It is just unimaginable to see Beijing’s harsh crackdown on Hong Kong over the last few months. It is surreal, and I am speechless. On average days, Hong Kong people still go to work under COVID-19, or just plainly work from home, but thier most common topic for conversation revolves around leaving Hong Kong, either temporarily or for good. Like I said last week, the “great escape from Hong Kong” is happening now, and nothing seems to be able to reverse the trend; even our beloved Cardinal Joseph Zen admonished young people to leave the city for a better future. The Cardinal will stay, as reported in the media, and will be a faithful servant of God to witness Hong Kong’s remaining days. I wish the guardian angels would stand guard over the Cardinal when God’s work being delivered in this “fallen city”.

And now, what has Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheung Yuet-ngor’s grand plan to rebuild Hong Kong got to be like, when people in the city are fleeing, and civil servants would rather think about “early retirement” just to avoid the oath pledging allegiance to the government? Civil servants have witnessed the drastic change in Hong Kong to date, and some are concerned about the oath taking - they actually pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the ruling party in China, and this might well affect their emigration plans, especially if they aspire to settle down in the UK or other Five Eyes countries. Intelligence from the UK indicates that Chinese spies have been deeply infiltrated into different sectors of the most sensitive industries and government agencies in Great Britain: banking, academia and even embassies, to name a few. Hong Kong civil servants’ fear hinges on their imagination and interpretation, but they need to make a “tough decision” and act on it. Under the new guideline, there is no grey area: if they want to keep their jobs, they have to bow down, pledge and comply.

That said, it won’t surprise anyone that a great majority of them will still “bear allegiance”, at least on the surface. Last year, not long ago, a wide spectrum of civil servants taking part in the social movement covered up the pictures of their civil servant ID cards posted on social media in support of the democracy movement. Tens of thousands of civil servants even joined a pro-democracy rally organized by civil servants showing support for Hong Kong’s democracy, which has displeased their masters in Beijing. Now, Beijing wants to seek revenge and is after their blood. Those civil servants who don’t budge and succumb will likely be fired.

Around 180,000 civil servants in Hong Kong and quite a substantial number of old timers that worked through the colonial days before 1997 saw the good, the ugly and the bad, and now they have seen the worst since the imposition of the National Security Law (NSL) just a few months ago. A political purge is going on in Hong Kong across all sectors, and Beijing won’t stop now, as the “cleansing” gets more efficient under the Covid-19 lockdown.

While writing this week’s opinion piece, I just saw the news about Frances Hui, a young female activist from the former pro-democracy student activist group Scholarism, declaring herself in “self-exile”. Carrie Lam should be ashamed of “eliminating” one or two younger generations of Hong Kong people in a bid to restore Hong Kong’s image of the international city. With all my due respect, I don’t think a lot of people believe she can steer the ship anymore.

While Carrie Lam and the puppet government officials talk about “rebuilding Hong Kong”, the whole world is witnessing the international city clamped down by brute force is being made unrecognizable in no time. In the name of national security and anti-money laundering, pro-democracy businessmen, journalists, politicians have been arrested and detained, and mostly denied bail, and this is just the beginning. The NSL has been abused by the executors to the hilt. I try not to think too much of how “the great purge” will play out for I don’t want to get it jinxed.

It came as a surprise that the Hong Kong government accused media tycoon Jimmy Lai of breaching the NSL by following US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Taiwan’s President Tsai on Twitter.

Can all these groundless accusations get worse, before things get so unbearable that even the pro-Beijing “blue ribbon” loyalists come out to protest against all this non-sense? I also wish the freezing of personal and business accounts of Hong Kong people would not become the new normal for the sake of national security, as it will greatly hurt our financial system. Let us not forget a few million people took to the streets to voice their protests against the extradition law amendment bill last year, and people living in this city has lost faith in the government, we could not rule out the possibility of large-scale retaliation.

It is quite obvious that the Office for Safeguarding National Security spearheaded by the Hong Kong police force will continue to make arrests of the democracy activists across different age groups. My heart bleeds when I see the CCP killing Hong Kong. If Beijing can really think “outside the box”, those in power should do a U-turn on its existing policy.

If I were part of the inner circle and ranked high enough to have influence on appointing the next HK Chief Executive, I would definitely recommend Jimmy Lai for the job to help rebuild the city and put all non-sense behind. Jailing those who love democracy and freedom won’t solve the problem, and Hong Kong will remain in darkness if people living in it don’t trust the system anymore. Jimmy Lai has a long track record of connecting to the people of Hong Kong, so here we go if Beijing is genuinely keen enough to think out of the box and take action.

(Edward Chin (錢志健) 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 Channel Facebook.com/edckchin Email: [email protected])

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