Beijing is pushing ahead a proposal to overhaul Hong Kong’s electoral system and allow only “patriots” to govern the city, officials announced on March 4. Zhang Yesui, a spokesperson for China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, named the plan as the seventh on the agenda when the body convenes on Friday. Events from recent years show that Hong Kong’s electoral system needs “improvements” to “keep up with the times,” Zhang said, making an implicit reference to the months-long pro-democracy protests beginning in the summer of 2019 that opposed the regime’s growing encroachment. Chinese authorities have moved quickly over the last year to tighten control, imposing a national security law that punishes any activities it defines as secession, subversion, collusion with foreign forces, and terrorism. Signals of the latest move had surfaced as early as late January, when the country’s leader Xi Jinping stressed the importance of having only “patriots …