Hong Kong’s new bounce, 5 years post-national security law

In the second of a two-part series on the national security law, we look at how the city has had to battle a negative narrative over the past five years. Read part 1 here.

Soon after Hong Kong reopened in early 2023 as harsh pandemic restrictions were finally lifted, veteran lawmaker Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee embarked on a solo mission to the West.

Visiting Brussels to meet European Union officials in September 2023, she sought to explain fundamental political and legal changes in the city and how it would not be deterred by its critics.

Beijing had reshaped the political landscape, first by imposing a sweeping national security law in 2020, then by introducing major electoral reforms to ensure that only “patriots” ruled the city.

By then too, a dark shadow had settled over the city, blanketing more nuanced and varied views about Hong Kong into one coagulated negative narrative that it had become a police state. With the national security law, no one was safe.

Diplomats, bankers and business people were told to carry burner phones when entering Hong Kong. The city’s future was over, its past a romanticised era where democracy reigned, or so this gloomy tale went.

It did not help that Hong Kong residents had also left the city in droves, drawn by easier pathways to emigration laid out by Western nations and partly because of the pandemic restrictions.