“There is no ‘red line,’” says an anonymous thirty-something Hong Kong humanities professor. “If they want to come after you, everything can be used as an excuse.”
Grace Tsoi, writing for the BBC, shows what happens when political correctness returns to its roots in totalitarianism. As it has in Hong Kong, in the “People’s [sic] Republic [sic] of China [sick].” The young academic Ms. Tsoi is quoting elaborated the situation: “He says his nightmare is being named and attacked by Beijing-backed media, which could cost him his job, or worse, his freedom.”
Political correctness can cause academics in America their jobs, of course. But as relentless as our woke media and online mobs may be to “de-platform” people they disagree with, it’s harder to go all the way.
Under a totalitarian state, it’s easier to be more thorough.
That’s why totalitarianism is the modish form of tyranny that tyrants aspire towards.
More power.
“In the academic year 2021/22, more than 360 scholars left Hong Kong’s eight public universities,” Ms. Tsoi explains. “The turnover rate — 7.4% — is the highest since 1997, when Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule, according to official data. Foreign student enrolments have dropped by 13% since 2019.”
The chilling effect is arctic. Self-censorship has become the rule, in advance of expected censure, censorship, or worse. Hong Kong academics blame all this on 2020’s National Security Law, which “targets any behaviour deemed secessionist or subversive, allowing authorities to target activists and ordinary citizens alike.”
It’s worth remembering that while “secession” is a dirty word for the powerful, and subversion the enemy of all, it does depend on context: secession from a tyrannical state is liberation; subversion of an unjust system is justice.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
3 replies on “Cold Climate in Hong Kong”
As a practical matter, the UK could not hold-on to Hong Kong. But a great many people there who had been subjects of Her Majesty — the UK equivalent of citizens — were issued new passports and cut loose, instead of being given an ordinary opportunity to migrate within the UK. The government led by Margaret Thatcher betrayed them. Imagine the US surrendering five million Americans to the Chinese state.
One of the better things done by Boris Johnson (who did and surely will continue to do many bad things) was to throw a life-line to about half of the victims. Of course, the UK ought to rescue them all.
The US may not have been immediate party to the betrayal of the people of Hong Kong, but would do well to offer refuge to them.
If the PRC understood that the geese were able to leave and lay their golden eggs elsewhere, it would take counter-measures. But one of the counter-measures might be to treat the people of Hong Kong more as had been promised.
Perhaps not your best-chosen words, Paul. “subversion of an unjust system is justice” could easily be taken as an apologia for Hamas….
The ‘context’ is what makes something subversive or just? Kind of what those university presidents were saying before Congress, wasn’t it? Rather than demand the witnesses answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’, I would have liked to see representatives challenge those statements by asking witnesses to describe a ‘just’ context for anti-Semitism. It’s possible for honest people to look at the same set of facts and reach different conclusions. The American Revolution, had we lost, might have resulted in our ‘founders’ being tried and executed for treason.