The Great Firewall of China has not descended upon Hong Kong... for now

  

What are the chances now of the Great Firewall of China 

descending on Hong Kong less than three years from now?

(N.B. The above photo was taken back in November 2019)

 

A massive internet outage occurred earlier today.  Imagine the relief of thousands, if not millions, of Hong Kongers upon realizing that it wasn't just them who (temporarily) lost access to global news sources and that the Great Firewall of China has not descended upon the territory, at least not just yet.  

 

I'm not going to lie in that this is a fear I've had ever since China's security law was announced as going to also being imposed on and in Hong Kong back in May of last year.  And I don't doubt that at some point in the not too distant future, the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, WhatsApp, Youtube and websites belonging to the The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, CNN, the British Broadcasting Coroporation (BBC) and NHK (AKA Japan Broadcasting Company) will be banned and inaccessible in "Asia's World City" as well as Mainland China.

 

For those who didn't realize: internet censorship has already commenced in Hong Kong though, just not on the mega, pervasive scale as in Mainland China.  Back in January of this year, the Hong Kong police ordered the city’s major telecoms providers to block access to an anti-government website.  The likes of the Hong Kong Broadband Network, China Mobile, Smartone and PCCW’s HKT complied and blocked HKChronicles, which collected information during the anti-extradition protests and operated as a pro-democracy doxxing platform, from being viewed in Hong Kong.  (On the other hand, a doxxing website targeting pro-democracy protesters, as well as journalists, remains viewable by Hong Kong-based internet users.)

 

Since then, a number of other websites -- all of them based in Taiwan (including Taiwan's Transitional Justice Commission, an independent government agency, and the Taiwan Presbyterian Church which reportedly launched a campaign to help Hong Kongers flee to Taiwan) -- have also been blocked off to Hong Kong internet users without a Virtual Private Network (VPN).  But it was in the past week or so that things appear to have stepped up a notch -- or, at least, there were attempts to do so. 

 

First, we had Nathan Law reporting on the 2021 Hong Kong Charter website launched in May by eight exiled Hong Kongers, including him and Ted Hui, having been taken down by its Israeli server, Wix, upon the request of the Hong Kong police.  And while Wix did end up reinstating the website after he Tweeted about it, it's still a frightening illustration of the willingness of the Hong Kong police to implement China's national security law for Hong Kong outside of Hong Kong (and the territories under the rule of the Communist Chinese regime).      

In a similar manner, Microsoft's search engine, Bing, blocked image and video results for the phrase “tank man” – a reference to the iconic image of a lone protester facing down a line of tanks one day after the Tiananmen Square Massacre took place – for several hours this past June 4th, citing "accidental human error" for the occurence.  Something worth noting when considering if this was a genuine mistake made: Microsoft Bing is one of the few foreign search engines that are accessible in China, because the company agreed to censor results for sensitive terms such as the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square or Falun Gong for searches made by its Chinese users. 

 

Also last week, the website of the US-based Hong Kong Liberation Coalition, co-founded by Hong Kong exile, Baggio Leung, was taken down by its American host, WordPress.  In this particular case, the website's erstwhile hosts deny that they had been asked to do so by the Hong Kong police and, instead, stated that it had content that violated WordPress's User Guidelines.  The upshot, though, is that the Hong Kong Liberation Coalition's website will be looking for another host (even while continuing to retain a (small) presence on Twitter).

 

Lastly, for now, it was reported today that Facebook has refused all 202 Hong Kong government requests for user data it received in the first six months after Hong Kong enacted the national security law last June.  This disclosure came from the company’s latest transparency report -- and we can but hope that we will learn that Facebook has continued to safeguard the privacy of its (Hong Kong) users in calendar 2021 when the transparency reports for the relevant time period is made available in the future.  

 

I am also fervently hoping that the likes of Facebook will still be accessible in Hong Kong through this year and into next.  Sadly, however, it is no longer a given that the Great Firewall of China won't descend upon, and envelope, Hong Kong in the (not so distant) future: just like it is no longer a given that Hong Kong will see another candlelight vigil at Victoria Park on June 4th or (mega) protest march like that which took place on June 9th, 2019 -- not even two years ago today.