A Stunning Shift — February 2021
Room 101 — Not Orwell’s torture chamber in 1984, but my high school history classroom in Hong Kong. This room, once my safe haven for free discourse and acquiring ever-evolving knowledge, now feels like the dystopia Orwell envisioned.
As I make my way to clas at the start of term, the sounds of debate no longer reverberate through the hallways. A year ago, I was constantly engaged in heated class discussions about Hong Kong’s unfolding political situation. Protests raged over the city’s future. The sight of upended pavement bricks was common, and the smell of rubber bullets pervaded the parched air. Some peers argued protestors were justified in using extreme measures to advocate their pro-democratic position; others asserted the police should restore law and order by any means. Freedom versus stability, protestors versus police, Hong Kong versus China — our debates touched upon everything. As a current affairs junkie, I was in my element.
But now, as I find my seat in class, I hear nervous whispers as we all adapt to a new school year, as well as to the new National Security Law imposed over the summer of 2020.
Growing up in Hong Kong as a Dutch-Chinese-American, I once took my city’s freedom of assembly and speech for granted. After all, constraints on freedom were distant narratives in our textbooks. History happened in some other country, at some other time, to someone else. But today, as lawmakers, journalists, and friends are arrested, it is becoming clear to me — history is unfolding on my doorstep. Shortly after classes begin, our high school announces that local politics are too dangerous to discuss in the classroom. We are all required to self-censor.
Despite having marched alongside two-million others on Hong Kong’s streets early last summer, I fall into a pool of silence throughout this first day of class, forced to avoid the very discussions that had mobilized me just a year prior. In a research paper about disinformation, I choose to compare QAnon and Nazi Germany, but overlook the similar events that I witness first-hand. In class, we still debate Cuban authoritarianism, but what goes unsaid about our city’s integration into China hangs heavy in the air. I am ashamed of my own complicity. I long for the revival of open discussions and to hear unbridled opinions, but fear the threat of punishment. Muffled whispers in the classroom, on the streets, and in newspaper publications suggest that ‘Hong Kong’s democracy is eroding’.
A Brief History — Long Before February 2021
While it seems that Hong Kong is on the precipice of democratic backsliding, the city’s history of freedom and democracy is not so simple. Throughout the 150 years of British colonial rule, citizens in Hong Kong were not granted universal suffrage. Even when Britain attempted to introduce direct elections in the 1960s and ‘70s, Beijing discouraged them, asserting that Britain must “preserve the colonial status of Hong Kong” and viewing democracy on the peninsula as the first step toward independence from the mainland. It was not until 1991 that direct elections for the local legislature were first permitted, but only for a limited number of council seats. Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last British governor, expanded this number, but the move infuriated Beijing, who renounced it shortly after the handover in 1997, thus overturning any semblance of full democracy in Hong Kong.
After the resumption of Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong, Beijing vowed to respect the “one country, two systems” principle, allowing Hong Kong to govern its own affairs and preserve its political and economic systems separate from the mainland over the next fifty years. However, recently, Beijing has made increasingly brazen strides to encroach on Hong Kong’s autonomy and silence opposition, undermining their promise.
In 2020 when city-wide pro-democracy protests escalated, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law, effectively criminalizing most forms of dissent; prominent pro-democracy leaders have been placed behind bars, election laws have been revised, eliminating almost all directly-elected seats, and the city’s civil society and free press have been gradually undercut and pressured into disbanding. Under the new law, one could be charged under anything considered remotely “seditious” in the eyes of the government. Unsurprisingly, onn international rankings, Hong Kong plummeted to 148th worldwide in respect for press freedom and human rights.
A Look Forward — Present day, January 2023
In Fall of 2020, I shared my discomfort regarding the unfolding situation in Hong Kong with my best friend, who attends an international school in Shanghai. In response, she showed me the chapter on “Authoritarian States” in her International Baccalaureate history textbook. Where my version of the same chapter noted China as an example of authoritarianism, in hers, all mention of Communist China was missing. I was dumbfounded. Students in mainland China were learning a very different version of history.
Grudgingly, I realized this would likely happen to my textbooks too. This omission struck me, revealing a sobering truth: What is not taught and what we dare not say are as relevant and integral to learning as what is recounted as history. Why are critical turning points, controversial figures and uncomfortable facts omitted? Who determines what is recorded as historical truth? And more pointedly, how can I address what isn’t taught and what isn’t said?
Since the summer of last year, the government has declared its plans to revise Hong Kong school textbooks, aiming to erase any official recognition of the British colonial era and instead asserting that the city had been illegally occupied until 1997. Textbooks will also portray the 2019 pro-democracy protest movement as foreign-backed “terrorist activities,” painting a distorted picture of the city’s recent history.
Historical truth, I have discovered, is almost an oxymoron in today’s world where we can edit, delete and control narratives. But what growing up in Hong Kong has taught me is that I need to listen to not only what is being said, but also listen carefully for what is not. In silence, there are vital stories. After all, we do not live in 1984. We live in 2023.
