OPINION:
The newspaper is the canary in the coal mine, the first to warn of the boot of the dictatorship when the dictator feels the heat of a free press. The dismissal of four columnists on The South China Morning Post, the leading English-language daily in Hong Kong, is a sign that China intends to be “no more Mr. Nice Guy” in the former British colony.
When it was a British colony, Hong Kong was the open civil society, not quite with the freedom Americans take for granted with the guarantee of the First Amendment, but a paradise contrasted with the Communist satrap, with all its attendant horrors on the Chinese mainland.
The once-respected reporting and commentary of The South China Morning Post is becoming an echo of the dull and boring parrot-like government media of mainland China. The columnists who were sacked were freewheeling critics, interesting and provocative. They were the gadflies of a newspaper with a small circulation compared to the Chinese-language dailies, but widely read by the politically consequential. The sacked columnists tried to protect Hong Kong’s 8 million people from the clampdown ordered by Xi Jinping to consolidate his hold on the People’s Republic.
The Morning Post is owned by a Malaysian Overseas Chinese with important commercial interests to protect in China. The crackdown is another Chinese reach for total control of Hong Kong’s once-rambunctious society. It’s not an accident that most of the newspaper’s columnists have strong family or other ties to the small coterie of politicians making the good fight for representative government in the Special Administrative Region, as Hong Kong is officially called, of the People’s Republic of China.
Beijing had already discarded its promise of popular suffrage as a part of the deal it made with the British, who were not so much naive in their negotiations with Beijing as weary of responsibility for its overseas possession. What has happened since has not surprised anyone with a clear-eyed appraisal of what the Communists had in mind.
The latest student revolt, despite unexpected wide popular support, has been beaten back. Intimidation of dissidents has included firebombing of the home of Jimmy Lai, a spectacularly successful Hong Kong entrepreneur, and ransacking of the offices of his crusading Chinese-language newspaper, Apple Daily, and Next magazine.
The long British fight against petty corruption among the police has gotten lost in the transfer of sovereignty. Hong Kong’s controlled immigration from the mainland, to supply an expanding labor force, has loosened with growing corruption.
Some in the business community, feeling safe in the comfort of the short view (“We’ll make a few bucks while we can and then get out”), have excused the crackdown as necessary to maintain the stability of the business climate that produced the Hong Kong miracle. But the essence of Hong Kong’s success and its economy was in the freedoms under British law and order which permitted it to flourish.
The former colony has profited, of course, from the steady inflow of mainland tourists, even though the locals complain bitterly of their rude manners, and their frantic purchases in the duty-free stores. But if the framework of freedom that was the touchstone of its prosperity is banished, the city is likely to become another example of Communist misrule on the mainland. Sadly, that’s the trend.
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