Hong Kong: nothing has changed except for everything

One of those great Russian novels which many people start and few people finish opens with a disturbing scene. A deceased priest, widely regarded as a saint, has been placed on a bier in the local cathedral, and faithful worshippers from miles around come to pay their respects.

Because it was believed at the time that the body of a dead saint was so purified by the hallowed status of its occupant that it would not putrefy, none of the usual precautions have been taken. Over the ensuing few days onlookers and cathedral staff manage to ignore the growing smell and pretend that it is not happening.

A rather similar exercise in collective self-deception is taking place in Hong Kong. Officially, nothing has changed. The ruling policy is "one country two systems," so Hong Kong is allowed to be different; order has been restored by the imposition of a national security law after the 2019 disturbances, and the economy will be back on track as soon as the Covid-19 hangover subsides.

True, there have been some minor amendments to the official line. Hong Kong no longer aspires to be "Asia's World City," or to take pride in being the place where the world's wheeling and dealing is done when New York and London are asleep. This no longer fits in with the spirit of the times, which demands that every public pronouncement on the city's future include a quote from Xi Jinping and an expression of gratitude for the mainland's help. Hong Kong now hopes to be the enabler of the Greater Bay Area, a specialist in finances and a conduit through which the world's money can participate in China's inexorable rise to greatness, or at least that part of it conducted in Guangdong Province.

But alongside this great hope comes the official insistence that nothing has changed, that Hong Kong is still enjoying 50 years without change as promised before 1997; any suggestion to the contrary is "firmly rejected" as "slanders and smears." If the suggestion comes from overseas, it will also be interfering in matters which are "purely China's internal affairs."

The trouble with all this is that Hong Kong people are at the same time fed a steady stream of reminders that times have changed.

Thousands of people who were arrested in 2019 have not yet been charged. Cases are now four years old. They still come up every week or so. Punishments almost invariably involve prison. Recent examples include a man who was jailed for five weeks. He threw a deflated folding umbrella at a policeman and missed.

In another four-year-old case, a man was jailed for five months for having in his possession two laser pointers.

Suggestions that after four years, it might be a good idea to let bygones be bygones are firmly rejected as incompatible with the rule of law. This is the reverse of the truth. In most respectable jurisdictions a lapse of four years between arrest and trial would be regarded as scandalous and in many it would result in the prosecution being dismissed as out of time.

Then there is the city's political life. This now features elections in which the candidates are pre-screened, and also face considerable difficulty in getting nominated if they do not have the government's approval.

This approach was pioneered in elections to the legislature, which has 89 avowed government supporters and one independent.

A similar process is now being applied to local councils, already purged of the councilors elected in the pro-democrats' landslide win in 2019. Candidates for the upcoming council elections must be approved by a government official and nominated by government appointees on local committees. Even candidates from parties so respectable that they have members on the government's Executive Council found it difficult or impossible to get on the ballot.