https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2025/06/13/the-empires-last-ab...

"Lawmakers would go on to formally approve the national security law, essentially a foregone conclusion, about three weeks later. The legislation broadly criminalized political dissent and hamstrung the civil liberties that once distinguished Hong Kong from mainland China. A defense of those freedoms—which were already under increasing attack—had come to define Lai's legacy. Lai not only unapologetically advanced democracy and free expression in the region, but he also met with then–Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; at trial, Lai testified that he had asked them to voice their support for Hong Kong. He knew the law was coming, and he knew what it meant for him."

The same 'National Security Law' will pass soon. Who decides what's right or wrong? It defeats freedom of speech.

If investment was the key to liberalization, we would have seen far greater investment behind the then-fallen Iron Curtain, where countries had actively turned their backs on command economies. The cynic in me thinks that capital didn't like just how that had turned out. If a country's people could either violently (Romania) or peacefully (almost everywhere else) remove such totalitarian systems of politics and economics, they could also reject methods of accumulating capital that might run afoul of their values.

China, on the other hand, had not moved away from command economics at the time. Instead, the result was state capitalism. People were free to try new things that could create economic expansion, but only in a way that served the needs of the state. Anything else would be handled with the same totalitarian methods that political dissidents and class enemies were once handled with under Mao. While this has ebbed and flowed over the years, it essentially remains the system in place.

Lai is a victim of this miscalculation.

The interesting thing is that the "two systems, one state" claim was revealed to have been a lie. I can kind of understand the position of China too, mind you - after all there was a war against the UK empire and they forced ceding territory (e. g. Hong Kong). But that still does not nullify the local's people preferences, and Beijing simply bulldozered through by force here. That's the total antithesis to freedom. Xi will focus on Taiwan next - that is also clear. It is in the "DNA" of the sinomarxistic philosophy (though one can wonder how much marxism with chinese focus is still left; it's kind of capitalistic led by a dictatorship. Oddly enough the USA is also transitioning to this by the tech-bros oligarchs.)

We kind of see that freedoms are being eroded. I don't know if that was always the case, or whether it just happens now more rapidly so; or is reported more often, but in the late 1990s I would say we had more freedoms, globally, than right now. Somehow the trend is going towards less freedom. Putin invading Ukraine, occupying land and killing people there is also highly similar to the pretext of the second world war, with the invasion of the Sudetenland by Germany, and then the Gleiwitz lie to sell the invasion of Poland. I think the only real difference here is that more countries have nukes. And smaller countries are kind of put in a dilemma now, since they can not offset bigger countries without nukes.

>he also met with then–Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; at trial, Lai testified that he had asked them to voice their support for Hong Kong.

Yeah, I don't think that's going to help convince anyone buddy.

I don't care about the specific politics, and I don't know his biography. You can love this man and hate China with the power of every cell in your body. But calling anyone a martyr, even with poetic license, has very specific connotations which don't seem to apply here.

Such a formulation is either sheer ignorance or worse, full-on deliberate cynicism.

Hong Kong's "past" was a typical colony where the governor was appointed by the British government with no local input whatsoever, and where any assembly of more than 6 people was deemed illegal and brutally suppressed. The type of thing that people like Gandhi (who are apparently heroes in contemporary narratives) fought against throughout their lives.

The British government only started changing the laws and handing locals more political freedom and freedom of speech once they knew that Hong Kong was returning to China no matter what (surprise, surprise).

In all such propaganda you see now, they try to construct a "past" that never existed, and apparently a lot of the young generation who never experienced the old days fell for it. But the older generation would tell them outright that "Hong Kong's past" is far less rosy than what's made out to be.

It's just astonishing when you see the amount of people waving British and American flags on the streets during the protests. What kind of "fight for freedom and independence" is that? Just imagine the reaction to protesters in a US territory or a European region (Catalonia etc.) waving Russian or Chinese flags.