US President Joe Biden has just signed an executive order launching a comprehensive review of America’s critical supply chains for strategically significant products and resources.

Among those are rare-earth elements, supplies of which the Biden administration says must not be ‘dependent upon foreign sources or single points of failure in times of national emergency’. ‘Foreign sources’ points a clear finger at one country which has dominated the market for decades.

China has used its near-monopolistic control of the global supply chain for rare-earth elements to strategic advantage against both the United States and Japan. The two countries have attempted to break China’s grip on rare-earth production over recent years using new green techniques.

As part of this effort, the US will reportedly accelerate efforts to work with Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to develop more resilient supply chains for semiconductor chips, electric vehicle batteries and other strategically significant products. However, there’s room for more strategic responses involving cooperation among Japan, the US and Australia to assure the mining and processing of the rare earths that are used to manufacture these products.

Rare earths are a group of 17 metals—15 elements from the lanthanide series and two chemically similar elements, scandium and yttrium. Each has unique properties that are vital for a range of commercial and defence technologies, including batteries, high-powered magnets and electronic equipment. An iPhone, for example, contains eight different rare-earth minerals, and there are probably a couple in your refrigerator and washing machine. They also make up about 420 kilograms of an F-35 fighter jet and are essential for guided cruise missiles.

Despite their name, rare earths are not all that rare. They’re present in abundance in the earth’s crust. The challenge, however, is finding them in sufficient concentrations to justify commercial mining operations. Securing the upfront financing required to build a mine in a location that will tolerate the substantial environmental impacts of establishing a rare-earth processing facility is no easy task.

Fortunately for China, the commercial viability of its reserves, Chinese companies’ access to state-backed financing and the country’s lax environmental regulations have helped build its dominance of the global rare-earth market.

According to the US Geological Survey, China accounted for at least 58% of global production of rare earths last year, and possibly up to 80% if you include illegal and undocumented production activity. China’s rare-earth production exceeds that of the world’s second-largest producer, the US, by more than 100,000 tonnes, and even then the US still relies on China for most of its rare-earth imports.

The Chinese state has realised that its control of the global market makes for a useful economic lever. In 2010, it effectively restricted rare-earth exports to Japan when a Chinese fishing trawler collided with a Japanese coastguard vessel near the disputed Senkaku Islands. More recently, it threatened to limit rare-earth supplies to US defence contractors, including Lockheed Martin, over its involvement with US arms sales to Taiwan.

China routinely adjusts its domestic production quotas and subsidises rare-earth prices to strategically flood the market when it wants to drive out competitors and deter new market entrants.

The US, in turn, has realised the need to develop a secure supply of rare-earths and has looked to Australia to help make that happen.

Australia has the world’s sixth-largest reserves of rare-earth minerals, though they remain largely untapped with only two mines producing them. The largest by far is the mine at Mt Weld in Western Australia, which is owned by Australia-based Lynas Corporation.

On 1 February, the Pentagon announced that it had awarded Lynas a second contract to develop a rare-earth processing facility in Texas.

The contract signed between Lynas and the US Department of Defence adds separation capacity for light rare-earth minerals to its planned heavy minerals processing facility in Hondo, Texas, announced last year. When the project is complete, Lynas—which is already the second-largest producer of separated rare earths globally—will operate two of the largest rare-earth processing plants outside of China. Not only is this a massive boon to Australia’s rare-earth industry, but it also gives the US substantially more access to rare earths in a global market that Beijing has long controlled.

While Lynas’s deal with the Pentagon is welcome news, the only new infrastructure being built under this agreement is in the US.

Compounding this challenge to China’s rare-earth monopoly has been the coup in Myanmar. China is dependent on rare-earth imports from Myanmar, particularly heavy rare earths. Imports of heavy minerals from Myanmar account for 60% of domestic Chinese consumption—and China is no stranger to restrictions imposed by the Myanmar government.

A long-term suspension of Myanmar’s rare-earth exports would be a shock to China’s supply chain. Filling the gap would require a sizeable boost to domestic production or additional foreign investment in an alternative supplier.

Days after the Pentagon announced its second contract with Lynas, Shanghai-based rare-earth processor Shenghe Resources signed a memorandum of understanding with West Australian mining company RareX Limited. If the deal goes ahead, Shenghe will hold a majority share of a new jointly owned rare-earth trading company that would likely source ore from RareX’s Cummins Range rare-earth mining project in northern Western Australia to be processed at Shenghe’s refineries in China.

The Cummins Range project will be a landmark project for northern Australia, bringing with it jobs and investment. The mine will likely transport rare-earth ores to either Wyndham or Darwin port to be shipped overseas for processing.

A Chinese state-owned company potentially investing in a new rare-earth mine in northern Australia should raise eyebrows in Canberra, Washington and Tokyo. The irony of descriptions of the project as a ‘great leap forward’ and RareX as ‘delighted to be moving towards securing an alliance’ ought not be lost on policymakers. There’s clearly a disconnect with Australia’s strategic policy settings when its partners have worked so hard to break China’s monopoly only to have the absence of equity investment push other Australian miners towards a Shanghai-listed company.

Australia’s critical minerals strategy of 2019 is largely focused on attracting foreign investment into new mining infrastructure. The renewed focus on the strategic and commercial importance of rare earths should be a stark reminder that, as the Northern Territory government’s Luke Bowen has written in The Strategist, Australia needs to back itself on rare earths instead of letting great-power competition lead the way.

While Biden’s executive order is a good start, the Australian government should establish a Japan–US–Australia dialogue to ensure a collaborative national policy response to rare-earth supply issues. Such a response needs to promote equity investments and green technologies for the mining and production of rare earths in Australia’s north that will support a shift to greater global competition and diversification away from China.

Xi Jinping’s control over the China Coast Guard, together with a new law that authorises the coastguard to use force against foreign ships in places China defines as in its own, is a big change that has so far attracted far less attention than it deserves.

Maybe that’s because Xi has acted on several fronts to assert Chinese power and take risks in the dying weeks of Donald Trump’s term as US president and in the early days of Joe Biden’s tenure. Some moves—like the one to put sanctions on senior Trump officials, their families and companies that employ them—have rightly attracted attention as vindictive measures. Others, like the People’s Liberation Army’s incursions into Taiwanese airspace, are about furthering Beijing’s campaign to isolate and intimidate Taiwan and test US and international resolve.

Taken together with these moves, Xi’s boldness with the coastguard shows that he’s ratcheting up the risk he’s willing to take in confronting other nations and using the levers he has to project Chinese power. And the coastguard move is one that gives him very practical new tools to cause damage and insecurity and act in ways that others—particularly militaries—can’t, and probably shouldn’t, match.

Chinese state media has downplayed the law, saying it’s similar to other nations’ practices—but it’s not, because it signals that the Chinese state will ignore international law of the sea and international tribunal rulings when using force and define the coastguard’s jurisdiction to use force through China’s unilateral characterisation of its maritime boundaries. And the way the Chinese coastguard is likely to operate in practice will be quite different too.

We’ve got used to stories of Chinese fishing fleets and Chinese militia vessels intimidating other nations’ vessels and even bumping into them to get their way, particularly in the South China Sea in waters claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines, but also down into the Natuna Islands in Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.

Chinese vessels have sunk Philippine and Vietnamese fishing vessels in the last year, and not seemed too bothered about meeting obligations to provide assistance to sailors needing help afterwards. We’ve also got used to the Chinese coastguard shadowing Chinese fishing fleets, ready to intervene if they come into contact with other nations’ vessels.

What’s different now, though, is that with this new law Xi has told his coastguard to be wolf warriors at sea—and to use force, including lethal force, to assert Chinese interests.

The Chinese coastguard has been building some novel ships that let it apply force not just with the weapons on board, but with the ships themselves. Coastguard vessels like the 10,000-ton Haixun aren’t just bigger than many naval ships operating in the South and East China Seas, but they also have strengthened hulls that are designed for deliberately hitting other vessels—‘shouldering’ is the naval term of art.

Imagine a specially designed large vessel like the Haixun ‘shouldering’ a Vietnamese, Philippine, Indonesian or even US naval vessel, enabled by Xi’s law and his command to Chinese agencies and officials to engage in a difficult ‘struggle’ against the world.

Ships operated by those navies (and the Royal Australian Navy) don’t have such strengthened hulls. They’re designed to withstand some damage, mainly from weapons—and the primary approach is to prevent missile hits.

To see the kind of damage a collision with a large vessel causes to such ships, we’ve got the example of the Norwegian frigate Ingstad, which collided with an oil tanker in 2018 before being deliberately grounded and sinking. The images tell the story. It ended with the frigate being scrapped because the damage (from the collision and from being underwater for four months) was too extensive to be repaired.

So, we may need to be thinking less about the Chinese coastguard firing on other nations’ vessels and more about how to handle coastguard commanders who are full to the brim with wolf warrior spirit and licensed by Xi to get into trouble, and how to deal with ships designed to hurt others without using their weapons.

The ability to inflict damage without weapons gives the Chinese coastguard the easy ground in an encounter. A naval vessel that can’t bump back without damaging itself is left with the choice of backing off and handing the encounter to the Chinese or using its weapons and being the first to fire. Neither is a great place to be.

The Chinese coastguard’s use of this new law and its ships in this way might get cheers in Beijing and make strident nationalists there happy. But if any Chinese leader thinks this ‘nonlethal’ use of force is a low-cost, politically free good, that would be a mistake.

Coastguard ships bumping into, damaging and perhaps sinking not just fishing vessels but other countries’ naval vessels would be a hugely escalatory and aggressive set of behaviours, especially in contested waters, no matter how Beijing characterises them. Maybe Xi needs to hear this from the leaders of other countries before we start seeing such antics on the water.

More crystal-clear Biden phone calls to Xi, and maybe calls from leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who could mention it while celebrating investment agreements, are paths here. In his first conversation with Biden, Xi said the US needed to show caution—well, that’s a message he might take up himself.

At a basic tactical level, capturing video of the Chinese coastguard in action on smartphones and developing a communication plan that gets that footage out before Beijing spins disinformation tales of ‘It wasn’t us. It didn’t happen. They did it first’ also make sense.

Sino-American rivalry bodes ill for Singapore’s politics and security but the storm has a few silver linings.

A ‘tech rush’ of sorts is manifesting with Chinese technology giants like Alibaba, Tencent and Bytedance (the owner of TikTok) expanding their presence in Singapore, alongside their American competitors.

The shift in global value chains creates opportunities for Singapore to reach out to both sides of the Sino-American competition and attract and anchor investment across ASEAN as a non-China alternative. This is notwithstanding that the bifurcation of technology and supply chains would be detrimental to economic efficiency and potentially to the unity of ASEAN if different members align more with one side or another.

The motivating factors for these shifts are mainly geopolitical, and the danger remains that Singapore and other countries will be pressured to align with one side or another. If so, what will Singapore decide? This has been a central geopolitical concern in Singaporean thinking about its security and remained a live question throughout the past year.

Generally, Singapore worked hard to engage with former US president Donald Trump’s administration and, compared with many others in the region, is more like-minded about the need to balance against China.

Yet even to Singaporean observers, there have been many signs that suggest a trend of US disengagement—most apparent in the American leader’s absence at the annual East Asia Summit, hosted by ASEAN, since 2018. That trend is expected to be reversed to some degree under President Joe Biden.

In contrast, China’s engagement with the region has continued and indeed stepped up with the Belt and Road Initiative as well as with assistance in dealing with the pandemic. Singapore is actively participating in the financing of many BRI activities and more broadly as a hub for China’s growing business presence in ASEAN.

Singapore’s articulation of the Sino-American question is changing, even as it continues fundamentally to advocate for American engagement in the region. In a 2020 Foreign Affairs article on ‘The endangered Asian century’, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong acknowledged how China’s stake in the region has grown: ‘Increasingly, and quite understandably, China wants to protect and advance its interests abroad and secure what it sees as its rightful place in international affairs.’

The adjustment in comments on the South China Sea is noteworthy: statements made by Singapore immediately after the South China Sea arbitration in 2016 drew a stern reaction from Beijing; by comparison, when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo formalised support for the tribunal ruling rejecting China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea, Singapore and ASEAN were relatively muted.

More than a few countries in the region are rethinking their policies towards China and the US.

For Singapore, while fundamentals remain in place, nuances may be discerned and there’s considerable debate and divergence among prominent former diplomats and public intellectuals.

Singapore’s fundamental position is that countries shouldn’t be forced to choose one side or the other, linked to an emphasis on the importance of an open regional architecture, in which influence is never exclusive and deepening ties with one does not mean going against the other.

The ability to engage multilaterally has worked in a rules-based international order that has helped small and middle powers to thrive. There’s concern that this multilateral system is fragmenting—and ironically because of actions taken by the US, which has been the maker and mainstay of that order.

Many in Singapore remain cautious about talk of a ‘Cold War 2.0’; while conflicts didn’t occur on Soviet Union or American soil, proxy conflicts were found in the Asia–Pacific theatre.

Even short of war, the dangers of a war mentality applied to Sino-American competition are manifold. They include a legitimation of breaking the normal rules so that it’s only power and might that matter, the forcing of an either/or choice in relations, and the weakening of international institutions.

Singapore has been watchful over the undermining of the Paris climate agreement, and responded by stepping up commitments to address climate change in tandem with partners. Similarly, the weakening of the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization are major concerns. With the weakening of the WTO, Singapore has joined in the ‘multi-party interim appeal arbitration arrangement’ to the WTO—a coalition that is broad but which in Asia initially includes only China, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

In the WHO context, Singapore is notably involved in COVAX—a global vaccine initiative to distribute 2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines around the world by the end of this year. These efforts point to a wider strategic response that Singapore is making in the current security context: to reach out to and work with other non-great powers, especially ASEAN and Asian partners (with continuing ties with Japan and India and an uptick in engagement with South Korea), as well as the European Union and others further afield.

Most analysis in Singapore points to the clear bipartisan support for the US to continue to be tough on China. In this regard, 2020 was a critical year for the broader re-examination of Singapore’s relations with both the US and China, and what Singapore and other countries can and should do.

The pandemic has sharpened that awareness and accelerated the trends. Singapore can wish but can’t directly improve the US and China relationship. But it has sought to increase its abilities to secure its own position if relations continue to deteriorate. This is not only in dealing with the two great powers, but also in its efforts for regional community, a rules-based international order and working with other countries.

These efforts are set in the context of avoiding a ‘war’ mentality, and the need to build consistent and steadfast engagement with other countries, taking a multilateral approach across a broad range of issues, especially in recovering and reconnecting in the wake of the pandemic.

For the security not only of Singapore but of many of the countries caught between the US and China, there’s nothing more, and nothing less, to be done.

ASPI’s executive director, Peter Jennings, has warned a United States congressional inquiry that China may trigger a major military crisis over Taiwan in the coming year as the Chinese Communist Party’s centenary looms and the US faces a terrible domestic health situation due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a series of written responses to questions from the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission today, Jennings says he believes the CCP will continue to test the boundaries of international patience in its operations against Taiwan and in the first island chain until the US and its allies feel compelled to attempt to limit Beijing’s behaviour.

A failure of the US to respond would challenge its credibility as a security partner.

At any time, Chinese President Xi Jinping could reduce the rhetorical tone and limit the People’s Liberation Army’s military exercises and air incursions, Jennings says, but Xi stands to lose nothing if he keeps testing the limits.

‘This gives rise, in my view, to a possible major crisis on Taiwan or the East China Sea in 2021.’ Jennings says Beijing will have developed a menu of options to pressure concessions from Taipei related to its political autonomy. ‘This does not have to involve a PLA amphibious assault of Taiwan’s northern beaches, but it could involve maritime blockades, closing airspace, cyber assaults, missile launchings around (and over) Taiwan, use of fifth column assets inside Taiwan, use of PLA force in a range of deniable grey-zone activities and potentially seizing offshore territory—Quemoy and Matsu, Pratas, and Kinmen Islands. Beijing will continue to probe with military actions, test international reactions and probe again.’

This threat must be seen against the background of China’s efforts to build soft power globally through its own foreign-language media outlets, Confucius Institutes, local organisations linked to the United Front Work Department and, above all, financial relationships, Jennings says.

He notes that, for many countries around the world, China’s global appeal is calibrated against the global attractiveness and effectiveness of the US. ‘Key Southeast Asian countries will make judgements about the need to hedge their relations with Beijing based on the level of confidence they have that the United States is engaged with the region and committed (for reasons of its own interests) to Asian security. A Southeast Asia that doubts the longevity of American interest will get closer to the PRC regardless of the appeal of doing so.’

In response to the commission’s request for recommendations to deal with this situation, Jennings says the CCP presents a profound threat to democratic systems and the international rule of law everywhere. To counter malign CCP activities, like-minded democracies must align and commit to a shared sense of purpose.

‘As Australia saw over 2020, Beijing works hard to split democracies apart from each other and to weaken their resolve through bilateral pressure. My view is that the Commission can play an international role by cooperating more closely with like-minded democratic legislatures including, of course, the Australian Parliament; sharing information and generally emphasizing that we must work together to address a global threat. The Commission might consider establishing a regular dialogue on the PRC for legislatures from the Five Eyes countries.’

The commission could engage with Australia’s parliament through the House speaker and the Senate president on a shared research agenda. That would use parliament’s high-quality and relatively well-resourced committee system, which operates in a largely bipartisan way on national security matters, says Jennings.

He says Southeast Asia is emerging as one of the most critical zones of global competition for influence between the US and the CCP. ‘Beijing sees the region as key to its security, which is why it made such an audacious move to annex the vast bulk of the South China Sea. For Japan and Australia, the free passage of trade through and over the South China Sea is an existential strategic interest.’

If the US is denied access to the region (which also includes treaty allies Thailand and the Philippines), America’s capacity to shape positive security outcomes in the western Pacific is deeply eroded. Beijing knows this and is actively engaged in trying to tilt the region away from the US, says Jennings.

The next two years will shape US success or failure in Asia, he says, and the commission should focus on building deeper knowledge about Beijing’s efforts in the region and a deeper appreciation of the strategic outlooks from the 10 Southeast Asian capitals.

‘America’s challenge is to give the Southeast Asian countries a sense that they have a realistic alternative to accepting Beijing’s dominance and that the democracies will continue to support … their sovereignty and security.’

Jennings suggests that the commission work with Australia to develop a plan to help vulnerable Pacific island countries (PICs) resist CCP pressure.

As in World War II, these nations remain strategically important in shaping how US forces can access and operate in the western Pacific. Beijing understands this too, which helps to explain why it has invested so quickly and substantially into building relations with PIC political elites, Jennings says.

Through its Pacific step-up policy, Australia is re-energising its own PIC engagement strategy, but all like-minded democracies can play a role. US Indo-Pacific Command and other US agencies have lifted their interest and activity with the PICs, and that engagement could be enhanced with more congressional help and support.

Jennings says the PICs are fragile societies, often with limited infrastructure, economic and social opportunities. ‘On the plus side, the region overwhelmingly shares our values and has (mostly) stuck to democratic systems.’

Dealing with China’s financial power is one of the biggest challenges the region faces. ‘It would be valuable to consider a joint study with the Australian Parliament on how best democracies can assist the PICs in strengthening their own systems and reducing their vulnerability to coercion and co-option’, Jennings says.

There’s a need to explain to the citizens of all democracies the nature of the challenges they face in dealing with an increasingly aggressive, nationalistic PRC. ‘There is a significant gap between what executive government and security and policy specialists understand on the one hand (which is often based on classified material), and what back-bench politicians and their electors know’, says Jennings.

‘The Commission could play an important role here by distilling its very deep strategic understanding of the issue into a “tool-kit” for elected representatives designed to help them explain the strategic challenge we face to our citizens.’

It seems clear, says Jennings, that Taiwan will face yet more pressure from the PRC in 2021 and later, and we should not be surprised if Beijing confects a cross-strait crisis.

‘It may be that President Xi calculates that a short-term window of opportunity is closing for the PRC to pressure Taiwan to make concessions on its future political status.’

The commission should help provide greater clarity on what the US would do if Taiwan were attacked, Jennings says. ‘My view is that clarity is what is most needed at a time when the PRC might fail to correctly read American policy signals.’

The CCP’s ‘one China’ policy has resulted in such limited Australian engagement with Taiwan that Canberra’s policy thinking about the country and its capacity to make public statements about Taiwan’s security have become stunted. A commission dialogue with Australian counterparts on options for engagement with Taiwan would be valuable, Jennings says.

‘I would expect the United States to stand by its long-held policy disposition to support Taiwan’, Jennings says. ‘On that expectation hangs the credibility of America’s alliance network in the Pacific. To put it bluntly, if the US chose not to vigorously support Taiwan in the face of PRC coercion, this will do immense damage to the credibility of US engagement as viewed in Tokyo, Seoul, and Canberra. That could weaken resolve in these capitals to resist PRC coercion.’

Originally published 3 July 2020.

Hong Kong’s first handover to China, in 1997, came with fireworks, lion dances and a mood of cautious optimism that this former British colony would enjoy ‘a high degree of autonomy’ for at least the next 50 years.

Just 23 years later, Hong Kong’s second handover to China—punctuated by a draconian new national security law that proscribes much protest activity and free expression—has seen fearful citizens deleting their Twitter accounts, political parties disbanding, and some activists and ordinary people planning to flee abroad. The optimism of 1997 has been replaced by a sense of foreboding and dread.

In a fitting coda, Beijing’s Communist Party rulers chose the exact anniversary of the handover, midnight on 30 June, to impose their new security law on Hong Kong and unveil its strictures on an unwilling population. After 23 years, China seems to be publicly affirming that the ‘one country, two systems’ experiment has failed and that Hongkongers were not sufficiently imbued with a patriotic love of the motherland and its authoritarian communist one-party system.

Now Hongkongers who had enjoyed a wide range of freedoms and a tiny taste of democracy will be subjected to the same sweeping constraints on their liberties as any Chinese citizen living on the mainland.

Over the past month, the new national security law was drafted behind closed doors in Beijing with no input from Hong Kong officials or citizens, who were not even allowed to see the text until a few minutes before midnight on the day it took effect. There was still some small hope that the law might not be as sweeping as some here feared, perhaps tailor-made for Hong Kong owing to this city’s special history and common-law traditions. Various leaks in the media in recent days appeared designed to assure people that their daily lives would not be greatly affected.

But the final text of the law was more severe and more detailed than the most optimistic here envisaged. Many when they saw it were aghast—shocked, they said, but not surprised.

The law establishes an entirely new infrastructure in Hong Kong to enforce a national security regime. Beijing will set up a national security agency in Hong Kong which will operate independently as it sees fit. China’s agents operating here, with special ID cards, and their cars, ‘shall not be subject to inspection, search or detention’ by local Hong Kong police. They are above the law.

Hong Kong will set up its own separate national security committee, chaired by the chief executive and including a ‘national security adviser’ appointed by Beijing. Its work will remain secret and not subject to judicial review. The law specifies that Beijing’s national security adviser will attend meetings of the committee.

The Hong Kong Police Force will establish its own national security department to collect intelligence and conduct operations. The law gives police wide powers to conduct searches, eavesdropping and surveillance without court oversight and to order people to turn over their electronic communications, and it appears to suggest that internet service providers must cooperate with probes. The law compels suspects to ‘answer questions’ and turn over information, although Hong Kong law gives people a right to stay silent.

The law also says that when there’s a conflict between this new edict and Hong Kong’s existing laws, the national security law takes precedence.

The law sets up a new section in the Justice Department to prosecute national security cases, and trials can be conducted entirely in secret, without a jury, and without the presumption of bail. Serious or ‘complex’ cases can be tried in mainland China.

The law says the Hong Kong government will ‘strengthen public communication, guidance, supervision and regulation’ of national security matters, including those relating to ‘schools, universities, social organisations, the media, and the internet’.

The law vaguely defines four categories of national security offences—secession, subversion of state power, terrorism and collusion with a foreign country. Appearing in Washington DC to advocate for sanctions against Hong Kong or ‘provoking hatred towards the central government’ are all now considered national security law violations.

Penalties for national security offences range up to life imprisonment, although a person who ‘conspires’ with a foreign country ‘shall be liable to a more severe penalty’. The Hong Kong justice secretary told a press conference on 1 July that if a suspect were handed over to mainland authorities to face trial, Hong Kong would have no say in whether the death penalty was imposed.

In a sweeping claim of extraterritoriality, the law also says it will cover offences ‘from outside the region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the region’.

The vagaries of the law for now leave it to the local Hong Kong police to interpret and enforce it. Their actions on 1 July—the handover anniversary, when activists traditionally stage mass protest rallies—showed that the police are taking an expansive view, arresting people for carrying flags promoting Hong Kong independence.

Police raised banners warning demonstrators that chanting the slogans and displaying the flags that had become a staple of the last 12 months of protest could now be considered a national security violation.

‘The law is so broadly written it could include almost any form of behaviour, such as waving an independence-themed flag today’, one longtime resident told me.

This is not the end of Hong Kong. It remains a global financial centre, its stock market is still the world’s largest and more capital is set to flow in if Chinese ‘red chip’ companies forced to delist from the New York Stock Exchange decide to relocate here. Multinationals whose business operations focus mainly on China’s massive market would be reluctant to decamp for faraway Singapore. Taipei and Tokyo are making overtures to lure businesses and hedge funds, but neither is as attractive an international English-speaking base as Hong Kong.

But it is the end of Hong Kong as we knew it. I was recently reminded how when I would leave after a lengthy reporting trip in China and cross the border into Hong Kong, I would almost literally feel a breath of fresh air. Unlike the mainland, reporting here was easy. People were willing to talk and express their views strongly. They gave you their names to be quoted. You didn’t have to hide your notebooks or constantly be looking over your shoulder if you pulled out a camera for a photo. Here I did not have to use multiple sim cards and disposable ‘burner phones’ to meet with sources.

That is all now changing. With the new law and the new national security infrastructure, Hong Kong now is becoming like every other mainland city under an authoritarian police state. Citizens scrubbing their social media accounts and scraping pro-democracy stickers off their shops is a sad but telling sign.

The Hong Kong we knew is dead. This is the new normal.