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A Hong Kong court has banned a popular protest anthem deemed seditious by city authorities, raising concerns about civil liberties in the Chinese territory and putting pressure on US tech groups including Google and Meta to comply with increasingly stringent security regulations.
The territory’s appeal court on Wednesday granted a preliminary injunction sought by local officials to ban “Glory to Hong Kong”, which judges said could be used as a “weapon”. The song, composed in 2019, quickly gained popularity during citywide pro-democracy protests that year.
The ruling on Wednesday highlighted the growing operational challenges for foreign companies in the Asian financial hub, where the government is struggling to protect its international reputation in the wake of Beijing’s political crackdown, the imposition of a local security law and a lagging economic recovery.
Beijing responded to the anti-government protests by imposing a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, which included penalties of up to life imprisonment and had the effect of silencing dissent in the territory. School curricula have been overhauled, the city’s government has been reconstituted to include only “patriots” and leading dissidents and activists have been jailed or gone into exile.
Hong Kong’s government followed up in March by enacting its own tough local security legislation, which increased penalties and included crimes such as treason and theft of state secrets.
The composer “intended [‘Glory to Hong Kong’] to be a weapon, and so it had become”, the court’s ruling said. “It had been used as an impetus to propel the violent protests plaguing Hong Kong since 2019. It is powerful in arousing emotions among certain fractions of the society.”
The song’s lyrics include: “Break now the dawn, liberate our Hong Kong. In common breath: Revolution of our times!”, a reference to a popular protest slogan that has since been deemed seditious by local authorities.
Lin Jian, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said after the court ruling that it was necessary for the territory to fulfil its “responsibility of safeguarding national security and the dignity of the national anthem”.
The appeals court judgment on Wednesday clarified however that exemptions to the ban could be made for the “purposes of academic activity and news activity”.
Thirty-two YouTube links to variations of the song were included in the judgment. The Financial Times found that some of the links were still accessible locally following the ruling. The song is also available on iTunes, Spotify, X and Facebook.
Hong Kong authorities have repeatedly asked Google to amend its search results to rank the Chinese national anthem above “Glory to Hong Kong”, requests that Google has refused.
Google, YouTube’s parent company, said it was “reviewing the court’s judgment”. Meta, X, Apple and Spotify did not immediately respond.
Jeff Paine, managing director of the Asia Internet Coalition, which counts X, Apple, Spotify and Meta among its members, said the group was “assessing the implications . . . including how the injunction will be implemented [to] determine its impact on businesses”.
“We believe that a free and open internet is fundamental to the city’s ambitions to become an international technology and innovation hub,” Paine said in a statement.
“Glory to Hong Kong” topped local iTunes charts in June last year when the government first filed for a court injunction against it, as residents rushed to download and preserve copies of it. That request was denied in July, leading authorities to appeal against the decision.
The song has also been played in error at numerous international sporting events to represent Hong Kong athletes rather than “March of the Volunteers”, the Chinese national anthem, drawing condemnation from Hong Kong’s government. The city does not have its own official anthem.
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