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Earlier this month, in a townhouse on the outskirts of London, Jarita Wan was teaching a group from Hong Kong to sing a song in Cantonese. The song is called Unfinished Ending. The windows behind her were covered with paper decorations from the Lunar New Year, including the Chinese character for fortune. For years, she was a successful musical theater actress in Hong Kong. She moved to the London suburbs with her husband,
her father, and two dogs in twenty twenty two. That was three years after pro democracy protests rocked Hong Kong. Teen demonstrations were the biggest political turmoil Hong Kong had seen in decades, and in response, Beijing cracked down, imposing a national security law for the city without public consultation. Wen says she no longer felt comfortable in the city that she grew up in.
What happened in Hong Kong in twenty nineteen was really really upsetting to a lot of us, especially as an artist's freedom of speech or freedom of writing, or freedom of creation is a part of our nature, and I start feeling suffocated.
When was among at least two hundred thousand local residents who chose to leave Hong Kong after the National Security Law came into effect. Many moved to places like the UK, Australia, Taiwan and Canada.
It was quite hard because I lived basically my whole life in Hong Kong and we've planned to start a new life here in UK, away from fear and away from this disheartening news.
Next week marks the twenty seventh anniversary of Great Britain handing the city of Hong Kong back to China. In many ways, the city still continues to serve as an important financial hub in the region, but Bloomberg China editor Alan Wong says we're seeing far reaching consequences from the national security crackdown still playing out to this day.
So the National Security Law silenced China's loudest critics in Hong Kong, and some people thought that would be it. Also, they hoped both businesses and the government said they wanted to move on from all this talk about security and to focus on the urgent task of growing the economy. But what happened in the last few months tell us that Hong Kong's national security crusee doesn't end here, and the city is unlikely to go back to what it was.
Welcome to the Big Tech Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wanh. Every week we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today on the show, twenty seven years after Hong Kong was returned to China, we look at how Beijing is reshaping the city's identity and what that means for Hong Kong and its seven million residents. Hong Kong was cedd to British control in
eighteen forty one after the First Opium War. This tiny rocky island sitting at the southern tip of China became a global center for trade and commerce between the East and the West. In nineteen ninety seven, after more than one hundred and fifty years of British rule, Hong Kong was returned to China as part of an agreement. But before the hand of the city back over, they agreed on one important condition.
They agreed on a framework they call one entry to systems to keep this city alive. Because people knew then and China knew then that if they were just going to turn Hong Kong into just like another mainland Chinese city overnight, then all the things that made Hong Kong special and useful to China would disappear overnight.
China agreed and made one country, two systems a constitutional principle. It promised that Hong Kong would enjoy a high degree of autonomy in its economic and political systems for fifty years, freedoms of self rule, speech and press that aren't allowed just across the border in mainland China. And despite the promise, many worried that the handover would change Hong Kong, and not for the better.
There was great anxiety in Hong Kong around the handover because of what happened in Beijing in nineteen eighty nine, when the Tenement Square massacre happened. That's when China's People's Liberation Army killed civilian protesters in the crackdown on program because they protest in Beijing, and that was the event that loomed in people's mind. People feared what the new government in China in Beijing would do to the city. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
It not that they had to say.
Alan was born and raised in British Hong Kong. In the years running up to the handover, he was just a young boy in elementary school, and even though he didn't understand it at the time, he remembers things out of the ordinary were happening around him.
I remember distinctly that some classmates would mysteriously drop out of school and I didn't know at the time, but they left because their families were moving to places like Canada and Australia. There were lots of people who did that, and some of that fear was captured in newspaper coverage of Hong Kong.
You know.
There was literally a magazine that put the words the death of Hong Kong on its cover, and obviously Hong Kong didn't die. In the first few years after the handover, Hong Kong was actually business as usual.
At the time of the handover, Hong Kong accounted for nearly one fifth of China's GDP, and in the decades since nineteen ninety seven, Hong Kong has continued to thrive as a financial hub, and politically it also remained vibrant. People protested freely on the street, which wasn't allowed on
the mainland. In two thousand and three, Hong Kong's government first attempted to pass a national security law that prompted half a million residents to take to the streets in the largest demonstration Hong Kong had seen since the handover. That protest became an annual tradition on July first, the anniversary of the handover. Hong Kong was also the only place on Chinese soil where people could commemorate the anniversary of the Teneman crackdown.
Every year since nineteen eighty nine, rain or shine, at least thousands of people they would gather in Victoria Park in downtown Hong Kong to commemorate those who died in the crackdown. For journalists, it was an event that they would just cover every year. They would take for granted that this event could take place year after year, even though it was completely impossible just across the border in mainland China.
But this vibrant, free environment would soon come under attack and the response would set the stage for Hong Kong's future. That's after the break in twenty nineteen, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Hong Kong to protest against the proposal of an extradition law.
The law would allow the transfer of fugitives in Hong Kong to mainland China to face trial there, and the government insisted it would only apply to a very few people and it would have no bearing on political freedoms in Hong Kong. People feared it could be used against dissidents China's critics.
When the UK handed Hong Kong back to China, there were no agreements put in place for extraditing individuals from the city to the mainland. That was part of the infrastructure that kept Hong Kong different from China. The protests soon morphed into a broader anti China movement that went on for months. Protesters regularly blocked highways, vandalized subway stations, and sometimes it escalated into violence, with full on confrontations
against Hong Kong riot police. The protests started to tail off after the COVID nineteen outbreak limited public activities, and on top of.
That, Beijing thought enough is enough. Beijing being imposed a new national security law in Hong Kong that made a lot of the protests that were lawful illegal that made a lot of expressions of dissent previously accept tolerated maybe no longer acceptable, and it allowed the authorities to almost completely wipe out the political opposition in Hong Kong.
This National Security Law, or the NSL, criminalized promoting Hong Kong secession from China, along with subverting the Communist Party, acts of terrorism, and collusion with foreigners. Violators could face life imprisonment. Beijing said the law was needed for national security, while critics said it was intended to shut down dissent and silence activist groups. The law has since been used
to try and imprison dozens of pro democracy activists. Police arrested a group called the Hong Kong forty seven, which included high profile activists such as Joshua Wong, seasoned politicians, elected lawmakers, social workers, as well as an academic, a union leader and a journalist. Last month, fourteen of the forty seven activists were found guilty of subversion charges, and
the Hong Kong government didn't stop there. In a surprise move, the police put bounties on those accused of violating the NSL and had left Hong Kong and Jimmy Lai, a tycoon and the founder of a pro democracy newspaper that were shut down by the government now faces trial on his role in the twenty nineteen pro democracy protests. He also faces a separate trial with more severe charges of collusion with foreign forces. All that puts the future of a free press in Hong Kong in the crosshairs.
The biggest, most vocal leaders of Hong Kong's pro democracy movements having either jailed or exiled those main voices calling for greater democracy freedoms in Hong Kong, they have been effectively silenced.
In March, the Hong Kong government passed a new security law known as Article twenty three. It cracks down even further with new offenses covering civil disturbances and foreign interference.
This new law is expected to coexist and work in tendem with the two thousand and twenty National Security Law. It is still fresh out of the oven, but we started to get a sentence of how the government wants to use this law.
Last month, Hong Kong made its first arrest under the new Article twenty three, arresting an activist who was already behind bars.
This activist, whose name is Chowhantung, a barrister and an organizer of the Tenement Square vigil. She was accused of making seditious posts on Facebook with the help of others.
The government didn't say what worth the offense posts, but they said those posts were in connection with a quote unquote sensitive date, and the government was referring to June fourth, the anniversary of the Tenement Square crackdown, and the the fact that the government refused to name the event and refer to it as a sensitive date says a lot about how sensitive it has become and how the government is trying to make it a taboo.
Yeah, but you can't even say June fourth.
He's like Votimore.
It was clear that Hong Kong's autonomy, the basic political freedoms it enjoyed after nineteen ninety seven, are now all but gone. The notion of one country, two systems now applies primarily to the economy, and Allen says that has created a sense of hopelessness for many of the people of Hong Kong.
They don't think what they say could change the system anymore. They fear getting caught up by the NSL. Some of those people chose to leave Hong Kong.
In response to the crackdown, Countries like the UK, Australia and Canada have offered pathways for Hong Kong residents to obtain citizenship, and for their part, Hong Kongers have been leaving in droves.
So the Hong Kong government doesn't publish official data on how many people left Hong Kong for good or how many people left for political reasons. We looked at immigration data from the UK, Australia and Taiwan and came to a rough estimate that at least two hundred thousand Hong Kongers had moved to those places after the NSL was implemented in twenty twenty.
But despite some people's disillusionment with Hong Kong and China's efforts to control the city, there are residents who are now taking advantage of Hong Kong's closer ties to China with much cheaper prices on the mainland. Some have even embraced a new cross border lifestyle.
After Hong Kong emerged from its pandemic isolation, and when people restarted their travels, they realized that so much has changed about Shuzen or other Chinese cities, and now they have so many more public transport options to go into China. The more seamless traffic experience has encouraged people to spend their weekends in China to shop, to eat, because they're just getting a lot more banned for the buck.
Just a few weeks ago, during the Dragon Boat Festival, Hong Kong residents made more than a million trips across the border to China for the long holiday weekend. That's an increase from twenty nineteen before the pandemic hit, and it's also more than three times the number of visitors who came from mainland China into Hong Kong. Bloomberg also recently interviewed young Hong Kong residents who used to protest China.
These days, they're now making regular trips to Shenzhen for cheap food, massages and even grocery runs.
They wouldn't say that they now love the Chinese Comments Party. They wouldn't say they endorsed China's political system, and they certainly wouldn't want those systems adopted in Hong Kong, but they become more agnostic about going to mainland China for leisure. I think they feel hopeless when it comes to changing the political system here, so they just see the shopping as a purely economic activity.
Alan, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers have left the city, but you have those who've stayed here. You have people who are now getting comfortable with the closer connections with China. Is that surprising in a way?
I mean, I'm not surprised because they're always immigrants coming and going before or after ninety ninety seven. That's just the nature of Hong Kong as a very international city, which is why, you know, the question of what makes someone in Hong Kong, or the question of identity in Hong Kong is so tricky. What China's leader before the handover said it wanted was for Hong Kongers to return
to China in their hearts and difference. That's a big difference here, and it's it's not easy to tell when or whether people will fully see themselves as part of this country. Like when they identify themselves, do they call themselves Hong Kongers or do they call themselves Chinese? And you know what do those words mean anyway? Ya don't so?
Yeah?
Yeah.
Mad.
As for Jerita, when the music teacher in London, she doesn't see herself back home anytime soon.
Since I left Hong Kong, I witnessed my friends from my industry, including theater actors, they got arrested or they got charged. I felt really scared, and I felt this place is trying to expel its own people. In order to survive in that city, I will transform into someone that I hate. I have to feel safe in the place that would let me to create or say anything that I want to say, or even sing anything that
I want to sing. Maybe there will be a future for me in Hong Kong, but I don't see a future that I like for me in Hong Kong.
Thanks for listening to The Big Take Asia podcast from Bloomberg News. I'm wan Ha. This episode was produced by Naomi Um, Young Young, Jessica Beck, and Alexander Suguiera. It was mixed by alex and fact checked by Jessica and alex And. It was edited by Aaron Edwards, Stacy Smith, Daniel ten Kate, and John Leu. Additional reporting by Aria Chen Dayu Jung and Rebecca Chung. Wilkins, Name Wushaven and Kim Gettelson are our senior producers. Elizabeth Ponso Is our
senior editor. Nicole Beamster Bower is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Please follow and review The Big Take Asia wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps new listeners find the show. See you next time.