Anyone who loves the unique culture of Hong Kong can sympathize with the demonstrators who are protesting the latest step in a long process of Hong Kong being absorbed by mainland China. The subjugation of Hong Kong to the full weight of the PRC’s oppressive legal system is like watching a beautiful flower being crushed by a tank — although international media scrutiny has so far forced the Chinese Communist Party to do this gradually rather than with the dramatic violence employed against the Tiananmen Square protesters three decades ago.

Many commentators have likened recent developments in China’s relations with the West to the rise of a new Iron Curtain that is increasingly dividing one-fifth of the world’s population from the digitally interconnected populations of the free world. Nothing more clearly symbolizes this trend that the Chinese Communist Party’s fundamental commitment to their so-called Great Firewall, built to isolate the population of China from foreign internet companies not subject to Chinese government control. At the core of the recent Hong Kong protests is the ambition of many Hong Kong residents to remain outside that rising wall of division between China and the free world.