00:00Stuck on the front door of the Hunter bookshop in Hong Kong is a sign that reads freedom.
00:07For the shop's owner, it's more of a wish than a reality, as Hong Kong enters its 28th year under Chinese administration.
00:14Letitia Wong was a pro-democracy politician in the days before mass arrests wiped Hong Kong's democracy movement out.
00:23Wong stayed put in Hong Kong, reinventing herself as a bookseller.
00:27But even with her political career behind her, she says the government still has her on its radar.
00:32By her account, she's had more than 90 interactions with the authorities since summer 2022.
00:38Warning letters, fire and health code inspections, even patrols outside her door.
00:43Though a national security law, or NSL, passed last year cracks down on acts of overt dissent,
00:49she says there's a vague sense that everyone has to watch their back.
00:53I think Hong Kong people are now scared of unknown, which we are facing a new normal,
00:59a new Hong Kong debt with many regulations, many ambiguous red lines, and many self-censoring things.
01:09The fire department says it was just following up on complaints.
01:12But Wong sees the inspections and paperwork as a subtle way of intimidating someone with a pro-democracy past.
01:18She's not alone. Another former politician, Chan Kim Cam, has gone from council representative to a seller of incense and fragrant oils.
01:29She says her tiny stall is also a target of this new kind of bureaucratic harassment.
01:34Over the past five years, I feel that the space for me is reducing.
01:41I feel that people like informing the authorities all the time.
01:44It's rather irrational and abnormal.
01:47It affects my life because people inform the authorities and send complaint letters about my store and my works.
01:53This isn't the Hong Kong many hoped for at its hand over 28 years ago,
02:02the day the UK returned the territory to China after controlling it for over a century.
02:07China gained back a territory whose loss was a deep historical trauma.
02:11And for Hong Kongers, it was supposed to be business as usual.
02:14Things wouldn't change too much too fast.
02:17For 50 years, China was supposed to be one country with two systems,
02:21leaving the freewheeling liberal system that had grown up in Hong Kong intact for years to come.
02:30But as early as 2003, a planned anti-subversion bill showed Beijing might not be quite so hands-off as some in Hong Kong expected.
02:38Now, after a major crackdown in 2019 and 2020,
02:45Beijing's allies are firmly in charge of the territory,
02:48with democracy leaders exiled, jailed, or gone silent.
02:52Hong Kong officials say the average person has nothing to worry about running into trouble with the law.
02:57When we promulgated the Hong Kong national security law,
03:03we make it very clear that the law is aiming at only a small portion of people who endangers national security.
03:16But some are still uneasy about their futures,
03:19even if the pressure they feel comes from municipal offices, not the police.
03:26Chinese and Hong Kong flags flutter side by side through the city, marking the handover anniversary.
03:31It's clear those in charge are determined the one country part of the formula, adopted 28 years ago, holds.
03:38How well the rest of the arrangements holding up depends on who you ask.
03:42Scott Huang and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.
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