The assault on Hong Kong’s freedoms since Beijing passed a sweeping national security law on June 30, 2020 has been alarming and rapid. Hundreds of critics and activists have been arrested—including dozens of pro-democracy politicians—dissidents have fled, and schools, bookstores and sectors of the media have engaged in self-censorship. Most recently, the government forced the newspaper Apple Daily to shut down by freezing its assets; its publisher, Jimmy Lai, was convicted and imprisoned along with other leading advocates of democracy under the new security law. Prominent democracy activists Alex Chow and Samuel Chu of the Hong Kong Democracy Council join Cato’s Doug Bandow and Ian Vasquez to discuss the deteriorating state of freedom in Hong Kong and pro-freedom strategies in the face of Beijing’s crackdown.

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