Why China is crushing Hong Kong dissent - BBC News

 China is crushing Hong Kong dissent

 In 2019 hong kong was rocked by pro-democracy mass protests now many months on the city is transformed and not in the way protesters have hoped the Chinese government has clamped down hard putting in place restrictive rules and reforming the way hong kong is run there's a stringent national security law that criminalizes anything that Beijing considers as subversion or collusion with foreign forces scores have been arrested under the law for doing things like chanting certain slogans waving this flag or organizing unofficial election primaries those arrested include pro-democracy activists and politicians who face long jail sentences china's also changed the way hong kong elects its local parliament the legislative council wants patriots to govern the city and anyone who wants to run will be screened beforehand so it's easier to buy anyone seen as critical of Beijing MPS who are directly elected by thepeople will also have less power but why is the Chinese government so intent on crushing descent in hong kong to understand this we have to go back in time hong kong used to be a British colony and in 1997 the city was handed back to china Britain and china struck a deal for the next 50 years Hong kong could mostly govern itself and have rights unlike anywhere else on the mainland such as freedom of speech and some form of democratic elections this concept was called one country two systems but as time went on there was growing suspicion that the Chinese government was interfering more with hong kong in areas like education the press and local elections this exploded in mass protests in 2019 over a proposed extradition law that many feared would make hong kong's courts less independent it turned violent meanwhile, support grew for pro-democracy politicians who swept local elections that year all of this did not go down well with the Chinese government it has blamed anti-china forces in hong kong for colluding with foreign forces but there may be deeper reasons for this tension firstly it's the question of identity and how it's evolved in the decades the two have spent apart it's the difference between a liberal hong kong with democratic values and the Chinese communist government independence press the free speech you can go to the street and protest you can yell down with the cgp these are the values that hong kong people grew up with so when people are defending something from being taken away there's this very volatile reaction how come people really asking what's been promised them essentially stick to the one country to systems model it's also got to do with how the Chinese government prizes national unity Beijing has become more insistent perhaps strident on this idea of oneness on this idea that anything that smells like what it believes is separatism is unacceptable based on this the belief that they have that china's weakness owed to its division and this allowed china to be in their retelling of history bullied uh invaded taken advantage of by others and so it's putting more pressure on hong kong but we see that pressure in Xinjiang we see that pressure in Taiwan, you see the pressure inside China so it's part of  an overall momentum that we see in Beijing that is not going away anytime soon so what does this mean for hong kong's future the PRC has so much more resources at its disposal it will probably try to force hong kong to bend to its will people in hong kong will be uncomfortable with it they will dislike it those people who can may wish to move away those who can't may try to resist possibly at great personal costs themselves people have to have some kind ofoptimism to continue so it may seem naughty but there's always light at the end of the tunnel and so people are insisting on that just resisting the new normal just insisting on living life as before is an everyday form of resistance you