On May 31, Zhou Fengsuo, a U.S.-based Chinese dissident and president of Humanitarian China, organized a virtual Tiananmen Square Massacre commemoration over Zoom. About 250 people, including participants from mainland China, joined the event. It included talks by Zhou and other student leaders of the 1989 democracy movement, the mothers of those killed in the crackdown, and survivors like Dong Shengkun, a Beijing resident who spent 17 years in prison for attempting to block troops from reaching Tiananmen Square. 

On June 9, on the anniversary of the anti-extradition bill protest that drew one million people and kicked off Hong Kong’s protest movement last year, several hundred protesters marched the streets of Hong Kong with their cellphone flashlights flickering in defiance of the government’s coronavirus restrictions.

Unlike a year ago, police no longer sign off on scheduled protests—deeming them illegal from the start—and quickly begin to search protesters, fire pepper spray, and disperse the small crowds. 

Despite a ban on Hong Kong’s annual vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, thousands of demonstrators streamed into Hong Kong’s Victoria Park to mark the anniversary Thursday. Separate groups also gathered in neighborhoods around the city, in churches, and outside metro stations. 

Rather than extinguish the memory of the Chinese government’s crackdown on peaceful democracy protesters 31 years ago, the ban only seemed to provide more reason to remember.

When Hong Kong’s democracy protesters waved American flags last November to thank the U.S. government for passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, they knew the bill was a double-edged sword: It requires the United States to assess annually whether Hong Kong has enough autonomy to continue receiving preferential trade benefits. This punishes China for encroaching on Hong Kong and breaking its promise to give the territory a “high degree of autonomy” for 50 years.

Crossing the border between mainland China and Hong Kong has always illuminated stark differences. On one side, the internet is censored, any dissent could lead to imprisonment, unregistered churches meet quietly, and the Chinese Communist Party rules with an iron fist. On the other, people access a free internet, protest for their freedoms, worship freely, vote for some of their lawmakers, and have long enjoyed one of the world’s freest economies.

In Wolf Warrior 2, the 2017 Chinese blockbuster that became the country’s highest-grossing film of all time, a former special ops soldier in Africa defeats Western mercenaries, rescues trapped factory workers, and protects the vaccine for the Ebola-like “Lamanla” virus that a Chinese doctor discovered.

In April, videos and images of African migrants facing discrimination in the southern port city of Guangzhou began flooding social media. In one, a Chinese official shows up at an African man’s apartment and forces him and his family to undergo a mandatory quarantine, even though his Chinese neighbors are allowed to move about freely. In another, a man holds up a notice at a Guangzhou McDonald’s that bans black people from entering the restaurant.