In a July 2 article in Foreign Affairs titled “Hong Kong is Part of the Mainland Now,” WEAI Research Scholar Michael C. Davis wrote about recent developments in Hong Kong, suggesting that the Chinese government has “stifled the territory’s autonomy” with its new security law which allows authorities to crack down on “protesters accused of ‘colluding with foreign forces,’ advocating ‘separatism,’ or merely damaging the city’s ‘premises and facilities.’”
Davis argues that China has flouted the Basic Law, which was enacted in 1990 and established an arrangement under which Hong Kong would have democratic self-rule and maintain its own judicial and legal systems for 50 years following the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.
“Twenty-three years after the handover, China has abandoned its promise of a separate system for Hong Kong. The city has done its part, serving China as one of the world’s leading centers of finance, culture, and education. But China never fully carried out its commitment to the democratic reform needed to sustain Hong Kong’s wavering autonomy. Now, it has brought Hong Kong fully under the national security state governed from Beijing.”
Click here to read the full article.
Davis also published a July 3 article in The Diplomat with Columbia alumna Victoria Tin-bor Hui, associate professor in Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, titled “Beijing’s National Security Law Brings Mainland Repression to Hong Kong.”
Click here to read the full article in The Diplomat.
