To love Hong Kong is to love something fickle, at constant risk of being stolen away.
on Hong Kong’s political journey and the implications of the new law; and I, the book from which this article is excerpted. To be honest, when I was first approached about doing this project, I was scared. Not because I doubted whether it was something I wanted to write, but because I was afraid that any criticisms of the new law and the associated policies would seal my fate and prevent my ever being able to return home.
But how could I not embrace that dream? I was raised by the giants who, year after year, indefatigably defended Hong Kong’s wavering democracy: my parents, my “aunties” and “uncles,” my godfather and godmother. In their determined protection of freedom and human rights, they showed me exactly how and why I should love this city.away.
On July 1, just hours after the legislation had been enacted, thousands of Hong Kongers braved arrest under the new law and took to the streets—as they had every year for 23 years on this date, the anniversary of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. In response, police raised the new purple flag, a warning that protesters were violating the law.
Debates over Hong Kong’s political future were the soundtrack of my childhood. Martin Lee, my godfather, the man who gave my mother away at her wedding, is known by many as the city’s Father of Democracy—the founder of Hong Kong’s first democratic party.
They became politically active in the early 1990s, advocating for democracy under the “one country, two systems” constitutional principle that was supposed to define life after the handover. Born of years of discussion between Britain and Hong Kong, the agreement protected the liberal values that Hong Kong inherited from colonial rule—promising 50 years of a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region that would function with a high degree of autonomy from the authoritarian system in China.
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