Ở Hồng Kông, sự kìm kẹp của Trung Quốc giống như ‘Cái chết bởi hàng ngàn vết cắt’

----

The stock market is in the tank, home values have tumbled (giá trị nhà giảm) and emigration is fueling a brain drain. Some of the hottest restaurants, spas and shopping malls that local residents are flocking to are across the border, in the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen.

The government needs to revive Hong Kong’s economy and promote its global image, but it has instead largely focused on national security. It moved with unusual speed on Tuesday to pass a package of updated and new security laws aimed at curbing foreign influence (hạn chế ảnh hưởng của nước ngoài) and dissent with penalties like life imprisonment for treason and other political crimes. The legislation could deter even more foreign businesses, already a shrinking presence, from investing in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, had been promised a degree of autonomy from Beijing after it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, with freedoms unseen in the mainland. But after massive antigovernment demonstrations engulfed cuộc biểu tình lớn chống chính phủ diễn ra) the city for months in 2019, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong in 2020 that the authorities used to crush the pro-democracy opposition with ferocity.

In this new environment, even sports cannot escape politics. Last month, an outcry erupted in Hong Kong after the soccer star Lionel Messi sat out an exhibition match against a team of local players because of an injury. The government had promoted the Inter Miami match, for which many tickets had sold for hundreds of dollars each, as a way to help generate excitement in the city.

The uncertainty has led some foreign firms to begin treating Hong Kong as if it were the mainland. They have begun using burner phones and limiting local employees’ access to their companies’ global databases.

source: nytimes,