What Leverage Remains to Preserve Free Expression in Hong Kong?

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In Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020, millions took to the streets, sparked at first by opposition to an extradition bill that allowed extraditions to mainland China. The protests, which ultimately took on a range of pro-democracy demands, were might with violent police resistance, and many activists were jailed. Protestors sought to defend civil liberties that Beijing pledged to uphold in the former British colony following its reversion to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, but the 2020 implementation of the National Security Law amounted to what the pro-democracy think tank Freedom House called “a multifront attack on the 'one country, two systems' framework.”

Since then, the crackdown on activism and the erosion of rights has continued. This week, a public consultation period ended for a new national security law, known as Article 23. The ostensible purpose of Article 23 is to target a wide array of crimes, including treason, theft of state secrets, espionage, sabotage, sedition, and "external interference" from foreign governments. The Hong Kong legislature, dominated by pro-Beijing lawmakers, is expected to approve it, even as its critics argue that the law criminalizes basic human rights, such as the freedom of expression, signaling a further erosion of the liberties once enjoyed by the residents of Hong Kong.

Even as freedoms are curtailed, Hong Kong still permits US social media and technology platforms to operate. But these tech firms have yet to openly challenge policies that threaten the free flow of information in Hong Kong, raising questions about corporate responsibility and the ethical considerations of purportedly pro-democracy firms doing business in regions where freedoms are under threat.

To learn more about what is happening in Hong Kong and what tech firms and other outside voices could be doing to preserve freedoms for the people of Hong Kong, I spoke to three experts who are following developments there closely:

• Chung Ching Kwong, senior analyst at the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China
• Lokman Tsui, a fellow at Citizen Lab at University of Toronto, and
• Michael Caster, the Asia Digital Program Manager with Article 19.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Chung Ching Kwong:

I'm Chung Ching Kwong, I'm the senior analyst at the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.

Lokman Tsui:

I'm Lokman Tsui, I'm a fellow at Citizen Lab at University of Toronto.

Michael Caster:

Michael Caster, the Asia Digital Program Manager with Article 19.

Justin Hendrix:

Thank you all for joining me today. We're going to talk a little bit about internet intermediaries, censorship, protest and Hong Kong, but first I think for tech policy press listeners, it'd be a useful thing to do to just spend a moment on the political context in Hong Kong at the moment.

Lokman Tsui:

Let me take a stab at that. Hong Kong was massively in the news in 2019 when the protests were going on. And you might be wondering what happened to the protests. Hong Kong is no longer in the news. But the reality is that the protests died down because of COVID, we might remember that as a little epidemic that we had for a couple of years, and then quickly in 2020, COVID happened, but also the national security law happened in Hong Kong. Beijing dropped that law overnight in Hong Kong without any kind of consultation or even the local government having seen it. And it quickly completely changed the landscape, the political landscape in Hong Kong. It became a lot easier than to arrest people for simply protesting, for simply being critical of the government. It's very hard to sum up what happened in the last couple of years, but very briefly, I don't think I'm exaggerating when complete social political economic fabric of Hong Kong has changed in the last couple of years.

Civil society got gutted, Press freedom is constantly under attack and critical independent journalists are an extinct or an endangered species at this point. Universities have changed massively, the courts have changed massively. I think the one line sum up is Hong Kong had made a massive turn towards authoritarianism. It was once a free city, maybe not democratic in that strict sense of the word, but with rule of law, with freedom, not perfect. But in the last couple of years, it has made a decisive shift toward the authoritarianism that Beijing wants the city to be under.

Michael Caster:

When I was living in Beijing 14, 15 years ago, the internet restrictions were already in place. In China, all of the mainstream social media platforms were blocked, all of that. And I remember visiting Hong Kong on visa runs or for meetings and things like that, traveling from Beijing to Hong Kong. And the stark difference that you would see, everything that was inaccessible in China, was accessible in Hong Kong. And over the years, especially since the national security law has been imposed by Beijing, as Lokman said, all of that freedom, the internet freedom that existed in Hong Kong has been chipped away at and slowly but surely through a forced censorship or self-censorship from the fear of arbitrary imprisonment, the digital space has increasingly taken on a sense, a feeling similar to again, that authoritarian model of internet governance that Beijing is so known for.

Chung Ching Kwong:

There seems to be a facade of things going normal or back to normal right now in the pro Beijing or Hong Kong government narrative that is there is still the facade of internet freedom, that people still have access to social media, things that aren't accessible back in mainland China. And they're still trying to justify that, "Oh look, Hong Kong is still under one country to system. We're still quite different from mainland China." But in essence to the implications of the national security law or the proposed Article 23, is just not going to be the same because there's going to be, as Michael said, forced censorship and self-censorship, but they're still trying very hard to maintain the facade that there is no great firewall in Hong Kong.

Justin Hendrix:

So let's talk about these legal changes that are happening. And you mentioned Article 23 of the basic law, and there are of course other changes that are presently out for public consultation.

Chung Ching Kwong:

The Article 23, as you said, is an article inside the basic law, which is like the mini constitution of Hong Kong, and it states that Hong Kong has the obligation to locally adopt a legislation to prevent acts of sedition, trying to overthrow the state, which is the Chinese Communist Party government and so on. So right now the government is proposing for the second time, since 2003, to locally adopt a legislation to show those responsibility. And the proposal that they came up with is largely problematic for a few reasons. First of all, it's because it's so fake, that it cover almost all aspects of life from social activities, social affairs to research, education to all sorts of levels in your life. Those things can be considered as related to national security. So it leads to a very difficult situation for journalists and even for normal citizens.

For example, the proposal of the government put out suggested that any kind of approach to try to change the minds of governments and policymaking would count as an infringement under the Article 23. So normal policy advocacy is no longer possible. Or they say people have the obligations to report to the police when someone around you is committing a crime. For example, if I am talking about... Oh, actually we are talking about something that would be seen as criminal right now and basically Justin, Michael, and Lokman you all the responsibility to report me because I'm talking about things that would infringe the Article 23. So there have been a lot of these consents that being raised from the law and it has huge implications on the cyberspace as well.

Lokman Tsui:

That was a great overview of the Article 23, especially history and how toxic it's been for all these years here in Hong Kong. But I think it might be helpful for the reader to know that the law has a different sort of meaning in Hong Kong these days than what you would understand in Europe or United States and so on, where the law is an independent institution of society. What we've seen over the last couple of years in Hong Kong is that, the law in Hong Kong used to be independent, you could trust the courts to operate independently of the government. But one big issue during the 2019 protest was exactly, are the courts actually under the government or separate independent? And the government have been making the case that there is no such thing as a separation of powers in Hong Kong.

And so moving more and more towards the China model where the law is an instrument of the government, I think that's important sort of context for when we're talking about all the things that are going to come up in the next couple of minutes or so, that the powers that are granted to the authorities under the law are not under a system of check and balances basically.

And that these can be used and abused by the authorities however they wish. Vague definitions for example, which is usually not uncommon in law because you want some flexibility in law, you cannot completely route out everything in law. But the broad definitions in the law as it is today in Hong Kong become very easily manipulated and abused by the authorities. And in China for example, that is basically anything that the authorities have not officially approved as fact, which is the opposite from what we understand here. In other parts of the world where now secrets are like a black myth, like here is something that you cannot talk about. What I'm afraid will happen in Hong Kong with that national secrets under the Article 23, we become this sort of white list. Here are the things you can talk about and everything else is national secret. And that's a real issue of concern, at least for me.

Justin Hendrix:

So I suppose what we're talking about here is this sort of sense that the last embers of freedom on the one hand and of course internet or digital freedoms, are also being stamped out.

Michael Caster:

I just wanted to add one element to what Lokman was saying about how both national law or international law has been manipulated and twisted to suit Beijing's purposes using the basic law as an example. So ahead of the handover Hong Kong from the British back to China, within the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which was signed and agreed in the 80s between then Margaret Thatcher and Zhao Ziyang, it was entered into the UN treaty system officially making it registered by the UN treaty system, it's a form of international law, it is a treaty, a bilateral treaty between the two parties. And yet in 2017, China just wished it away and said that this is really just an 'historical document and it has no practical significance and no binding force.' And so this is an international treaty that China entered into, which is also in part setting up the role that the basic law will have, the one country two systems, the way in which laws and policies are negotiated and adopted in Hong Kong, all of that nationally, which was also then supposed to be enforced under this treaty.

But this is relevant not just at the national level, it's also an indication of how China feels completely unaccountable to the international legal norms and the international human rights system or other international norms and standards including internet freedom principles and norms, which are of course then soft law. But what's notable here too is because one point of analysis for all of the laws we're talking about in Hong Kong, is that Hong Kong is again under the basic law and other local laws beholden to accountable under the international Covenant on Civil and Political rights and other international human rights frameworks that the PRC actually isn't. And that's a function of history, but it's still binding on Hong Kong.

And as a result, a few years ago, the Human Rights Committee, which is responsible for monitoring and assessing the implementation of the ICCPR, in its review of Hong Kong, specifically on the national security law due to a raft of human rights concerns, some that have to do with internet freedom, others obviously on press freedom, other association assembly rights issues. But the Human Rights Committee very clearly in its concluding observations said that Hong Kong should. Cease to implement the national security law. And Hong Kong just ran rough shot through that recommendation and this is where we are today.

Justin Hendrix:

You just painted a bleak picture somewhat of the extent to which the rule of laws being run over roughshod. Are there any points of leverage here? Do you hold hope that anything will go in a different direction than it seems to be going at this point? Is there a legal recourse for those who are concerned about rights, rule of law and certainly free expression in Hong Kong?

Chung Ching Kwong:

If I say I am extremely hopeful, then I would be lying because any reasonable person looking at the situation would be like we're quite toasted in this regard when it comes to in general freedom expression and internet freedoms. But there is always a bit of silver lining to the situation, especially because the proposed legislation is actually local legislation. So technically it's subjected to judicial review in Hong Kong instead of the national security law, where no judicial review or any kind of legal challenges against the law is impossible. But the fact that initiating a judicial review against any legislations related to the Article 23 might be an infringement of the national security law, which is not subjected to any kind of legal challenges will be quite interesting, in a way quite sad to see if anyone will attempt to try to challenge the law and so on.

But on the other hand, it's not completely impossible for some space to maneuver when it comes to the proposed legislation. There are a lot of things that different stakeholders can do, especially when it comes to multinational corporates in Hong Kong, like big service providers like Google, like Facebook or Meta or X or whatever there is that's out there that do operate in the Hong Kong market. They are the one who's going to be really hit by the legislation and they do have some sort of leverage, but I'm not sure if they would be willing to do it. I have seen Google going into court with the Canadian government until the very, very last hurdle, but I don't see similar approaches being used in Hong Kong in terms of these legislations. Perhaps the context is very different, I understand that, but I do think if they are willing to do something, there might be some space to maneuver when it comes to the situation in Hong Kong.

Justin Hendrix:

So there's the sense that the tech firms still have some leverage that you're saying essentially?

Chung Ching Kwong:

Yeah, I'd say more or less they do have. And probably Lokman will know better the subject because Lokman has more experience in the actual operating environment, but I do think they do have some leverage.

Justin Hendrix:

Lokman.

Lokman Tsui:

I think the question of hope is always a very tricky one because obviously if you look at the last couple of years things have gone really bad in Hong Kong in terms of freedoms and digital rights especially. But the other way to look at it is, the internet in Hong Kong used to be very free and open just like any other country in the world, not like China at all. And then so the other way to look at this is, but the reality is also that Hong Kong's internet is not like China's internet right now.

The hopeful thing is to say, there's still a lot of bad that could happen that has not happened yet. So there's a lot of work that we can do to make sure that it doesn't slide into that direction, and this is where the tech platforms, but not just the tech platform obviously, but all the major institutions have a role to play. It's not like the script has been written out and the outcome is already defined and decided there's still a lot that can be done and could be done. So that's how I'm looking at it.

Justin Hendrix:

Michael, maybe I'll come to you next. You've been essentially organizing, calling on tech platforms to resist censorship in particularly around a protest anthem that was restricted on YouTube. Tell us about what you've been doing in terms of trying to engage with tech firms.

Michael Caster:

In terms of the potential leverage that global tech community has in Hong Kong, one of them also is to pursue every possible legal challenge. This is the best practice across a range of issues, right? Counteracting internet shutdowns. The provider should issue a legal challenge to every order to shut down the internet, other things like this. But unfortunately what we found is this is one context in which the platforms have been quite shy about expressing any challenge to the frog in a boiling water phenomena of the deteriorating internet freedom in Hong Kong.

And this is both through public and private engagement with authorities in Hong Kong. And the reason why platforms are in the best place to enter in as parties in these types of cases, either through the current injunction hearing that's being tossed back and forth between the court in Hong Kong or other similar cases, is again, for the same reasons that bleakness that we outlined earlier, individuals in Hong Kong, lawyers in Hong Kong, those that aren't already facing existing spurious arbitrary charges under the national security law, are just opening themselves up to persecution if they were to then enter in as parties in these types of disputes.

There was one instance where a well-known activist, Chow Hang-tung, tried to enter into this case, but the court refused her effort saying she wasn't really a party to this. She already is facing a number of judicial harassments, but we haven't really seen a lot of other people doing that, again because of the risk, because of the fear. But platforms could do this. They are actually implicated in the injunction, they stand to lose financially and other means that they could actually even enter this in an apolitical way. All of this is obviously very politicized, but if they wanted to protect themselves a little bit, they could still hide behind that type of argument. And unfortunately, we haven't seen any platforms who would be significantly impacted by this injunction trying to enter in as parties to the case.

Also, we haven't seen a lot of public outcry, public criticism, some of the same platforms either individually or speaking through coalitions, whether it's the Asia Internet Coalition or the Global Network Initiative, have come out quite critical of similarly concerning measures that would restrict internet freedoms in neighboring countries. But we really haven't seen that kind of public registry of concern relating to China and Hong Kong. I think perhaps one way that we see that is that it's also an implication that the platforms are also aware of who's calling the shots in Hong Kong and it's Beijing. And if they enter too much into their criticism or their critique of what's happening in Hong Kong, these are also companies that have significant, some of them, have significant business holdings, business operations in China. And so it's not just the potential financial impact to their markets in Hong Kong, but it's also their market access in the mainland China.

Justin Hendrix:

You've just laid out the connection to Chinese power and perhaps that's changing the way that the platforms are behaving here. You've been covering South Asia generally for Article 19 for some years. Do you have experience of essentially seeing tech platforms intervene in other nations where perhaps there's not the boogeyman or the specter of Chinese authorities behind the scenes?

Michael Caster:

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a clear double standard in terms of the way that the international tech community is responding to restrictions on internet freedom in one country to another. For example, when Vietnam last year, moved to issue a Draft Decree 72 under the cybersecurity law, which among other things would impose hasty notice and take down orders up to 24 hours further, real name identity verification measures, things like this, the Global Network Initiative issued a statement, a detailed analysis of Draft Decree 72 in Vietnam, criticizing it for various reasons, failure to adhere to international human rights or internet freedom principles.

When the government in India sought to force Twitter to remove content that was dealing with commentary that was critical of the BJP government, Twitter challenged those decisions in court. These are two examples where we've seen in the region individual platforms or platforms operating in coalition, standing up to pressure from semi-authoritarian or authoritarian states to impose measures that amount to censorship and surveillance. Unfortunately, we really don't see that same level of adherence to their own self-proclaimed principles, commitments to human rights, commitment to various internet freedom principles and things like that when it comes to China, when it comes to the greater China area.

Lokman Tsui:

Just to add a little bit to what Michael earlier was saying about the lack of absence of tech platforms in this debate, and I just wanted to say it was not just the tech platforms also. In 2020 when the national security law was dropping Hong Kong, there was a remarkable up swelling of governments giving critique and criticism. But fast-forward to today with the upcoming Article 23 legislation proposal, there's been a deafening silence by not just tech platform but also governments on this issue. And as if either we are accepting it or it's normal or whatever, but it's not normal, but not acceptable. And it's been frustrating when even the Regina Ip Lau, who was the minister of security back in 2003 when the original Article 23 was proposed and got massively shelved, at this point, now can say, "Hey, we don't hear any criticism from anyone right now. So it is okay." No, it's not okay.

Chung Ching Kwong:

Adding on what Lokman has just talked about, online platforms not being in the debate. It's very weird because I remember when the national security law was being put forward in 2020, they actually at least issued some kind of response like racing concerns about data requests being made to these platforms and made pledges that they're not going to answer a Hong Kong government's data request after the adoption of the national security law. But right now, the scope of the proposed Article 23 are actually much bigger than the national security law and it will affect the daily operations of tech companies, platforms, even internet service providers, much more than it did before. So it's actually very weird to see that they're not going to say anything or it doesn't seem that they have planned to say anything because for example, as I talked about just now, one of the key thing is that you have to report someone's attempt to break the law.

And imagine if you're running an email surface which is not encrypted and you see someone emailing each other about, say for example, Hong Kong independence, do you as an online service providers have the responsibility to report this kind of communication to the police so that the police can take action against these subversion activities? And what kind of position will these tech companies be put in? For example, if you're running Google and you have Gmail and in these email you find these weird or so-called criminal content or what about user generated content platforms like YouTube, you put something on it and whatever, it's seditious, then it's their responsibility of Google to report, and what kind of cost will that be for their own policy team or people who does this kind of content moderation? And so it has massive implications on the daily operations and it would affect their ad revenue and so on, but they don't seem to want to speak on the issue, which is very weird from my perspective.

Justin Hendrix:

Michael had shared Lokman's report on some of the doxing that took place in 2019. I guess I could ask a general question about whether we're continuing to see more nefarious... Lokman, you mentioned persecution earlier, whether we're continuing to see more nefarious persecution of pro-democracy activists or other folks who represent a challenge to Beijing's interests in Hong Kong?

Lokman Tsui:

Well, what we see is the repression is spreading. In Hong Kong, it's been ongoing and it's still ongoing and it's getting worse and worse. But what you also see is there is a trend towards the repression going transnational. And it's not just Hong Kong citizens who have moved abroad, that's obviously a primary target. A lot of people have left Hong Kong following the developments of the last couple of years. And so the Hong government has been issuing, for example, bounties on these people who simply have expressed support for the movement and so on. But also what you see is, it's not just Hong Kong, but also US citizens have been targeted. And this is also why I think more people should know about this, is not just a story of Hong Kong and Hong Kong people or even Chinese people, it's everyone who wants to do business in China needs to know what's going on here because this is also affecting them.

And even the powerful companies right now are seemingly afraid to stand up to these kind of practices. We talked with land about Google, but Apple for example, also is not innocent here. They have this great reputation of pro privacy everywhere in the world except in China. When it happens at the entire manufacturing line and everything is in China, of course, this is a story that's affecting everyone, and Hong Kong is just a canary in a coal mine. And so if you want to know what the influence of China expanding, we would do well to heed the lessons that Hong Kong is teaching us.

Chung Ching Kwong:

And also adding on what Lokman just said about companies that are operating in Hong Kong. The proposed article basically says the government has the power to suspend different kinds of organizations from operating or even ordered dissolution, not only for just NGOs or civil society groups, but also companies or other private entities they have the power to do... I think that also adds to the risk that they're exposed to and they should be concerned about these things because if you look at what happened in China, a lot of the times, foreign companies are some of the targets when it comes to visa and a false closure of an entity. And at the same time, another offense that just came into my mind is the unlawful disclosure of information. So it is not only limited to state secrets, but also covers any information that looks like that it is national secret, even though if it's not true.

So the whole operational environment for these platforms, have just drastically changed. Everything that allows this kind of social media company or any kind of platforms to operate, it's just suddenly gone under this proposed Article 23 and still they are not voicing their concerns. Maybe they're doing it behind closed doors so that they're not publishing seditious material, I have no idea if it's happening behind closed doors. But not having any kind of public gesture, basically goes against all the principle that they say they uphold, for example, like connecting people's information for Google or protecting privacy as Apple always says. And they're not doing anything publicly. And I wonder what kind of internal policy discussion they're having on these issues.

Justin Hendrix:

Well, certainly if there are tech executives who are listening to this and they would like to share some insight into their deliberations, we're happy to hear from them. I suppose I'll just ask you this, there are probably some listeners out there wondering, why do these American tech firms who say they are pro-democracy, who say they are concerned about things like human rights, why do they continue to operate in China? If they're being put in this situation in Hong Kong, why do they continue to operate there? I realize that's a tricky question because we're talking about also channels that are of course still very important for free expression. But is there anybody that sort of has a view on that? Whether at some point the tech firms should take a stand perhaps by saying this is no longer an environment in which we can do business and stay in accordance with our stated principles.

Michael Caster:

Not to pick on Apple alone because there's other problematic companies, but I think Apple provides a really good sort of case study in addressing some of this question. Apple is a trillion-dollar company and they make about 20% of their profit in China. That's from production and sales. And that's a pretty significant financial incentive for Apple to comply with requests from China for things that Apple claims vehemently to be against in virtually every other market. There's been a lot of reporting on this over the years, the New York Times has done some really great reports. There's an organization under a great fire called Apple Censorship, which does really terrific work of tracking a lot of the ways in which Apple as a company has been complicit in a lot of the censorship and surveillance demands from China.

And what's interesting too is there's starting to be a conversation around decoupling or other terms that have been bandied about for how some of these companies that are integrated into the supply chain or Chinese market, whether they're hardware or software, internet companies so forth, might start to try and move out of China a little bit because of certain risks.

Some of that might be because of increasing risks by new legislation such as in Hong Kong creating certain challenges for them. But in the mainland where a lot of these laws have been in place for a long time, the cybersecurity law, China cybersecurity law has been enforced since 2017, for example. So it's not anything new, but it's becoming an increasingly difficult operational environment. But another big question is, whether or not they have conducted Human Rights Impact Assessments in the first place for all of these markets. And the big question is clearly we can see from how they have been operating over the last five to 10 years that a lot of those HRIAs were probably not conducted very well. But certainly one question is whether they took into consideration or have reevaluated within their Human Rights Impact Assessments, what market exit will look like, what responsible market exit will look like.

And there's a lot of conversation right now about these tech companies potentially leaving or becoming less integrated with China, but if they haven't really taken into consideration what responsible market exit looks like, we're then looking at parallels to what happened with Telenor in Myanmar and its exit from Myanmar following the coup there. So there's a lot of questions again around the lack of transparency and how these companies see themselves upholding or not their own stated corporate responsibility to human rights.

Justin Hendrix:

Lokman.

Lokman Tsui:

I think it might be helpful to put in context what it means to leave a market. And oftentimes we think of a grandiose exit Google did in 2008, when they made this grand announcement for. "No. Now we're going to leave China." What we've seen in the last couple of years in Hong Kong after the national security law was announced in 2020, is that companies haven't made these grant announcements, but there have been changes. They have moved things away from Hong Kong. Data centers are no longer... If they already were in Hong Kong, were moved out of Hong Kong to other places, Singapore or whatever, or they plan to not come at all. Key strategic personnel is also being moved out of Hong Kong, have been moved out of Hong Kong. So I don't think any tech company at this point who is still operating in Hong Kong will have policy of lawyers like that are responsible for these kind of decisions in Hong Kong because they could be arrested.

So they keep those in California, wherever. And so mostly salespeople and so on are left and maybe engineers. And so there's a strategic retreat already going on without sort of a grandiose rub it in the nose kind of announcement of like, "We're leaving Hong Kong now." But what you also see is that governments are pushing back on that. If for example, China's security laws is now saying if you're operating some kind of service that is relying on critical infrastructure, then it has to be in China. India, for example, has said, if you're operating here, we need some kind of privacy person here that basically is responsible for these policies, and basically a hostage. Companies can respond by retreating strategically, but you all see the government now introducing legislation to say, well, if you're moving data centers away and we're going to mandate them that you have them here if you want to keep doing business here or keep personal and so on. And so that's the ongoing battle right now that we see going on.

Justin Hendrix:

I think one thing I'd like to ask is what you were each watching for over the next few days and weeks as the situation plays out and what the process is from here, what the timeline looks like, but also any kind of final thoughts you have on what should happen or what you would like to see happen either from other governments, from the tech firms themselves, or even perhaps from the authorities in Hong Kong who are still in a position perhaps to make change.

Michael Caster:

One thing that's on the sort of radar is the legislative calendar has also stated an intention for tabling a cybersecurity critical infrastructure bill. And this hasn't been put forward yet, so there's no real draft to point to in terms of what is going to be in new cybersecurity or critical infrastructure legislation. But I think in that we know where a lot of the direct or implied influence in the legislative process in Hong Kong comes from. And so we can also pretty clearly look at what China's cybersecurity law says and what it's...

The Chinese cybersecurity law came out in 2017 and there's been some follow-up legislation, the critical information infrastructure, security protection regulations in 2021, cybersecurity review measures a year later and so forth. And I think looking at a lot of those, we can start to speculate what might be in Hong Kong's cybersecurity critical Information bill. And that'll be concerning for the same types of censorship and surveillance concerns that we've been discussing throughout supercharging, some of the things that are already there, so to speak. And a lot of that would probably relate to things around data localization, real name identity verification, things like that.

But another place that this also points to concerns for the future is again, how China perceives its controlling role over critical infrastructure and its emphasis on being the world leader in under sea fiber optic cables. And that Hong Kong is a place where a number of landing stations currently exist and new projects are underway. For example, next year Cambodia and Hong Kong are slotted to open a new fiber optic cable running broadband to Cambodia. And in the fact that a lot of countries around the world have certainly started to wake up more to the threats that a Chinese company or state-owned enterprise's involvement in this type of infrastructure, whether it's Huawei Marine changing its name to HMN technologies to evade some of that scrutiny and so forth.

But then I think because of some of the challenges we've mentioned that still certain actors believe it's business or it can be business as usual with Hong Kong, then failing to acknowledge the risks inherent in Hong Kong being so plugged into global internet infrastructure, that certain laws like this potential cybersecurity critical infrastructure bill could then raise some real risks to the information integrity, information security, global internet infrastructure.

Chung Ching Kwong:

It's very important to think about if there is significant difference or substantial difference if there's no Western tech, just to overgeneralize it. Being in Hong Kong, is there any difference if we have no Western tech and just being left with Chinese alternatives? I think there's still difference right now, at least we are still accessing foreign media in Hong Kong right now. So those things do make a slight difference. Maybe it doesn't change the bigger context in general, but I think right now at this point, I prefer to have these big tech still in Hong Kong instead of saying completely leaving the market. And as Michael said, what is responsible exit? If at some point these companies, platforms are leaving Hong Kong? What kind of situation Hong Kong is being left in? And in terms of what next? I think the law will be passed in Hong Kong given that the legislative council in Hong Kong are filled by patriots that are widely in support of the Hong Kong's governments and the Chinese government.

So I think the law will definitely be passed. But there are things that governments and tech companies can do. Governments should at least revise business risk advice for the operational environment in Hong Kong. Right now, the UK for example, only have a line or two about the national security line as possible implications. Which is insane, if you think about what kind of risk these UK companies are exposed to if they're operating in Hong Kong. And there haven't been enough investigations, and what are the implications? Like how much money are these company losing? Or what is the economic impact on these companies if they're operating in an environment without legal attorney thing and national security law? None of these things have actually been thoroughly assessed. And for tech companies, I think they will have to think about what they're doing and if they can still call themselves upholding human rights, the freedom of expression. It's a very difficult situation to operate in.

And there are ways to circumvent. As Lokman said, there's strategic retreat like not having data being stored in Hong Kong right now, not having policy people in Hong Kong and so on. But these are the short-term circumvention they can do. But to be honest, I don't have any answers right now. I wish I have some more insightful answers and say, "Hey, let's do this and this will solve the problem." But I think at least be active and try to maneuver the space that we have because being inactive is exactly what authoritarian regimes want so that they can easily just change the status quo into something that is desirable for them.

Lokman Tsui:

I think hope is in believing in change that it's possible, not that it will for sure happen. So the legislation will be passed for sure as Chung Ching said, because the legislative council is completely rigged in favor of Beijing at this point. But the world changes if we change too. And one thing I would advise anyone who is... And at this point it's very hard to avoid doing business with China, not dealing with China. And so anyone, if a tech company or governments or even us, it would be good for us to think about what is our bottom line? What are we not willing to compromise on?

Obviously think about what we are willing to compromise on. And that seems like a lot if it comes to China these days. But what are we not willing to compromise on? And then make those clear and then be ready to step out if those are being attacked. And then I think that is something that we all can do a lot more and especially expect the companies and governments to speak out on that and be clear on that too, because that's not happening. And because if we let the other side decide, they're going to keep pushing our boundaries as far as they can, and it's up to us to say, "I'm here and no longer."

Justin Hendrix:

I thank you all for sharing this information with us. It painted a dire picture, but also left us with a way to think about hope in these situations. So I'm grateful to you for taking the time to speak to me and to my listeners. Lokman, Michael, Chung Ching, thank you so much.

Lokman Tsui:

Thank you, Justin.

Michael Caster:

Thank you.

Chung Ching Kwong:

Thank you.