Beijing and freedom of expression
The government’s crusade to outlaw "Glory to Hong Kong" has come to be symbolic of the clampdown on freedom of expression and democracy in Hong Kong – and of China’s increasing suppression, which is now also affecting western tech companies still active in the region.
The National Security Law makes "colluding with foreign powers" illegal
Foreign companies such as Google find themselves in a quandary. On the one hand, they are bound to obey local laws. They want to protect their employees, and they don’t want to lose access to the Hong Kong market. On the other hand, they have their reputation to consider. Because Google’s official motto "Do the right thing" – like its forerunner "Don’t be evil" – has a clear moral dimension.
The so-called National Security Law makes "colluding with foreign powers" illegal, without specifying exactly what that means. That could eventually lead to employees of foreign companies being arrested. According to a report from the European Union, published on Aug. 18, over the past year Hong Kong’s criminal prosecution authority arrested 236 people for reasons of "national security".
Bounties offered for pro-democracy activists
In 2022, the colonial-era sedition law was also used by the authorities a number of times. Around a fifth of all arrests by the national security police came under this law, including the Nov. 1 arrest of an EU citizen.
The foreigners who are most at risk are those with Chinese roots, no matter how far in the past these may be. Beijing doesn’t recognise dual citizenship and treats these people as its own citizens. One of them is Kevin Yam. He was born in Hong Kong but moved to Australia at the age of 10 and has Australian citizenship. He worked for 17 years as a lawyer in the financial services sector in Hong Kong, before fleeing to Australia in 2021. He is one of eight pro-democracy activists living in exile who have recently had a bounty put on their head by the Hong Kong authorities.
They are accused of colluding with "foreign powers" and endangering national security. "I am an Australian citizen exercising my democratic rights," Yam said in an interview with Die Welt. Now a Senior Fellow at the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, he has met Australian members of parliament and spoken about the decline of democracy in Hong Kong in the United States Congress.
Yam says that he was never politically active in Hong Kong itself, and that because of the fear created by these repressive laws, Hong Kong is suffering from a significant brain drain. Many experts confirm this. Foreign companies looking to set up new offices are choosing other Asian countries, such as Singapore, indicating that the exodus of tech companies due to growing Chinese influence has already begun.
Until recently, the situation in Hong Kong was different.
U.S. tech companies no longer play a significant role in the Chinese market. Because of censorship in China — which has blocked services such as YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) — and the growing numbers of Chinese alternatives on offer, these companies have little chance of attracting customers with their reduced offerings. Google pulled its search engine from China in 2010, and mobile phone production there was also shut down a few years ago.
Google will probably stay
Until recently, the situation in Hong Kong was different. Google and other American tech companies were still able to offer their full range of services here. But their freedoms are slowly being restricted.
When Die Welt wrote to Google asking if they would remove the controversial song from their search results, the company didn’t offer a direct answer. Instead, it pointed us to its biannual transparency report, which lists government requests to remove content.
According to the latest edition of the report, the number of requests from Hong Kong has risen sharply over the past year. It does not specify whether this is due to growing pressure from the Communist Party. According to the report, around 30 percent of requests to remove content are granted.
Experts think it is unlikely that Google will bow out of the Hong Kong market as it did in China in 2010 — as long as none of its employees are arrested. Hong Kong is simply too valuable for business operations in Asia.
