Protesters expose a fractured Hong Kong, but China’s grip only tightens

IT WAS A dramatic rebuke of Chinese rule of Hong Kong, on the day it was meant to be celebrated. On July 1st, a public holiday known as Establishment Day in honour of the handover of the territory in 1997 from Britain to China, anti-government protesters stormed into and ransacked the city’s Legislative Council, displaying a British-era colonial flag for cameras and live social-media feeds. Hours after Carrie Lam, the territory’s chief executive, had toasted the putative success of 22 years of mainland rule, protesters laid bare for the world the reality of a deeply fractured, fractious Hong Kong.

The violence provided Mrs Lam and Chinese leaders in Beijing, on the defensive after weeks of massive but mostly peaceful protests, an opening to harden their line against protesters. They moved quickly to take it. Mrs Lam held a press conference at police headquarters at 4am on July 2nd, condemning the break-in and defacement of the Legislative Council, known as Legco, and vowing that perpetrators would be caught and punished (there have already been some arrests). The Chinese central government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong declared that the “savage acts were an outright provocation and trampling of the city’s rule of law.” On July 3rd Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to Britain, denounced Hong Kong’s “ultra-radicals”, saying they had “challenged the bottom line of one country, two systems”, the framework, negotiated in a treaty with Britain, under which Hong Kong’s freedoms are meant to be protected until 2047.