In the current frenzied atmosphere of punishment and retribution, even the most extraordinary challenges to Hong Kong’s way of life can be overlooked or simply shrugged off as being “the way things are”.

Thus recent remarks by Xia Baolong, the head of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, were not greeted with the kind of shock that might have been expected in calmer times. But what he had to say was truly shocking.

At a forum in Shenzhen, the details of which were carried in the Beijing controlled Bauhinia magazine, Xia labelled Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai, jailed activist Joshua Wong and former HKU legal scholar Benny Tai as being “the most vicious traitors” and called for their “severe punishment”.

All three men are in the middle of trials, supposedly aimed at determining their guilt or innocence. Yet Bao, the most senior Beijing official directly responsible for handling Hong Kong affairs, has already proclaimed their guilt and insisted on the type of punishment they should receive.

It is hard to believe that his words will be without influence and, of course, the various Quislings who clamor to provide an echo chamber for their bosses, have enthusiastically joined in the denunciation chorus.

There is a long and inglorious history of denunciations of this kind. It probably goes back to Roman times with the fall of the Emperor Nero who was declared to be an ‘enemy of the people’ by the Senate. More infamously this term was widely employed during the French Revolution’s ‘Reign of Terror’, sending thousands of people off to death by guillotine. In the modern era both the Nazis and the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union used the justification of treachery for the widespread annihilation of opponents.

The Chinese Communists have been inclined to describe opponents as ‘class enemies’ or ‘anti-patriots’. Whatever the term used, the appalling toll of naming and shaming during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s ended up with the staggering persecution of some 36 million people.

Fast forward to 2021 in Hong Kong and we see the spirit of the Cultural Revolution being revived by Comrade Xia who is proclaiming guilt and thirsting for retribution in ways that differ little from those dark days.

If this does not send a chill down the spine, it is hard to imagine what more is needed to do so. However as night follows day the denunciation and vilification of three individuals will not stop there. Once a taste has been acquired for this kind of thing it is not easily satiated.

Were this just an isolated case of a new mood of naming and shaming of the state’s perceived enemies, it would still be troubling but less so.

However this Cultural Revolution style is growing by the day. An informers’ hotline has been installed for citizens to denounce people they suspect of breaching national security. The Beijing controlled press is making a habit of singling out individuals they want to see punished or fired from their jobs or simply chastised. They rage against judges who fail to inflict harsh enough sentences on protesters, they zero in on people in all parts of the public sector who they want kicked out of their jobs.

A current campaign focuses on Vivian Lau, the new permanent secretary at the Food and Health Bureau, accusing her, among things, of being married to someone that they allege showed sympathy towards the 2019/20 protest movement. Guilt by association was always a hallmark of how things were done during the Cultural Revolution.

Almost a century and a half ago, the playwright Henrik Ibsen turned the phrase ‘enemy of the people’ on its head with his seminal play of that name depicting one man’s struggle to prevent the water contamination spreading through his town. He faced fierce opposition from the government and majority of the inhabitants who depended on the spa business for their living. As a result, he paid a heavy price for daring to expose the dangers to citizens.

In 2018 an attempt was made to stage this play at Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts. After a single performance it was censored and then cancelled for so called technical reasons.

The acute political antenna of the propaganda chiefs in Beijing rarely malfunctions and they rapidly came to realize that Ibsen’s plea for tolerance, truth and justice was not the kind of thing that had a place in China.

(Stephen Vines is a Hong Kong-based journalist, writer and broadcaster and runs companies in the food sector. He was the founding editor of ‘Eastern Express’ and founding publisher of ‘Spike’. In London he was an editor at The Observer and in Asia has worked for international publications including, the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, BBC, Asia Times and The Independent and, during Hong Kong’s 2019/20 protests, for the Sunday Times. He hosts a weekly television current affairs programme: The Pulse”

Vines’ latest book Defying the Dragon – Hong Kong and the world’s largest dictatorship, will be published early next year by Hurst Publishing. He is the author of several books, including: Hong Kong: China’s New Colony, The Years of Living Dangerously - Asia from Crisis to the New Millennium, Market Panic and Food Gurus.)

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