On Monday, February 9, the final nail was hammered into the coffin of the freedom that for so long had made Hong Kong a unique territory in the Chinese world. Judges appointed by authorities loyal to Beijing imposed an exceptionally harsh sentence of 20 years in prison for pro-democracy activist and former media mogul Jimmy Lai.

During the two years of his trial, a conviction had seemed inevitable. The National Security Law, imposed more than five years ago to quell dissent against the Chinese regime, made him a prime target. He was one of the first arrested in August 2020, just one month after this new repressive legal order took effect.

Lai became the most emblematic victim of this takeover, a martyr of Hong Kong. He never sought to apologize for his criticism of the regime or for his contacts with Taiwanese democrats or American officials. A devout Catholic, he appeared to have come to terms with this outcome. Yet his 20-year sentence, at the age of 78, weighs even heavier on a city whose citizens each day measure how little political freedom remains: Its press has declined in quality, its most independent bookstores have closed, and university professors worry about what they can say in the classroom.

This fate mirrors that of several dissidents in mainland China, evidence, if any were needed, of the flattening of political differences inherited from history. Human rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2023; Uyghur intellectual Ilham Tohti to life imprisonment in 2014; and citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who dared to publish videos from Wuhan at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, to two consecutive four-year terms.

All are subject to a regime that has become increasingly harsh under Xi Jinping’s rule. From Beijing’s perspective, the operation in Hong Kong has been a success. After the 1997 handover of the former British colony to China, residents could for a time believe that respect for its distinctive traits – freedom of expression and protest, local elections – might serve as a showcase to persuade Taiwan to move closer to mainland China.

Instead, its subjugation became a demonstration of force. Since Xi imposed the National Security Law, critics have either fled to London or Taiwan, their voices quickly diminished by exile, or resigned themselves to silence.

Hong Kong is stable because it has been muzzled, and Xi has achieved his goal of merciless subjugation. The situation did not dissuade British Prime Minister Keir Starmer from traveling to Beijing and Shanghai at the end of January, while Donald Trump could make a visit in April.

Only the faintest hope remains: that the Chinese authorities might allow Lai to leave, in what could be a low-cost diplomatic gesture. Very few believe it could happen. China’s leaders feel they forced the American president to yield in the trade war in spring 2025, see the slump the United States is stuck in, and note Europe’s industrial difficulties. They are convinced that no one can lecture them anymore.