Thread by @nytimes

Children are taught to identify traitors. Neighbors are urged to report one another. Officials are pressed to pledge their loyalty.

One year after it imposed a national security law, China has remade Hong Kong. This is how the city’s freedom was taken. nyti.ms/3h3T6Zi

Armed with the sweeping national security law it imposed one year ago, Beijing has pushed to turn Hong Kong into another mainland megacity, where dissent is immediately smothered. The very texture of the city’s once vibrant daily life is under assault. nyti.ms/3AfD1Hu

Teachers are told to imbue children with patriotism through 48-volume books called “My Home Is in China.” Libraries have removed dozens of books, including one about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Police officers goose-step in Chinese military fashion.

Lo Kit Ling, who teaches a high school civics class, is now careful to say only positive things about China. She had always tried to offer multiple perspectives on any topic, she said, but she now worries that critical views could be taken out of context by a student or parent.

When Beijing purged political candidates it deemed disloyal, it called it “perfecting Hong Kong’s electoral system.” When Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper, was forced to shut and its leaders were arrested, the party said the paper abused “so-called freedom of the press.”

“Fear — it can make you stronger, because you don’t want to live under fear,” said a business owner who put protest art in his stores. Or “it can kill your desire to fight.” Despite everything, Hong Kongers have fiercely fought for freedom. nyti.ms/3AfD1Hu

Hong Kong’s freedoms were curtailed with breathtaking speed when the national security law was imposed in 2020. But this crackdown was years in the making. Read more.