From public health to political repression: COVID-19 lockdown measure in Hong Kong's opposition districts

Abstract

Repression comes with costs, such as reducing regime legitimacy and citizen conformity. The COVID-19 pandemic was an opportunity and a pretext for authoritarian regimes to repress their populations at a low cost. This paper examines the case of Hong Kong, where restriction-testing declarations (RTDs) were used as a lockdown measure to facilitate mandatory testing for the virus from January 2021 to September 2022. Despite the government's claim that RTDs were implemented for public health reasons, statistical analyses showed that Hong Kong districts that opposed the regime or those with a mobilization legacy were more likely to be subject to RTDs, with the opposition district effect present only when COVID-19 infections were low. These RTDs highlight the authoritarian regime's tradeoff in using a nonpolitical measure to achieve its political aims and illustrates the enduring impact of past election and mobilization activities on the choice of selective repression sites in Hong Kong.