Hong Kong was already a police state. But the repression keeps getting worse. The prohibitions, mandates, and penalties have gotten worse on the mainland as well. For the rulers of totalitarian regimes, no amount of repression is ever enough.
Benedict Rogers, a cofounder of Hong Kong Watch, concludes that any persistent feeble rationale for denying what’s happening in Hong Kong has become even less tenable. People have no choice now but to accept that Hong Kong is “no longer the freedom-loving, open city it once was. The Hong Kong people themselves have not changed, but their city is now controlled by a repressive police state….” (“Hong Kong is now a police state,” UCA News, May 23, 2025).
To impose one draconian national security law [in 2020] that almost entirely silences domestic dissent, dismantles civil society, undermines the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, and intensifies the crackdown on basic freedoms in Hong Kong would, one might have thought, be enough.
To impose a second, even more repressive domestic security law [in 2024] might be regarded as over the top, particularly in light of China’s original commitment in an international treaty, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, ahead of the handover from British rule, to preserve Hong Kong’s freedoms.
To then impose new legislative measures, in addition to these two laws, as the Hong Kong authorities did last week, is not only to hammer the nails into the coffin of promised freedoms, but to embed the tombstone upon the grave of basic human rights and the rule of law in the city….
Anyone disclosing investigations by Beijing’s national security office in Hong Kong could be jailed for seven years.
Six sites in Hong Kong—including four hotels—are now prohibited locations, because they are bases for the national security bureau…. Places for tourists have now been converted into centres of surveillance and repression.
Rogers is not quite right about one thing. Hongkongers have indeed changed over the last five years. The population has changed. Many of the most freedom-loving and courageous residents have left Hong Kong since the crackdown of 2020. At the same time, many former protesters who have remained no longer hope to change the situation by their own political action, at least not in the near future. Further affecting the character of the populace is the fact that in recent years, immigration to Hong Kong from the mainland has increased.
Rogers himself, having been denied entry to Hong Kong in 2017 and threatened with imprisonment in 2022, won’t be gracing the city with his presence again anytime soon. And he urges would-be visitors to be extra-cautious—to be careful about any reading material they bring with them to and to realize that any criticisms of the Chinese state that they may have posted on social media could get them in hot water.
“Beijing is exercising direct rule of Hong Kong, resulting in the total dismantling of Hong Kong’s previous freedoms, basic human rights, the rule of law and judicial independence.”
Also see:
Hong Kong Watch: “Call to sign petition to the UK Prime Minister on maintaining the 5+1 BNO pathway”
The petition is a response to the possibility that the Starmer government will make it more difficult for former Hongkongers to become British citizens.
