Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now Joshua Wong, £9.99
Joshua Wong was born in 1997, the year of the handover of Hong Kong to China. At the time, 2047 – the date when the Joint Declaration’s promise of no change to Hong Kong’s political system expires – seemed a long way off.
It is certainly beyond the expected lifetime of those who had negotiated the handover and the ‘one country/two systems’ arrangement under which Hong Kong is governed and allowed to enjoy a ‘high degree of autonomy’.
For people of Wong’s generation, however, 2047 will come while they are in the prime of life and with it a huge uncertainty about their future. Already they have seen a steady and quickening erosion of many of the freedoms Hong Kong enjoyed, and a seemingly inexorable process in which the government in Beijing has been extending its influence throughout Hong Kong.
