Today, 19 December, marks 40 years since the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, which laid out the conditions for the July 1997 British handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Among its provisions, the Joint Declaration laid out the principles of ‘one country, two systems’ and guaranteed Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy from China. Later enshrined in the Basic Law of Hong Kong, this promise was supposed to remain unchanged for 50 years, or until 2047.
Despite its commitments under the Joint Declaration, the PRC has overseen the systematic dismantling of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong.
Negotiations leading to the Joint Declaration began officially in September 1982, when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher met in Beijing with China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Two years later, following a period of tense exchange between British and Chinese negotiators with little authentic room for Hong Kong voices, on 19 December 1984, Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Zhiyang signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Counterfactually, since 2017 China has stated that it is no longer bound by large parts of the Joint Declaration, claiming it has no ‘practical significance, and it is not at all any binding,’ a mere ‘historical document.’ In reality, as an international legal agreement, the Declaration has been registered as a binding treaty with the United Nations since 1985.
The Joint Declaration explicitly lays out that the ‘rights and freedoms, including those of the person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of correspondence, of strike, of choice of occupation, of academic research and of religious belief will be ensured by law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.’ As such, the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly are enshrined in Article 27 of the Basic Law, along with other rights and freedoms that once distinguished Hong Kong from mainland China.
Despite this, Hong Kong has moved rapidly from being a vibrant beacon of free expression in the region, to increasingly resembling China as one of the most repressive environments in the world for the freedom of expression.
In the past decade, Hong Kong has experienced one of the biggest declines in ARTICLE 19’s Global Expression Report, dropping 54 points into the ’crisis’ category. In 2023, Hong Kong ranks 125 out of 161 countries and territories covered in the report.
The assault on Hong Kong’s freedoms has in large part been driven by the Beijing-imposed 2020 National Security Law and 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, rubber-stamped by a compliant Legislative Council.
The laws have since then been used to justify rampant arrest and imprisonment, such as the mass sentencing of 45 pro-democracy figures on 19 November 2024. Activists, including law scholar and peaceful protest leader Benny Tai and student leader Joshua Wong received prison terms of between ten and four years respectively.
Since 2020, publisher Jimmy Lai has been the target of judicial and political harassment in reprisal for his participation in the 2019 pro-democracy movement, that saw upwards of 2 million people take to the streets. Jimmy Lai has been arbitrarily detained since August 2020. The authorities have denied him his right to be represented by a lawyer of his choice and hinted that he could be transferred to mainland China. If convicted under the National Security Law, he could face life in prison.
Lai is one of an estimated 1,916 political prisoners in Hong Kong, many of whom have been charged for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, according to documentation by the exiled Hong Kong Democracy Council.
Hong Kong and Beijing authorities have furthermore sought to impose global censorship, exemplified in a May 2024 injunction against YouTube for streaming a popular protest anthem, and engaged in transnational repression. For example, in July and December 2023 Hong Kong authorities issued bounties of one million Hong Kong dollar for at least 13 activists residing in Australia, the UK and US.
Since the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong, the British Foreign Secretary has reported at 6-month intervals on the implementation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. In recent reports, the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), has found that Beijing has betrayed its commitments under the Joint Declaration. Since 2022, the FCDO has also pointed to the systematic eroding of the freedoms of expression, press, assembly, and others. In its most recent report from June 2024, FCDO highlighted the growing attempts to apply ever-increasingly repressive laws extra-territorially.
