Four years on from the 2019 protests and unrest, Hong Kong was finally able to legally restrict the performance and distribution of the movement’s anthem Glory to Hong Kong – a move that its composer foresaw back in 2020. But why is the song controversial, and where did it come from? How did the government win at the appeals court? Was the song already illegal? And how did YouTube seek to comply with the legal ruling? HKFP examines how the government enacted the ban, and how a city – once a bulwark of free expression in Asia – came to insist that a song was a threat to China, the world’s secon…