How democracy was dismantled in Hong Kong in 2021

For Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, 2021 has been a year in which the city’s authorities and the central government in Beijing stamped out nearly everything it had stood for

HONG KONG -- For Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, 2021 has been a year in which the city’s authorities and the central government in Beijing stamped out nearly everything it had stood for.

Activists have fled abroad or been locked up under a draconian new National Security Law imposed on the city. Opposition voices have been driven out of the legislature. Monuments commemorating China's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing in 1989 have been taken down. And as the year neared its end Wednesday, a vocal pro-democracy media outlet closed following a police raid, silencing one of the last openly critical voices in the city.

The crackdown, which took root 18 months ago with the enactment of the National Security Law, played out this year as the world's two major powers, the United States and China, battled over democracy and good governance.

The Biden administration has been sharply critical of China's moves in Hong Kong as it tries to support democracy globally and deepen ties with other democracies in the face of China's rise. China, ruled by the Communist Party, has pointed out flaws in American democracy and argued that its own system has delivered both stability and a better response to COVID-19 compared to what it describes as chaos in the United States.