The novel coronavirus — which, after originating in China, has gone on to wreak havoc around the planet partly because of Beijing’s failure to promptly share all the information it had about the initial outbreak — is changing the way the world looks at China.

Beijing has been accused of shirking its obligations to the World Health Organization. It hasn’t helped its case lately by pushing internationally what Chinese patriots have applauded online as “wolf warrior diplomacy” (戰狼外交): a campaign of strident propaganda, trying to shift the blame and threatening to restrict exports of critical medical supplies.

Sensing mounting international opprobrium and fearing economic decoupling with major Western powers, the Chinese government appears to believe that it must act, and fast, to once again turn Hong Kong into its window onto the rest of the world. The territory already played something of that role during much of the Cold War, at least until China opened up to the West and mainland cities like Shanghai gained stature as world-class financial and commercial centers.

In the 1950s, a tacit quid pro quo developed between the British colonial government in Hong Kong and the Communists on the mainland: Beijing would let the British make money and not challenge or undermine their sovereignty over the city so long as they kept a lid on any anti-China activities there (including broadcasts by the United States Information Agency). After the British handed over the territory in 1997, the Chinese authorities have had to do by themselves the dirty job of suppressing any political opposition in Hong Kong.

The job has gotten more and more dirty over the years. Especially since, by now, Beijing’s goal doesn’t seem to be maintaining stability in the city so much as subjugating the place.

This week, that ambition has meant axing pan-dem leaders in Hong Kong. They, as mostly old-timers, have little influence over the newer and largely younger more militant pro-independence wing of the city’s pro-democracy movement. Yet people like the barrister Martin Lee, 81, and the media tycoon Jimmy Lai, 71, still command respect among the older generation. And Beijing sees them still as a potential fifth column for Western powers.

Also notable, just days before the arrests, Luo Huining, the head of the Central Liaison Office, called for new security laws to be passed under Article 23 of the Basic Law: Those would sharply curtail political freedoms in Hong Kong and put the city’s citizens firmly under the control of communist China.