Hong Kong’s Freedoms: What China Promised and How It’s Cracking Down

Beijing has tightened its grip on Hong Kong in recent years, dimming hopes that the financial center will ever become a full democracy.

• Before the British government handed over Hong Kong in 1997, China agreed to allow the region considerable political autonomy for fifty years under a framework known as “one country, two systems.”
• In recent years, Beijing has cracked down on Hong Kong’s freedoms, stoking mass protests in the city and drawing international criticism.
• Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020 that gave it broad new powers to punish critics and silence dissenters, which has fundamentally altered life for Hong Kongers.

Introduction

China pledged to preserve much of what makes Hong Kong unique when the former British colony was handed over in 1997. Beijing said it would give Hong Kong fifty years to keep its capitalist system and enjoy many freedoms not found in mainland Chinese cities.

But more than halfway through the transition, Beijing has taken increasingly brazen steps to encroach on Hong Kong’s political system and crack down on dissent. In 2020, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong. Since then, authorities have arrested dozens of pro-democracy activists, lawmakers, and journalists; curbed voting rights; and limited freedoms of the press and speech. In March 2024, Hong Kong lawmakers passed Article 23, an additional security legislation that further cements China’s rule on the city’s rights and freedom. These moves have not only drawn international condemnation, but have also raised questions about Hong Kong’s status as a global financial hub and dimmed hopes that the city will ever become a full-fledged democracy.

What is the status of Hong Kong?

Hong Kong is a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China that has, until recently, largely been free to manage its own affairs based on “one country, two systems,” a national unification policy developed by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. The concept was intended to help integrate Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau with sovereign China while preserving their unique political and economic systems. After more than a century and a half of colonial rule, the British government returned Hong Kong in 1997. (Qing dynasty leaders ceded Hong Kong Island to the British Crown in 1842 after China’s defeat in the First Opium War, and Kowloon and the New Territories came under British rule shortly after.) Portugal returned Macau in 1999, and Taiwan remains independent.

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The Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 dictated the terms under which Hong Kong was returned to China. The declaration and Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the city’s constitutional document that Beijing enacted in accord with the declaration, enshrined the city’s “capitalist system and way of life” and granted it “a high degree of autonomy,” including executive, legislative, and independent judicial powers for fifty years (until 2047).

Chinese Communist Party officials do not preside over Hong Kong as they do over mainland provinces and municipalities, but Beijing exerts decisive influence over the region’s political sphere, especially after the enactment of the National Security Law in 2020. Beijing also maintains the authority to interpret the Basic Law for Hong Kong, a power that it had rarely used until recently. All changes to political processes are supposed to be approved by not only the Hong Kong government, but also by China’s top legislative body, the National People’s Congress, or its Standing Committee.

Hong Kong is allowed to forge external relations in certain areas—including trade, communications, tourism, and culture—but Beijing maintains control over the region’s diplomacy and defense. Under the Basic Law, Hong Kongers are supposed to be guaranteed freedoms of the press, expression, assembly, and religion, as well as protections under international law, which include those guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). But in practice, Beijing has curtailed most of these rights.

Was Hong Kong ever a democracy?

Although colonial Hong Kong had certain freedoms, it was never rated a full democracy [PDF] by international standards. And today, China is a one-party state that is reluctant to allow Hong Kong to hold free and fair elections. Experts note the ambiguity on this issue. The Basic Law states that the government’s “ultimate aim” is to have Hong Kong’s leader elected by popular vote, but it does not give a deadline for this to occur.

Since the handover, there have been no free votes by universal suffrage for the chief executive, who is the head of the Hong Kong government. The chief executive is instead chosen by an election committee composed of representatives from Hong Kong’s dominant professional sectors and business elite. Under the Basic Law, Hong Kong residents were previously allowed to vote for members of the legislature, known as the Legislative Council, or LegCo, as well as for members of their local district councils, which handle day-to-day community concerns.

But more recently, Beijing has curbed Hong Kong residents’ already-limited voting rights. It overhauled the electoral system in 2021 to make it easier for pro-Beijing candidates to be appointed as chief executive and as LegCo members. Beijing ruled that only “patriots” who “respect” the Chinese Communist Party can run in elections. Only one candidate was allowed to run in the 2022 chief executive election: John Lee, a hard-line former chief superintendent of the city’s police force. For the LegCo, prior to 2021, half of the body’s seventy members were elected by direct voting, while the rest were chosen by groups representing different industries and professions. Now, just twenty members are directly elected and seventy are chosen. In response to these changes, pro-democracy groups boycotted the 2021 LegCo elections, and all ninety seats went to pro-Beijing individuals.

In 2023, new election rules set by Chief Executive Lee reduced the number of directly elected representatives from 90 percent to 20 percent of the total council seats. The remaining seats must be appointed by the chief executive or indirectly appointed by an electoral college. Prior to the rule changes, the district council was one of the last systems in which voters had a direct, unrestricted voice in their elections. Due to broad dissatisfaction with the new restrictions, voter turnout for the 2023 district council elections plummeted to 27.5 percent of eligible voters, compared to 71 percent in the 2019 election.

Unlike China, Hong Kong has numerous political parties. They have traditionally split between two factions: pan-democrats, who call for incremental democratic reforms, and pro-establishment groups, who are by and large pro-business supporters of Beijing. The latter have typically been more dominant in Hong Kong politics. Although only a small minority of Hong Kongers have favored outright independence from China, youth movements, mostly led by student protesters, have demanded a more democratic system. Students have formed several political groups, including more radical, anti-Beijing parties such as Youngspiration, Hong Kong Indigenous, and Demosisto. But the powers of these groups and pro-democracy parties have weakened significantly as Beijing has cracked down on political opposition, including via the national security law. Several parties have disbanded, and some members have been forbidden from running in elections or jailed.

How has Beijing eroded Hong Kong’s freedoms?

Beijing had been chipping away at Hong Kong’s freedoms since the handover, experts say. Over the years, its attempts to impose more control over the city have sparked mass protests, which have in turn led the Chinese government to crack down further.

For instance, in 2003, the Hong Kong government proposed national security legislation that would have prohibited treason, secession, sedition, and subversion against the Chinese government, but popular protests defeated that effort. In 2012, it tried to amend Hong Kong schools’ curricula to foster Chinese national identity, which many residents dismissed as Chinese propaganda. And in 2014, Beijing proposed a framework for universal suffrage, allowing Hong Kongers to vote for the city’s chief executive, but only from a Beijing-approved short list of candidates. The proposal led to protesters organizing massive rallies, collectively known as the Umbrella Movement, to call for true democracy.

In the years following the 2014 protests, Beijing and the Hong Kong government stepped up efforts to rein in dissent, including by prosecuting protest leaders, expelling several new legislators, and increasing media censorship.