The Hong Kong government applied to the court to confiscate assets belonging to Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai (黎智英), and a hearing has been scheduled for July 8.
This is not merely a follow-up to an individual criminal case, but another demonstration by Hong Kong that when a regime treats dissent as hostility, the subsequent assault on freedom does not stop at personal liberty — it extends to property, the media and public memory.
Today, it is Lai whose assets are being pursued, but what is really being put to the test is how much confidence society still has in the bottom line of the rule of law.
Beijing promised Hong Kong a “high degree of autonomy,” claiming that things would remain unchanged for 50 years. It also enshrined private property and individual freedoms under Hong Kong’s Basic Law. The issue has never been whether these promises sounded appealing, but whether those in power are willing to let those promises bind them.
When the power of interpretation and the power of enforcement are in the hands of authoritarians, provisions originally meant to protect the people can at any moment be turned into tools for suppressing freedom.
What should alarm Taiwan the most about Lai’s case is that the path has already been laid out with striking clarity. First, the scope of repression is expanded under the guise of national security. Then, assets are frozen through legal procedures. Next, Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper and one of the largest Chinese-language media outlets in Hong Kong, is forced to shut down due to a funding shortfall — and now, further moves have been made to confiscate the remaining related assets.
This proves that what authoritarian regimes seek to eliminate is never just one individual, but the very conditions under which dissenting voices can exist.
If there are still those in Taiwan who package engagement with China as a shortcut to peace or treat authoritarian promises as guarantees of security, they should take Hong Kong’s lesson seriously.
It is not that Hong Kong lacked institutional commitments or legal provisions, but that those assurances ultimately could not withstand the redefinition of power.
Today, newspapers might be taken away. Tomorrow, it might be property. The next day, society could lose its capacity to distinguish right from wrong.
It is worth noting that this pattern is not unique to Hong Kong, but rather an outcome that any society operating within an authoritarian framework might face.
Authoritarian systems do not excel by immediately declaring the end of freedom, but by first permitting, then restricting, then punishing — conditioning people, through repeated concessions, to grow accustomed to silence.
By the time someone finally looks back, what has been lost is often no longer just a piece of property or a media outlet, but the last vestige of confidence that freedom can still be guaranteed.
In viewing Lai’s case, Taiwan must not stop at sympathy alone, but must fully grasp the institutional warning it conveys.
What truly protects freedom has never been the temporary goodwill of those in power or the most eloquently written promises — but rather a democratic system that effectively constrains authority, an independent judiciary and a civil society that refuses to be silenced. Only by upholding these things can Taiwan ensure that Hong Kong’s present does not become its own future.
Steve Ho is a retired engineer.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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