Hong Kong's crackdown on humor is not funny -- or a surprise

Stephen Vines is the author of "Defying the Dragon: Hong Kong and the World's Largest Dictatorship." He was previously a presenter for Radio Television Hong Kong and a columnist for Apple Daily.

Back in 2003, I was one of the founders of the Hong Kong satirical magazine Spike. We upset a lot of people, mainly in government and business, and entertained many others but never really thought of ourselves as canny foretellers of what was in store for the former British colony, which had been returned to Chinese rule just six years previously.

The cover of our first edition featured a photo of Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive, smiling as he tipped voting slips out of a ballot box. Into his mouth, we inserted the speech bubble, "We won't be needing these, then."

Below was the caption, "Tung's bold election plan."

We thought it was pretty funny at the time. Fast forward to last year, and a new election system was put in place, effectively demolishing the whole edifice of free and fair elections in the city. Dozens of opposition legislators and neighborhood council members have been arrested or have made a hasty exit from the territory.

What seemed like a joke about early moves to erode Hong Kong's freedoms has become a reality.

Two years ago, cartoonist Wong Kei-kwan, better known by his pen name Zunzi, told an interviewer, "Jokes can quickly pierce through all this and nail the lies."

Today his work is under fire from John Lee, Hong Kong's current chief executive, and the city's police force over newspaper cartoons described as "false" and "misleading." Lee, among the least popular officials in the city's previous administration, won his post earlier this year in a contest in which no other candidate was allowed to stand.

Being a satirist of any kind has become a dangerous business in Hong Kong.

At least four well-known practitioners of this ancient art of taunting the authorities with humor have fled. The popular television satire show "Headliner" was summarily cut from the schedules of public broadcaster RTHK two years ago after a satirical skit upset police. Five speech therapists were given 19-month prison terms for sedition last month after publishing children's books depicting rebellious sheep.

The popular RTHK satire program "Headliner" was canceled in 2020 after upsetting police: Parody has become a dangerous business in Hong Kong.   © Getty Images

And so it goes amid the continuing assault on Hong Kong's dwindling media freedom that has seen editors and media executives jailed and publications, including Apple Daily, forced out of business.

"Jokes can be very dangerous," Zunzi told his interviewer. This is hardly an understatement. Indeed, it is impossible to think of a single authoritarian regime that has taken kindly to having its leg pulled.

Consider how the Nazis hated Charlie Chaplin's mocking film "The Great Dictator." A more recent example comes from Vladimir Putin's Russia, where Siberian opponents of his regime were promptly arrested after launching a series of teddy bears and other toys gently mocking the regime.

It could be argued that authoritarians simply lack a sense of humor, or maybe it is a lack of self-awareness.

There is plenty of scope to support this notion. When Lee was preparing for his new role last April, he strained the boundaries of satire by saying: "Freedom of the press always exists in Hong Kong. I think there is no need to use the word 'defend' because it exists and we attach great importance to press freedom."

His statement had, of course, been preceded during his term as secretary of security by the arrests of journalists, police raids on newsrooms and the sacking of many critical voices from the industry,

But his ominous Orwellian denial of reality only goes so far in getting to the heart of why rulers of unfree societies fear humor.

They inhabit a world of insecurity and paranoia. Their only certainty is their ability to suppress dissent.

Satire presents authoritarians with a particular problem because it skirts around the barriers of open dissent. It may, from the rulers' point of view, be considered both insidious and subversive because mockery of the regime undermines the rulers' authority and, worse still, is likely to be popular.

Indeed, it can be said with confidence that in every single society where freedom of expression is suppressed, satire steps in both to ease the strain and to undermine the authorities.

Hong Kong, which revels in the dexterity of the Cantonese language, has a long tradition of mockery, but it is a newcomer to the grisly business of expunging free expression. The authorities seem to distrust the people and are anxious not to disappoint their bosses in Beijing.

Thus, they have a tendency to overact and seem incapable of not making themselves appear to be foolish. Earlier this month, an outdoor showing of the 2008 Batman film "Dark Knight" was banned on the grounds that it depicted excessive violence.

Cue for raucous laughter all round, as gratuitous violence is built into the DNA of local movies. So what was the real problem with the film?

It is unclear, but the movie was partly filmed in Hong Kong, so perhaps it contains images that are unacceptable to the regime, or maybe it has a problem with the Chinese characters in the movie. Because a lack of transparency marches hand in hand with ruthless suppression of dissent, it is hard to know what triggers the itchy fingers of the censors.

Looking back on the early days of the postcolonial regime when we launched Spike is to reflect on an age that seems far more distant than it is. The government led by the hapless Tung was feeling its way, but who back then could have predicted that Hong Kong would so easily slide into worrying comparisons with the likes of the regimes in Pyongyang and Moscow?