Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China's Crackdown Reveals About Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere

by Mark L. Clifford

Overview

A gripping history of China's deteriorating relationship with Hong Kong, and its implications for the rest of the world.

For 150 years as a British colony, Hong Kong was a beacon of prosperity where people, money, and technology flowed freely, and residents enjoyed many civil liberties. In preparation for handing the territory over to China in 1997, Deng Xiaoping promised that it would remain highly autonomous for fifty years. An international treaty established a Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a far freer political system than that of Communist China—one with its own currency and government administration, a common-law legal system, and freedoms of press, speech, and religion.

But as the halfway mark of the SAR’s lifespan approaches in 2022, it is clear that China has not kept its word. Universal suffrage and free elections have not been instituted, harassment and brutality have become normalized, and activists are being jailed en masse. To make matters worse, a national security law that further crimps Hong Kong’s freedoms has recently been decreed in Beijing. This tragic backslide has dire worldwide implications—as China continues to expand its global influence, Hong Kong serves as a chilling preview of how dissenters could be treated in regions that fall under the emerging superpower’s control.

Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World tells the complete story of how a city once famed for protests so peaceful that toddlers joined grandparents in millions-strong rallies became a place where police have fired more than 10,000 rounds of tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition at their neighbors, while pro-government hooligans attack demonstrators in the streets. A Hong Kong resident from 1992 to 2021, author Mark L. Clifford has witnessed this transformation firsthand. As a celebrated publisher and journalist, he has unrivaled access to the full range of the city’s society, from student protestors and political prisoners to aristocrats and senior government officials. A powerful and dramatic mix of history and on-the-ground reporting, this book is the definitive account of one of the most important geopolitical standoffs of our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250279170
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/01/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	467,504
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

MARK L. CLIFFORD is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, the former executive director of the Asia Business Council, and a former board member at Next Digital. He is editorial chair of the Asian Review of Books, and served as editor in chief of both English-language papers in Hong Kong, The Standard and the South China Morning Post. An honors history graduate of UC Berkeley and a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, he holds a Ph.D. in Hong Kong history from the University of Hong Kong.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

Part I "River Water Does Not Mix with Well Water" 7

1 The Summer of Democracy 9

2 An Umbrella Occupation: A New Generation Rebels 19

3 And Then There Were None 39

4 Property and Poverty 52

Part II "Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time" 65

5 Opium, Free Trade, and a "Barren Rock" 67

6 A "Dying City" Rises from the Ruins 79

7 "Horses Will Still Run, Stocks Will Still Sizzle, Dancers Will Still Dance" 93

8 Massacre in Tiananmen: "Today's China Is Tomorrow's Hong Kong" 99

9 "I Have to Live in the Real World" 109

10 The Last Governor: "A-Year Sinner" 119

Part III Sprinting Economy, Faltering Freedoms 129

11 China Opens for Business 131

12 "The Great Chinese Takeaway" 142

13 "The First Postmodern City to Die" 155

Part IV "It Is Imperative to Uphold the Leadership of the Communist Party" 185

14 The Endgame 187

15 Punishing a Media Maverick 202

16 "Strike Hard" 218

17 "History Will Absolve Me" 232

Epilogue: A Newspaper Is Murdered, a City Mourns 259

Acknowledgments 275

Notes 279

Index 295

Editorial Reviews

12/13/2021

Clifford (The Greening of Asia), the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, mixes memoir, politics, and economic analysis in this detailed portrait of how the Chinese government has curtailed the freedoms of Hong Kong residents since taking control of the territory in 1997. 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. He interviews students, journalists, and small business owners who joined the protests, and documents the chilling effects of the National Security Law imposed by China in July 2020, which “criminalizes opposition and criticism.” Though Clifford’s argument that China is on a campaign to “extinguish free thought” around the world borders on the hyperbolic, he makes an impassioned case that “anyone who believes in democracy” should support the protest movement. This cri de coeur rings true. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Blending personal experiences and careful historical research, Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World is an intimate and informative report on Hong Kong's affairs. Mark Clifford's rational, plainspoken voice is full of sympathy and at times touched with pathos. With this passionate book, the author did a great service to the city he loves."
—Ha Jin, author of A Song Everlasting

"A riveting and eye-opening book that will stir outrage in anyone who has visited Hong Kong, follows China, or worries about how China will shape the 21st century. The crushing of dissent and freedom in Hong Kong has received less attention than the Tiananmen Massacre. But Mark Clifford argues persuasively that the suppression of Hong Kong is the true playbook of Chinese repression, and one that it is already exporting to Taiwan, Asia and even the United States. His insider account highlights the Hong Kong heroes who fought back, and the perpetrators—inside and outside Hong Kong—who abetted China’s takeover. He leaves us with the uneasy conclusion: We should have seen this coming."
—Jonathan Kaufman, author of The Last Kings of Shanghai

“Powerful, comprehensive and poignant, this book offers a truthful and balanced overview of events in Hong Kong over the past three decades or more. As someone who has lived and breathed much of what Mark Clifford writes, I identify with it and endorse it totally. If you want to understand Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party and the threat to freedom itself, you must make it a top priority to read this book.”
—Benedict Rogers, co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch

“Gripping and powerfully-written, Clifford pulls in the reader through a vivid account of Hong Kong’s history and on-the-ground reporting on the students, business tycoons, and politicians central to this disturbing drama, that tells us much about the growing threat China’s top leaders pose to global freedoms. He taps into his deep experience running Hong Kong’s top English language newspaper, directing the business association representing the region’s most powerful companies, his close contacts with senior Hong Kong officials, and his crucial role as a director for Hong Kong’s once most independent media company, whose destruction is central to this modern tragedy. Clifford, who has spent most of his adult life in Hong Kong, is uniquely suited to tell this sad story…A must-read account on the ongoing destruction of Hong Kong and why it matters to the world.”
—Dexter Roberts, author of The Myth of Chinese Capitalism

“Mark Clifford has written a riveting and passionate account of China’s attack on Hong Kong and its broader implications. Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World parts the curtains on what every informed citizen should know and be thinking about.”
—Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean Emeritus, Yale School of Management

“The world has usually viewed Hong Kong as either a last gasp of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European colonialism or, more recently, as a buzzing beehive of modern capitalism. Neither image captures the surprising phenomenon that Mark Clifford details in this masterly study. Hong Kong has now become a front line in the world-wide quest for human freedom. Pursuit of it has spouted like a geyser from Hong Kong wellsprings that are located neither in national pride nor in appetite for lucre but in human nature itself—in the desire to be master of one’s own life. The Communist Party of China’s repression of Hong Kong is both fierce and unscrupulous, and the world ignores this stand-off at its peril. As Vaclav Havel has taught us, an assault on human dignity anywhere is an assault on it everywhere.”
—Perry Link, professor emeritus, East Asian Studies, Princeton University and author of An Anatomy of Chinese

"Clifford uses his background in business journalism to give sure-footed, brisk explanations of how the city’s real estate oligarchs rig the property market. He writes scathingly of how the British worked hand in hand with the business elite to suppress popular aspirations. And his firsthand account of [Jimmy] Lai’s arrest is heartfelt and telling."
—New York Review of Books

"A powerful account of Hong Kong's slide into autocracy."
—"The Seven Books That Best Explain Hong Kong's History," The Economist

“An agile observer and diligent journalist, Clifford leads us through Hong Kong’s fraught modern history in relation to the striving for democratic freedoms, and he reveals many stark consequences brought about by the suppression of its spirit. An intimate, eye-opening chronicle that should serve as an alarm to fragile democratic republics around the world.”
—Kirkus

"[Clifford] 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."
—Wall Street Journal

"A rapid-fire recounting of the key events from the Occupy movement to the arrests of prominent politicians and journalists in 2020 and 2021. [Clifford] 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."
—Washington Post

"[A] detailed portrait of how the Chinese government has curtailed the freedoms of Hong Kong residents since taking control of the territory in 1997...Clifford makes an impassioned case that 'anyone who believes in democracy' should support the protest movement. This cri de coeur rings true."
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

★ 2021-12-07
Pertinent, mournful reflections on how mainland China continues to tighten its grip on the freedoms held so dear by the Hong Kong community.

Clifford, who has made his living in the city as a journalist and newspaper publisher since 1992, begins with a vital question: “How did a beacon of prosperity and freedom, a city of peaceful rallies where fathers stood vigil with their school-age children, find itself transformed into a place of firebombing and tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition?” The author begins in 2014 with the Occupy Central movement, which, after initially dying down, regained momentum in the summer of 2019 following the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4. Soon after, writes Clifford, the government, “angered at its inability to bring Hong Kong to heel and convinced that Western plots to overthrow China lay at the roots of the protests, responded by ushering in an ominous new phase with the July 1, 2020 imposition of a draconian National Security Law and subsequent arrests of dozens of leaders of the democracy movement.” The author believes these crackdowns are reminiscent of the violent practices embraced during the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong, when neighbor turned against neighbor, student against teacher. In addition to a potent personal narrative, Clifford widens his scope to encompass the larger-scale, nefarious intentions of Beijing to maintain control over its satellites. The government’s methods have included efforts to tamp down Hong Kong’s Cantonese speakers and to lock down the film industry via censorship and plot alterations (a topic that Erich Schwartzel investigates comprehensively in his recent book, Red Carpet). An agile observer and diligent journalist, Clifford leads us through Hong Kong’s fraught modern history in relation to the striving for democratic freedoms, and he reveals many stark consequences brought about by the suppression of its spirit.

An intimate, eye-opening chronicle that should serve as an alarm to fragile democratic republics around the world.

Kirkus Reviews