The Economist - How a free and open Hong Kong became a police state

[emily]

The Economist

How a free and open Hong Kong became a police state
An anatomy of erasure

“During British rule the party was an illegal organisation (indeed even today it has no official presence in the territory). That did not stop it from recruiting. Mr Ching estimates there are currently some 400,000 underground party members in Hong Kong, around 5% of the population. Roughly half were born and raised in Hong Kong. The other half were born on the mainland and resettled themselves in the city.
In her book, “Underground Front”, Christine Loh, an official in Hong Kong’s government in the 2010s, cites one estimate that 83,000 mainland officials entered Hong Kong under assumed names and false identities between 1983, when negotiations on the handover began, and its eventual achievement in 1997. After seven years in Hong Kong the infiltrators qualified for permanent residency, which gave them the right to apply for jobs in the Hong Kong civil service. The party prioritised infiltrating departments like the police, customs and immigration to ensure it had control over the city, says Mr Ching. The response to the protests of 2019 had been years in the making.”

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