The national-security law that the Chinese Communist Party is using to complete its takeover of democratic Hong Kong has pretty much everyone agreeing that the era of the “One Country, Two Systems” framework developed for Hong Kong’s handover from the British to the PRC is over. From the time of the 1997 handover until now, the framework has allowed Hong Kong to exist as a semi-autonomous administrative region that has its own economic and political system but is technically a part of the PRC. But since Beijing unilaterally imposed the national-security law in June, Hong Kong elections have been canceled, pro-freedom professors have been fired or arrested, and democrats have been banned from politics. For Hong Kong, “one country, two systems” is finished.
On the mainland, though, “one country, two systems” isn’t a framework so much as an accurate description of the status quo. Ironically, Beijing is all too happy for the world to focus on the demise of the official “one country, two systems” policy in Hong Kong if it distracts from the decay and systemic weakness that plague the mainland. The CCP’s crackdown on Hong Kong, its trade standoff with the U.S., its growing militarism in the Pacific, and other ostentatious public displays of Chinese strength are meant to hide the rot underneath.
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