Hong Kong’s season of discontent began the same week an estimated 190,000 people turned out in Victoria Park to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the 3–4 June 1989 crackdown on student-led protests in Beijing and elsewhere in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Even though the Party-state has largely succeeded in excising the deadly suppression from the collective memory on the mainland, the events of 1989 are still lodged deep in the Hong Kong consciousness. Back then, a million Hong Kongers marched in solidarity with the mainland protestors and, after the deadly suppression, they helped smuggle activists out of China.

Thirty years on, Hong Kongers continue to turn out to the annual vigil, knowing they bear the moral weight of being the only people on Chinese soil who may openly remember this recent history.

Just five days after the 2019 commemoration, a million people congregated at the same spot to march against the extradition bill. It was a protest path — Victoria Park to the Legislative Council building in Admiralty — that became well-trodden over the following months by crowds that swelled to an estimated two million people at one point (for details of the protests, see Chapter 2 ‘Hong Kong’s Reckoning’, pp.51–67).

The massive protests were covered intensely by the international media. What received less coverage was the appearance that same week of a small volume that does much to explain Beijing’s response to the ongoing crisis in Hong Kong — a slim book printed by Hong Kong’s New Century Press 新世紀 called The Last Secret: The Final Documents from the June Fourth Crackdown