China’s Embrace Is Driving Hong Kong Away
Refusing to appreciate the former colony’s unique history and identity has led Beijing into a crisis that now threatens to ruin the city.
He’s not the only one who thinks so.
Photographer: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images
Chinese leaders insist that Hong Kong belongs to China and whatever happens there should be of little concern to the rest of the world. In fact, it’s equally arguable that the city and community of Hong Kong have never been part of China. Refusing to acknowledge or understand that sense of separateness has led Beijing into a crisis that now threatens to ruin Hong Kong as a global financial center and further upend China’s relations with the United States and other democracies.
By moving ahead this past week with a new national security law for Hong Kong, aimed at squashing stubborn opposition to Communist rule, China’s central government is almost certain to provoke yet more street protests in the city. Mainland officials decry this resistance as the work of foreign instigators. After all, by Beijing’s reckoning, Chinese authority over Hong Kong is to be celebrated after the humiliation of more than 150 years of colonial rule.