How China killed Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement in less than a year, while the rest of the world were too weak to help

On Tuesday, China passed a new national-security law for Hong Kong, giving it sweeping powers to punish dissent as it sees fit. It ostensibly brings an end to a year of protests that began in March 2019 over an extradition bill, and morphed into demonstrations against the security law in May 2020. The US threatened sanctions and tariffs if China didnࢀ™t roll back its security law, and the UK and EU condemned Beijing. But China simply didnࢀ™t care, and ࢀ" just as it has done with other human-rights concerns ࢀ" pressed ahead with its own agenda with little regard for…