Editor’s note for Thursday, October 29, 2020

My thoughts today:

Hong Kong’s national security law is getting teeth. The city’s police force plans to open “a new hotline for gathering national security-related intelligence from members of the public,” reports Hong Kong Free Press.

Also: Hong Kong will not grant bail to 19-year-old activist Tony Chung (鍾翰林 Zhōng Hànlín), a former organizer of pro-independence group Studentlocalism which shut down on June 30 just before the national security law went into effect. And yesterday, China’s Ministry of Justice has ordered lawyers to stop working for the 12 Hongkongers who were detained by the Chinese coast guard while trying to flee in a boat to Taiwan.

So it’s entirely unsurprising that the New York Times is moving its Asian headquarters from Hong Kong to Seoul, as reported in this interview with Korean news site Naver.

Meanwhile, in Zhejiang, the provincial government announced that a man “was caught by police for using VPN to browse Wikipedia,” tweets Tony Lin. He notes:

While using VPN has been deemed illegal in China, this is a rare case for the government to specifically disclose what the VPN is used for: reading wikipedia for research…[R]ecently there’s a surge of cases of individuals who are punished for using VPN.

David Paulk, an editor at state-owned Sixth Tone commented: “Censorship directive on this: Do not pursue. 😔” And indeed the Zhejiang government has deleted the announcement from its website.

Our NEXTChina online conference: Access Members can register for free for this year’s event by using the promo code NC20ACCESS. Click here to learn more and get tickets.

Our word of the day is profound adjustment in the international balance of power 国际力量对比深刻调整 guójì lìliàng duìbǐ shēnkè tiáozhěng.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief