'I am just Hong Kong': A city's fate in China's hands

The new national security laws, outlined at the annual session of China's legislature on Friday, will likely curtail some of the civil liberties that differentiate Hong Kong from the rest of the count

Hong Kong was born at the crossroad of empires, a hybrid of British and Chinese parentage. It may fade there, too.

This “barren rock,” as an envoy of Queen Victoria once called it, transformed into one of the world’s first truly global cities, a place where international finance has thrived as its people created a cultural identity all their own. Even the territory’s current political system is bound by a negotiated settlement, called “one country, two systems,” that, despite all odds and an inelegant moniker, seemed to work.

But this week, Hong Kong discovered the limits to the middle ground that it