Hong Kong entertainers, and some perspective(s) on how bad things have become in Hong Kong

 

I like to think that Anita Mui passed on the torch...

 

Today is Leslie Cheung's birthday.  If he had lived, he'd have been 65 today.  I sometimes wonder what he'd have made of Hong Kong's present situation.  I wonder that too, actually more, about another Hong Kong luminary who passed away in 2003: Anita Mui Yim-fong; this not least because she was far more openly political -- and would regularly sing the anthem most commonly associated with Tiananmen Square Massacre commemorations, Blood-Stained Glory, at her concerts.

 

While Leslie and Anita are no longer with us, Anita Mui's chief protege, Denise Ho, is.  And this evening, she staged a concert -- online because the Hong Kong Arts Centre cancelled her booking days before her concert series there was scheduled to take place.  It represented the latest act of defiance and resistance from a professional entertainer who has become more well known as a pro-democracy activist in recent years, and who has been resolute in stating that she does not intend to leave Hong Kong; this despite there being obvious attractions for someone who likes to express herself freely to do so.      

 

On the subject of such folks: yesterday, Ng Ka-leung, one of the co-directors of the dystopian but (all too) prescient Ten Years, became the latest prominent Hong Konger to announce that he had left his home city.  I think it's particularly telling, even worrying, that Ng has decided to joined the likes of his fellow Ten Years co-director, Jevons Au, who left in July of last year, in exile -- because while Au has become the better known filmmaker in recent years (with post-Ten Years film successes Trivisa and Distinction), Ng's Local Egg was the segment of Ten Years with the most optimistic outlook and message!     

Not that I blame him, of course.  It's hard to deny that the current situation in Hong Kong is not great and its (immediate) future looks plenty bleak.  And while there's been a pause in the onslaught of bad news (that left many of us reeling earlier this week) this weekend, it just only really means that we've had time to take a breath and get some perspective with regards to how bad things here really have become, including by reading pieces like Kent Ewing's over at the Hong Kong Free Press, a few choice excerpts of which I reckong are worth sharing:

Hongkongers—from opposition politicians to teachers to civic activists and students—all made the mistake of choosing to believe in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. That agreement paved the way for the city’s 1997 handover from British to Chinese sovereignty under a “one country, two systems” arrangement that for at least 50 years was supposed to guarantee Hong Kong “a high degree of autonomy” as well as personal freedoms for its citizens that are simply nonexistent on the mainland.

These freedoms—of speech, press and assembly—were then enshrined in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, which also promised a gradual progress toward democracy that, like those guarantees of personal freedom, now seems dead in the water...

[O]vert demonstrations of freedom of expression and tolerance for dissent were part of what made post-handover Hong Kong such a special city in China. They were not unpatriotic. To the contrary, for many Hongkongers, they represented the highest form of patriotism—the kind that strives to build a better city and better country and, yes, squawks and agitates when that does not happen...

The crackdown on Hong Kong freedoms... —now putatively justified by a sweeping national security law that seems to mean anything authorities want it to mean—has been a gross overreaction to a peril that never really existed. It betrays the deep-seated, abiding insecurity of Chinese officialdom, which sees destabilising foreign forces hiding in every nook and cranny of Hong Kong.

Rather than foreign forces, the authorities themselves may well be most responsible for the coming into being of considerable opposition to the Hong Kong government and also Beijing's.  As law professor Michael Davis pointed out in his "Testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission Hearing on “US China Relations in 2021: Emerging Risks":  "Growing public awareness that Hong Kong’s capacity to guard its autonomy would depend on the promised democratic reform, led to equally large protests for democracy in 2004. This demand would become a constant theme in Hong Kong politics, in the 2012 protests against the government’s proposed patriotic education, in the 2014 “umbrella movement” protesting government foot-dragging over the promised democratic reform, and in the 2019 protests against the government’s proposed extradition bill."

At the same time, it is worth noting and emphasizing that: "Hong Kong protesters have not sought a local government constantly at odds with Beijing, but they have clearly hoped for a government that would find its voice to guard autonomy and protect the city’s core values. Long ignoring popular demands to fulfill Basic Law commitments, the Beijing and Hong Kong governments only have themselves to blame for the growing opposition. The 2020 National Security Law (NSL), imposed directly by Beijing, represents a refusal to take responsibility for this failure and profoundly undermines the “one country, two systems” model."

 

For, lest it not be clear, the NSL: "represents a comprehensive threat to Hong Kong’s autonomy, rule of law and basic freedoms. One would be hard-pressed to devise a more comprehensive plan to shut down an open society and inhibit the free-wheeling debate that has long characterized Hong Kong", and made Hong Kong Hong Kong as well as attractive for many people.