Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World
What China's Crackdown Reveals about Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere
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- € 11,99
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A gripping history of China's deteriorating relationship with Hong Kong, and its implications for the rest of the world.
For the 150 years that Hong Kong was a British colony, people, money and technology flowed freely, while Hong Kong residents enjoyed freedoms that simply did not exist in mainland China. When the territory was handed over to China in 1997, the Communist Party promised that Hong Kong would remain highly autonomous for fifty years. Now, at the halfway mark, it is clear that China has not kept its word. Universal suffrage and free elections have not been instituted and activists have been jailed en masse following the decree of a sweeping national security law by Beijing. As China continues to expand its global influence, Hong Kong serves as a chilling preview of how dissenters could be treated in regions that fall under the emerging superpower's control.
A Hong Kong resident from 1992 to 2021, Mark L. Clifford has witnessed this transformation first-hand and has unrivalled access to the full range of the city's society, from student protestors to billionaire businessmen and senior government officials. A powerful and dramatic mix of history and on-the-ground reporting, Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World is the definitive account of one of the most important geopolitical standoffs of our time.
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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that helped fuel the 2019 protest movement, which was sparked by the legislature's consideration of a bill (since withdrawn) that would have allowed for the extradition of suspected criminals to China.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.
