Hong Kong: Beijing Tightens Social Control

Hong Kong: Beijing Tightens Social Control

Click to expand Image A prison van believed to be carrying Jimmy Lai leaving West Kowloon Magistrates Courts where his sentencing took place in Hong Kong, February 9, 2025. © 2025 Vernon Yuen/NEXPHER/Sipa via AP Photo (Tokyo) – Beijing has restructured Hong Kong’s governance to answer to Party leadership rather than Hong Kong’s people six years after imposing the draconian National Security Law, Human Rights Watch said today.“Hong Kong’s highly …

National Security Law capped Beijing’s assimilation plan to end Hong Kong’s self-rule

FORUM Staff June 30, 2026, marks the sixth anniversary of Beijing imposing Hong Kong’s National Security Law, a repressive measure that underscores China’s blueprint to eliminate alternative centers of power and make political divergence unsustainable. Gradually undermining its self-professed “One Country, Two Systems” structure, Beijing used legal authority, elite co-option, economic leverage, institutional restructuring and …