A yr later, the central authorities imposed a sweeping national security law that gave authorities huge latitude to criminalize speech and stifle dissent in a territory as soon as recognized for its unbiased courts and freewheeling legislature and newspapers. Professional-democracy lawmakers had been arrested in droves, and outstanding media shops were forced to close. (On Monday, a number of defendants will stand trial within the largest case but involving the safety legislation.)
Then, for many of the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government sealed the territory’s borders and imposed a few of the world’s harshest restrictions on day by day life.
Seashores had been closed for weeks on finish. Playground tools was sealed off with police tape and chain-link fencing. Residential buildings had been locked down due to a number of constructive circumstances. And, for a protracted whereas, virtually everybody arriving within the metropolis, together with residents, confronted a compulsory three-week lodge quarantine.
The bulletins on Thursday had been the federal government’s newest effort to rebuild Hong Kong’s cratered tourism trade. The town counted about 600,000 customer arrivals final yr, in contrast with greater than 65 million in 2018, the yr earlier than the protests started.
In 2020, Hong Kong paid a public relations agency about $6 million to assist it “reconnect with the world and relaunch as quickly as attainable,” as a senior official put it last year.
The federal government mentioned this week that its six-month airplane ticket giveaway, financed by a pandemic-era relief package, will initially goal vacationers from Southeast Asia and later these from the Chinese language mainland and different locales. The vast majority of the tickets will be offered by way of airways based mostly out of Hong Kong, together with Cathay Pacific, whereas others shall be given away by way of tourism-related companies.
Dino Chen, 26, who works in public relations in Hong Kong, mentioned that whereas she thought the marketing campaign might draw guests within the quick time period, the “unclear” ambiance within the metropolis’s political and cultural spheres helped make the general outlook for tourism unsure. (One instance: Earlier than Hong Kong’s long-awaited M+ contemporary art museum opened in 2021, pro-Beijing figures criticized items in its assortment as an insult to China and called for them to be banned.)
