Less like Asia's World City and more like another Xinjiang?

Asia's World City -- for how much longer?

Barbed wire fencing in the city 

Hong Kong’s daily coronavirus infection numbers fell below 100 for the first time in 12 days today, with today's reported total of 80 cases (along with two additional deaths).  Caution is still urged though, and the authorities have extended existing social distancing measures for at least another week.  And, of course, I don't foresee their going back on their decision on Friday to postpone the Legislative Council elections (by at least one year).        

Incidentally, the record daily number of new daily coronavirus cases for Hong Kong remains at 149 -- the high reported last Thursday, the day before the government decided to announce the postponement of the Legislative Council elections.  Since then, Hong Kong's daily infection numbers have been 121, 125, 115 and now 80.  Dare I say that this points to a downward curve in terms of the numbers?         

Some might find it ironic, funny or both that the Wuhan coronvirus threat could be contained within days of the election postponement.  Oh, and the announcement of Hong Kong's first daily double (as opposed to triple) digit infection number in 12 days happens to have come one day after a medical team arrived from Mainland China to conduct nucleic acid Covid-19 tests here.

There are some within the system who have opined that this external help will be appreciated since Hong Kong's medical system is currently being (over-)stretched.  But it would be a stretch indeed to say that this Mainland Chinese team's arrival in Hong Kong has been universally welcomed; with suspicion and fears arising from a number of quarters that this team are going to collect Hong Kongers' DNA for surveillance purposes a la Xinjiang.

While the powers that be have denied that this is the case, one can see where these doubts come from since at least one Mainland Chinese firm that has been conducting coronavirus testing has been linked to the forced collection of genetic material of Ughyurs in Xinjiang.  And the leader of the Mainland Chinese team stating today that they are here to help expand Hong Kong's testing capabilities to more than 200,000 people a day is not going to calm people down since there hitherto had not appeared to be a perceived need to test so many people here for the coronavirus in a single day; with there being more than 200,000 people tested in Hong Kong in a month only in July!  

Already, there's been some pushback from local medical experts on the need do such mass testing. Chinese University of Hong Kong respiratory medicine expert Dr. David Hui has highlighted too that such a move would require a city-wide lockdown where nobody is allowed to leave their homes as well as enormous manpower to pick up the samples within a week.  Also, as I understand it, all a coronavirus test can do is determine if a person is infected or not at the time that he or she takes the test.  So it'd be pretty pointless, really, to test so many at random unless you're going to keep on testing those with negative results again and again and again for who knows how long to make sure that they are not infected (and infectious) and are staying that way!

Getting back to the fear that Hong Kong will be turned into another Xinjiang: the fact of the matter is that they've been with us for a while.  And, surely understandably, these worries have increased in recent months with China's announcing and then bringing into effect a draconian security law for Hong Kong; with some observers outside of Hong Kong now seeing what Hong Kongers have been seeing and saying for months.

As an example, here's sharing a series of comments made by Chinese law and governance expert Carl Minzner on Twitter:  

It’s easy to think that Hong Kong & Xinjiang are just two totally different issues. One, a cosmopolitan global city with a primarily Han population. The other, a heavily rural Central Asian region with a large Muslim population (Uighurs being the most well known minority).

But from the standpoint of a stability-obsessed one-Party state, they look similar.

Both are border regions with populations that embrace identities that do not fully conform with the increasing narrow ethnocentric line being promoting by Beijing.

Both have institutions (cultural, religious, and in Hong Kong, political) that - at least in the past - had a degree of autonomous space.

And both also have links to a diaspora population overseas that Beijing is really concerned about.

That’s why it’s important to look at the new National Security Law not simply as a tool to go after a few outspoken individuals, but as a key step in what is likely to be a more comprehensive effort to rectify Hong Kong society.

And that has already been done in Xinjiang.

Writing on July 31st, Minzner went on to state the following:

 Here’s one particularly distressing thing to consider. Right now, Beijing is primarily focused on figuring out how to extend its controls *within* Hong Kong. Schools, Legco. At some point, courts.

But at some point - perhaps after the exodus of some fraction of Hong Kong’s population and the emergence of a more organized set of voices overseas, Beijing is going to turn its sights on how to tighten its grip on the Hong Kong diaspora.

And at that point, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they started reaching for some the tactics employed in Xinjiang - applying pressure on family and relatives in Hong Kong, as a tool towards that end.

As it turned out, we didn't have to wait for long to see how prescient he was.  For later that same day, it was revealed that the Hong Kong police had issued arrest warrants for six individuals who all now no longer reside in Hong Kong.  

In reaction, like his fellow "wanted individual" Simon Cheng before him, Nathan Law proceeded to announce that he had severed ties with his family (no doubt to try to protect them from having pressure applied on them by the authorities).  For even as Hong Kongers fear that Hong Kong will suffer the fate of Xinjiang, they also have tried to learn lessons from it: with the chief one being that we need to resist rather than just accept whatever fate the powers that be intend for us, even when the world sees it as inevitable.