The social amnesia of forgetting how to read people’s faces and gauge conversations is very, very real.
My editor told me that she could not stop talking about Hacks. In my mind, this wasn’t a problem. Hacks — the Jean Smart-led comedy about an aging, stubborn comedienne on HBO Max — is a brilliant show that deserves to be talked about, over and over again. There’s nothing wrong with talking about the ferocity of Smart.
“No, Alex, you don’t get it. It was the only thing I could talk about!” she said, as I was failing to see her point. “Like, people I just met or acquaintances I haven’t seen in a year — the only thing I could talk about is Hacks!”
It dawned on me that my editor wasn’t just espousing the goodness of Hacks, but rather, it was the only topic of conversation she felt comfortable talking about. Her in-person social skills, dulled and stifled during the pandemic, had turned her into the person you find at parties who will tell you said television show is “so good” and stare at you blankly.
But she isn’t alone.
Lockdowns and work-from-home protocols have completely overhauled the way we interact. It’s not just the face-to-face meetings that the pandemic eliminated, but the behaviors that go along with it. In every single face-to-face conversation, we’re unconsciously calibrating and gauging our behaviors to make other people and ourselves feel at ease. And we’ve spent an entire year and a half not practicing those skills.
Think about it: Small talk was already, for many of us, dreadful. And now we’re all so bad at it.
And it’s not just small talk but all our social interactions.
I spoke to Tara Well, a psychology professor at Barnard College who specializes in perception and cognition. Well is in the midst of writing a book about our reflections, and is an expert on how we mirror each other in conversations. If there’s someone to talk about the effects of spending a year talking to each other over Zoom or FaceTime, how that’s changed our real-life interactions, and whether only talking about Hacks with strangers is normal, it’s Well.
So, about my editor and how she can’t stop talking about Hacks. Why is she talking about Hacks so much?
So I can definitely relate to the whole TV thing. I didn’t even have a TV before the pandemic! I totally relate to it.
But there’s a thing called social mimicry, which is what we do when we’re face to face with people. As we’re talking, we tend to mirror their gestures, we modulate our voices in synchrony. And we mirror and reflect our facial expressions.
I think I’ve heard this. That if someone likes you, they begin to mimic your expressions and mannerisms.
Yes. We rely on face-to-face feedback for ways in which to regulate our emotions to gauge how we’re feeling, and to get feedback from other people to let us know we’re okay.
We also do this to modulate our own emotions.
I think that it’s definitely related to us being a social species, and needing bonds and to be in groups. For instance, babies, when they first come out of the womb, will orient toward the face of the mother — they prefer to look at a human face than anything else. There’s even a recent study that showed that looking at your own face and recognizing other people’s faces can create a dopamine hit.
So it’s a positive thing when we look at each other!
When you’re with a close friend or a romantic partner or a child you’re taking care of, you’ll find that you’re actually breathing in synchrony, you’re moving in synchrony, your vocal patterns and your gestures are moving in synchrony. And that is, you know, creating dopamine and creating oxytocin — all the hormones that help us feel good and to bond with each other.
So we modulate and mimic to make the people we’re interacting with and ourselves feel at ease. Does this happen with conversations, too? Like maybe my editor who can only talk about Hacks is doing so because it’s a “safe” topic?
I think the short answer to that question is yes, I think so!
But back to the question about conversation subjects, I think one of the things that happened during the pandemic is that we needed to modulate and adjust our level of intimacy with face-to-face and being either seen way more than we were used to, or way less than we’re used to.
Conversations went that way, too.
I think many of our conversations were either talking about personal trauma and life-changing events that were super, super heavy or wanting to divert ourselves into talking about TV shows and whatnot. How do you modulate between staying in reality and not denying everything that’s happened? And also keep your sense of humor and be able to introduce new, interesting things to your conversations.
And during the lockdowns, we didn’t have the general social gossip that you have when you’re just hanging out with people. You get out a lot of information, social information, about other people in those kind of settings. That was harder to do this year.
You could interact with people on social media or by text, but it wasn’t this kind of casual, water-cooler hanging out, or just hanging out at a party and someone happened to tell you something. There was less time just bumping into people.
I feel like I’m relearning social cues in spaces, too. The other day I caught myself being weird and staring at someone, who caught me staring, at the gym! I never did that before! Is that normal?
I mean, I think it is. And I think it’s a baseline for us, too. We all have different levels of visual curiosity and a sense of wanting to look around.
If you’re out in public, one of the things that I’ve noticed and that people are writing about is pandemic-induced agoraphobia. It’s a fear of crowds, and now there’s fear of going outside; now that you can go out, you’re afraid. And one of the aspects of that is having less control over the environment.
So maybe I’m just stimulated? Or curious? Or just being weird?
Humans are very threat-sensitive. Being visually curious is a natural reaction.
We have all been through a period of time in a heightened state of anxiety. So we’re in social situations now where our visual field has changed. So we’re like, “Wow.” It can be scary and curious, at the same time.
Especially if you’re living in New York City and if you haven’t been in any of those kinds of really noisy, chaotic ambient environments yet, that can create anxiety, because your threshold is now lower than it was. That’s so much stimuli imploding on you, you know, so that might take a while for people to get used to again.
I want to zoom us out a little bit.
So we do all these things to shape our bonds and prove we’re not threats and reassure each other that we’re all okay. We’re constantly modulating. Then boom, the pandemic kind of takes that away from us. What happened when we all shifted online? What happened to all those behaviors?
One of the main things that happened was the lack of friendly touch — hugs, handshakes, and even getting your hair done, your nails done. That has a tremendous impact on our anxiety levels, our ability to feel like ourselves, and, again, our emotions and a sense of bonding. We really need that physical touch.
The research also shows that people tended to focus more narrowly on rekindling those bonds with people they really knew well, so that their breadth of different people [they were in contact with] got narrower, but the bonds got deeper for the people that they really were close to.
It’s important to keep in mind that there’s a huge difference between people who were living in a pod or living with a family and people who were living alone. So you can’t take the “average” of that experience. Everybody had an intense experience, but it could have been completely different for everyone, you know?
I think more specifically about people who were single but really essentially living alone, and then really living alone once the pandemic hit. They’d had way less face-to-face contact. People who were living in a family or a pod, they were having more in-person face-to-face contact, even if it was with the same people over and over again.
My research is basically on mirrors and reflections and how we look to each other for resonance. And so one of the things is how Zoom is different even though it’s technically face-to-face. But Zoom is taking face-to-face contact out of context. It’s showing our faces up really close, but it’s not letting us see the whole person, and we get a lot from people’s nonverbals as well.
So we’re seeing these really, really, really close-up faces, and that kind of freaked a lot of people out. That partly explains Zoom fatigue.
Also, the weird thing about Zoom is that — if you’re vain like me — you’re watching yourself on Zoom, too. Like, you’re watching yourself react to things people are saying and reacting to that while reacting to people who are reacting to what you’re saying but also maybe reacting to their own faces. It’s not face-to-face interaction at all.
Yes! Then also there’s a slight time lag, you know, in the real-time feed, that’s a couple seconds. And research shows that within that couple of seconds, if someone pauses for a minute, we’re likely to attribute something negative.
Oh, my god, this is so true. If someone hesitates around me, I would rather a two-ton safe drop on me.
Yes, if you’re already anxious and then you’re on a call with someone, that hesitation can heighten it.
So in other words, you know, you can use that technology for social interaction, but you’re really reaching. You really have to put in a lot of effort in bonding with people over Zoom that you just don’t have to when you meet someone for coffee. The latter is much more satisfying in terms of social bonding than, you know, being on a Zoom call with a zillion people or one person and having kids in the background and everything else.
Now that things are opening up again, is it surprising to you that people (especially me) feel socially awkward?
Not at all! Like I said, at the beginning, humans have a natural kind of evolutionary pull towards bonding and being in groups. We need physical contact, and we need visual contact for coordination.
People, especially those who were living alone, haven’t been around other people. It’s about getting that coordination back in terms of being face to face with others.
Like, it’s normal for it to be a little rough at first, right?
Yes. The key is to take the small steps and to keep going out in public. I hope it’s not the case, but I imagine it probably is, that people who suffer from severe social anxiety or anxieties are going to have a harder time adjusting after the pandemic.
But I think everybody needs to take it in steps and keep getting out there and interacting with people, even if it feels a little uncomfortable. So it might just be stepping out of your comfort zone. That changes, too. What was comfortable to you before the pandemic could now be out of your current comfort zone — that’s how it is, and you know, that’s fine.
I never believed I could be one. That’s the problem.
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The first time I attended a press screening — an early, private presentation of a film for critics and journalists — it felt like I was crashing an exclusive gathering I wasn’t supposed to witness. I was a 20-something DREAMer who had just qualified for a work permit through DACA; I had a community college education and worked part time at a fast food restaurant.
“Someone is going to ask me what I’m doing here,” I thought.
That was about eight years ago, when I replied to a Craigslist ad seeking writers for a small but established-enough outlet to be on the public relations and studio lists that grant some legitimacy. As someone without a car in Los Angeles, accepting the assignment from an independent publication required a long trip to Beverly Hills. I’d watch a new movie, write about it, and get published, but I wouldn’t get paid. (Many sites can only offer access and a platform. You get to hone your skills and make contacts writing for them, but income has to come from elsewhere.)
At that point in my life, my immigration status had made attending film school financially unfeasible. Writing about movies seemed like an opportunity to not let that dream completely vanish. But I had no connections in media; like me, all of the people in my immediate circle were working-class Latinos. The classified call for writers was an entry point, or so it seemed, to a profession that could often carry the air of elitism.
A self-taught, undocumented Latino for whom English is a second language isn’t the prototype of a critic in this country. Though I still didn’t see myself as a “critic,” I was doing something I never thought I could. That was enough, for a while.
But eventually, as this unpaid side gig took over more of my time, it felt like being begrudgingly invited to dinner at a large mansion and seated far from the table where the guests of honor sit. At this imaginary dinner, there’s room for plenty to come in, but once inside, not everyone’s voice breaks through the main hall. Hierarchies apply.
According to a 2018 study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative that looked at the gender, race, and ethnicity of critics reviewing 100 top domestic films of 2017 — nearly 20,000 reviews in all — 82 percent of the critics were white (non-Hispanic) and nearly 78 percent were male. And nearly 90 percent of those considered “top critics” were white.
Critic jobs are so scarce and so sought after, those who are fortunate enough to land one tend to keep it as long as possible, which means the statistics likely haven’t changed much even five years after the Annenberg report, particularly when looking at staff positions.
“Technically, anyone could be a critic, but not everyone could be a critic,” freelance film critic and writer Robert Daniels told me by phone from Chicago.
The internet has democratized the sharing of opinions on any given cultural work. Virtually anyone can express their perspectives on art via Twitter, Letterboxd, Medium, Substack, their own website, or any number of other forums. The question now isn’t so much who gets to be a critic, but rather which critics among a roaring choir of ideas will have an impact on the larger cultural conversation.
Though he has found success as a freelancer with bylines at big-name outlets, Daniels, who is Black, started his career by launching a self-run website: 812 Film Reviews. As he points out, staff writers at those big-name outlets are predominantly white, and since major films are rarely assigned to freelancers, the initial consensus about a film comes from those reviewers on staff. Having his own outlet allows him to weigh in, too.
Jose Solís, a gay Latinx critic with a strong presence in the New York theater scene, is even more blunt about the state of modern criticism: “White men and white women who went to private schools and who are upper-middle-class or higher are the ones who get to be critics,” he says.
Now, many are discussing the effects the homogeneity among critics can have on not only the arts but also on popular culture itself.
In a 2019 piece for the New York Times about white critics in the fine art world, Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Chi-hui Yang wrote that the gaze that has been the standard when evaluating art can carry ingrained negative biases. “When Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker described photographs by John Edmonds as ‘slang,’ some readers wondered if he did so only because the artist and his subjects were black,” they wrote.
Art critic Aruna D’Souza chimed in: “The problem is not that these critics lack some essential connection with the work of artists of color. It’s that many of them simply are not familiar with the intellectual, conceptual and artistic ideas that underlie the work.”
Similarly, Dennis Harvey, a male film critic at Variety, came under fire in 2020 for what was perceived as a misogynistic perspective on the physique of actress Carey Mulligan in the Oscar-nominated film Promising Young Woman. (Variety apologized in an editor’s note, but Harvey later told the Guardian he was “appalled” by the accusation.)
A critic’s job is to assess a work of creativity, both its form and its relationship to the larger culture, with insight. Being a critic means having power — power to spearhead the chatter around a certain piece of art, its significance, and the prospects of its creator. So it’s crucial that the critical community reflects everyone who is part of the society consuming the work that is up for discussion.
The responsibility for bridging the gaps in access to critical power falls on editors, especially those at legacy publications, who must be proactive in extending invitations to fresh voices. Offering opportunities can have a ripple effect on the larger pool of critics. For starters, it instantly infuses a site’s roster with a wider range of viewpoints. In the best of outcomes, perhaps some of those freelancers may eventually become permanent staffers.
Naveen Kumar, a freelancer and the associate director of the National Critics Institute, a program intended to help critics develop their skills, says some critics have managed to amass a fan base they can take wherever they go. But achieving an editorial voice and finding a following is difficult without the credibility of an established publication behind you. There’s no clear path to the highest echelon.
“The publication itself lends the writer some credibility, so if you [are not a well-known] name, that platform is very meaningful,” Kumar said. It’s a symbiotic relationship where the outlet helps the critic be recognized, but you first need to be in those pages to benefit from the exposure. And to get there, you first need to have achieved enough to get on the editor’s radar. These caveats often play against underrepresented groups, and in turn affect how we talk about the things we see on screens, in galleries, and on theater stages.
For Kumar, when the demographics of critics are narrow, so too are the conversations they generate. In a field conventionally dominated by white, cisgender male voices, he believes there are limitations in terms of what they see and the value system at play when they write criticism. If the range of voices featured were to expand, we’d get more in-depth and dynamic exchanges.
“That’s not to say a white critic can’t see a movie by a Black filmmaker and understand it or speak insightfully about it, but a Black critic is going to bring a different lens, a different set of experiences, and different value judgments that will illuminate different things for different readers,” Kumar added. “The same goes the other way around: People from marginalized identities have very particular viewpoints on dominant culture.”
And if the assessments come from a nearly homogeneous subset of the population, that most certainly affects which art becomes part of the celebrated canon and what fades into obscurity.
For Daniels, Spike Lee’s Bamboozled is an example of how the predominantly white critical gaze almost exclusively shapes the discussions around a film. In this instance, it painted the film as unworthy of more profound examination.
Released in 2000, Bamboozled is, ironically, a satire about a Black television writer dealing with racism in the workplace who accidentally achieves success for a show that amplifies hateful stereotypes. Back then, white critics were dismissive of its tone and provocative ideas.
“New Line faces a challenge in marketing a tough film that is not vital enough to generate extensive debate and not entertaining enough to draw large audiences, black or white, to theaters,” critic Emanuel Levy wrote for Variety.
In his review at USA Today, Mike Clark referred to Bamboozled as “visually drab and ultimately done in by a heavy-handedness no prettier to ponder.”
At the Village Voice, Amy Taubin called it “a seriously schizophrenic work made up of two incompatible movies.”
But when the film hit streaming platforms in 2020 after being unavailable for years, it prompted a reassessment that included a wider range of critical voices. In a new review, current Vanity Fair critic K. Austin Collins, viewing the film in a fresh light, called it “audacious, vibrant, unsurprisingly maligned but frequently brilliant.”
Jourdain Searles, a prominent freelance film critic and one of the hosts of Netflix’s YouTube show Black Film School, believes the significance of certain titles is always measured against the narrow curiosity of white critics for stories outside their comfort zone.
“I have a big grudge against Precious,” Searles said, offering Lee Daniels’s 2009 film as an example. “And a lot of it has to do with what is considered to be authentic and important, and that’s often defined by white people.” For Searles, Tina Mabry’s Mississippi Damned, released the same year, is a more incisive film about Black womanhood but was ignored in comparison to Daniels’s Oscar-winning effort.
No doubt more Black critics should have a say in the appreciation of Black-centered works, but to simply see more Black critics covering Black films as a solution is reductive. The same goes for any other marginalized group that’s pigeonholed into writing solely about content that directly speaks to their sexual orientation or racial, ethnic, or gender identity.
Writers of color consequently face a complex challenge: Strike a balance between championing talent or narratives from specific communities while pushing to be seen as capable of tackling any topic. Opportunities to nab a seat at criticism’s exclusive table tend to come when there’s a need or desire to fill in the establishment’s blind spots, which means writing about subjects that no one on staff is either interested in or qualified to comment on.
“I don’t know if the pool of critics will ever feel fully reflective of the world. I just don’t know,” said Roxana Hadadi, a film critic of Iranian descent who has faced her own share of situations in which access has come with her background as a caveat. Other critics don’t have to ponder whether they landed an assignment because their insight is valuable or because they might check a specific box or fill a diversity quota.
Reformatting the systems that determine who gets to be a critic with a meaningful presence will take more than just one-off displays — but at least the one-offs reveal an interest on the institutions’ part, however forced or sincere, to enact change.
Film festivals such as Sundance and the Toronto International Film Festival (partnered with Rotten Tomatoes and other organizations) have developed inclusion initiatives to help critics from underrepresented backgrounds attend these marquee events, pursue coverage on the ground, and hopefully make connections that lead to better-paid work and further exposure. Yet the long-term effects of these undertakings are yet to be seen.
Projects with similar aims include the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Ruth Batchelor Scholarship, which targets aspiring critics at community or junior colleges as a way to address the disparity that comes from an educational standpoint. Motivated by his less-than-welcoming personal encounters in theater, Solís launched a BIPOC Critics Lab with few resources but support from fellow critics. A version of his intensive program was recently held through the Kennedy Center.
Thinking back on my improbable path as a film critic and writer, I realize that I started out without real aspirations. I never expected to make it this far. In conversations with other critics of color, a common trend that arose is that most of us, for a long time, thought that being a critic was far-fetched.
There was no precedent for me, as for countless others, in criticism. Irrationally, I decided to keep at it for as long as I could financially, fully aware it may lead nowhere.
Some days, it still feels that way.
Carlos Aguilar is a freelance film critic. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Variety, the New York Times, the Wrap, IndieWire, Vulture, and RogerEbert.com, among others. He is a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
One year on, the first national security trial shows how.
Tong Ying-kit was arrested a year ago, accused of driving a motorcycle into a group of policemen, a flag trailing behind him that read: “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.”
His trial, which began last week, marks a milestone for Hong Kong: Tong is the first person charged under its national security law.
The Beijing-imposed legislation went into effect a year ago. It is vague, it is broad, and it targets crimes such as secession, subversion, colluding with foreign powers, and terrorism. It portended a sweeping crackdown on dissent and an erosion of the rule of law in Hong Kong. Since then, more than 100 people have been arrested under the national security law, and more than 50 charged. And now, with Tong’s trial underway, the crackdown is here.
Tong’s saga reveals how deeply the national security law has transformed Hong Kong in just one year. It has chilled Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. But it has also radically — and swiftly — disrupted the territory’s long tradition of an independent judiciary.
As this trial plays out, it will set a precedent for the national security defendants who come after. Tong’s trial is the first, but it will not be an outlier.
“It is the application of a law,” said Martin Flaherty, a professor of international law at Fordham University School of Law, “that means the end of Hong Kong as the world knew it.”
Tong Ying-kit’s trial and the national security law
On July 1, 1997, Great Britain returned Hong Kong to China’s control. The handover created a setup known as “one country, two systems,” which established that Hong Kong would maintain separate economic and political systems from mainland China for 50 years, through at least 2047. That includes Hong Kong’s storied tradition of common law, an independent judiciary, and protections for certain freedoms like speech, assembly, and the press, which are preserved in Hong Kong’s Basic Law, a kind of mini-constitution.
The date of the handover has traditionally been one of protest in Hong Kong among those who oppose China’s rule — and, in the years since 1997, Beijing’s tightening of control over the territory. That included in 2019, when a summer of massive protests against the Hong Kong government over a controversial extradition bill grew into a larger pro-democracy movement. The Chinese government started to lose patience with the months of unrest, and after the coronavirus pandemic slowed protests in 2020, China interceded with its national security law to crush the resistance for good.
On July 1, 2020, Hongkongers still demonstrated, in defiance of both coronavirus restrictions and the new national security law. Quickly, though, national security arrests began, including of people who had signs and flags calling for Hong Kong’s independence.
Tong Ying-kit was among them. Reportedly a 24-year-old cook at a ramen restaurant, Tong faces two counts under the national security law: terrorism and inciting secession. The charge of inciting secession is tied to the “Liberate Hong Kong” flag he brandished, which authorities say represents pro-independence sentiments. That slogan has been a feature of Hong Kong resistance for years, but is effectively banned under the national security law.
The terrorism charges are a bit weird, and are apparently tied to police claiming he tried to run them over with his motorcycle. Tong’s lawyers are arguing he did not intentionally hit the police, but lost control of his bike after being distracted when a police officer swung his shield toward him. Prosecutors have tried to say that Tong rode through police cordons, and then attempted to run over three officers who tried to stop him.
Recently, prosecutors added a dangerous driving charge under previously existing traffic laws, a non-national-security-law offense. Experts said this type of criminal charge would have been far more likely before the national security law, or perhaps might have been coupled with other criminal offenses, such as assault.
Tong has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The full outcome of the trial is still unclear, though Tong is unlikely to escape consequence-free.
But even before the verdict, Tong’s case reveals how profoundly Hong Kong’s judiciary is straining under the national security law, as it shreds the typical protections and rights afforded defendants.
The new national security law threatens Hong Kong’s judicial system
Two elements make Tong’s case so troubling: first, his denial of bail, and second, his denial of a trial by jury.
Tong wasn’t alone in being denied bail — dozens and dozens of other defendants charged under the law have been held in custody for months. Typically, defendants have a right to request bail unless prosecutors have a legitimate reason to retain the accused in custody.
But the national security law sets a convoluted bail standard, experts said. The burden is on the defendant to show that they will not continue to engage in any activity that will endanger national security.
This is a tough bar to meet, first because what constitutes endangering national security is very broad — subversion or “colluding with foreign powers” are basically whatever authorities want them to be. And second, because, in many cases, defendants say they didn’t engage in actions that endangered national security in the first place. As Flaherty put it, this creates the ultimate catch-22.
This makes it safe to say, said Lydia Wong, a research fellow at the Center for Asian Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, that bail for national security defendants is “basically nonexistent.”
Perhaps the most chilling element of Tong’s case is the denial of a trial by jury. Experts told me that a trial by jury is a cornerstone of Hong Kong’s common law, and is enshrined in its Basic Law. A trial without one — especially one where the defendant potentially faces life imprisonment — is unprecedented.
A provision of the national security law allows juries to be scrapped in certain cases, and the law includes a vaguely defined concern for jurors’ safety as justification for doing so. Hong Kong’s High Court ruled earlier this year that convening a jury in Tong’s case could potentially put “jurors and their family members at risk.” Tong’s lawyers appealed the ruling, but the ruling stood. Instead, a three-judge panel will hear Tong’s case.
That panel isn’t made up of any three judges, either. These justices are designated to specifically handle national security cases. They are selected by Chief Executive Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief administrator who also happens to be handpicked by Beijing.
Together, it looks like a very deliberate effort to limit scrutiny in these national security trials, carving out a kind of parallel justice system. “The government really wants to diminish transparency for national security crimes in as many ways as they can — I will not say to control the outcome, but limit the choices of the outcome,” said Eric Lai, a Hong Kong law fellow at the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown.
A free and fair jury trial would inject uncertainty into the trial result. That is not really the outcome the Chinese government wants, as the point of introducing such a draconian law is to use it — to punish those who dissent, and make the stakes so high it deters the rest. The lack of public input could empower the prosecution, or judges, to act without any accountability, essentially creating a sham court system that starts looking a lot more like China’s.
A jury-less trial is just one way to achieve that. The national security law also allows for defendants to be tried on the mainland, crumbling entirely any semblance of two separate legal systems. As some experts ruefully pointed out, Tong is lucky, at least, to have Hong Kong judges presiding over his case, as China doesn’t even have a tradition of an independent judiciary to undermine in the first place.
Taken together, the national security law represents the “mainlandization” of Hong Kong’s judicial system, said Fiona de Londras, chair of global legal studies at Birmingham Law School.
The fundamental principles of the common law and legal autonomy of Hong Kong aren’t being chipped away at. “They’re being bludgeoned,” de Londras said.
The “one country, two systems” policy is over, and then some
Tong isn’t a high-profile pro-democracy figure, someone who’s long been a leader of the movement, or an outspoken media mogul. Little is known about him. The more violent allegations — that he barreled into officers — make his case a little more complicated than the most extreme applications of the national security law, like charging lawmakers who participated in election primaries with attempting to overthrow the government.
Lai, of Georgetown, said that may be the point. Tong’s case is a “way to test the water, to test how these new measures under the new national security law work — without a strong backfire from the global community.”
That shouldn’t obscure the very real unraveling that Tong’s case represents. More people will be denied bail; many more will be denied jury trials. Experts said they see other areas where Beijing’s influence and pressure is knocking off, one by one, the kind of institutions that make the rule of law possible.
For one, experts said they are concerned about the larger independence of Hong Kong’s judiciary, as judges who have appear to have ruled in favor of pro-democracy figures in non-national-security-law cases often come under attack from the pro-Beijing media.
There are also growing concerns about defendants’ right to counsel, and whether those charged can select their legal representation. A national security case involving Hong Kong activist Andy Li raised questions as to who had appointed his attorney. The fear is that prosecutors themselves are perhaps appointing defense attorneys, an obvious conflict of interest and another way to limit the outcomes in any national security trial.
All of this is commonplace in China’s legal system — which, again, is the point. Hong Kong’s rule of law was one of the last bastions of the “two systems.” The national security law is deliberately tearing that away. A senior Chinese official, Zheng Yanxiong, who’s in charge of overseeing the national security law, said, according to the Guardian, that Hong Kong’s rule of law was a “source of [its] charm,” but ultimately, the real goal of the judiciary was to “highly manifest the national will and national interest.”
The imposition of China’s will is not limited to the judicial system. The shutdown of Apple Daily, and the arrest of its journalists, is destroying freedom of the press. The targeting of academics and university professors is dismantling freedom of expression. The silencing of the annual Tiananmen Square vigil — the only memorial in greater China — is an attempt to erase dissent.
“Beijing [is] determined to reshape Hong Kong by this unprecedented law,” Lai said.
Tong’s trial is just another component of this effort. It shows China will apply and enforce the national security law to impose its will on the territory. It is designed to punish anyone who advocates for democracy, and acts as a warning to anyone else who might try to do so.
And the national security law serves one more goal — maybe the most important one of all — de Londras, of Birmingham Law, said. It makes “it very clear to the people who live in Hong Kong, who is in charge of this territory. And it is not them.”