Hong Kong
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Conflicts - Tensions
New mediation body serves China’s political agenda, OBOR scheme
Isabelle Horio/U.S. Army 8th Theater Sustainment Command, National Security Law Team Beijing launched an international mediation body in Hong Kong in May 2025 that seeks to augment the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) global influence. The International Organization for Mediation (IOMed) purportedly will be an alternative dispute resolution platform to established courts such as the International Court of Justice. While the…
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Free and Open Indo-Pacific/FOIP
U.S. sanctions CCP, Hong Kong officials over transnational repression
FORUM Staff Human rights advocates welcomed United States sanctions on officials in China and Hong Kong who used draconian security laws to intimidate and harass pro-democracy activists. The March 2025 sanctions freeze U.S. assets owned by six senior Beijing and Hong Kong security officials and block U.S. entities from conducting financial transactions with the sanctioned individuals. They include the chief…
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Free and Open Indo-Pacific/FOIP
Report exposes CCP human rights abuses throughout 2024
FORUM Staff A prominent Chinese economist disappeared after privately criticizing the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) weakening economy, The Wall Street Journal newspaper reported in September 2024. In mid-December, a Tibetan village chief died three days after his release from prison on charges of “endangering state security.” His crime, according to the Central Tibetan Administration, was championing preservation of the…
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Features
Free, Open, Prosperous
Indo-Pacific populations have woven democratic norms — including transparent, accountable and inclusive governance under the rule of law — into the region’s cultural fabric. Japan established its first representative government in the late 19th century, nearly a century before its modern constitution, supplanting the intervening military rule, proclaimed that “sovereign power resides with the people.” South Korean civil society, including…
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Conflicts - Tensions
Hong Kong’s academic freedom suffers under security regime, report says
Voice of America Hong Kong’s national security law, enacted in July 2020, has eroded academic freedom in the former United Kingdom colony, according to a report released in late September 2024. The report, by the international group Human Rights Watch and the United States-based advocacy organization Hong Kong Democracy Council, said university authorities have imposed greater control and limitations on…
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Conflicts - Tensions
Hong Kong begins 2024 on anti-democracy drive
FORUM Staff When the trial of media mogul Jimmy Lai began December 18, 2023, in Hong Kong, some called it a landmark test of free speech under the former British colony’s draconian national security law. Others, such as Lai’s son, Sebastien, called it a sham trial. Jimmy Lai, 76, the pro-democracy publisher of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, is charged…
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Conflicts - Tensions
U.N. ‘alarmed’ by Hong Kong detentions
Reuters The United Nations said it is alarmed by detentions in Hong Kong linked to the 34th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Hong Kong police said they detained more than 20 people on June 4, 2023, for “breaching public peace” and also arrested a 53-year-old woman for “obstructing police officers” on the anniversary of…
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Conflicts - Tensions
U.K. criticizes erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong
Reuters The United Kingdom in January 2023 criticized what it said was the systematic erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong by the Chinese government and a crackdown on free speech by authorities in the former U.K. colony. The criticism, contained in the U.K. government’s latest six-month report on Hong Kong, accused the People’s Republic of China (PRC) of diminishing the…
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Conflicts - Tensions
Security clampdown diminishes Hong Kong’s value to mainland China
Tom Abke Beijing’s security clampdown in Hong Kong is rapidly reducing its value to the mainland by making it a less attractive place to live and work, thereby draining it of talent, according to a former United Kingdom diplomat stationed there and media reports. By bringing the city’s systems of political representation, media, education, civil society and law under authoritarian…
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Conflicts - Tensions
Hong Kong press freedom erodes at world-leading pace
FORUM Staff Hong Kong, once a bastion of free speech and press freedom, is losing its true voice. With the rapid disappearance of thorough, balanced reporting by independent journalists, Hong Kong “news” now consists of one-sided, coverage professing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) viewpoints, observers say. No nation or territory tumbled farther than Hong Kong from 2021 to 2022 in…
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