From the time of the colonial days to the even first few years after the 1997 handover, it was usually fun to be living in Hong Kong. In my earlier years of schooling in Hong Kong, I went to an Anglican school up at Kadoorie Hill on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. Not only were the school boys very motivated academically, but they also excelled both in athletic sports and music. That is part of my upbringing and education. In the 80s, life was quite predictable under the colonial rule of Hong Kong.

Fast forward thirty years under Chinese rule. God Save the Queen no more. Secondary school children of Hong Kong got familiarized with the “March of the Volunteers”, the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China, but many more participated in numerous street demonstrations for democracy: fought hard and won in the battle against the national education curriculum in 2012, confronted the regime through peaceful means during the Umbrella Movement in 2014, and went all-in to fight against the evil extradition bill and tyranny of China in 2019. That said, the secondary school students were too young to be politically coming-of-age.

People in their forties to mid-fifties belong to the Generation X category (born between 1965-1980), they are the by-products of the fruit of success of the good old Hong Kong, powered by the opening up of China in some ways. But more importantly, international businesses believe in the rule of law in Hong Kong, and that it would remain intact for the sake of international businesses and trade. People like my age rode on the coattail of Hong Kong’s success, the city also prospered for the better in many major industries in the 80s and 90s: construction, finance, real estate and manufacturing, just to name a few. Hong Kong was on auto-pilot mode, and people with various skill sets could develop their full potential, and overseas businesses did see a lot of opportunities from just being here. I miss that part of Hong Kong history from the mid-80s to the first few years after the 1997 handover. I gained my education and professional work experience during those years overseas, especially in the global financial markets. Those were also the time that I would never regret spending.

The handover ceremony of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, was monumental, and paramount leader Deng Xiaoping just died a few months before the historic event. I was then running a sizable equity portfolio for a bank-owned asset management firm based in Canada at the time of the handover. During the same period, the Asian Economic meltdown came about in the 1997/98 period. October 23, 1997, Thursday, was a day that older folks like I should still remember. It was the day when the Hong Kong stock market plummeted by 1211.45 points, or around 10.41%, on a single day, and it had been the worst one day drop since the stock market crash of 1987. The stock market lost 50% of the value during that period, and it was pretty much the same in the property market. The moral of the story is: anything can change without warning, and that is part of life.

At every stage of life, we could be very enthusiastic and driven about work, and try to live life with a higher purpose. That said, it is difficult to be overly optimistic about Hong Kong these days. When I was in North America from the mid-eighties to the late nineties, the so-called yuppie(young upwardly-mobile professional) culture came about because of global expansion of international trade and finance. Hong Kong professional people also got their own version of yuppiedom, and they became more successful financially. And in the mid-80s, Lan Kwai Fong, one of the nightlife districts, was developed for higher income earners.

While not trying to make direct comparison, it is sad to see the next generations of Hong Kong people - millennials (born between 1981-1996), Generation Ys (born between the 80s and 90s) and Generation Zs (born between 1997-2015) alike - have to confront Beijing for their survival, some even have the guts and will power to stand up and fight tyranny aggressively at an early age. Activist Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow fit into the definition of a generation Y and Z respectively, and indeed, they do have a huge following, and that means the power to mobilize people for causes. Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow were raised in the days of the internet age and media, but at the same time, they took a road less travelled to confront Beijing. We applauded Joshua and Agnes as heroes of their generation, but the communist rulers think quite differently. This is also the generation of young people that Beijing has been trying to wipe out totally, if all things fail.

The summer months of 2019 leading to now was unprecedented in Hong Kong modern history. People across different generations took to the streets to fight for a free Hong Kong. Among those various events, one million came out, then two million, in June of 2019; the huge numbers have since been telling Beijing that Hong Kong people don’t want to be extradited to China, and that what the people want is true democracy. During the fight for freedom in the summer months of 2019, leading to the big battle finale at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Polytechnic University, the younger generation put their lives on the line for a free Hong Kong. They didn’t want Beijing’s intrusion.

Though the extradition bill was finally retracted, bringing the city back to “normal” is quite far-fetched. I believe that the next 22 months in Hong Kong could be quite painful, until approximately the June 30, 2022, the deadline. The pseudo half way point of the “one country, two systems” only exists “on paper” now. The National Security Law (NSL) for Hong Kong that came into effect at 11:00pm on June 30, 2020 has actually sped up the slow death of Hong Kong. The NSL has been in place for over two months now, and the damages have been irreparable. We are supposed to have a Legislative Council election on Sunday Sept 6 tomorrow, but the government decided to kill it using COVID-19 as an excuse.

The political purge of young activists like Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow were unprecedented, and other young activists who came forward to fight and defend our freedoms are now in Hong Kong’s “Most Wanted List”. If I were the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, I would dismiss all the cases against the protesters since last summer, to bring back some peace in Hong Kong, and let the city restart again.

Now, with the so-called Universal Community Testing Program that is offered to Hong Kong citizens for free, should we be grateful to the Hong Kong government or doubtful about the intention behind? Unlike her predecessors, HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam will be remembered in history as someone masterminding the slow death of Hong Kong. Her cabinet members, lacking in technocrats who help run the city, but full of “shoe-shining” civil servants who think more like Communist Party members, have brought in a lot of unjust laws, challenging the moral baseline of humanity. Most people have had grave concern this week about the Chief Executive’s claim that our understanding of Hong Kong’s “separation of powers” of the executive, legislative and judicial bodies have been all wrong. The Chief Executive even talked like a communist comrade, putting forward the need to “educate” parents, and “rectify” their mistakes.

It has become quite clear that neither Beijing nor the puppet Hong Kong SAR government has ever wanted a genuine reconciliation with Hong Kong people since the events of last year. The scale of government suppression is just unbelievable. Government injustice towards its own people will lead to more resistance, tragedies and even deaths. In fact, Beijing is losing a lot of audiences here. Different generations of Hong Kong people have already lost faith in the government, and if the regime only knows how to respond to its people with further suppression, I believe more people will take it to the world stage and ask for help from around the globe. We should give special credit to Nathan Law, who left Hong Kong two months ago due to the NSL. If Hong Kong voices cannot be heard at the world stage, then what is left for this city? Before it is really “game over” for Hong Kong, it is the moral duty for us, whether situated locally or overseas and across generations, to keep the fight for democracy alive and tell our story to the world. So help us God.

(Edward Chin runs a family office. Chin was formerly Country Head of a UK publicly listed hedge fund, the largest of its kind measured by asset under management. Outside the hedge funds space, Chin is Convenor of 2047 Hong Kong Monitor and a Senior Advisor of Reporters Without Borders (RSF, HK & Macau). Chin studied speech communication at the University of Minnesota, and received his MBA from the University of Toronto. Twitter: edwardckchin Youtube: Ed Chin Facebook.com/edckchin Email: [email protected])

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