IN THE two weeks since China’s Communist regime imposed a harsh national security law on Hong Kong, freedom has been rapidly disappearing from the former British colony. Schools and libraries have been pulling books from the shelves and purging history texts. Opposition slogans and songs have been banned. Hundreds of people have been arrested for peacefully demonstrating, including a few who did nothing more than hold up blank sheets of paper.
Beijing may have been thinking it was well on its way to crushing the pro-democracy movement that arose in Hong Kong last year and persisted through months of demonstrations, despite violent police repression. If so, it was in for a surprise: Over the weekend, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers turned out again, this time to vote in unofficial primaries for opposition candidates in upcoming elections for the territory’s legislature. The long lines of people who appeared at 240 shops and street kiosks serving as polling stations, despite official warnings that the balloting was illegal, was an inspiring show of defiance of the harsh new order China would impose.
Jubilant organizers said Monday that 592,211 people had voted via apps and an additional 21,000 with paper ballots — a turnout equal to 27 percent of the vote in the last legislative elections. As organizer Benny Tai Yiu-ting told the South China Morning Post, it was as though 600,000 people had participated in a pro-democracy demonstration — which would rank it with the largest such events the city has seen.
At least in theory, this one could have powerful practical consequences. The point of the primaries was to create a unified opposition slate for the September elections for the Hong Kong legislature, with the goal of capturing a majority of its 70 seats. That would allow the opposition to veto legislation, including the budget, which in turn could force the resignation of despised Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam.
In practice, the regime of Chinese President Xi Jinping will probably use its muscle to tilt the elections, for example by banning many opposition candidates from the ballot. Already it is moving toward prosecuting and imprisoning key opposition leaders — from 23-year-old Joshua Wong to 82-year-old Martin Lee. The primary vote nevertheless shows that China will continue to face potent resistance in Hong Kong from people unwilling to passively surrender the rule of law, free expression and the promise of full democracy that China made when it took back the city in 1997.
So far, Hong Kongers have received only limited support from Western democracies. The United States and European Union have condemned the new security law; Britain and Australia have offered asylum to Hong Kong refugees, and the United States is imposing sanctions on some officials. The Xi regime brushes off such gestures; people in Hong Kong know that the repression will likely escalate. Nevertheless, they persist. It’s a historic display of civic will and courage.
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