In June 1793, the French lawyer and politician Pierre-Victurnien Vergniaud and 28 other Girondin leaders were placed under house arrest by Parisian insurgents allied with the Jacobins.
A prominent figure during the French Revolution, Vergniaud was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1791 and became president of the National Convention in 1793. Vergniaud initially sought to save King Louis XVI's life during his trial, but ultimately voted for the monarch's execution.
Vergniaud was later imprisoned, convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal, and beheaded (by guillotine) on October 31, 1793. Before his execution, Vergniaud uttered the sentence: “The Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its children” (La Révolution est comme Saturne, elle dévore ses enfants).
The French statesman's aphorism captured the essence of modern revolutionary movements which start out with the goal of liberating people from oppression, yet may turn violent and tyrannical themselves.
The German author Wolfgang Leonhard adapted Vergniaud’s adage into the title of his 1955 book “The Revolution Dismisses Its Children” (Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder). Born into a Communist family, he grew up in the Soviet Union and after World War II was sent to East Germany to help install Communist rule. However, he became disillusioned with the regime. In 1948, he fled to Yugoslavia and then West Germany, where he gained notoriety as an outspoken critic of Communism.
What is true of revolutionary upheavals applies to other regimes founded primarily on the use of violence to achieve political goals. Once a government is installed by force, and relies on force to perpetuate its rule, those who supported its rise to power may end up being purged or persecuted. As factional strife breaks out, there is no recourse to the law, public opinion, or elections.
A similar scenario is now playing out in Hong Kong, where civil rights and liberties have been undermined since the imposition of the National Security Law (NSL) by the Communist regime in Beijing in June 2020.
Read: The Rise and Decline of Hong Kong
On 19 March 2024, the Hong Kong government – now firmly in control of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) loyalists – passed the Safeguarding National Security law, also known as Article 23. The law criminalises acts of treason, insurrection and incitement to mutiny, theft of state secrets and espionage, sabotage, and external interference, with penalties up to life imprisonment.
One of the lawmakers who voted for the law was Paul Tse Wai-chun (謝偉俊), a solicitor and veteran pro-Beijing politician. Several days after he had enabled the Hong Kong authorities’ autocratic power grab, Tse took down his entire Facebook page for fear that his past remarks may have been “too sharp” (太尖銳) and might be misinterpreted.
He told Hong Kong media that he would delete “sensitive” (敏感) content, including a “Little Red Book Governing Hong Kong” post, fearing accusations of “inciting ethnic conflicts.” He also emphasised that he did not seek to “spread panic”, but wanted to prevent readers from seeing or sharing his posts, hence the need for careful handling as a lawyer.
In January 2024, Paul Tse had criticised the Hong Kong police’s heavy-handed law-enforcement approach. “Law enforcement agencies have been conducting high-profile operations characterized by an iron-fist approach, issuing parking penalty tickets day and night, deploying plainclothes police to catch jaywalkers, and shutting down bookstores and factory canteens continually,” Tse said.
He further complained that the government seemingly favoured people from mainland China who do not contribute to the city's tax revenue, instead of focusing on the welfare of Hong Kong taxpayers. Tse coined the phrase “The Little Red Book governs Hong Kong” (小紅書治港), a reference to mainland Chinese who voice criticism of Hong Kong on the popular Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book). Tse’s remarks implied that the Hong Kong government was beholden to Chinese netizens and was responsive to them in order to avoid their wrath.
Tse was quickly rebuked by the Beijing-installed Chief Executive of Hong Kong, John Lee Ka-chiu (Chinese: 李家超). “Such thinking is narrow-minded and dangerous,” Lee said. “We must not escalate minor conflicts into major ones, and should be cautious not to label situations that are not conflicts as conflicts.”
Lee added that Tse's remarks reminded him of the “black violence” during the 2019 pro-democracy protests. “Government policies take into account the overall interests of society, and cater to the needs of all social classes,” he stated, urging people to avoid spreading negative and false narratives that go against the principle of “patriots administering Hong Kong”.
The phrase “patriots administering Hong Kong” (愛國者治港) is a euphemism used by the government to describe people loyal to the CCP.
John Lee's warning to Paul Tse is a clear example of how Hong Kong’s authoritarian government works. By comparing Tse to the pro-democracy protesters of 2019-2020, Lee sent him a not so veiled warning that he, too, could be persecuted and imprisoned if he stepped out of line. Loyalists who for decades were free to speak their mind and participate in politics without fear of retaliation have handed power over to unaccountable autocrats that rule by force. And they themselves do not enjoy the protection of the law, the free press and electoral politics.
“Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,’” said Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong in a speech on November 6, 1938. That is Hong Kong’s new governing philosophy, courtesy of the CCP.
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- The Adventure of Urashima Taro
- Breeze of a Spring Evening and Other Stories
- Rags or Riches - A Hong Kong Novel
- Craven A and other Stories
- The Oil Vendor and the Queen of Flowers: A Tale From Ancient China
