Almost thirty years after the return of Hong Kong (香港 – hoeng gong, in Cantonese) to Chinese sovereignty, the former British colony appears profoundly transformed. From the principle of ‘one country, two systems’ to the National Security Act of 2020, the political and civil framework has progressively tightened. Arrests of democrats, closure of independent newspapers, trials linked to the memory of Tiananmen and a growing diaspora towards the United Kingdom and beyond tell of a city struggling to recognise itself. The symbolic case of Jimmy Lai, entrepreneur and founder of the Apple Daily newspaper, who has become one of the most notorious faces of judicial repression, fits into this context. So what remains of Hong Kong today? We discuss this with Francesca Lancini, a journalist who has been covering Asia and human rights in particular since the early 2000s.

From 1997 to the present, what was the moment that marked the most significant transformation?

It has been a long process with crucial dates. Beijing’s longa manus has been trying to expropriate Hong Kong of its freedoms since 1 July 1997. Handed over to China amid midnight fireworks, in the presence of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles (now King) and Chinese President Jang Zemin (江泽民), the former British colony was to remain a Special Administrative Region for at least 50 years. It was supposed to retain its free market and legal system until 2047. But the pact was betrayed, as many Hong Kongers feared.

What were the other steps towards an authoritarian system?

The pro-democracy citizens had started to demonstrate massively as early as May 1989, gathering one and a half million people in support of the students in Tiananmen Square. After the massacre, they continued to march every year on July 1st until 2020. This was the other decisive moment, when the Chinese regime, due to and under the pretext of the Sars-Cov2 pandemic, managed to block all civil society initiatives and impose the National Security Law from the mainland (on 30 June).

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, i.e. the legislative body of the People’s Republic of China, has promulgated a liberticidal law that applies to Hong Kong’s permanent residents, non-residents and those outside the city. It provides for extradition even from countries with which there are no treaties on the matter and the maximum penalty of life imprisonment for four crimes: secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign organisations. In fact, it punishes freedom of expression. It criminalises any initiative, verbal or written content in favour of the autonomy and rights of Hong Kongers, or critical of the authoritarian Chinese regime. It demands that publishers and online service providers enforce censorship.

Has the Hong Kong Constitution been overturned?

Yes. In 2021, Beijing introduced amendments to the so-called Basic Law by changing the electoral system. It reduced the number of seats in the Legislative Council elected by the people and stipulated that all its candidates be approved by an Election Committee controlled by the Chinese regime. The Election Committee also appoints the head of the local executive, who since 2022 has been former security secretary John Lee Ka-chiu, a former policeman and anti-democratic hawk. After all, the Chinese government only approved him as a possible candidate. Thanks to this crackdown, in 2024 the ‘new legislators’ of the puppet government passed an even more restrictive ordinance to safeguard national security. By now, Hong Kong is led by a single party, as in China. The Democratic Party founded by Martin Lee in 1994 was dissolved last year and the entire democratic movement suppressed and dismantled.

Are the growing diaspora and the economic difficulties that have emerged in parallel likely to trigger a further structural weakening of Hong Kong, socially, financially and internationally, or will the current model stabilise despite the outflow of human and business capital?

About 500,000 Hong Kong residents have emigrated since 2020 and others continue to leave the city. Among them are many families with school-age children who reject Chinese patriotic education, teachers, Catholics and democratic dissidents. More than 150,000 individuals have been granted special visas for the UK, with the remainder coming mainly from Canada, Australia and neighbouring Taiwan. Between 2020 and 2022, there was a ‘brain drain’ of around 140 thousand workers, mainly in the education and health sectors. By 2025, the capital flight would reach USD 76 billion. With one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, between 0.73% and 1.24% birth rate, Hong Kong faces a difficult demographic situation. According to the World Bank, by 2040, almost 30% of the Special Administrative Region’s population will be aged 65 and over.

But others are coming…

That’s right. To attract a new workforce, Hong Kong has taken steps such as the Top Talent Pass Scheme (TTPS) targeting talent, i.e. highly skilled professionals. From June 2022 to June 2023, the TTPS and other immigration programmes brought 174 thousand people to the city, mainly from Mainland China. By 2025, there were already more than 230 thousand. Socially, the most likely effect of this population exchange is that Hong Kong will become culturally and politically more similar to the rest of China. Economically, it is recovering through the export of AI-related electronics, growth in tourism and financial services.

However, it remains one of the most expensive places to live: Hong Kong remains one of the least affordable housing markets in the Asia-Pacific region, with average rents now consuming 72% of the average monthly income. In 2024, one in five of the 7.4 million inhabitants lived below the poverty line. Inequality between rich and poor is growing, affecting the elderly in particular. In short, it remains a financial hub, with low taxation and an almost free port trade, which however is at the centre of illegal trafficking such as war components to Putin’s Russia.

Is the criminalisation of the memory of 1989 just an internal issue of political control or a broader signal about the direction the Chinese leadership intends to extend beyond Hong Kong?

It shows how fast Hong Kong is assimilating into China and its authoritarian system, but also that the regime of Xi Jinping (习近平) – president since 2013 – is the most aggressive in every sphere since Mao Zedong (毛泽东). It is so in domestic politics as in foreign policy. The mainland has never been able to commemorate the victims of Tiananmen (天安门 – Tiān’ānmén); as of 2021, neither can Hong Kong. Three leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China are on trial for inciting subversion.

The Pillar of Shame monument, depicting the stacked bodies of Tiananmen victims, was removed from Hong Kong University. An estimated 10,000 Hong Kong citizens were arrested as a result of the 2019 protests against the National Security Act. Almost 2,000 political prisoners have been detained and just under half are still behind bars. Among these high-profile figures in the pro-democracy movement are Joshua Wong, Lee Cheuk-yan, Gwyneth Ho and Jimmy Lai.

Jimmy Lai has become the symbol of the judicial season opened by the National Security Act. His trial is being closely followed by London, Washington and Brussels. Can the Lai case (who is also a British citizen) still affect relations between China and the UK, especially in light of new special visas granted to Hongkongers?

Jimmy Lai is considered the epitome of ‘Hong Kong consciousness’. A former child-worker, emigrated on a boat from Canton, a Catholic, he is a self-made man who first opened Next magazine and then the tabloid Apple Daily. Since Tiananmen he has always openly defended, putting his face to it, the freedoms of Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese who aspired to them. He has supported, even financially, the millions of Hongkongers who at various times marched peacefully against authoritarian regression. He never ran away, knowing that he could be imprisoned and sentenced as he was on 9 February.

Twenty years in prison for conspiracy and sedition is like a death sentence at 78. Unfortunately, it is unclear how Keir Starmer’s government, which met with Xi Jinping and approved the Chinese mega-embassy in London City after Theresa May sold the former Royal Mine Court building at the time of Brexit, wants to move. Starmer inherits a critical economic situation and is under attack from domestic sovereignists, Russian propaganda and the Trump administration. All these players do not want the UK to rejoin the EU because it would strengthen it. However, both Starmer and Canadian PM Carney, in truth all democracies, need to be very cautious and I would add ‘wary’ of the Xi Jinping regime that still holds Russia and Iran together. China is a master (even for Trump) at using business as a weapon of coercion, i.e. hybrid warfare. The new special visas for Hongkongers are a good initiative, but…

What risks?

Just on 9 February, the day of Jimmy Lai’s conviction, the UK government announced that children of British (overseas) citizenship status holders who were under the age of 18 at the time of Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997 will now be able to apply for the route independently of their parents. Their partners and children will also be able to move to the UK through the expanded route. It is estimated that 26,000 people will arrive in the next five years. In the meantime, however, Beijing has issued warrants and bounties against activists and refugee students abroad, expanding the transnational dimension of the confrontation.

The largest Chinese embassy in central London is considered a huge problem for Britain’s security and of course for Hong Kong expatriates. From 2013 to the present, Xi Jinping’s regime has also made thousands of people disappear abroad. The lesson represented by infiltration, spying, Russian influence from the 1990s onwards does not seem to have been learnt. The commander of Scotland Yard, Dominic Murphy, has complained that there are more Russian spies in the UK today than at any time since the Cold War. For Murphy, the counter-terrorism police would be facing their biggest challenge in 30 years. The British services said they could mitigate the increase in Chinese diplomats and officials, but how?