Being in Hong Kong at this very moment feels like living somewhere that just received a ‘guilty’ verdict but you have to wait another few hours to know what the sentence is.

Actually, you don’t even know what law was broken because it was written over the weekend.
I wrote this on June 11th, thinking through three different #NationalSecurityLaw scenarios. The law passed three hours ago and we still have no idea what’s in it. As I write at the end, the scenarios are probably best thought of as sequential stages. https://comparativist.substack.com/p/the-fall-of-hong-kong">https://comparativist.substack.com/p/the-fal...
“At what point is it beyond clear that escalating repression and violence on an entire people only backfires? That making hardened enemies of the CCP in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan could not be more contrary to the CCP’s own security interest?” https://www.comparativist.org/2019/10/08/hong-kong-and-xinjiang-are-governance-failures/">https://www.comparativist.org/2019/10/0...
‘Secession’ is going to be one of the crimes, though no one knows how it will be defined. Insomuch as Hong Kong nationalism is seen as a national security threat to Beijing, I wrote in 2015 that they were all but ensuring HKers would eventually embrace it. https://www.comparativist.org/2015/02/01/the-coming-storm-of-hong-kong-nationalism/">https://www.comparativist.org/2015/02/0...
You can follow @Comparativist.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: