Commentary Hong Kong tastes the bitter fruit of China’s “whole-process people’s democracy.” The transition of Hong Kong’s democracy into a Chinese-run nightmare is painful to watch. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) is in the midst of being completely absorbed into communist China’s political system—despite the promises made by Beijing in 1997 that the city would be allowed to maintain its political autonomy “for fifty years” under a “one country, two systems” framework. Throughout the 1990s to the present, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been redefining the meaning of that framework in order to implement “lawful” communist political and social controls over Hong Kong. The framework concepts were captured in the Basic Law, which was passed by China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), in 1990, to include guarantees of a “high degree of autonomy” for “Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong.” All those high-minded promises made …