Word: draconianism
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...should know. I was on the Drafting Committee of the Basic Law in the late 1980s and fought?in vain?the introduction of potentially Draconian clauses, including Article 23. While the Basic Law was still being drawn up, the Tiananmen massacre took place. It was a time when Beijing's leaders were not even sure about their own future. They were fearful that Hong Kong?where more than a million people took to the streets in the runup to the June 4, 1989, killings?would become a center for subversion. So in the second draft of the Basic Law, they...
Lewis’ deanship, though, was anything but calm. Soon after taking office, he oversaw the consolidation of the Phillips Brooks House, angering many in Harvard’s social services community with his autocratic management style and draconian reforms. Lewis was the driving force behind the randomization of upper class housing, a move which has won plaudits from many, but which Lewis himself has said he suspects would be instantly overturned in a student referendum. Many of Lewis’ more minor reforms have also aroused the ire of the student body, most recently the ban on kegs...
...explained, students face a “1 a.m. choice” that occurs each weekend night when College-sanctioned room parties are shut down. With even Tommy’s House of Pizza forced to close its doors at 2 a.m. because of the draconian Cambridge Licensing Commission, most students find final clubs the only available option...
...Authoritarian regimes don't win many popularity contests, but their one selling point is an ability to control their citizens. Singapore ruthlessly nipped its SARS problem in the bud with draconian quarantine measures?one of the few times the island nation's authoritarian reflexes were cheered by the international community, which rewarded Singapore by keeping it off the World Health Organization's (WHO) travel advisory list. But instead of using its vast autocratic apparatus early on, Beijing's leaders lost key weeks in curbing the disease by pretending there was no problem. Now, China's central government is playing...
...Today, there are few living witnesses to the devastating effects of smoking opium, the resin of the same poppy plants from which heroin is derived. In the early 1950s, newly communist China took draconian steps to rid its population of addicts, but the vice lingered for another decade in the expatriate-Chinese communities of Southeast Asia. Thailand was the last place in the world with licensed opium dens. In 1959 those licenses were revoked; the Heng Lak Hung on Bangkok's Charoeng Krung Road?said to be the world's largest opium den, with more than 5,000 users...