The last vigil
Developments
- In Hong Kong, three people go on trial for holding candles and remembering the dead. The charge: “inciting subversion of state power.” The act: organizing annual vigils to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre—i.e., memory itself.
- A week ago, Trump threatened tariffs on eight NATO allies unless they agreed to sell Greenland. By Wednesday at Davos, he’d dropped them, pivoting to founding a Board of Peace meant to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza—by signing a document that doesn’t mention Gaza. In Brussels, the European Union moves to gut privacy laws it’s spent a decade building.
Features
- Can Europe save its auto industry? Sander Tordoir on how Chinese competition, American tariffs, and self-inflicted injury have put Europe’s carmakers on the brink.
- The post-Cold War economic order is crumbling—what’s taking its place? Nicholas Mulder on the forces behind the “phase shift” in the world economy.
Books
- Why is the Arctic so important? Mia Bennett & Klaus Dodds, Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic.
Music
- What’s Elefant Records?
- & New tracks from Lisasinson, Sunniva Lindgård, Lala Lala, Vial, & Juliana Barwick.
+ Weather report
- Snow from Kansas to Boston—and a cyclone gathering off Australia …
Developments
China by candlelight
On Thursday, Hong Kong’s High Court opened the trial of three former leaders of the group that, for 30 years, organized candlelight vigils to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Chow Hang-tung, Lee Cheuk-yan, and Albert Ho face charges of “inciting subversion of state power”—for holding candles and remembering the dead.
The vigils were the only large-scale public commemoration of June 4 anywhere in China. Tens of thousands gathered annually in Victoria Park. Beijing treats the date as taboo; Hong Kong, under “one country, two systems,” was supposed to be different. The vigils were legal until 2020, when authorities banned them, obliquely citing Covid-19. In 2021, under the National Security Law Beijing imposed after massive pro-democracy protests, police arrested the leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China—the organization that ran the vigils. The group disbanded. Authorities have held the defendants for over four years.
Now the trial. Lee and Chow pleaded not guilty. Ho pleaded guilty. Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director, said, “This case is not about national security—it is about rewriting history and punishing those who refuse to forget.”
The vigils are gone. The Alliance is gone. But Chow, Lee, and Ho are in the dock.
Why?
- Memory as subversion. The prosecution must establish that commemorating a massacre constitutes “inciting subversion.” The Alliance’s stated goal was never to overthrow Beijing—it called for China to accept responsibility for June 4 and embrace democratic reform. Its position was that the Chinese Communist Party should contest free elections, not be destroyed. But the National Security Law draws the line differently: Criticism of the party’s past conduct, if persistent and public enough, constitutes undermining state power. The trial tests whether memory itself is criminal.
- The arc since 2014. The vigil organizers’ prosecution is the endpoint of a sequence that began with the Umbrella Movement—when tens of thousands of Hong Kong students occupied the city’s busiest districts, demanding Beijing honor its pledges of greater democracy. CCP Chairman Xi Jinping, who had taken power two years earlier, saw things differently. The 2019 anti-extradition protests, the largest in Hong Kong’s history, broke the camel’s back. Beijing imposed the National Security Law in 2020. It shut down pro-democracy newspapers. State-owned enterprises bought up independent bookstores. Activists fled or got arrested. Self-censorship spread—people knowing they were watched, not saying things, not publishing. Hong Kong became, as Minxin Pei put it here in The Signal in 2021, “just another Chinese city.” The vigils were the last public act of collective memory. Now even that faces prosecution.
- The Lai precedent. Last month, a Hong Kong court convicted media tycoon Jimmy Lai of foreign collusion—the highest-profile National Security Law case yet. That verdict established the legal template; this trial follows it. The system now processes cases in sequence.
- The international signal. China pledged to the U.K. and the world that Hong Kong would remain untouched for 50 years. That pledge didn’t survive its halfway mark. The vigil prosecutions reinforce what the Lai conviction already demonstrated: Beijing will absorb Hong Kong on its own timeline, and international condemnation won’t alter the pace.
- The diaspora question. The National Security Law’s Article 38 claims jurisdiction over offenses committed anywhere in the world. Hong Kong police have issued arrest warrants for activists abroad. If organizing vigils in Hong Kong constitutes subversion, what about organizing them in London, Toronto, or Taipei?
- Who this is for. Authorities have already silenced the three defendants—holding them for four years, dissolving their organization. The prosecution isn’t primarily about them. It’s about everyone who might consider remembering publicly. Hong Kong residents who lit candles. Diaspora communities that held solidarity vigils abroad. Anyone who might think the space for dissent could reopen. The message: Even after the gatherings stop, the organizers face punishment. Memory has consequences.
The vigils weren’t protests against Beijing’s current policies—they were acts of remembrance for something that happened 37 years ago. The charge is subversion, not unlawful assembly. The Alliance’s goals, by its own account, were reformist, not revolutionary. But under the National Security Law’s logic, prosecutors can cast persistent public criticism of how the party has governed—including how it governed in 1989—as an attempt to undermine state power. If that theory holds, there’s no statute of limitations on dissent, and no safe way to remember what the party wants forgotten. Convict them, and the question becomes what precedent Hong Kong is setting—and for whom. … See “One country, one system.”
Meanwhile
- The crisis that wasn’t. On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened 10 percent tariffs on eight NATO allies unless they agreed to “the complete and total purchase of Greenland.” The European Union weighed €93 billion in retaliatory tariffs. The eight targets issued a joint statement: “We will not allow ourselves to be blackmailed.” By Wednesday, at Davos, Trump had dropped the threats. The two sides established a working group—though one defined by a “fundamental disagreement.” Copenhagen hasn’t budged. It was a 48-hour crisis that produced no tariffs, no agreement, no movement. … See “Cliffhanger,” “Breaking noise.”
- Signed, not settled. Also at Davos, Trump announced that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had agreed to “the framework of a future deal” on Greenland—and signed the founding charter of his “Board of Peace,” a body nominally created to oversee Gaza’s reconstruction. Both follow a familiar shape: announcements without substance, agreements without counterparties. Denmark didn’t attend the Greenland talks; Rutte said sovereignty never came up. The Board of Peace’s 11-page charter doesn’t mention Gaza. Trump will apparently chair it indefinitely, with the sole power to appoint and dismiss members. Permanent seats cost US$1 billion. Major Western allies declined. Trump invited Russia; Moscow neither declined nor signed. What either initiative actually accomplishes remains unclear. … See “Framework of a concept of ….”
- Brussels retreats. The European Commission has proposed legislation—the Digital Omnibus—that would weaken the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the AI Act, the European Union’s flagship data-protection and algorithmic-oversight laws. The proposal, now moving through the European Parliament, lets companies use personal data to train AI models as a “legitimate interest”—a carve-out major technology companies have lobbied for aggressively. It delays high-risk AI enforcement until 2027 and weakens safeguards on automated decision-making. The digital industry spent €151 million lobbying EU institutions over two years—a 34 percent increase. The Trump administration, in the meantime, has rolled back federal AI oversight and signaled it won’t enforce Biden-era data protections. Brussels appears to be following Washington’s lead.
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