from challenging government policies. What explains the vibrancy of civil society in previous decades was the mushrooming of autonomous groups that raised their own funds from international foundations, private charities, corporate sponsors, individual donations, and crowdfunding.

“In my first job as a social worker, I was fired for helping South Asian children find school places. Hong Kong was supposed to have a free education policy, and education is the most important pathway to overcoming inequality. However, Hong Kong schools discriminated against South Asians and denied them equal access. I searched for a new job with a social service organization that served South Asian children, but none existed. My former professor advised me: ‘If no organization hires you, then you open one yourself!’ Thus, I founded Unison and raised funding from private foundations. When school administrators and government officials were not responsive, I called journalists to write stories and legislators to press questions. We gradually achieved equal access to all levels of education and moved on to job opportunities with various branches of the civil service.

“With the National Security Law, funding has dried up. Organizations dare not seek resources from international foundations for fear of the charge of ‘collusion with foreign forces,’ from crowdfunding for fear of the charge of ‘money laundering,’ and do not collect donations from like minds because pro-democracy rallies have been criminalized. Civic groups have also lost their traditional allies as pro-democracy legislators have been arrested and responsive officials displaced. It is now too risky to question macro-structural inequality and criticize government policies.

“What remains are social welfare organizations that deliver remedial services as dictated by the government. The government is also subjecting funding of social services organizations to annual review, making them more beholden to official policies.”

—Fermi Wong, founder and former Executive Director of Hong Kong Unison [145]

“What we witnessed is a purge of not just frontline protesters, but wider societal support networks. People who have been convicted include not only ‘the valiants’ who threw petrol bombs, but professionals who were at protest sites just to do their job, including first aiders. Many people with medical and first-aid training volunteered during the protests. A judge convicted a first aider because his mere presence had helped to ‘shield and support’ protesters by increasing their confidence and allowing them to carry on with their radical acts for longer.[158] Now anyone who was arrested but not charged in 2019 risks re-arrest and conviction.

“In August 2019, medical staff staged lunchtime sit-ins with the slogan ‘Hong Kong police attempt to murder Hong Kong citizens.’ They were so brave; such protests were spontaneously organized by individual medical staff.

“The Hong Kong Public Doctors’ Association has been very cautious. The association has only issued statements directly relevant to the profession and public health: police violence, the health impacts of tear gas and other police weapons, the oath-taking requirement, the Hospital Authority’s handling of COVID cases, etc. These statements should not fall under the National Security Law. Nevertheless, all criticisms and suggestions were falling on deaf ears and so the association stopped issuing statements by the end of 2021.

“Tam Yiu-chung, the only Hong Kong delegate to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, blamed ‘yellow’ medical staff for the COVID outbreak. This suggests that the authorities have to create enemies.

“The Hospital Authority management has lost its autonomy to make professional decisions based on scientific knowledge and Hong Kong’s realities. It now blindly follows the government’s zero-COVID policy, as shown in, for example, the distribution of the Chinese traditional medicine ‘Lianhua Qingwen Jiaonang’ at hospitals.[159]

—An activist doctor

“In early February 2020, the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance organized a large-scale strike of 7,000 to 8,000 staff to demand that the government close borders to stop the spread of the coronavirus. In February 2021, the union’s chair, Winnie Yu Wai-ming, was arrested and later denied bail is among one of the 47.

“The union issued various public statements and set up street stands to raise awareness on COVID policy. Our statements were always based on professional expertise and scientific research, even including quotes from the government. But we were criticized as ‘the so-called experts.’

“In September 2021, the Union Registry sent a letter to top officers asking us to explain our involvement with the strike, Winnie Yu’s role in the primaries, our call for people to write to Yu and other arrested activists, the union’s statements on both the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine and the ‘Leave Home Safe’ app, and the screenings and street booths related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. It seemed that the national security police targeted first public stars, then behind-the-scenes organizers.

“By the end of 2021, medical staff no longer criticized the government’s COVID policy. No one dared to speak out anymore. All major civil society groups had been forced to shut up, if not to shut down as well.

“In 2022, the government invoked emergency measures to bring in mainland doctors and nurses. I see it more as a public relations show to demonstrate how much the motherland loves Hong Kong, rather than as a ploy to undercut the Medical Council’s registration authority. Nonetheless, what is really scary is that they have demonstrated their ability and will to simply push a button to bypass existing rules and procedures that had been built up over decades.”

—Ivan Law, former Vice Chair of Hospital Authority Employees Alliance

“Hong Kong’s civil society slowly built up over the decades, reached its apex in 2019, but has since jumped off the cliff. The National Security Law has effectively strangled a whole-of-society movement.”

—Claire, a Hong Kong graduate student  

“Hong Kong has changed from an open society to one in which people are gripped by fear. And the fear is encompassing.”

—A professor in Hong Kong

“I lived in Hong Kong from October 2018 to April 2022. Under the National Security Law, the most noticeable phenomenon is silence. The city has gone from having as many as 2 million people marching in the streets in June 2019 to total silence without a single protest today. All my pro-democracy friends are biting their tongues. We exercise hypervigilance in not just what we do and say, but also how we dress. You cannot wear all black or you risk getting questioned by the police. One day I was reading Michael Davis’s Making Hong Kong China [163] in the metro; my partner was alarmed and warned me against reading books critical of the government in public. When you see police officers in the streets, you go on high alert and walk in the opposite direction because you could be arrested for any reason. We have lost freedom in terms of not just the freedom to protest, but also the freedom from fear because of the need for constant vigilance. The streets of Hong Kong may still look the same as in the past, but the spirit of Hong Kong has been dimmed.”

—An American student of human rights law at the University of Hong Kong

“In 2019, whenever protesters were released from police custody after their arrest, supporters would gather outside, then clap and cheer when the arrestee appeared. But the National Security Law changed that. In December 2021, when I went to a police station to welcome someone to freedom, I noticed many people were standing around the edges and across the street but trying very hard to look like they weren’t there for the released person. When the released person finally appeared, they all looked that way, but there was complete silence—no cheers, no crowding around. The show of support for a friend who has been through hell is transformed but not disappeared.”

—Samuel Bickett, American lawyer, human rights activist

“Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is feeling fear, but still deciding to do the right thing. We all have that courage embedded within us.”

—Kwong Chung Ching, former election campaigner in Hong Kong

“Hong Kong has become a completely different place now. Yet, while political participation has stopped, life has not. Hong Kong is home and is where I find my identity. We want our home to get better. We can continue to quietly cultivate our own community. Small acts go a long way. Take care of the people we personally know. We all know people under arrest: Visit prisoners, attend trials, write letters. Sear the experiences into our memory.”

—A former District Councilor

“The 2019 protest reflects a strong civil society with a dense network of groups and communities and ties among individuals. While formal organizations could be banned outright, connections and ties endure.”

—A professor of Hong Kong civil society

“Hong Kongers abroad can take up the torch, speak truth to power, preserve the Hong Kong spirit, write the history, and guard the memories.”

—A professor with expertise in Chinese and Hong Kong politics

“It is hard to reconstruct Hong Kong civil society abroad. If the purpose is to serve Hong Kong people, it is necessary to be on the ground. We can’t do anything to help those in jail or slow down the destruction of Hong Kong.

“It may be said that those who have left can criticize the government when those who stay no longer can. Yet I am not sure if such criticisms make people there feel good, because we speak their minds, or make them feel worse, because we remind them of the heartbreaking reality.”

—An activist doctor

“District Councilors, before we were disqualified, helped to build up civil society from the bottom up. I started grassroots work immediately after graduation from university. However, I decided to leave for safety after the mass arrests of 47 on February 28, 2021. Many Hong Kongers are staying behind to face the grim ‘new normal.’ We have to listen to them and do our best to get their voices out.”

—Timothy Lee Hin-long, ousted elected District Councilor

“I used to believe that international pressure could help improve human rights in China. But clearly the Chinese Communist Party leadership does not care what the world thinks.

“Nevertheless, don’t underestimate how much impact consistent pressure on the Party for its violations of international law and UN standards can have. We may not be able to stop the destruction of civil society, but we can keep Hong Kong on the international agenda to make sure that our friends do not languish in jail.”

—Patrick Poon, Visiting Researcher, Institute of Comparative Law, Meiji University, Tokyo