Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China's Crackdown Reveals about Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere
Mark L Clifford
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China's Crackdown Reveals about Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere
Mark L Clifford
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
... captures how much has been wrested from Hong Kong’s people—a measure of how far Beijing is willing to go to destroy liberal institutions and democratic norms and ensure its tight lock on the power of the Chinese Communist Party.
... a journalistic book in the traditional sense, offering readers a rapid-fire recounting of the key events from the Occupy movement to the arrests of prominent politicians and journalists in 2020 and 2021. He also takes time to delve into the history of the handover negotiations between Britain and China, as well as the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, which plunged Hong Kong into crisis and prompted a wave of emigration.
Clifford’s authoritative reportage makes for gripping reading. But the book gets bogged down in repetition and starts to feel like a long-form magazine feature stretched across 300 pages. His assertion that China’s ambition is to suppress free thought the world over feels underbaked, despite numerous examples of China pulling levers of intimidation beyond its borders. Like Russian disinformation campaigns, it’s hard to know the scale and reach of China’s harassment methods abroad, and unfortunately, Clifford fails to shed much more light than what has already been reported in the mainstream media..
Pertinent, mournful reflections on how mainland China continues to tighten its grip on the freedoms held so dear by the Hong Kong community.
Making a convincing case that the personal freedoms and legal protections established under British colonial rule helped make Hong Kong 'one of the freest and most prosperous places in the world,' Clifford explains how the influx of mainland Chinese tourists and property buyers in recent years have contributed to staggering income disparities that helped fuel the 2019 protest movement, which was sparked by the legislature’s consideration of a bill (since withdrawn) that would have allowed for the extradition of suspected criminals to China.