that somehow, the will of millions of hong kongers would prevail over the might of beijing. ♪♪♪ [singinge] [singing in cantonese] bill: but what a difference a year makes. hong kong, once china's liberal outpost, has gone from a city of protest to a city of fear. male: [speaking foreign language] bill: covid restrictions have unexpectedly conspired with beijing's efforts to crush the protests and silence a city. and one by one, china's government is taking down those who resist, from billionaire tycoons to uni students. joshua wong: and now is not the time for us to kowtow to beijing and to surrender, thank you. claudia mo: the mood is a bit eerie. on the surface, hong kong is still quite so glamorous, quite so prosperous-looking, but then deep down it's rotting. bill: we join one young pro-democracy activist who's been forced underground. max mok: the atmosphere's different. it's a lot grimmer, and it's very-- it's become a lot harder to hold on to ho. bill: as dissent is crushed, hong kong activists face a tough choice: to stay or flee? prison or exile? max: this is the only thing i th

they feared of the loss of control, they thought it might be hard to get hong kongers to do with theyanted, so they did not introduce true democracy or widen the franchise at all. until the last possible moment. life under the british, there was legal predictability. no democracy. hong kong at the time was going very fast and the british were responsible for building these new towns, providing accommodation and schooling, building up civil service, that kind of measure of predictability, so, it was a place which changed from being somewhere people pass through on their way to somewhere else to a place that became home for generations of people. that was the big change that happened under the british. susan: you write that the british did not pay attention to the impending 1997 date until 1982, then ramped up negotiations. what leverage did the british have legally? louisa: it's a difficult question to answer. the british always believed they had a weak hand. they knew hong kong was to return to china in 1997, and when they had gone to negotiate over his future, it was said to margaret

that somehow, the will of millions of hong kongers would prevail over the might of beijing. ♪♪♪ [singing

that somehow, the will of millions of hong kongers would prevail over the might of beijing. ♪♪♪ [singing