For the past year, my local coffee shop has been plastered with a medley of posters, stickers, and flyers showing support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests. They’re emblazoned with phrases like “We Create Tomorrow Together,” “Hong Kong Add Oil!”(a term of encouragement directly translated from Chinese), “Liberate Hong Kong, the Revolution of our Times,” or depict black-clad protesters with yellow hardhats, umbrellas, and gas masks facing off the police.
On the morning of July 1, 2020—the 23rd anniversary of the city's handover to China from British rule—the shop’s owners took them all down. The night before, the Chinese government had passed a new security law granting Beijing sweeping powers to quell dissent in Hong Kong, essentially curtailing the freedoms and rule of law that had differentiated the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China from the mainland. The legislation, which was enacted swiftly and whose full text was made public only after it came into effect, criminalizes acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces.
Its scope is broad. It comprises anything from misusing China’s national anthem to damaging public transportation—one of the main forms of protest in 2019—to chanting certain slogans, and sentences are harsh. In the most extreme cases, violators can face up to a lifetime in jail, regardless of whether they’re Hong Kong residents or foreigners. This law even applies to those outside the city, who could be prosecuted upon entering Hong Kong, according to an English translation of the text.
While Chinese authorities have argued that the law will ensure stability in the SAR and only be used against “an extremely small minority of people,” activists have described its passage as “the end of Hong Kong that the world knew before.”
Cassie Wong, the owner of the cafe near my apartment, shares that sentiment. “Throughout the protests in 2019, my partner and I never questioned that we would openly display our support to the movement,” she says. “Even when clashes between demonstrators and police got more violent, we kept the decorations up, because we had the personal liberty to do so. But with the new policy, everything’s changed. Publicly voicing our dissent is no longer an option. Hong Kong is no longer free.”
She tells me she cried when she stripped the posters off the walls. “I felt so sad and disappointed. Hong Kong is home, but home is not home now. Where do we go from here?”
Many others are asking that same question across the city.
While on the surface this compact metropolis is still bustling, still vibrant in its myriad of contrasts, from the skyscrapers to the wild outdoors, underneath it all the mood has shifted.
Concerned about censorship and surveillance, people are deleting social media accounts, downloading VPNs, and switching to encrypted messaging platforms like Signal for all conversations. Lennon walls, which for much of this past year were covered in hundreds of posters and colorful sticky notes carrying protest messages, have been dismantled. Anti-China graffiti has been painted over. Independent art galleries are rethinking their programs, navigating what they can and cannot showcase. Other pro-democracy businesses like Wong’s—which are referred to as “yellow shops” and span hole-in-the-wall dim sum spots, canteen-style eateries, bakeries, hipster bars, and thrift stores—have gone quiet, too.
“There’s a lot of fear,” says Miles Yip, a freelance photographer who often shoots in Hong Kong for international lifestyle clients. “And the risk is that it’ll eat into the essence of Hong Kong—its resilience. We’ve always taken pride in our transparency and independence from China, but this new security law is forcing us to rethink our identities. It’s definitely making me rethink mine.”
Among Yip’s friends, especially millennials and Gen Zers, many are already planning to leave Hong Kong for good as soon as they can. (The U.K. has offered millions of Hong Kongers a path to citizenship, and several other nations are in the process of changing their visa policies to welcome them.) Those who stay will have to think of “different ways to keep their heads up and support civil resistance,” Yip says. “I am confident we will come up with new forms of expression. But I am worried [that] local creativity might be quashed, and things like my profession [might] become more challenging.”
Outsiders and foreign governments, too, are looking at Hong Kong with new eyes. Taiwan, Canada, the U.K., and Australia have updated their travel advisories, warning of heightened risk (the Australian advisory is especially blunt, reading: “The new national security law could be interpreted broadly. You can break the law without intending to. The maximum penalty under this law in Hong Kong is life imprisonment."). The U.S. State Department also revised its travel advisory, raising Hong Kong to Level 2 (out of 4) in terms of risk, meaning U.S. citizens should "exercise increased caution."
“It’s difficult to ascertain the impact of the national security law on Hong Kong tourism at the moment, but it is highly unlikely that bona fide tourists will be affected at all,” a spokesperson from the Hong Kong Tourism Board said in an email.
That’s likely true: China has a similar security law and, at least pre-pandemic, most travelers would still visit its cities and landmarks with an awareness of the laws around censorship and expression. Hong Kong was appealing because it didn't have those limitations.
“One of our most distinctive features was our autonomy,” Wong, the cafe owner, says. “You could come to Hong Kong and not worry about speaking your mind, or browsing the web, or checking out an underground art show. Now books are being pulled from libraries, and the police can search your house without the need for a warrant. Instead of moving forward, we’re stepping backward.”
But she still holds hope. “During the protests, one of our guiding principles was to ‘be like water’ [a phrase borrowed from Bruce Lee], which meant adapting quickly to the circumstances, whatever they might be. So we just have to do that. We have to keep being like water.”
Names have been changed.
