Following a 2004 visit to the bright lights of Shanghai, columnist Peter Hitchens gloomily acknowledged that China, then approaching the zenith of its economic growth miracle, “proved that police states can also be prosperous”.
It led him to caution: “If the world discovers that liberty is an optional extra, rather than a necessity, how long will freedom last?”
Twenty years later, those words – and their implicit warning for the freedoms we take for granted, including religious practise – are, unfortunately, being born out both in Hong Kong and here in the West.
