How democracy was dismantled in Hong Kong in 2021

For Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, 2021 has been a year in which the city's authorities and the central government in Beijing stamped out nearly everything it had stood for.

Activists have fled abroad or been locked up under a draconian new National Security Law imposed on the city. Opposition voices have been driven out of the legislature.

Monuments commemorating China's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing in 1989 have been taken down.

And as the year neared its end Wednesday, a vocal pro-democracy media outlet closed following a police raid, silencing one of the last openly critical voices in the city.

The crackdown, which took root 18 months ago with the enactment of the National Security Law, played out this year as the world's two major powers, the United States and China, battled over democracy and good governance.