A senior adviser in Hong Kong to the central government says the aim is to “kill a few chickens to frighten the monkeys”
IF CHINA’S RULERS hoped the new national-security law they have imposed on Hong Kong late on June 30th would immediately cow its critics there into silence, they have been proved wrong. Protests to mark July 1st, the anniversary of the handover of the territory from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, defied both the law and a ban this year on what has become an annual event. So the first arrests under the law came almost at once. By the evening hundreds of people had been detained.
China had announced its intention to pass such a law without reference to Hong Kong’s own Legislative Council in May. Billboards hailing the legislation were plastered across Hong Kong even before senior officials in the city had seen it. Officials have stressed that the bill would comply with “important principles of the rule of law” and international human-rights legislation. But it will take precedence should a conflict arise between the new law and existing ones.
Even before the law was enacted it had affected Hong Kong’s internal politics and international relations. On June 30th, Joshua Wong, a leading activist, and his young colleagues from Demosisto, a small pro-democracy party, announced it was disbanding. Mr Wong promised on Facebook to keep up his advocacy work as an individual: “I will continue to defend my home—Hong Kong—until they silence, obliterate me from this piece of land.
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