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A new magazine in support of Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy is reaching out to the diaspora and those still living in the former British colony, offering unvarnished commentary from the safety of Taiwan where it is published.

The magazine encourages Hong Kong subscribers to get the electronic version due to security concerns about police potentially finding a physical copy in people’s homes.

Hong Kong authorities maintain that freedom of speech and that of the media are intact, but say national security is a red line.The national security law punishes anything China considers subversion, secessionism, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.

he Hong Kong of my youth was a dynamic city, one in which you could eat or drink at all times of day; where you could safely go wherever you wanted, when you wanted; and where you could say what you wanted, to whom you wanted.

That postcard image of Hong Kong as a model of safety and predictability has changed in recent months.

Witnessing these protests and coming back to the place of my childhood is to watch a city transform and awaken on different sides of a divide

in wealthy places on China's periphery — Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea — a rapid response swung into action.One reason was that they had learned from the past.

“We were all burned very badly with SARS, but actually it turned out to be a blessing for us.”

Political will, dedicated resources, sophisticated tracking and a responsible population have kept coronavirus infections and deaths in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore relatively low. South Korea, with more deaths, has led the way in widespread testing.

Britain on Friday hailed a new visa offering Hong Kong citizens a route to citizenship after China’s crackdown but Beijing said it would no longer recognise special British passports offered to residents of the former colony.

Britain says it is fulfilling a historic and moral commitment to the people of Hong Kong after China imposed a tough new security law on the city that Britain says breaches the terms of agreements to hand the colony back in 1997.

The new 250 pound ($340) visa could attract more than 300,000 people and their dependents to Britain and generate up to 2.9 billion pounds net benefit to the British economy over the next five years, according to government forecasts.

Hong Kong residents who boo the Chinese national anthem might soon face up to three years in prison.

The anthem has been booed at recent football fixtures in Hong Kong, where anti-Beijing sentiment has been rising.

Democracy activists fear the new law could be used to undermine freedom of expression in the territory, which enjoys freedoms not seen on the mainland.

China unveiled a road map for cementing its rise in a post-Covid world as it opened one of its biggest political events of the year on Friday, casting its success against the coronavirus as evidence of the superiority of its top-down leadership while warning of threats at home and abroad.

The message on Friday was one of optimism about the strength of its economy and the solidarity of its people, and of struggle against an array of challenges: a hostile global environment, demographic crises at home and resistance to its rule of Hong Kong.

According to the plan, the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-Constitution, will be amended to change the process of selecting the territory’s chief executive and the legislature.

The publisher, Gui Minhai, a naturalized Swedish citizen, was one of five missing employees of Mighty Current Media, a Hong Kong publishing company and bookstore specializing in books about the sex lives and corruption of China’s top leaders. The books are popular with tourists from the mainland.

Hong Kong, while part of mainland China since 1997, has a separate government and legal system and guarantees civil rights such as freedom of speech and due process of law.

“I do not want any individual or organization, including Sweden, to involve themselves in, or interfere with, my return to China,” Mr. Gui said in the televised report. “Although I have Swedish citizenship, I truly feel that I am still Chinese — my roots are in China. So I hope Sweden can respect my personal choice, respect my rights and privacy of my personal choice and allow me to resolve my own problems.”

The Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet giant, is making an ambitious play to reshape media coverage of its home country, taking aim at what company executives call the “negative” portrayal of China in the Western media.

As the backbone of this effort, Alibaba agreed on Friday to buy the media assets of the SCMP Group, including one of Hong Kong’s most influential English language daily newspapers, The South China Morning Post. Alibaba is acquiring an award-winning newspaper that for decades has reported aggressively on subjects that China’s state-run media outlets are forbidden to cover, like political scandals and human-rights cases.

Alibaba said the deal was fueled by a desire to improve China’s image and offer an alternative to what it calls the biased lens of Western news outlets. While Alibaba said the Chinese government had no role in its deal to buy the Hong Kong newspaper, the company’s position aligns closely with that of the Communist Party, which has grown increasingly critical of the way Western news organizations cover China.

China finds altering course especially difficult, mainly because of how its domestic political system functions. As an authoritarian regime—and one that is more and more centered on a personal cult surrounding Xi Jinping—admitting fault is perceived as a threat to credibility.

instead of compromising, Beijing trots out a couple of standard tactics to try to get its way. First, it throws money at the problem.

Then, Beijing mixes in coercion

“You don’t have to read the People’s Daily, because that won’t tell you what’s really going on, but you have to read these,” said Ho Pin, an exiled Chinese journalist who runs Mirror Books, a company based in New York that publishes muckraking books and magazines in Chinese. Chinese officials visiting Hong Kong often buy them as gifts for fellow officials, he said. “In the past, you’d give a mayor a bottle of liquor. But that’s nothing these days, and so is a carton of cigarettes,” Mr. Ho said. “But if you give him one of our books or magazines, he’ll be very happy.”

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, stronger powers imposed humiliating, one-sided treaties on weaker nations in East Asia.

The treaties imposed harsh conditions on the target nations, sometimes seizing territory, allowing citizens of the stronger nation special rights within the weaker nation, and infringing on the targets' sovereignty.

the Treaty of Nanjing, forced China to allow foreigner traders to use five treaty ports, to accept foreign Christian missionaries on its soil, and to allow missionaries, traders, and other British citizens the right of extraterritoriality. This meant that Britons who committed crimes in China would be tried by consular officials from their own nation, rather than facing Chinese courts. In addition, China had to cede the island of Hong Kong to Britain for 99 years.

it is natural enough to look at Taiwan’s example and wonder why we didn’t do what they did, or, more pertinently, could we have done what they did?

we keep seeing the culturally embedded assumption that East Asian-style state social control just won’t fly in the good old, individualist, government-wary, freedom-loving United States.

The New York Times: People in “places like Singapore … are more willing to accept government orders.” Fortune: “There seems to be more of a willingness to place the community and society needs over individual liberty.” Even WIRED: “These countries all have social structures and traditions that might make this kind of surveillance and control a little easier than in the don’t-tread-on-me United States.”

Trade has become an increasingly important part of China’s overall economy, and it has been a significant tool used for economic modernization.

In 1965 China’s trade with other socialist countries made up only about one-third of the total.

The principal efforts were made in Asia—especially to Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), Pakistan, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka)—but large loans were also granted in Africa (Ghana, Algeria, Tanzania) and in the Middle East (Egypt).

In Lebanon they are against a tax on WhatsApp and endemic corruption. In Chile, a hike in the metro fare and rampant inequality. In Hong Kong, an extradition bill and creeping authoritarianism. In Algeria, a fifth term for an ageing president and decades of military rule.

The protests raging today and in the past months on the streets of cities around the world have varying triggers. But the fuel is familiar: stagnating middle classes, stifled democracy and the bone-deep conviction that things can be different – even if the alternative is not always clear.

“The data shows that the amount of protests is increasing and is as high as the roaring 60s, and has been since about 2009,” says Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, a professor who studies social change and conflict at Vrije University in Amsterdam.

China on Thursday demanded President Donald Trump veto legislation aimed at supporting human rights in Hong Kong and renewed a threat to take “strong countermeasures” if the bills become law.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi joined in the criticism, telling visiting former U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen that the legislation constituted an act of interference in China’s internal affairs and ignored violent acts committed by protesters.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the bills Wednesday, a day after the Senate passed them on voice votes. The bills now go to the White House for Trump’s signature, and the White House signaled that he would sign the measure.