One Country, One System

HONG KONG WAS S UPP OSED TO GOVERN ITSELF. SO MUCH FOR THAT

- IAIN MARLOW

One afternoon in early April, with the novel coronavirus racing around the world and China still more than a month away from imposing sweeping new security legislation on Hong Kong, Winnie Yu climbed into the cab of a battered white moving truck in Mong Kok, a working-class neighborhood in Kowloon. Wearing a khaki jacket over black pants and running shoes, she grabbed a seat crammed behind a rack that held a ladder, a toolbox, and several umbrellas. A 32-year-old nurse and labor activist, Yu was overseeing the relocation of the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, a new union of 20,000 medical workers, and I got in next to her for the ride. As the truck sped through one of the densest parts of one of the densest cities on Earth, it passed dilapidated apartment blocks, sidewalk fruit vendors, fluorescent-lit noodle shops, luxury watch stores, and HSBC branches. When it came to a stop beside a tower named, optimistically, Perfect Commercial Building, Yu and two friends jumped down and started unloading secondhand office furniture, maneuvering it into the tiny elevator.