Within just one month, Beijing and the Hong Kong government have tightened their grip on the city on all fronts. The latest is that the founder of Next Digital (formerly Next Media) Jimmy Lai went on trial. Christmas is approaching, but the territory is getting increasingly uneasy.

Lai, detained on a charge of fraud until a court hearing in April next year, stood trial Saturday for the charge of “conspiring with foreign forces to endanger national security”. The charge is under Hong Kong’s National Security Law, implying Lai if convicted could face a jail term of at least three years and up to life imprisonment.

Lai is not the first victim of the purge, nor will he be the last. On November 11, four pro-democracy lawmakers –Dennis Kwok Wing-hang, Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu, Kwok Ka-ki, and Kenneth Leung Kai-cheong – were disqualified from the city’s Legislative Council. The dismissals were made after China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee passed a new law allowing disqualification of ‘unpatriotic’ legislators of Hong Kong. Unhappy with China’s move, 15 opposition lawmakers quit en masse, leaving Hong Kong’s Legislature with only two democrats, including Cheng Chung-tai and Pierre Chan Pui-yin, together with the remaining 41 pro-Beijing lawmakers. Hong Kong’s lawmaking body went back to serve as a rubber stamp in the 1990s before the direct elections were held.

Then on November 25, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said in her annual policy address that there is a need to introduce a Bill to enhance “oath-taking” by civil servants, suggesting not just legislators will be disqualified, so will the civil servants, judges, and public university professors if they violate the oath of office.

This month, the authorities of Beijing and Hong Kong are intensifying a crackdown on dissidents like “boosting last-minute sales” by firing a series of “flying guillotines”. On December 1, 40 newsroom staff members at i-Cable News were laid off, including the entire team of the investigative program “News Lancet”. This prompted the mass resignation of the senior managers from the China news team and Hong Kong news desk. The paid TV network is one of the few “disobedient” media outlets in Hong Kong and everyone knows the mass layoffs are not intended to cut operating costs but to stifle press freedom.

Dissidents became the next target. On December 2, the trio of young activists Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, and Ivan Lam received jail sentences after pleading guilty to organizing an illegal rally outside the police headquarters on June 21 last year.

Wong and his associates are young, prominent pro-democracy activists. Wong formed a student activist group called Scholarism in his teens, leading more than 100,000 Hongkongers to go on the street to protest against a government plan to introduce patriotic education in schools, claiming it amounts to Chinese patriotic “brainwashing”. They successfully forced the government to abandon the idea. In September 2014, Wong was arrested during a massive pro-democracy protest after hundreds of students occupied Civic Square in front of the Central Government Complex. The protest and occupation kicked off the Umbrella Movement. Today, Wong was arrested and sentenced. Another young activist Nathan Law is living in exile in the U.K. for allegedly violating the National Security Law. Young activists are brutally squelched. Hong Kong’s democracy is facing a bleak future.

On December 3, Jimmy Lai was arrested on fraud charges and was jailed until a court hearing in April next year. But on December 11, he was suddenly charged for violating Hong Kong’s National Security Law. Many were worried he would stand trial in China. Even if he is tried in Hong Kong, the city’s National Security Law allows Beijing and Hong Kong’s Chief Executive to select judges. Some trials can be held behind closed doors. Lai is in jeopardy.

Luo Huining, head of Hong Kong liaison office, said at a symposium to mark China’s Constitutional Day that the decision to disqualify four lawmakers “set clearly the bottom line and political rule for patriots governing Hong Kong”. It is clear that Beijing authorities and the Hong Kong government are intensifying their efforts to “set the bottom line for patriots governing Hong Kong”. They won’t stop the efforts to crush the dissent in order to mark a clear bottom line.

At this critical moment, a new political party Bauhinia Party is created. It used to keep a low profile, but now plans to register 250,000 members. Its leaders are all “new Hongkongers,” who were born on the mainland but became Hong Kong residents. Since the handover in 1997, the city has seen an influx of over 1.5 million “new Hongkongers”. Beijing obviously expects this new group to participate in politics to accelerate the city’s “mainlandization” (Sinicization).

On December 8, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) bestowed Press Freedom Award on Lai, who urged the outside world in a pre-recorded video to keep paying attention to Hong Kong. “Speak up for us.” He is worried Hong Kong will be forgotten by the world. He called on the media industry to continue “report our story, speak up for us, and draw the world’s attention to our plight.”

It’s hard to be optimistic about the city’s situation. We should not stop caring about what’s happening in Hong Kong. We can’t leave it behind. If we Taiwanese do not speak up today, “Today’s Hong Kong, Tomorrow’s Taiwan”, implying Taiwan will one day become akin to Hong Kong. When Taiwan is strangled by China’s Communist Party, the world will be just watching without anyone voicing their protest.

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