In this edition of American Thought Leaders, host Jan Jekielek speaks with Marion Smith, executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, about Hong Kong and what he calls a new Cold War. The conversation was recorded as Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests filled the streets, and it asks why a city once promised a high degree of autonomy found itself in open conflict with Beijing. Smith draws on the foundation’s work documenting communist regimes to place those events in a much longer history.
The interview explains how the Chinese Communist Party sought to extend its control over Hong Kong through legal pressure, political influence, and intimidation, despite the promises made when Britain handed the city back in 1997. Smith describes the protesters not as a fringe movement, but as ordinary Hong Kong residents defending freedoms of speech, assembly, and the rule of law that they feared were being taken away piece by piece.
For viewers, the value of this discussion is its framing: Hong Kong is presented not as a distant local dispute, but as a front line in a wider struggle between free societies and authoritarian power. Understanding what happened there, Smith argues, matters for Taiwan, for the United States, and for anyone who wants to know what communist rule looks like when it meets a free people.