text:  I was at a gathering recently where I was answering questions from residents, and one of them said, Yuan, you sound like you're an optimist in the way that you talk about the future. And I thought about this, actually, and I think I am optimistic by personality, but I also think that my optimism, my hope for a renewal of British democracy comes from seeing the exact opposite, which is the rise of authoritarianism in China, the crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong in 2019 and onwards.