January 19, 2021
In the months since a repressive national security law upended life in Hong Kong, numerous activists and politicians have fled the city for self-imposed exile abroad. Many more have emigrated, and as Britain’s new citizenship pathway for Hong Kongers takes effect at the end of this month, hundreds of thousands more could leave in the coming years.
Just today, local media reported that jailed activist Joshua Wong’s parents and brother have left the city for Australia.
But there are fears that Chinese authorities could try to make it more difficult for Hong Kongers to escape the crackdown, for example by adopting mainland Chinese-style exit bans particularly against activists and dissidents. For months, Beijing has made noises that the UK offer to Hong Kongers infringes its sovereign rights over its citizens.
What will be the future of China’s authoritarian political system?
Many predicted that China’s rapid development over the past several decades would inevitably lead to gradual liberalization. Economic growth was expected to generate a cascade of changes first to society, then law, and eventually politics. Events appeared to confirm these projections. As Chinese authorities opened up the economy in the late twentieth century, they also launched sweeping reforms of the nation’s legislative and judicial institutions.
The events of the past decade, however, have called these assumptions into question. From 2000 to 2011, per capita GDP in China more than quintupled, skyrocketing from US$949 to $5,445. But one-party rule remains intact under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Chinese authorities have turned against many of the legal reforms that they themselves enacted back in the 1980s and 1990s. Lawyers have come under increased pressure. Political campaigns warning against r