The HK bookstore owners disappearing come to mind.

... Which is exactly how things have worked in mainland China before Xi, under Xi, and will continue to work after Xi.

Xi is not 'less liberal' then his predecessors because he started repressing Hong Kong the exact same way that they repressed the mainland. I mean, this sucks for Hong Kong, but it's not like the CCP had a sudden change of heart under him - it just took them a few years (And a bit of an anti-mainland movement) to start flexing their political muscle in Hong Kong.

While it is true that even under Hu, HK government was pressured to take orders from the mainland government, it is evident that the current regime is less tolerant to any democratic opinions. HK government is forced to implement the "National Anthem Law", and is planning (I believe still a rumor, but most likely the truth) to pass the controversial Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23.

At least during Hu's time there was still some minimum open channel (advocated by Chief Tsang) between the democrats and the mainland government. Now, there is none. There is no compromise on anything coming from mainland.

There is absolutely no flex under Xi's regime. I used to be quite pro-mainland myself, but in recent years I have switched my position after seeing how the mainland government is overreaching the One Country Two System.

"Hong Kong is being repressed" does not mean that Xi is meaningfully less liberal, overall.

How has Xi changed life for citizens of mainland China - the 99.5% of the population that does not live in Hong Kong? How has it become more authoritarian for them?

Every time I've asked this question, the answer has always involved Hong Kong - as if it is representative of China as a whole.

Nobody considers Puerto Rico to be representative of the rest of the United States, or Gibraltar to be representative of the rest of the United Kingdom. Hong Kong is, in a similar vein, a poor litmus test.

And they were released and allowed to tell their story.

If this incident happened any time before Xi, would the outcome have been the same?

Why registered a new account to comment on this? You can't be serious right? They told a story based on a script. Sorry, I cannot trust someone who just created a new account to make a comment like this.

I'm not asking you to trust me.

I'm asking you a question.

OP was saying that Xi is more liberal than his predecessors.

You said "Xi's regime is less liberal than ever."

So my question then is how would his predecessors handle the Hong Kong booksellers?

And they were released and allowed to tell their story.

If this incident happened any time before Xi, would the outcome have been the same?

They were released because the mainland government was forced to explain why the owners were arrested (but a lot of people believe they were kidnapped). In particular, one of the owners is a British citizen.

While pro-mainland argued that the owners were arrested lawfully, the truth is not.

> It was widely believed that the booksellers were detained in mainland China, and in February 2016 Guangdong provincial authorities confirmed that all five had been taken into custody in relation to an old traffic case involving Gui Minhai.

How could all five be detained in relation to an old traffic case? Most importantly, there was no evidence of these owners leaving HK, so how did they end up in China? All five of them? Plotting against mainland? Why would a traffic case warrant this kind of arrest? Let's face it, if this was a local traffic incident in U.S., there would be no manhunt at this scale.

So are you saying that Xi's predecessors would have handled the situation in a more "liberal manner?"