I wrote briefly about the handover, the other day, July 1 1997. Cliff remembers it too and gives a fair account of the happening since then, in the piece above.
Note the highlighted bit at top right: the reason that progress towards universal suffrage was stopped in 2015 was not because of China, but because the local Hong Kong pan-Democratic camp voted down the measures that would have moved us forward to that goal, because “they were not enough”. That’s like “perfection is the enemy of the good”. Or: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. The pan-dems played a card, and it was a trumped. They were stupid... and naive too. I thought so at the time. As did many. We would done way better have taken what was on offer and then tried to move forward from that. Instead: riots of 2019 and the National Security Law, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Cliff has captured the essence of the last 26 years. If Hong Kong broadly stays as is and doesn’t get worse in terms of freedom of speech and the rule of law, then we’re fine. Especially when we look at the craziness of Europe. And now Australia with proposals to criminalise “mis and disinformation”, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.
