Under the eye of the dragon: How the reality of modern China is every face and every move tracked, ‘wrong’ political thoughts punished and all citizens’ lives controlled by the State, by KAI STRITTMATTER …(Our Future?)
By KAI STRITTMATTER
DAIYMAIL.COM
14 June 2019
Police ruthlessly beating back protesters with batons and showering them with pepper spray in violent running battles.
Rounds of rubber bullets and tear gas fired into crowds of angry but until then peaceful demonstrators.
The scenes this week in Hong Kong were as shocking as any seen there since the former British territory was handed over to China in 1997.
The handover was supposed to guarantee Hong Kong considerable autonomy and democratic rights under a ‘one country, two systems’ agreement.
But now its China-friendly parliament is debating plans to allow the extradition of Hong Kong citizens to mainland China, and a very different legal system.
Which is why thousands besieged government headquarters in the city, prompting that brutal crackdown from the police.
Hong Kong is the only spot on Chinese soil where any such protest is still imaginable. But for how much longer?
Make no mistake, Hongkongers are protesting not in an act of hope but of desperation. With the new extradition law looming over them, they feel that this is their end game.
Beijing’s aim is clear: to turn Hong Kong into a Chinese city like any other. In the new China that means a place with harsher and vastly more efficient repression than we have seen in recent memory.
There are several reasons the Chinese Communist Party deeply distrusts Hong Kong and its way of life, and is intent on destroying it.
One is the ability of Hong Kong to remember. In China remembering events the Chinese Communist Party chooses to erase from history is a subversive act and thus forbidden and punished.
Take Tiananmen Square. It was exactly 30 years ago last week that a brave demonstrator carrying nothing more than a plastic grocery bag was photographed as he stood in front of a tank during protests in the Beijing square against China’s Communist government.
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