Top Quotes: “City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong” — Antony Dapiran

Introduction

“By creating a scene of violence and chaos, tear gas works to objectify the crowd, turning it from a group of human beings into a seething, writhing mass. Tear gas also helps to turn a protest into a riot – and therefore makes it a legitimate target for further state violence.

Understanding this perhaps helps to explain why Hong Kong police deployed so much tear gas on the citizens of the city in the course of 2019, often when the crowd was not violent, not charging police lines – sometimes even when the streets were totally empty. It helped to justify the police’s own actions: ordered to deploy force against the people, tear gassing those people turned them from fellow Hong Kong citizens, with whom they might sympathise, into an objectified other, into criminals.”

“On 28 September 2014, in the event that prompted the beginning of the Umbrella Movement occupation, Hong Kong police fired eighty-seven tear gas shells at the crowds. It was the first time that tear gas had been used against Hong Kong people in almost fifty years, and it would be the only occasion in the course of those protests on which tear gas was used, such was the public outrage it provoked.

On 12 June 2019, the first occasion on which police fired tear gas during that year’s protests, they fired over fifty rounds. During the day that saw the siege of Chinese University in November, police fired over 2,330 rounds in the course of a single day, approaching two rounds for every single minute of the day.

By the end of 2019, over the course of seven months, Hong Kong police had fired over 16,000 rounds of tear gas onto the streets of Hong Kong.”

“The extradition bill, unlike the high-speed rail station, offered no benefits to Hong Kongers. It was a decision made apparently to the detriment of Hong Kong people and entirely in the interests of Beijing. For this reason, many suspected Lam was doing it at Beijing’s behest. Lam, and Beijing, both insisted otherwise. ‘The central government gave no instruction, no order about making this amendment, Chinas ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, told the BBC. ‘This amendment was initiated by the Hong Kong government.”

But while Lam’s plan was not instigated by Beijing, they surely welcomed it. Hong Kong had long been a haven for corrupt officials and businessmen from the mainland and their ill-gotten gains, as well as a refuge for political dissidents who continued to be a thorn in Beijing’s side. Tiananmen exile Han Dongfang, for example, had been based in the city since 1993, operating China Labour Bulletin, an NGO advocating for labour rights in the mainland. Yet Lam ignored the obvious warning signs. Public concerns about mainland security agents on Hong Kong soil inside the high-speed rail station were one thing, but nerves in Hong Kong had also been rattled by two other recent and dramatic cases.

In the first case, five men associated with Causeway Bay Books mysteriously disappeared between October and December 2015. The bookstore and its owner, publisher Mighty Current Media, specialised in books on Chinese politics, in particular salacious accounts of the private lives of China’s leaders, which were banned on the mainland but extremely popular with mainland visitors to Hong Kong. One of the five booksellers, Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, was abducted from his holiday home in Pattaya, Thailand, while another, UK citizen Lee Bo, disappeared off the streets of Hong Kong after making a book delivery in a remote district on Hong Kong Island.

All five later emerged in custody in the mainland, and were said to be under investigation, variously in connection with a ten-year-old hit-and-run traffic offence allegedly committed by Gui or for selling banned books illegally by mail order into the mainland, and appeared in televised confessions. (Opponents of the extradition bill were quick to point out that Gui would likely have been extradited under the proposed law, notwithstanding the various checks and balances, since his traffic offence was not political and also met the dual criminality requirement.) Mainland investigators demanded that the booksellers hand over the records of their mainland-based customers.

Speaking in June 2017, shortly before she assumed office as chief executive, Carrie Lam was hardly reassuring when, in response to a question about the missing booksellers, she said, “It would not be appropriate for us to go into the mainland or to challenge what happens on the mainland. That has to be dealt with in accordance with the mainland systems.””

“Given the awkward publicity these cases had attracted, the prospect of having a legitimate channel through which to bring these fugitives back to the mainland to face trial without having to resort to kidnapping was surely appealing to Beijing. Indeed, Reuters reported in December 2019 that frustrations in the wake of the Xiao case had led the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful anti-corruption body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, or CCDI, to push for just such an extradition mechanism. The revelation undercut the narratives from both Lam and Beijing that the extradition bill was entirely of Lam’s devising, and that Poon’s murder was the primary motivation. Yet it remained the case that the murder would provide the political pretext for fulfilling the CCDI’s long-held wish.”

“To be sure, there were other options besides Lam’s proposal. Instead of amending the law on fugitives, the government could have chosen to amend the law on offences to the person, giving the Hong Kong courts jurisdiction over murders committed outside Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Bar Association suggested that a one-off ad-hoc agreement could be reached with Taiwan with respect to the Chan case. Chan could also have been persuaded to surrender himself to the Taiwanese authorities – something he might have been prepared to do in exchange for Taiwanese prosecutors agreeing to waive the death penalty for his case.

Nevertheless, the government dismissed all of these options, instead attempting to amend its proposal to make it more palatable to the business community. Nine white-collar crimes were removed from the list of forty-six extraditable offences, and the threshold required for extradition was increased such that it applied only to offences punishable by three years in prison, instead of the previous one year. Bribery, however, remained on the still-broad list, as did aiding and abetting any of the listed offences. The proposed bill was introduced into the legislature at the beginning of April 2019.”

“Then came two dramatic interventions from outside Hong Kong. First, Taiwan stepped in and undercut Lam’s rationale for the bill by announcing that it would not seek Chan’s extradition even if the bill passed, citing potential threats to the safety of Taiwanese citizens travelling to Hong Kong if the law came into effect.

Then, on 17 May, Beijing’s representatives in Hong Kong summoned over 200 pro-Beijing business and political leaders to a meeting to request their backing, and Vice-Premier Han Zheng as well as another Politburo Standing Committee member, Wang Yang, spoke publicly in support of the bill. As another Liberal Party leader, Michael Tien, said afterwards, “If you do business in China, although you may have worries, when the absolute top leader asks for your support, what do you say?’”?

With Beijing’s support secured, Lam pressed ahead, scheduling the second reading debate of the bill for Wednesday 12 June.

Yet momentum was continuing to build against the bill. The normally conservative Law Society, representing the city’s solicitors – the branch of the legal profession with more direct exposure to mainland business interests than the barristers represented by the Bar Association – made a statement calling for the bill to be delayed to enable further consultations. Foreign chambers of commerce began to voice their concerns about the bill and the truncated legislative process. They, and foreign governments, had become alarmed when they realised that the extradition bill would apply not only to the thousands of their members and citizens resident in Hong Kong, but also to anyone passing through Hong Kong.”

“The Hong Kong people had some reason to expect that their will would be respected: they had in mind a spedic histonical precedent. In 2003, a protest march held in strikingly similar circumstances had ended in victory for tibe protesters and, ultimately, the resignation of a chief executive.

Hong Kong in 2003 was in a parlous state. Already battered by the Asian financial crisis, the bursting of the dotcom bubble, and the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Hong Kong from November 2002 through mid-2003 found itself at the epicentre of a global health epidemic when Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) struck. In Hong Kong 299 people died, and the ensuing panic devastated the local economy, with tourism particularly hard hit. The property market – already spooked by an ill-considered government plan to increase dramatically the supply of affordable housing – collapsed, and unemployment in Hong Kong rose to a historically high level of 8.3 per cent as an ailing economy led to pay cuts and layoffs.

It was into this environment that the chief executive, Tung Chee Hwa, proposed a controversial new law. Article 23 of the Basic Law required the Hong Kong government to enact legislation to ‘prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition or subversion against the Central People’s Government.’ Six years after the handover, the legislation had still not been enacted, and Tung, perhaps under pressure from Beijing, decided it was time to act. Indeed, it seems likely that, just as Lam was responding to a brief from Beijing to support Chairman Xi’s anti-graft campaign, Tung was responding to a brief from then-president Jiang Zemin, who was pursuing a campaign against the Falun Gong religious sect. Banned on the mainland, where they were considered a subversive cult, the Falun Gong operated freely in Hong Kong.

Tung’s secretary for security, Regina Ip, led the initiative to enact the Article 23 anti-sedition law, and proposed a heavy-handed law that would have significantly curtailed freedoms in Hong Kong, including by criminalising ‘the publication or possession of seditious publications, and attempting or conspiring to intimidate or overthrow the People’s Republic of China government or resist the [PRC government] in its exercise of sovereignty over a part of the PRC’. The government also proposed that those laws would apply to any act committed by a Hong Kong permanent resident overseas.

A new civil society umbrella organisation, the Civil Human Rights Front, was formed, with its membership consisting of civil society groups across Hong Kong, from pan-democrat political parties, to unions, to religious associations. The group coordinated activists’ efforts to oppose the Article 23 law, and organised a major protest march against the bill.

On 1 July, the public holiday that commemorates the anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to PRC sovereignty, the front page of the anti-establishment Apple Daily newspaper screamed, in huge red characters, ‘Take to the streets! See you there!’

The Hong Kong Observatory issued its ‘hot weather’ warning that day with temperatures climbing to 32 degrees Celsius by early afternoon, when the march was due to commence. It quickly became clear that people would not be deterred by the heat: over 500,000 answered the call to march against the Article 23 law.”

“Tung continued to be unpopular, overseeing continuing policy missteps and a still-faltering economy. As a result, 1 July 2004 again saw a significant turnout of protesters demanding Tung’s resignation. He finally resigned the following March, two years before his term was due to end, citing personal reasons.

It is worth reflecting that the victory of the 2003 protests directly enabled the 2019 protests to develop in the manner in which they did. The draft Article 23 law covered, among other offences, the commission of ‘violent public disorder that would seriously endanger the stability of the People’s Republic of China,’ as well as an attempt to commit sedition or secession by ‘serious criminal means,’ which was defined to include causing serious injury, seriously endangering the health or safety of the public, causing serious damage to property, or ‘seriously interfering with or disrupting an essential service or facility.’ It is highly likely that acts committed by some of the more radical protesters during the course of the. 2019 protests – such as throwing petrol bombs, vandalising property, and disrupting the MTR system – would have been caught by these provisions had they become law.”

The Umbrella Movement

“Towards the end of the evening, the Civil Human Rights Front, which – as it had in 2003 – organised the march, announced that one million people had joined, double the number in 2003 and, at that time, the largest protest march in Hong Kong’s post-handover history. Surely the government could not ignore their voices?”

“To avold being accused of organising an unlawful assembly, protest organisers encouraged people to come ‘star gazing’ in Tamar Park on Tuesday night, and to picnic in the park on Wednesday.”

“The Umbrella Movement of 2014 had been, at the time, the high point of Hong Kongs long history of civil disobedience: a seventy-nine-day occupation-style protest that brought the city to a standstill.

The background to that movement lay in Beijing’s promise to Hong Kong of democratisation, in particular implementing universal suffrage for selecting the chief executive, the post-handover equivalent of the territory’s governor.”

“Under the current method for selecting Hong Kong’s chief executive, put in place in 2012, an election committee of 1,200 representatives drawn from various industry, business, social, and special-interest groups nominates candidates. The composition of the committee is such that it is dominated by pro-Beijing loyalists.”

“Hong Kongers had long held out hope that this would change. The Basic Law promised in Article 45 that the ‘ultimate aim’ was that the chief executive would be selected by way of universal suffrage.”

“In 2007, ten years after the handover and after years of pressure from Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists, Beijing finally issued a ruling that universal suffrage would be implemented for the selection of the chief executive in 2017. That answered the question of ‘when’. As to the question of how, Beijing announced that it would provide further details of the exact mechanism of universal suffrage in 2014.

A key question in the minds of Hong Kong’s pan-democrat politicians was how candidates for that election would be nominated. They had hoped for a mechanism for civil nomination, whereby any member of the community could be nominated as a candidate to participate in the election. The democrats recognised that, as long as candidates could only be put forward by a Beijing-controlled nominating committee, none of their own would ever be able to run.

In an attempt to place further pressure on the government, a hitherto little-known academic, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong, came up with a plan. In January 2013, he published a column in the Hong Kong Economic Journal newspaper proposing that, if Beijing’s electoral reforms did not meet expectations, there should be an act of civil disobedience to protest. Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, Tai called his plan ‘Occupy Central.’

It would be an act of nonviolent resistance, a sit-in of thousands of citizens in Hong Kong’s Central financial district, bringing commerce in the city to a standstill until the government met their demands. Tai, together with his collaborators, Chan Kin-man, a Chinese University of Hong Kong academic, and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, a Baptist minister – who collectively came to be known as the ‘Occupy Trio’ – formed a group called Occupy Central With Love and Peace to organise their protest.”

“When China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, finally announced the electoral reforms it would permit Hong Kong in a decision of 31 August 2014, it was unsurprisingly a disappointment to Hong Kong’s democrats.

Beijing proposed that the following mechanism be adopted for the election of Hong Kong’s next chief executive:

• A nominating committee would be formed, similar to the current election committee.
• The nominating committee could nominate only two or three candidates (more candidates than that would confuse voters, said Beijing officials).
• Each candidate had to receive the endorsement of more than half of the nominating committee (a higher bar than the existing 150 out of 1,200 members of the election committee required for nomination).
• All eligible Hong Kong electors could then vote to elect one of the candidates as chief executive.

It was a process clearly designed to ensure that only Beijing-endorsed candidates could run for the office.”

“In 2011, Leung’s administration had proposed a compulsory ‘moral and national education’ curriculum to be rolled out in Hong Kong’s schools. The patriotic education program was intended to help young Hong Kongers to meet Beijing’s exhortation to love the motherland and love Hong Kong, but many parents, teachers, and students were alarmed at what they saw as an attempt to brainwash Hong Kong schoolchildren with biased pro-Beijing information. Wong, just fourteen years old at the time, founded Scholarism to lead a protest campaign against the plan, with the support of a parents’ group, the National Education Parents’ Concern Group, and the Professional Teachers Union. The group staged mass protests and a hunger strike outside the government headquarters in Admiralty. In 2012, in a major victory for Wong, Scholarism, and political protest in Hong Kong, Leung’s government was forced to withdraw the proposal.

Now, as the city prepared for the Occupy Central protests in 2014, Wong was back in the limelight leading Scholarism, its membership primarily comprising high school students, alongside the university students of the HKFS. The students’ week of protest culminated on the night of Friday 26 September, when a group of students led by Wong and HKFS leader Lester Shum scaled the fence of Civic Square outside government headquarters – the site of Scholarism’s successful protest against the national education curriculum two years earlier – and began a sit-in. The sit-in carried on throughout the day and into Saturday night, the crowds growing even larger as many members of the local community came down to support the students.

On the morning of Sunday 28 September, as the scale of the protests grew and moved into their third day, Benny Tai announced what many had already recog-nised was the reality: Occupy Central had begun.”

“The crowds continued to push up against the police line, attempting to join their fellow protesters on the other side of the barriers. Police repelled them with pepper spray, and then, when that had no effect, they fired tear gas. Through the rolling clouds of gas, a man emerged, defiantly holding two tattered umbrellas aloft. His image was captured by press photographers, and he soon became the movement’s icon: Umbrella Man.

Hong Kongers watching the events unfold on live television were outraged. This was a level of police violence not seen in Hong Kong since anti-colonial government riots in 1967, and seemed far disproportionate to the actions of the crowds, who were armed only with umbrellas and cling film. As a result, more protesters flocked to the site. By evening, contrary to police expectations, the crowds in Admiralty were getting larger, not dispersing. At the same time, spontaneous occupations of streets broke out in other key locations in the city: the Causeway Bay shopping district, the tourist hub of Tsim Sha Tsui, and the working-class Mong Kok district. After midnight, the police retreated, ceding the streets to the protesters.

It later emerged that the police withdrawal was at the express orders of chief executive C.Y. Leung. In the subsequent days, as the government attempted to soothe community anger by announcing that the riot police had been withdrawn, daily protests continued, with massive crowds gathering, easily numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The protests rapidly developed into a full-scale occupation, with tent cities springing up in the three occupied zones of Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong Kok, blocking many kilometres of the main arterial roads of the city. A tent census at the peak of the occupation recorded over 2,000 tents in Admiralty alone (with hundreds more in the Mong Kok and Causeway Bay occupied zones). An infrastructure grew around these encampments, with supply stations providing necessities, from food and water, to first-aid and personal-care supplies, to camping equipment.”

“The Umbrella Movement established the respective colours of the two opposing sides of the political divide in Hong Kong. The protesters adopted the yellow ribbon as the symbol of their movement, and yellow became the colour representing their cause, with yellow umbrellas a particularly popular item. In response, those allied with the government and police began wearing blue ribbons to express their support. By 2019, ‘yellow’ and ‘blue’ had become established shorthand to describe pro-democracy and pro-government/pro-police sympathies, respectively.

The Hong Kong protesters’ greatest public victory in 2014 came almost a month into the protests on 21 October, when the government agreed to participate in a televised debate with student leaders. This recognition of their status as equal interlocutors with the government immediately gave the protesters and their movement legitimacy, and the opportunity to argue their case directly to both the government and the people. Big screens were set up in the protest zones on the night of the debate, and large crowds gathered to watch and cheer on the students.

The government team was led by then chief secretary Carrie Lam, tight-lipped and unsmiling alongside the secretaries for justice and constitutional affairs, as well as two other officials. On the students’ side of the table, Chow and Shum led a delegation of five members of the HKFS in their signature black T-shirts. The contrast between the two sides of the table was striking. The five government representatives, all but one of whom had never faced an election in their lives, were wooden and mechanical, putting in a performance that did nothing to ameliorate the public perception of a government out of touch with its people. All of the student leaders, on the other hand, had earned their place at the table through student union elections, and spoke with passion, conviction, and even humour.”

“The debate ended in deadlock, with Shum summing the protesters’ views in his closing remarks: ‘Now the government is only telling us to pack up and go home. The whole generation, awakened by tear gas, cannot accept this. We are the generation chosen by the times. I think the same applies to you – you are the officials chosen by the times. Can you be responsible? Or will you be the ones that kill our political future …?’

There were no further talks, and the occupation stretched into November, with little progress made in reaching a resolution. C.Y. Leung refused any further dialogue or compromise, and his disdain for the people’s will could not have been clearer than when he told media that if the city introduced universal suffrage, elections would be ‘entirely a numbers game’ in which politicians would be forced to ‘be talking to the half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than US$1,800 a month’, rather than, presumably, just the pro-Beijing business elites to whom he owed his position. In the meantime, the student leaders began to lose direction and momentum. Their control of the Admiralty main stage was not uncontroversial, as other protesters complained that the leaders’ and their marshals’ control over who could speak from the main stage was undemocratic, verging on dictatorial. Things came to a head when a group of more radical protesters from the anarchic Mong Kok-occupied site visited Admiralty in an abortive attempted to tear down the main stage. By mid-November, time finally seemed to be running out for the protesters: a number of taxi and minibus companies successfully took action in the Hong Kong High Court to obtain injunctions requiring protesters to clear blockaded roads in the occupied areas, and authorising bailiffs to request police to assist in enforcing the injunctions.

At the end of November, police supported bailiffs in executing the injunction against the Mong Kok protest site along Nathan Road, and the site was cleared. A week later, on 9 December, at the end of a routine police press conference, a police spokesman announced that the Admiralty protest site would be cleared on the Thursday of that week, ‘to reopen the blocked roads so that the general public can resume their normal daily lives.’

This was the end.

Thousands turned out at the main Admiralty protest site for what would be the last night in Umbrella Square.

It was a night for nostalgia. Visitors posed for photographs and collected keepsakes. Parents brought their children, one telling me, ‘I want them to see this, and remember it, so they know what Hong Kongers are capable of.’ Meanwhile, village residents started the process of packing up, removing supplies and dismantling tents.

Late in the night, archivists begin dismantling the Lennon Wall, photographing it section by section, and then each colourful Post-it Note was carefully removed, collated, and stored in archive boxes. The following day, police and government contractors moved in to clear the main Umbrella Square site. They worked their way through the protest zone, dismantling tents, tearing down banners and posters, heaping all of the debris into piles. Dump trucks and cleaners followed behind the police, sweeping everything up.

By nightfall, the kilometre-long stretch of the highway that had been home to the protesters for seventy-five days had been swept clean, and traffic flowed where rows of colourful tents, banners, and handmade wooden furniture had stood only hours earlier. With the clearance of the small remaining protest site in the Causeway Bay shopping district a few days later, the Umbrella Movement was over.

On that final night of the Umbrella Movement in Admiralty, as most posters and banners were being taken down, a few new ones were going up: ‘We will be back!’ they read. It became a refrain on that last day, chanted by a few hold-outs as they staged a sit-in, their symbolic final act of nonviolent resistance, and awaited arrest.”

The 2019 Protests

“Unlike during the Umbrella Movement, the protesters had two advantages that increased their chances of success. In 2014, they were trying to push the government to adopt a genuinely democratic means of electing the territory’s chief executive – although specifically which model of genuine democracy, the protesters could not quite agree upon. In 2019, their request was simple: they wanted the government to drop the extradition law. And it is a truism in politics that it is easier to oppose than propose.

The protesters knew that if LegCo were allowed to meet, the pro-Beijing majority would push the bill through. Their protest was the only way the bill could be stopped. Tens of thousands of protesters completely surrounded the government headquarters and LegCo building, chanting, ‘Cit wui! Cit wui!’ (‘Withdraw!’)”

“As I looked around the crowd, the scene felt reminiscent of the Umbrella Movement, but there was one clear difference: there was no main stage, there was no one with a megaphone directing proceedings, there were no leaders. This seemed to be a sensible decision, given that, at the same moment we stood on that street, the leaders who had stood on the main stage here five years before – Joshua Wong of Scholarism, Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man of the Occupy Trio, and Shiu Ka-chun, who had been the master of ceremonies of the main stage – were sitting in jail for their role in inciting those protests. The HKFS’s Lester Shum and Alex Chow had also served jail sentences. And yet, if there were no leaders, how did we all come to be here? Where did those supply stations come from? It was as if the lessons of the Umbrella Movement had been built into the collective muscle memory of the city: all it took was a flex, and all of the tactics and infrastructure, the shape of protest as a way of being, unconsciously emerged.”

“This mortality-obsessed theme would continue throughout the summer of 2019, and made a sharp contrast to 2014's Umbrella Movement, which was an exuberant affair. At the main Admiralty-occupied site of the Umbrella Movement, rainbow rows of coloured tents had lined the roads, while cultural expression flourished – every available surface, from walls to footpaths, bridges to traffic barriers, was plastered in banners, posters, flyers, chalk drawings, Post-it Notes, and sculptures.

The mood at weekends felt like a community arts festival: the main stage hosted guest speakers, movie screenings, and performances, and thousands flocked with their families to visit on the sunny autumn afternoons. Musicians played impromptu gigs, dancers performed routines, and there was an array of other events: portrait-sketching, leather work, weaving, origami. Volunteers gave public lectures, and there were discussion groups and nightly ‘sharing sessions’ where people gathered to discuss the unfolding events.

The infrastructure in what came to be called Harcourt Village developed by the day, as carpenters built increasingly sophisticated staircases over cement road barriers, and makeshift shower tents were set up. And, of course, there was the Homework Zone, which began when a volunteer carpenter hammered together some planks to make a few desks over a traffic barrier so that student protesters would have a more comfortable place to study. From there it grew, every day more furniture being constructed – desks, benches, and bookshelves.

Marquees were pitched above the desks to protect students from the elements. Then carpet was laid down, and a diesel generator installed, which enabled lighting for night-time study sessions and free wi-fi. Volunteers provided tutoring, with signs out front advising which tutors were on duty, as well as politely requesting onlookers to avoid photographing students to protect their identities.

The Umbrella Movement quickly fostered what felt like an unprecedented sense of community in a city not previously reputed for its humanitarianism. Protesters and supporters donated water, food, and camping supplies, established first-aid stations and lending libraries, and collected rubbish and sorted it for recycling. The public bathrooms were regularly cleaned by volunteers and equipped with a comprehensive selection of toiletries. This self-regulating society became a mini-utopia, reflecting the hopes of the Umbrella Movement itself, agitating for a more perfect democracy for Hong Kong.

The demonstrations of 2019, by contrast, would reflect a feeling of desperation, as demonstrators said they were fighting for the very life of the city, and a sense of mortality would hang over those summer days. Far from the utopian ideals of the Umbrella Movement, demonstrators were battling what they saw as their city sliding into a nightmare of police brutality, arbitrary detention, and extrajudicial punishment. Raymond Chan, a pro-democracy lawmaker, summed up the prevailing sentiment when he told me, ‘If we lose, it may be the end of Hong Kong as we know it.”

“Death was something that protesters now appeared willing to contemplate. Some reportedly even put their last will and testament in their backpacks when they prepared to go to the frontline. On the side of a volunteer first-aider’s helmet during one protest, I read the following chilling message, written in neat black felt-tip pen: ‘Do NOT resuscitate if severely wounded and unresponsive. Handwritten will in pocket.’

Following that first tragic death at Pacific Place on 15 June, more suicides would follow; some left messages supporting the protests before leaping to their deaths.

And as the summer unfolded, the levels of violence would spiral to deadly new levels.”

“Organisers put the final figure at two million people, plus a symbolic one for the fallen protester of the night before; police said the march totalled 338,000 people at its peak, but also acknowledged that their count only covered one route, not the four other roads down which the densely packed crowds also marched. With the participation level reaching over one-quarter of the population, it seemed remarkable that Carrie Lam had succeeded in inciting a level of anger and anxiety in Hong Kongers not seen since 1989, when over 1.5 million residents marched in support of the students in Tiananmen Square.

Yet it should not have been a surprise. There was a reason why this issue galvanised public opinion and provoked a response like no other in recent years, a reason connected with a deep sense of Hong Kong identity.

In the past, Hong Kong had distinguished itself on the basis of its wealth: for decades, its people were rich compared to those of China, which from the late 1970s began struggling to lift itself out of poverty. Many Hong Kongers have memories of going to visit cousins in the mainland in the 1980s, bearing gifts of the latest-model rice cooker, or a television set. However, over the twenty years since the handover from the UK to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, as Hong Kong’s economy drifted and China’s boomed, that distinction failed to hold. Indeed, their respective positions reversed, as the Hong Kong economy increasingly relied on the mainland, whether that was mainland tourists staying in Hong Kong’s hotels and shopping in its luxury boutiques, or mainland companies raising funds on the city’s stock exchange and keeping legions of professional-service providers profitably occupied.

As a result, Hong Kongers replaced their pride in material success with a pride in Hong Kong core values, those rights and freedoms that distinguished life in Hong Kong from the rest of China. The concept of Hong Kong core values was first articulated by a group of pro-democracy scholars and politicians in 2004, initially to raise alarm at the prospect that those values were being lost.

However, the concept was soon co-opted by the government and more widely across Hong Kong society to articulate Hong Kong’s competitive advantage vis-a-vis the rest of China, and indeed much of the rest of Asia.”

“Leaving a blockaded Harcourt Road in their wake, with a few dozen protesters sheltering from the midday sun in the shadow of the overhead pedestrian bridges, the protesters split into several groups. One large group encircled the nearby police headquarters building, and began a siege that would last until late into the night. A number of smaller groups splintered off to carry out targeted wildcat occupations of other government facilities: the taxation and immigration department headquarters in Wanchai, and another key government office building in Admiralty. In each case, they arrived at the buildings in groups of only a few hundred, blocking all entrances, and flooding the escalators and lift lobbies, until the government declared the office closed and dismissed staff for the day. With their objective achieved, the protesters immediately dispersed and moved on to their next target. ‘Be water!’

In eschewing the fixed, immobile occupation strategies of the past in favour of this highly mobile, agile style of protest, the Hong Kong protesters had developed a remarkably effective and efficient means of protest. As a result, they showed that a relatively small group of protesters could successfully disrupt the government of a major global financial centre. What’s more, the protesters made themselves effectively immune to clearance or arrest: with no entrenched positions and adopting an unpredictable and constantly mobile presence, they would simply disperse and regroup elsewhere later if they met with police opposition.

This very characteristic might explain another term that police and the pro-Beijing press soon developed for the protesters: ‘cockroaches.’ Critics were quick to call out the dehumanising language, noting that the term was also used by the warring factions in Rwanda, and pointing out — admittedly slightly hyperbolically — that dehumanisation was one of the first steps on the path to genocide. However, one can understand why the metaphor resonated for a frustrated police force: protesters would swarm the streets, yet as soon as the police arrived on the scene — like cockroaches in kitchens across Hong Kong when the light was switched on — they would scurry away before they could be caught, only to remerge as soon as the police departed.

As temperatures rose and frustrations built up over the following months, police officers would take to openly calling protesters cockroaches on the streets in the course of their policing, a sign of how far force discipline had fallen.”

“The protesters surrounding the police headquarters dressed themselves in ‘black bloc’ attire: entirely black clothing, including long black trousers and long-sleeve black tops, black headwear, and full face masks leaving only their eyes exposed. The tactic, initially adopted by anarchist protesters in the West, was intended to ensure that protesters were indistinguishable from one other, making it more difficult for police to identify individuals for subsequent arrest. In the age of the surveillance state, and in particular sitting on the doorstep of China — which had built itself into the most advanced and complete surveillance state on the planet — the Hong Kong protesters were acutely aware of the risks posed by facial-recognition technologies, and could frequently be heard calling upon onlookers not to take photographs of protests. Black bloc was a measure against that surveillance, stymying attempts at facial recognition.

However, the black-bloc attire had another effect: it was a uniform and, as with all uniforms, had the psychological effect of uniting a crowd of disparate individuals into one coherent team.”

“The yellow hard hat had been worn by some protesters in the Umbrella Movement, in particular in the face of police baton charges in the rough-and-tumble Mong Kok-occupied area. But in the 2019 protests, they became the de rigueur accessory worn by all protesters, as early as on the first day of clashes on 12 June. The humble yellow construction hard hat soon became a symbol of the protests: featured on posters, worn by commuters on the way to work to express their sympathy with the protesters, and incorporated into memes.”

“This led to the 2019 protest movement being characterised as ‘leaderless’. This was, on the one hand, a deliberate response to the government’s aggressive prosecution of the Umbrella Movement’s leaders. Few were willing to take a prominent and public role again, and risk being prosecuted for inciting an unlawful assembly. With no visible leader, there would be no one to imprison.

But the lack of a centralised leadership was also a result of the movement’s online, organic tactics. Protesters used online forums such as LIHKG, as well as chat groups on the messaging application Telegram (the largest among such groups had upwards of 200,000 members), which have a ‘poll’ function, to vote on their next steps — ranging from which buildings to target, to when to move on. Protesters voted on the spot, and acted accordingly. This was supplemented by dynamic small-group discussions on the ground among smaller subgroups of protesters.

In the absence of meaningful democracy provided by Beijing and the Hong Kong governance system, the Hong Kong people had improvised their own democratic institutions. Like Benny Tai’s referendum in 2014, LIHKG emerged as a key improvised democratic institution during the course of the 2019 protests. Through this forum, the protesters enacted the kind of participatory democracy they wanted to see introduced. Ideas would be raised in a LIHKG post, and then other participants would respond with their comments as they ‘upvoted’ or ‘downvoted’ the various posts. When consensus emerged around a post proposing a particular protest action, it would be acted upon.”

“In the ensuing months, it emerged that the protesters — especially the so-called frontliners — operated in small subgroups or teams (one media outlet used the loaded term ‘cells’) of around ten members. The members of these teams tended to know each other — they may have been friends, classmates, or colleagues — and always moved as a group, acting together and supporting each other. They would then cooperate with other teams on the frontlines, lending a hand to build a barricade, or lining up alongside other teams to face the police. These teams communicated with each other and coordinated with the wider group, again over mobile chat applications.”

“During the most intense early clashes between protesters and police, Telegram reported that it had been subject to a distributed denial-of-service attack originating in mainland China.” On top of this, the massive overload of mobile networks that occurred when tens of thousands of people were standing in the same small area trying to access their devices simultaneously meant that communications quickly became unreliable.

In response, protesters turned to alternative peer-to-peer technologies — in particular, the AirDrop feature with which every Apple phone is equipped. Protesters used AirDrop to share messages on the ground in the course of protests, and to spread the word among the broader community. Commuters on the Hong Kong subway system found themselves receiving unsolicited AirDrop messages with slogans promoting the protesters’ cause or advertising the next rally. Prior to protests, Telegram chat groups carried a reminder: ‘Remember to have AirDrop switched on!’ During one protest in Mong Kok, my phone began pinging with incoming AirDrop messages warning of an impending police clearance operation. While in the MTR on the way to another protest in remote Yuen Long, I received AirDrop maps of the proposed protest area, which featured warnings of triad-controlled areas that were not safe for protesters. Towards the end of that same protest, as the protesters were preparing to be water and disperse, my mobile phone suddenly began to receive AirDrops carrying a simple message: ‘Leave together at 7:00.’”

“The Umbrella Movement had required significant commitment and personal sacrifice in order to maintain the occupation, with people sleeping in tents on hard concrete night after night, for months on end. The 2019 style of protest was much less demanding of its participants’ time and their physical comfort: protesters would join a protest on a weekend, and then go to class or work for the remainder of the week.”

“It was one of many Hong Kong protest strategies that were soon taken up by activists around the world, including Extinction Rebellion protesters from Brisbane to London – making Hong Kong into something of a ‘Silicon Valley of protest’ for a new generation of civil-disobedience innovators. Mao Zedong had once inspired revolutionaries around the world. Now, Hong Kong activists were doing the same.

They were also hoping to bring the world’s attention to their own revolution.

They saw the planned G20 summit of world leaders, to be held in Osaka at the end of June, as an opportunity. Though unable to get their struggle onto the formal agenda on the G20 conference tables, they aimed for the next best thing: their breakfast tables. Activists took out a series of full-page advertisements in newspapers across the world to publicise their struggle. They funded the initiative with an online crowdfunding campaign that raised over HK$6.7 million within a matter of hours. Volunteers – again coordinated via an online forum – prepared and proofed the text in multiple languages, booked the advertising space, and delivered the artwork to the newspapers. In the days leading up to and during the G20 summit in the final days of June 2019, striking full-page black-and-white advertisements reading ‘Stand with Hong Kong at G20' appeared in newspapers from The New York Times to The Guardian.”

“Ever since the march to oppose Article 23 in 2003, the public holiday on 1 July marking the anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China has been a traditional day of protest in Hong Kong.”

“Something else was happening: as the protesters at the frontlines needed more supplies, they used hand gestures to make their requests. These signs – a gesture over their heads for helmets, holding up hands to their eyes like binoculars for goggles, miming putting up an umbrella – were then echoed through the crowd in the LegCo forecourt and around the corner onto Tim Mei Avenue. From a pedestrian footbridge above, I watched as the hand signs rippled down human chains of protesters stretching hundreds of metres, all the way down Tim Mei Avenue and across the ten lanes of Harcourt Road, to supply stations on the far side of the road near Admiralty Station. There, the hand signals met their response, with the necessary supplies being passed from the supply station all the way back along the human chain to the frontline, either hand-to-hand or with runners running the supplies up between the lines to the cheers of the crowd. It was a formidable logistical operation, breathtaking in its simplicity and effectiveness. A few weeks earlier, I had seen the beginnings of these hand signals among the crowds, and guides had been circulating online to socialise the agreed-upon signals. Now the system had blossomed into its fully realised form.

This hand-signal system would become another key strategy for the protesters as the summer wore on. In numerous protests, supply chains would stretch for multiple city blocks, sometimes tracing complex paths around street corners and overpasses, even stretching over a kilometre in length. The sign language would become so iconic that, later in the summer, at a ‘silver-haired’ rally of elderly Hong Kongers marching in support of the young generation, the elders were learning and practising the youngsters’ hand signals in solidarity.”

“In terms of its composition, LegCo comprises seventy members, of which:

• Thirty-five are returned by way of geographic constituencies elected by means of universal suffrage. These seats are similar to parliamentary seats in the lower house of Westminster systems such as that in the United Kingdom or Australia, or to congressional districts in the United States. There were approximately 3.8 million registered voters for geographic constituencies in Hong Kong in the LegCo election held in 2016.
• Thirty are returned by functional constituencies: these are seats representing various industries, professions, or other special-interest groups. These include, for example, seats representing the textiles, transport, real estate, and insurance industries; the medical, legal, and accounting professions; and certain rural residents’ groups. Only members of the particular group are permitted to vote for their representative. Thus, for example, only barristers or solicitors may run or vote in the legal profession functional constituency. There were, in total, only 232,498 registered electors in functional constituencies in 2016.
• Five are returned by the district council functional constituency: these seats may only be filled by existing district councillors (members of local councils). Voters not eligible to vote in other functional constituencies may cast votes for these seats.
• Thus, everyone in Hong Kong votes for two representatives; however, all those representatives sit in the one chamber.

This system produces a structural bias in favour of the pro-Beijing parties, which, due to the influence of the pro-Beijing lobby among the small-circle functional constituencies, traditionally win almost all of those seats.

Together with the additional seats they are able to win in the geographic constituencies, the system ensures that the pro-Beijing parties always win a majority of the seats in LegCo, even though the pan-democrat candidates consistently win around 55 per cent of the popular vote.”

“While the government can freely propose legislation to LegCo, legislators themselves may only introduce private members’ bills with the written consent of the chief executive if they are relating to government policies. With any kind of meaningful legislation invariably relating to government policies, this gives the chief executive an exclusive right to define the issues for debate. In addition, private members’ bills, unlike bills proposed by the government, are subject to a super-majority requirement, needing separate majorities in each of the geographic-constituency seats and functional-constituency seats in order to pass, thereby giving the pro-Beijing parties a veto power through their control of the functional constituencies.

Legislation does nevertheless require a positive vote of a majority of LegCo to pass, even for government-initiated bills. Thus, the government must secure the support of LegCo in order to implement its policies. Legislators have the power to question government officials and require them to justify their policies, meaning that the government is to some degree accountable to LegCo and so, indirectly, to the people.

However, as a result of the electoral system, in effect Hong Kongers elect the opposition; they do not elect the government. This is because, structurally, the system is designed to produce a result whereby a majority of the popular vote will only ever elect a minority of the seats.”

“Most notable was the success of the young politicians from the Umbrella Movement generation. Indeed, localist candidates attracted 19 per cent of all votes cast. Edward Leung’s nominated successor, Sixtus ‘Baggio’ Leung (no relation), won a seat, as did fellow Young-spiration member Yau Wai-ching and another localist candidate, Lau Siu-lai. Demosisto’s Nathan Law was also successfully elected. The success of Demosisto and Youngspiration represented a stunning result for the political newcomers and a clear achievement of the Umbrella Movement. Among other successful non-establishment candidates, Eddie Chu, a veteran protester and land-justice activist, attracted the most votes of any single candidate, with Hong Kong media crowning him the ‘King of Votes’.

Just when it appeared that the pro-democracy parties were about to enjoy an era of renewed vigour and increased influence, everything fell apart. During the oath-taking ceremonies for the new legislators, the two Youngspiration lawmakers deliberately botched their oaths as an act of protest, mispronouncing ‘China’ as ‘Chee-na’ (deeply offensive in China, as it was a derogatory term used by the Japanese occupiers during the war), adding obscenities to their oaths, and displaying ‘Hong Kong Is Not China’ banners. Lau Siu-lai read her oath with a six-second pause between each word, rendering the oath a meaningless list of words. A number of other pan-democrat lawmakers also enacted less extreme forms of symbolic protest during their oath-taking.

The LegCo president accepted the oaths of all but the Youngspiration duo, and seemed prepared to give them an opportunity to retake their oath properly in order to take up their seats. There was, after all, precedent for them to do so. Veteran activist ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung and other radical pan-democrat legislators had engaged in symbolic acts of protest during their oath-swearing in previous years, without consequence. However, this time, Beijing and its proxies in the Hong Kong government sensed an opportunity. The Hong Kong government intervened, suing in the courts in an effort to prevent the legislators from being allowed to retake their oaths. In yet another twist, before the court had the opportunity to hand down its decision, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee stepped in with an unsolicited interpretation of the Basic Law. This was unusual in itself – in the past, Beijing had only directly intervened in Hong Kong legal matters at the request of the Hong Kong government or courts. An unsolicited interpretation, while a case was still under active consideration by the courts, was an inappropriate interference in the operations of Hong Kong’s judicial system.

The content of the interpretation was even more eyebrow-raising. The NPC ruled that the Basic Law requirement for legislators and other government officials to take an oath of office should be understood to mean that they had to take their oaths properly and solemnly; and that if an oath were taken improperly, it could not be retaken and the relevant officer would be immediately disqualified. This clearly went beyond the text of the Basic Law, and amounted to making new legal requirements out of whole cloth. In addition, the interpretation was to be applied with retroactive effect, something widely regarded as anathema in the common-law tradition. University of Hong Kong law professor Johannes Chan called the NPC interpretation a vote of no confidence by Beijing in Hong Kong’s independent judiciary.

In the wake of the NPC decision, Hong Kong’s High Court confirmed that the Youngspiration duo were disqualified from office. Emboldened by the NPC interpretation, the Hong Kong government took further action in the courts to disqualify four additional legislators for oath-swearing infractions: Lau Siu-lai, Nathan Law, ‘Long Hair’ Leung, and architects’ functional-constituency representative Edward Yiu. The disqualified legislators were also required to repay all salaries and allowances received by them during the time they were ‘illegally’ occupying their seats – claims that amounted to millions of Hong Kong dollars.

The outcome was that six duly elected pro-democracy lawmakers had been unceremoniously booted out of office, opening up their seats for by-elections in which the LegCo proportional-voting system would mean that at least one seat would flip to a pro-Beijing candidate.

In the subsequent by-elections for five of the seats vacated by the disqualified pan-democrats, two were won back by pan-democrats, but three went to pro-Beijing candidates. (One seat remains vacant while the disqualification is appealed through the courts.) As a result, the pro-Beijing parties controlled forty-three out of sixty-nine seats, but the pan-democrats held on to their super minority block.”

“Many suspected the police withdrawal had been deliberate, that the protesters had been allowed to break in. As the protesters rampaged through the building, Lam perhaps calculated that public support for the protest movement would quickly dwindle, allowing her to return to business as usual.”

“In Yuen Long, a satellite suburb in the north-west corner of Hong Kong towards the Chinese border, white-shirted gangs apparently affiliated with triads had attacked commuters coming off the MTR trains at Yuen Long station. They targeted young people in particular, people wearing black T-shirts, and anyone who looked like a protester, but their attacks were indiscriminate as they lashed out at people in the station and even burst into a train stuck at the platform and attacked passengers inside. The vicious attacks hospitalised forty-five people. Many injuries resulted from the weapons the thugs wielded: bamboo canes.

Meanwhile, calls to police went unanswered, and when two police did appear at the station, they made a quick retreat when they saw they were outnumbered. Riot police only appeared an hour or so later, by which time the gangs had retreated to nearby villages. The commanding officer on the scene was recorded as sarcastically replying to media enquiries about the tardiness of the police response: “I don’t know if we were late … I couldn’t see my watch.” Police were later photographed chatting with armed, white-T-shirted men in the area, while they claimed publicly they were not able to find the perpetrators.”

“The protesters greeted arriving passengers with chants and banners in multiple languages, from English to French, and from Spanish to Japanese. They handed out flyers styled as tourism brochures that explained their cause and sought tourists’ support. One brochure with the unexceptional cover ‘Discover Hong Kong’ opened to reveal surprising images of police brutality and triad attacks. Another was a ‘tourist map’ of Hong Kong highlighting key protest sites, with a caption explaining: Here are some sites that best represent Hong Kong, where you can experience the determination of the anti-extradition bill movement.”

“A recording emerged of an anonymous Cathay Pacific pilot’s in-flight announcement upon arrival in Hong Kong that evening, in which he calmly explained that arriving passengers would see some protesters in the terminal and that they should not be alarmed, and encouraged them to approach and speak to the protesters if they wanted to learn more. He finished his announcement with a phrase in Cantonese: ‘Heunggongjan gaa jau! Maansi siusam!’ (‘Hong Kongers, add oil! Take care!) The recording quickly went viral.

As a strategy, the airport protest was brilliant. It was visually striking – a mass of bodies in the cavernous airport, a made-for-television moment. And, with its abundant transportation links, the airport was easily accessible to protesters, and also not susceptible to violent dispersal by police: it was hard to imagine police firing tear gas inside a busy airport terminal full of innocent travellers. Both its media-friendly nature and the location meant that the protest was effective in spreading the protesters’ message globally. The action centred on the tourism- and trade-focused economy of Hong Kong, exposing its vulnerability and exploiting the global nature of the city to win attention to the protesters’ cause.”

“In 2019, protesters turned to a ready-made public forum: the shopping mall.

Hong Kong has the highest concentration of malls in the world, partly a result of a unique alliance between the government and real estate tycoons in building the city’s infrastructure. Hong Kong’s subway system is funded by granting the subway operator, MTR Corporation, property-development rights for the land above its stations. MTR in turn partners with the tycoons to build vast residential and commercial developments – shopping-mall podiums with residential and sometimes office towers – directly connected to the stations. Much of the city’s population lives on top of, or effectively inside, a shopping mall.

As a result, the mall plays a unique and all-encompassing role in daily Hong Kong life. Malls are shopping destinations for everything from daily necessities to luxury goods; recreation spaces; and the primary places where people socialise with family and friends. Hong Kong apartments are generally too small for entertaining guests: malls host children’s parties, graduation lunches, and wedding banquets. And in Hong Kong’s humid, tropical climate, the air-conditioned, temperature-controlled atriums, courtyards, and squares in the malls provide respite from the heat and shelter from tropical downpours. Malls are also the passageways through which citizens pass from public-transport hubs to their homes. Many of the malls are required, under the terms of their leases, to keep their doors open twenty-four hours a day for public passage. This contractual requirement is essential: although they masquerade as public spaces, these urban enclaves are privately owned and fall under the control of mall management.

During the protests of 2019, in a unique Hong Kong-style evolution of the right to the city, the malls became sites of contestation: protesters began to assert their ‘right to the mall’.

On 14 July, a large protest took place in the Sha Tin district. As riot police closed in, protesters fled through the adjacent New Town Mall packed with shoppers and diners on a Sunday evening, traditionally a family day out in Hong Kong. Police pursued the protesters into the mall, firing pepper spray and beating protesters with batons. Protesters responded by throwing umbrellas and bottles at police. The violence left blood on the mall’s polished floors, and police were pictured slipping on slicks of their pepper spray. Meanwhile, Sunday-night shoppers and diners, including families with small children, cowered, horrified by the melee going on around them. The fact that all this occurred with not a single window broken nor a shop looted was testament to the discipline of the protesters: they even cleaned up the mess afterwards.”

“Other malls that earned the protesters’ ire were subject to destructive attacks. In November, baton-wielding undercover police officers arrested protesters who were vandalising pro-government stores in Festival Walk in Kowloon Tong. As bystanders tried to intervene to prevent the arrests, riot police stormed in and forcibly cleared the mall. In retaliation for mall management’s failure to keep out the police, protesters broke into the mall after hours, smashing glass barriers and escalators, and setting a four-metre-tall Christmas tree ablaze. The mall was forced to close for two months to carry out repairs.”

“Throughout the 2019 protests, protesters ‘deconstructed’ the city’s fabric. Metal pedestrian barriers, ubiquitous along Hong Kong’s roadsides, separating footpaths from the traffic, were dismantled and then reconstructed into barricades across streets, or occasionally fashioned into battering rams. Traffic signs were removed and, with the addition of a few zip ties as handles, converted into makeshift shields. As police increasingly deployed water cannons and armoured ‘barricade-smashing’ vehicles to clear the streets, protesters dug up vast quantities of the city’s brick paving – Hong Kong footpaths are generally brick-paved rather than cement – broke them into chunks, and tossed them onto the roads, effectively blocking access for the police vehicles. These broken chunks of brick were also used as missiles directed at police lines.”

“Hong Kong government, when it became familiar with the protesters’ tactics, begun to take countermeasures, stripping the city of the urban hardware that the protesters so readily recontextualised for the purposes of their barricade resistance. The authorities pre-emptively removed metal road barriers and fencing, replacing them with red plastic tape, and removed rubbish bins from the streets. They laid down glue on footpaths to prevent the removal of brick pavers, and filled in the gaps where the pavers had been removed with roughly poured slabs of plain cement.”

“In order to keep pressure on the government, activists announced a day of general strike on Monday 5 August, what they called the ‘Three Strikes’ (‘Saam Baa’), referring to work stoppages, class boycotts, and market boycotts. The week leading up to that day would see a series of protest actions aimed at building momentum for the general strike.

On the morning of Tuesday 30 July, protesters disrupted MTR trains, blocking train doors at key stations during the morning rush hour to prevent trains departing. (It would later emerge that this was a rehearsal for the following Monday.) Wednesday saw a flash mob protest by workers from the financial-services industry: many wryly commented that the situation must be dire to have reached a point where even investment bankers were leaving their desks to join a political protest.

On the Friday night, a rally of civil servants was held in Chater Garden. A stern warning from the government that the civil service had an obligation to remain both neutral and loyal – the latter raising some eyebrows – did nothing to diminish the turnout, with participants overflowing into the surrounding streets. It is unclear how many of them were civil servants, but some certainly were, and many others were office workers who had emerged from the towers of Central after work. Young activists were there, helping to coordinate, and as the rally broke up for the night and people headed into the MTR, they led chants of: ‘Singkei jat, baa gung!’ (‘Monday, strike!’)

On the Saturday, a protest rally in Mong Kok veered off its approved route and spread across Kowloon all the way down to the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, where some protesters removed the PRC national flag from a flagpole and tossed it into the harbour. From there, the crowd moved on to the main Cross Harbour Tunnel, one of three connecting Hong Kong Island to Kowloon, where they blocked the tunnel entrance, causing traffic chaos on both sides of the harbour. Half an hour later, like water, they moved on again, stopping by Tsim Sha Tsui police station, which was attacked with bricks, before the protesters settled back in Mong Kok, building barricades and preparing to face off with police, following the well-rehearsed script again.

Not far away, in the residential district of Wong Tai Sin, local residents were engaged in their own clashes with police. Police deployed tear gas and pepper spray at a transport interchange on the ground floor of a residential complex, with local residents who had come downstairs from their apartments in their slippers fighting back with wok lids. The fact that the police seemed to have radicalised ordinary people in the community was striking.”

“Having moved on to Causeway Bay, protesters revealed yet another creative protest strategy, this time involving their use of barricades. Protesters blockaded the main roads around the Cross Harbour Tunnel entrance on the Hong Kong Island side. As rows of police vehicles and riot police on foot massed at the far end of the blockaded road and prepared to move in, the protesters suddenly removed the roadblocks, releasing the pent-up cars and buses directly into the path of the approaching police and snarling them in traffic, enabling the protesters to make their escape.”

“Posters promoting the 5 August 2019 strike appeared online, styled as tourism advertisements for the various districts across Hong Kong where protest gatherings were scheduled to be held. ‘Picnic in Tamar!’ ‘Go bike riding in Tai Po!’ ‘Play football in Tsuen Wan!’ ‘Go dancing in Tuen Mun!’ ‘Worship at the Wong Tai Sin temple!’ Protesters were assuming the MTR system would be paralysed by the strike action, so the rallies would have to be local.

Early in the morning, prior to the commuting rush hour, activists again descended on the MTR system, swarming the platforms, blocking train doors to prevent departures, and rapidly bringing large sections of the MTR system to a halt. Tempers flared in some locations, leading to confrontations between activists and some commuters, but most were supportive and resigned in the face of the disruptions.

At the same time, news began to filter in from the airport: air-traffic controllers were calling in sick, and other aviation workers were joining the strike. Images of the departure board filling with ‘Flight Cancelled’ messages spread online as over 200 flights were cancelled. Many private businesses joined the strike action, while those who could do so chose to work from home. Even the Disneyland cast had reportedly decided not to report to work that day.”

“One of the key reasons the 5 August strike did not have a larger impact was that, unlike in 1967, the pro-Beijing Federation of Trade Unions, still the largest labour group in Hong Kong, did not support the strike action. It was a constraint that did not escape the attention of activists. In the months following the strike, a wave of new independent unions were formed, not only with a view to protecting labour rights but specifically to facilitate future strike action. We want to introduce a new culture that trade unions are not just about labour rights – they could also consolidate the voices of the industries to resist the authorities, one union organiser told the South China Morning Post. A protester pamphlet titled ‘Organise Labour Unions; Everyone Strike’, explained: ‘Do you want to strike, but are afraid of being the only one? Actually many other people feel the same. Join a union, and you won’t have to battle alone!’ At least twenty-four new trade unions were established in 2019, almost double the number established the previous year, according to the Hong Kong Labour Department. New unions were established for hotel employees, information-technology workers, and hospital-authority employees, as well as a white-collar office workers’ union.”

“As the situation at the airport spiralled out of control, there was a sense that things were falling apart in the protest movement, that a collapse in discipline had pushed events to a volatile and dangerous point – a point at which Beijing would have no choice but to respond forcefully. In a press conference following the airport attacks, a Beijing spokesperson said that the protesters in Hong Kong were showing characteristics of ‘terrorism’, a further escalation in rhetoric that indicated that Beijing was now viewing the situation in Hong Kong as a matter of national security. Beijing’s tolerance was being pushed to the limit. A. question was being asked ever more urgently: would Beijing send the People’s Liberation Army into Hong Kong?

This was not idle speculation. Beijing and its proxies had been alluding to the availability of this option for some weeks.”

“There were many reasons why the unthinkable did not come to pass and, at least in the current environment, remains extremely unlikely.

Beijing is keenly aware that any deployment of Chinese troops in Hong Kong would mark the death of Hong Kong’s status as an international financial hub. This would have catastrophic consequences for the Hong Kong economy, and the collapse of Hong Kong, together with the related international reaction, would most likely have a devastating economic impact on the rest of China as well.

Beijing also knows the impact that such deployment would have on China’s reputation. China’s leaders have been living in the shadow of the events of Tiananmen for thirty years. Accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, a triumphant Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, and the continuing global outreach of the Belt and Road initiative were all steps in rebuilding China’s global standing after being a pariah state in the bloody aftermath of Tiananmen. Now, Chairman Xi had a bold ambition of China being recognised as a global leader, on a par with – and ultimately eclipsing – the United States. All of this, and with it Xi’s ‘China Dream,’ would have been snuffed out the instant Chinese tanks crossed the Shenzhen River into Hong Kong.

That is not to say that Beijing would not be willing to bear these costs under any circumstances. As the party leadership showed in 1989, when faced with an existential crisis threatening their rule, no option was truly unthinkable. However, in the case of Hong Kong, it seems that there were only two circumstances in which Beijing would be prompted to take that step.

The first was if the Hong Kong government and police lost control of the city. Beijing has always maintained the position that it would not intervene so long as the local authorities were able to maintain order. The situation in Hong Kong, while volatile, was still a long way from the scale of the unrest in 1967, when British army troops were deployed to assist police. Indeed, the real question from Beijing’s point of view would most likely be not the ability of the local authorities to maintain order, but their willingness to do so: however, there were no signs of any divergence of views between Beijing, the Hong Kong government, and the police.

Beijing’s military planners may also have been aware that any such intervention would likely be extremely messy. The narrow, winding backstreets of Hong Kong would not easily accommodate tanks or armoured personnel carriers. PLA troops entering Hong Kong would be seen by most of the population not as liberators but as an occupying force, and any incursion may well have provoked the entire city into genuine revolt and sparked an urban guerrilla war of resistance. Simply put, the situation in the Hong Kong streets in 2019 did not necessitate such a disruptive and risky intervention.

The second circumstance in which Beijing would feel obliged to intervene forcefully in Hong Kong was if there were any risk of ‘contagion’, of the unrest in Hong Kong spreading to the mainland and threatening the party’s authority there. Again, in 2019 there were no signs that the situation in Hong Kong presented any kind of existential threat to Communist Party rule. People in the mainland did not generally have a sympathetic view of Hong Kongers, regarding them as spoiled and ungrateful, and their protest demands as unrealistic.”

“The practice seemed to be a significant retrograde step, recalling the experience of travelling to China in the 1980s, when flight attendants scoured the aisles of incoming flights to collect all foreign newspapers before landing.”

“On 23 August 2019, the thirtieth anniversary of the Baltic Way — a human chain linking the capitals of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to demand the Baltic republics’ independence from the Soviet Union — more than 200,000 people came out onto the streets of Hong Kong to form the Hong Kong Way. From the crowded streets of Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island, to the famous waterfront of Tsim Sha Tsui, to the suburbs of the New Territories, to the peak of Lion Rock, people linked hands in a continuous human chain that measured 60 kilometres in total.”

“After the clashes between protesters and police in Sha Tin’s New Town shopping mall, online satirists created a faux advertising poster for the mall with an image adapted from a press photo of the mayhem and the slogan ‘A Whole New Shopping Experience.’”

“In August, another practice was initiated by protesters: the ‘Ten O’clock Calling.’ Every night at ten o’clock, people were encouraged to open their windows, stand on their balconies, and shout out the slogans of the movement, in a call-and-response style. Their voices would echo around the densely packed apartment tower-blocks of Hong Kong’s suburbs.

‘Gwong fuk Heung Gong!’ (‘Reclaim Hong Kong!) one voice would call. ‘Sidoi Gaakming!’ (‘Revolution of our times!’) would come the response.

Another group of voices, chanting together, would shout: ‘Hoenggong jan…’ (‘Hong Kongers ..) Elsewhere, a voice would reply: ‘Gaa jau!’ (‘Add oil!’)

A lone female voice, calling alone in the distance: ‘Ng daai sou kau…’ (‘Five Demands …) would find its answer with a resounding: ‘Kyut jat bat ho!’ (‘Not one less!)

The Ten O’clock Calling was a novelty, but also an important means of building solidarity: although residents were sitting alone in their tiny Hong Kong apartments, they were not alone — the people all around were with them, their voices supporting them. And sometimes the calling would degenerate into a series of cathartic screams, expressing nothing less than the frustration and desperation of a protest movement that was receiving no response from its government. At least, with the Ten O’clock Calling, their voices were heard; they received a response.”

“The police had been foreshadowing their recently commissioned water cannons for months, conducting public demonstrations for legislators and the media, and road-testing them on the city’s streets. The water cannons had made their first operational debut the previous week at a protest in Tsuen Wan, but were deployed then only to help clear debris from the roads. This would be the first time they were deployed against human targets.

The crowd scattered — the water cannon’s reputation has preceded it. Various protester infographics circulating online gave advice on how to handle different elements of the police’s offensive weaponry, from tear gas to pepper spray. The infographic on the water cannon had only one piece of advice: ‘Run!’

I ran with them, climbed up onto the overpass, and looked down as some brave frontliners remained on the road and were buffeted by the water cannon. As the water cannon began to direct its stream up at the protesters and media on the bridge, I dropped further back — the spray was not just water, but a highly irritant form of pepper spray called pelargonic acid vanillylamide, or PAVA. The police not only directed the spray in powerful jets; they fired it up high into the air, where it misted, forming a spreading cloud of PAVA droplets that drifted on the breeze. Those without gas masks coughed and choked as the pepper spray caught in their throats.

From further back, I watched as bright-blue plumes suddenly came shooting from the water cannon — police had mixed the water with an indelible dye intended to mark protesters for later arrest. The blue clouds appeared almost festive, and there was an instinct to run towards them, arms outstretched. But then those hit by the dye came running back from the frontline, their limbs and clothes soaked in blue. They smarted in pain and vainly scrubbed at their blue-tinged skin with alcohol wipes.”

“Police stations were attacked almost nightly by protesters, who set up catapults to launch bricks and other projectiles at the windows, or hurled petrol bombs at the entrances. Ordinary citizens gathered around their local police stations to hurl insults and abuse.”

“It was, without question, an unacceptable level of violence and abuse to direct towards a police force, and critics were quick to point out that, had protesters behaved this way in the West, they would have been met with lethal force. Yet the ‘Try that in the US and you’d be shot dead’ argument overlooked some important differences between liberal democracies and the political reality faced by protesters on the streets of Hong Kong. If one-quarter of the population of a democratic country took to the streets in protest, the government would resign or, at least, mindful of its imperilled electoral mandate, respond to the protesters’ demands. They could not leave the protesters ignored and unanswered for months, the problems festering in the streets until they exploded into this level of violence. Also, any police force in a libera democracy is accountable to its democratically elected government: if people are unhappy with the behavior of their police force, they can, by putting pressure. their elected representatives, push for a change in policy or in the leadership of the police. None of those safety valves was available in Hong Kong in 2019.”

“Disturbingly, a culture of impunity appeared to be growing in the force. Police officers began deliberately obscuring the ID numbers on their uniforms, and then simply stopped wearing them altogether (rendering it impossible to make an effective complaint about individual officer’s behaviour to the authorities). The police often appeared disorderly in their behaviour on the streets, apparently failing to heed orders and sometimes having to be physically dragged into line by colleagues. This was indicative of a seeming collapse in command and control of the force.”

“The People’s Daily editorialised, These “Black Shirts” are breaking the law and violating discipline, and yet enjoy this kind of “VIP treatment”. What are MTR thinking? It accused the MTR of betraying its duty.

The change in tone at the MTR in response to the criticism was immediate. The following weekend, the MTR shut down stations for several stops around planned protest sites in two remote districts of Hong Kong in order to prevent people joining the protests, notwithstanding the significant inconvenience this caused to residents of those districts. This trend would continue, culminating in early October when the MTR cooperated with the government to shut down its entire system in a de facto curfew on the city. The MTR was also seen providing dedicated trains to transport police officers while they were policing protests, and allowing police to rest inside closed stations, further angering protesters: the MTR would no longer help ‘us’, but it would help ‘them’.

In the protesters’ eyes, the MTR had betrayed them, and had become a collaborator with the government, the police, and Beijing. It was given the nickname the ‘Party’s Railway’ (‘Dong tit,’ a pun on ‘Gong tit for MTR’ in Cantonese), and MTR stations and facilities became a target for protester vandalism. Week after week, stations were graffitied, ticket machines and turnstiles destroyed, and station windows and glass panels smashed. Protesters turned on fire hoses and flooded stations with water, or set fires at barricaded station entrances. For some members of the wider community, this was unacceptable: notwithstanding their political position, attacking the city’s beloved MTR and inconveniencing thousands of commuters was going too far. Yet such actions did not undermine broader support for the movement.

It was one of the great tragedies of the 2019 protests: a collapse of public trust in those previously trusted institutions upon which citizens relied in their day-to-day lives. From the police and the MTR, to the Airport Authority and Hong Kong’s flag-carrier airline, Cathay Pacific, to, later, the city’s largest bank, HSBC, all were institutions whose identity had hitherto been closely tied to that of the city and its people. And all were now being pressed into service by Beijing to oppose the protesters.”

“Along march routes, friendly shop-owners would place bottled water outside their stores, with a sign ‘Free for protesters. Hong Kongers, add oil!’ During street skirmishes in late November in Tsim Sha Tsui, along a backstreet of shuttered shops close to the frontlines, one grocery store had its door open a crack with a hastily handwritten sign posted out the front: ‘Come in and take whatever you need.’”

“Before protests began in remote suburbs, the door codes of housing estates in the area would be circulated on chat groups to facilitate protesters’ escape.

After a protest, the ticket-vending machines at the MTR stations were piled high with coins to enable people to purchase single-use tickets rather than use their stored-value Octopus cards, which protesters feared would enable their movements to be tracked. Bags of coloured clothing, often neatly marked by size, would be left at station entrances to enable protesters to change out of their telltale black outfits and travel home safely. And down in the streets, as the police raised their black warning flags, protesters would shout up to the residents in the apartment buildings above: ‘Saan coeng!’ (‘Close your windows!’)

As tear gas filled the streets of Causeway Bay one weekend evening, protesters tried to press one of their gas masks into the hands of a middle-aged woman who had been inadvertently caught up in the gas. She tearfully refused it, saying to the protesters, ‘You need it! I’m okay!’ But the protesters insisted, pushing it back into her hands: ‘Just put it on! Put it on!’”

“On the afternoon of Friday 4 October 2019, a few days after returning from National Day celebrations in Beijing, Carrie Lam held a press conference to announce her latest plan to stem the protests.

Looking ashen-faced, Lam announced that she would use powers under the colonial-era Emergency Regulations Ordinance (not utilised since the 1973 oil crisis) to introduce an anti-masking law. The new law prohibited the wearing of face coverings during any public protest — authorised or not — with those violating the ban facing a fine of HK$25,000 and one year’s imprisonment. Exemptions were available for people wearing masks for religious, health, or work-related reasons. This latter exemption appeared to exempt journalists covering protests and seeking to protect themselves from police tear gas, but that would not stop police forcibly ripping the face masks from reporters’ faces in the days to come.

The anti-masking law was notable not only for its restriction of civil liberties, but because, in enacting the ban using the Emergency Regulations Ordinance, or ERO, the executive branch of government had unilaterally decreed an entirely new criminal offence, bypassing legislative scrutiny.”

“The anti-masking law was also a rankling act of hypocrisy. Since the SARS epidemic of 2003, the government had been encouraging the Hong Kong populace to wear face masks to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

Now that same government was telling everyone to remove their masks, and in the face of a government-created health and safety risk against which even ordinary citizens needed protection: police tear gas.

After Lam announced the face-mask ban, a clip of Edward Leung speaking in an election debate during his 2016 by-election campaign began circulating online. In the clip, Lam says in response to a pro-establishment candidates suggestion of a face-mask ban, ‘A few years ago, Ukraine passed an anti-mask law. Do you know what happened in Ukraine? A revolution started in Ukraine. You want to do it? Do it, we will fight till the end.’”

As Leung had predicted, Lam’s face-mask ban provoked a furious response. Almost immediately that Friday afternoon on 4 October 2019, people began massing on the streets of Central, and crowds swelled as workers finished the working day and left their offices to join the protest. Many were still dressed in their office attire: men in suits, and women in high-heeled shoes carrying designer handbags. Schoolchildren joined the gathering as well, some turning their school shirts inside out so the emblems were not visible. All were defiantly wearing masks. The ban was due to come into effect at midnight.

The crowd chanted two new slogans. The first was a perhaps obvious augmentation to their demands. What had previously been five demands were now six: withdrawal of the masking ban had been added to the list.

Protesters pasted posters on the storefronts of the businesses they had trashed, explaining their rationale for why the particular business had been selected for what they called refurbishment. Any businesses outside these categories were left untouched. Indeed, when protesters mistakenly vandalised stores they believed were Chinese-owned but later realised were not, they would post signs apologising, or spray-paint a rough ‘Sorry’ on the storefront.”

“Even when protests took place in the midst of Hong Kong’s poorest neighbourhoods, no shops were looted by protesters. I saw inside vandalised Starbucks stores where the storefront and all the interior fittings of the shop had been smashed, yet snacks and bottled beverages were still sitting untouched on the counter and in refrigerators.

Every action taken had a purpose, and protesters at no stage claimed ownership over property within the urban space.”

“To understand the impact of the MTR shutdown on transport around Hong Kong, consider that in a city of just over seven million people, the MTR system carries around five million passengers per day.”

“The partial curfew continued all week, with the MTR system closing early each evening, again ostensibly for repairs. This ensured that most of the city rushed home from work and avoided coming out onto the streets in the evenings, reducing the number of midweek skirmishes between the populace and police that had been a feature of previous weeks. Protests reduced in number and intensity. There was a sense that perhaps Lam was finally beginning to bring the city back under control.

However, the calm would not last. A month later, the city would be burning.”

City on Fire

“Early in the morning of Monday 11 November 2019, as the morning commute was getting underway, protesters again began blocking roads and disrupting traffic and MTR services. Police quickly responded, leading to multiple flashpoints across the city. Then, as Hong Kongers watched their phones while queuing for their buses to get to work, or while having their breakfast milk tea and congee, a shocking scene emerged. In Sai Wan Ho, a police officer attempting to clear protester roadblocks became embroiled in a scuffle with three protesters.

The officer gripped one protester around the neck with one hand and began to drag him away, while with the other hand he drew his gun and pointed it at another protester. As the second, unarmed protester approached and appeared to make an attempt to swat away the gun, the police officer fired, shooting the protester in the stomach from a metre away. He then turned and fired two shots at another approaching protester, as the first protester lay stricken, his face drained white, blood pouring from his abdomen onto the road. The whole incident was live-streamed by a local media organisa- tion, and videos circulated quickly online, to widespread outrage.

It was the beginning of what became a week of chaos that engulfed the city.

Later that day, in Central, smartly dressed but furious white-collar office workers emerged from their offices at lunchtime, wearing face masks and joining black-shirted protesters in blockading the streets. With Chow’s death and the morning’s shooting, the crowd again had a new slogan. Previously, ‘Hong Kongers, add oil!’ had given way to ‘Hong Kongers, resist!’; today their new slogan was: ‘Heunggongjan bousau!’ (‘Hong Kongers, revenge!’)

While the office workers marched and chanted, radical protesters among the crowd vandalised nearby Chinese bank branches, graffitied walls, and blockaded the roads. Riot police soon arrived on the scene, and before long were firing tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd in the busiest intersection in Central.”

“The lunchtime protests continued every day that week, with white-collar workers flooding the streets and riot police descending on Central to disperse the protesters. Tear gas was fired on multiple occasions, drifting into the adjacent shopping malls and office lobbies.”

“The city was roiled with disruptions throughout the week, the streets lit with burning barricades, and petrol bombs hurled at police lines. The roads became moonscapes as protesters dug up brick pavers from the footpaths, and either tossed them onto the asphalt or constructed them into miniature trilithons to block traffic and impede the progress of police. Roads along block after block were rendered impassable. As a result of the transport disruptions, and with the sense that the city’s streets were no longer safe, all school classes were cancelled for the week, and many people simply stopped going to work. The city ground to a standstill.”

“In recent years, as Hong Kong’s economy had become more integrated with that of mainland China, the services industry that made up a significant proportion of the economy had a growing need for workers with fluent Chinese language and cultural skills. The foreign expats of yore had come to be replaced by a new class of expats: mainland-born, overseas-educated professionals who now populated the banks, accounting firms, and law firms of Central, as well as staffing the Hong Kong branches of numerous state-owned companies and financial institutions. Many more visited Hong Kong from the mainland, whether for business or pleasure.

As the protests turned violent, and took on an increasingly anti-China bent, this community began to feel nervous.”

“Beijing seemed to be thinking: Let Hong Kong burn. As long as there was no risk of contagion, or impairment of the city’s ability to act as a source of capital for China’s businesses, Beijing appeared content to leave Hong Kong to consume itself in violence and rage. Their expectation was that the growing disruption and violence would ultimately undermine support for the protest movement, deepen the divisions in Hong Kong society, and create fertile conditions for Beijing to step in and impose order. In the meantime, Hong Kong would serve as an object lesson for domestic propaganda purposes in the rest of China. Look at the mess, Beijing could say, that ensues from popular movements demanding so-called democracy and freedom.”

“Out the back of the building, five students sat chatting cheerfully at a picnic table in the sunshine as they assembled Molotov cocktails. The nearby swimming pool was empty, and had been used for Molotov cocktail practice: the pool floor was scarred with black burn marks and covered in shattered glass bottles.”

“With both sides refusing to step down, the entire city was on edge, many openly wondering whether Hong Kong was about to witness a repeat of 198%’s Tiananmen Square massacre. Police officers were pictured standing outside the campus with serious weaponry, including AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. There were reports of snipers being stationed on the roofs of surrounding buildings. It seemed incredible that police would actually storm the campus with guns blazing — but that seemed to be precisely what they were threatening to do. Part of the reason for police continuing the siege seems to have been their impression that hundreds of so-called radical frontline protesters were holed up inside the campus, and that they could in one action arrest this core group, emasculating the protest movement. Their impression would ultimately prove to be mistaken.

Throughout these traumatic events, the Hong Kong government was once again absent. In any other city undergoing the events Hong Kong endured that day, political leaders would have been front and centre, explaining, justifying, reassuring the public, visiting the sites of conflict, and speaking to all sides involved. Instead, Hong Kong had to console itself with deafening silence. The PolyU siege had been underway for over two days before Carrie Lam finally emerged to give a press conference on Tuesday morning, at which she announced that protesters under the age of eighteen (of which there were over 100) would be permitted to leave the site without being arrested, while asking that the other protesters surrender themselves to avoid further violence.”

“The police did not ultimately storm PolyU, as they had been threatening to do, but maintained their cordon around the campus. The siege dragged on through the week, with police reporting that over 1,100 people were arrested at the site. The numbers of protesters still inside the campus reportedly dwindled, and the protesters become increasingly desperate, paranoid, and afraid. The government refused to compromise, and the Cross Harbour Tunnel was not reopened. But the elections would go ahead.”

Post-Uprising

“On Thursday 21 November, the US Congress passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. In a rare display of bipartisanship, the bill was passed unanimously by the Senate and with only one dissenting vote in the House, and President Trump signed the bill into law a week later.

The act provided for sanctions against individuals suppressing human rights and freedoms in Hong Kong, and importantly created a mechanism whereby the US secretary of state was henceforth required to issue an annual certification of Hong Kong’s autonomy, thereby ensuring that the issue of Hong Kong would be raised annually in Congress.

The news was welcomed by protesters as an unambiguous and powerful expression of support from the world’s superpower, the fruits of months of lobbying by Hong Kong activists and politicians such as Joshua Wong, Denise Ho, and Democratic Party senior statesmạn Martin Lee.”

“That day saw the highest-ever turnout for a Hong Kong election, with 2.9 million voters (out of 4.1 million eligible voters) casting a vote, representing a turnout of 71 per cent. (Recall that the previous turnout record, for the post-Umbrella Movement LegCo elections in 2016, was 58 per cent.)

In the final result, pan-democrat candidates won 385 seats; pro-Beijing candidates won only fifty-nine seats; and eight seats went to independents. (In the previous 2015 district council election, the split was pan-democrat, 126 seats; pro-Beijing, 298 seats; and independent, seven seats.) Several prominent pro-Beijing figures, including Junius Ho, lost their district council seats.

Having secured a majority of district council seats, pan-democrats had won the power to appoint 117 district council representatives to the 1,200-member Chief Executive Election Committee in 2022.

Pan-democrats won control of seventeen out of the eighteen district councils. They had previously controlled none. On two of the eighteen councils — Wong Tai Sin and Tai Po — pan-democrats won every single seat. (For one remaining council, Outer Islands, pan-democrats won a majority of the seats open to popular vote, but pro-Beijing parties retained control due to ex-officio positions given to rural chiefs.)

Pan-democrats won around 57 per cent of the popular vote, while the pro-Beijing candidates secured around 41 per cent.”

“There was a largely unspoken subtext to the 2019 protest movement. The protests were really only about one thing: China. It was as if, twenty-two years after the handover, the Hong Kong people suddenly woke up and realised that they were living in China — or, rather, that the China they found themselves living in was not the one they expected it to be.

The whole underlying assumption of One Country, Two Systems and the promise of a fifty-year guarantee of rights and freedoms for Hong Kong when it was inked into the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 — and we might surmise that this assumption was held on both the British and Chinese sides of the negotiating table — was that China would be a very different place by the year 2047. Recall that, in 1984, Deng’s reform and opening-up program had been underway for almost six years, and had already ushered in significant changes in Chinese society after the ten dark years of the Cultural Revolution. The year 2047 at that point was more than sixty-three years away. In China itself, the 275-year reign of the Qing Dynasty had ended only seventy-three years earlier, and the intervening years had seen republican rule, the warlord era, the Sino-Japanese war, and finally the civil war followed by the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949. A period of sixty-three years in China could contain a lot of history.

However, thirty-five years on from 1984, China is looking very different — more economically powerful and technologically advanced, but also less liberal and less politically open — than many would have perhaps expected. It may not be a coincidence that the mood began to shift in Hong Kong as it became increasingly apparent, especially in the five years after the Umbrella Movement, that the underlying assumption had been flawed.

Suddenly, ‘fifty years, no change’ seemed less like a promise and more like a curse: a political system and a society frozen in the aspic of 1984, not permitted to develop or evolve, not allowed to change.”

“The plenum focused on the need to ‘strengthen the national education’ of Hong Kong and Macau people, especially civil servants and young people, including education on the constitution and the Basic Law, and Chinese history and culture, in order to boost their national consciousness and patriotic spirit. Given that the 2019 protest movement, like the Umbrella Movement, was youth-led, this is hardly surprising. Beijing will probably give up on the current generation of youths, who may go down in Hong Kong history as a lost generation. They may find themselves toxic to employers, unable to visit the mainland, and their opportunities, if they remain in Hong Kong, may be greatly circumscribed, tainted by the events of 2019. But Beijing will hope to save the next generation and the generations to follow: 2047 still lies more than a generation into the future.

Again, many read this as an indication that Beijing would make another attempt to introduce a ‘moral and national education’ curriculum similar to that blocked by the protests in 2012 led by Joshua Wong and his Scholarism group. And again, Beijing is unlikely to make another directly confrontational attempt when there are other methods available to it that are just as effective.

A renewed focus on Chinese history classes will be one way in which the party’s version of history can be instilled in Hong Kong’s youth. Pressure is already being exerted through Hong Kong’s Education Bureau on high school principals to pull their unruly student bodies — and teaching staff — into line. Public high school campuses have been required to prohibit any activities that might be remotely associated with protest, from chanting slogans to wearing face masks to forming human chains — in Hong Kong schools, even holding hands is now seen as a subversive act.”

“Beijing intends to integrate Hong Kong and Macau more closely with the mainland, increasing the mobility of not just capital and business, but also people. All policy options are on the table as Beijing seeks to realise its vision for the Greater Bay Area, from unifying the tax system — higher tax rates being one of the key disincentives for Hong Kong-based executives to work across the border — to redrawing the very borders of the cities and regions. The Hong Kong of the future may not even cover the same territory as the Hong Kong of today.

There is a certain logic to Shenzhen becoming a satellite town of Hong Kong, with the lower-wage-earning workers unable to afford Hong Kong’s spiralling housing costs relocating across the border and commuting into Hong Kong. This portends a future where Hong Kong and Shenzhen converge economically and financially towards Hong Kong, but politically towards Shenzhen.

It might also mean that higher-wage-earners currently based in Shenzhen will move across the border to enjoy the benefits of life in Hong Kong. This raises fears of a kind of cultural assimilation, with Hong Kongers eventually becoming a minority in their own city. However, Hong Kong is no Tibet or Xinjiang, and any strategy to assimilate Hong Kong through migration would be based on flawed logic. Hong Kong has a long history of absorbing and assimilating immigrant populations, particularly those coming from China. When people come from the mainland to Hong Kong, it is not Hong Kong that becomes more like the mainland: those mainland people become Hong Kongers. Edward Leung himself, remember, was born in mainland China.”

“Finally, the full text of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was revealed to the Hong Kong people at the same time as it came into force, at eleven o’clock that night, one hour before the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China. At that moment, Hong Kong as we knew it permanently changed.

Lam and other government officials had sought to reassure the public — and international investors — that the National Security Law would target only a ‘very small minority’ of extremists and that fundamental freedoms would be maintained. Subsequent events would quickly show the depth of the deception in those statements.

For me, the realisation that Hong Kong was facing a new reality hit the following morning, as I followed coverage of protesters gathering in an attempt to stage the traditional 1 July protest march. Images soon circulated online of a new purple warning banner reportedly being displayed by the police, reading: You are displaying flags or banners / chanting slogans / or conducting yourselves with an intent such as secession or subversion, which may constitute offences under the HKSAR National Security Law. You may be arrested and prosecuted. My first reaction was to laugh. ‘Displaying flags’ or ‘chanting slogans’ were criminal offences, in Hong Kong? It had to be a joke! Surely this new law did not go that far?

The banner was no joke. And police quickly followed through on their threat. The first person arrested under the new law that day was a man found to have in his bag a flag bearing the slogan ‘Hong Kong Independence.’ Further arrests were made of young women displaying stickers with what the police said were now illegal slogans, including ‘Reclaim Hong Kong,’ ‘Hong Kong Independence,’ and, most strikingly, the simple word ‘Conscience.’ That same day, a young man flying a flag from the back of his motorcycle bearing the slogan ‘Reclaim Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times’ appeared inadvertently to crash into a line of police officers blocking the road. He was arrested, and charged with secession and terrorism offences under the new law.

The government, in a self-described solemn statement a few days later, declared that the popular ‘Reclaim Hong Kong, Revolution of our Times!’ slogan, ‘nowadays connotes “Hong Kong independence” .. or ‘subverting state power’ and would be considered in breach of the law.

The National Security Law created four new criminal offences: secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces. The offences are vaguely drafted and broad in scope. All carry penalties of up to life imprisonment. In addition, the law covers anyone inciting, aiding, or abetting the above offences.

The terrorism offence takes what are ordinary criminal acts — vandalism, criminal damage, arson, assault — all of which were adequately and reasonably addressed by Hong Kong’s existing laws, and defines them as ‘terrorism’ if the perpetrators have any kind of ‘political agenda. The law appears to have been specifically crafted to cover actions taken by protesters during the recent protests, almost as if it had been drafted using those protests as a checklist: throwing petrol bombs, vandalising MTR stations, blocking the Cross Harbour Tunnel, and cutting traffic lights all now constitute acts of terrorism.

Other acts of protest that attack or damage government premises or facilities or that might otherwise ‘interfere with, disrupt, or undermine’ the operations of the government now constitute the crime of ‘subverting’ state power. This would include occupying roads and blockading government buildings, as protesters did in the Umbrella Movement and in 2019, as well as the filibustering and protest tactics adopted by pan-democrat politicians in the LegCo, and even strike actions such as the strike organised by the Hospital Authority workers during the early stages of the Covid pandemic.”

“Ordinary citizens supporting protesters by donating money or equipment, sheltering them from police, offering ‘school bus’ services to drive them home from protests, or even simply providing them with information, now risk committing the crime of aiding and abetting terrorism or subversion.

The law appeared specifically targeted to criminalise dissent and to put an end to political protest in Hong Kong, once and for all. At the same time, it undermined the solidarity that bound together protesters and the wider community, by threatening the moderate (often professional, middle-class) supporters of the protesters with serious criminal charges. It was, at its core, an attack on mutual trust.

The law also targeted pro-democracy politicians’ overseas lobbying efforts and support networks. The pan-democrats had been active in international outreach, travelling the globe to meet with foreign governments to solicit their support for Hong Kong democracy. It had been particularly galling to Beijing to see pro-democracy legislators meeting with the likes of US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and house speaker Nancy Pelosi, lobbying for support and cheerleading for sanctions. The informal citizens diplomacy in which Joshua Wong and others had engaged was now similarly shut down. All of those activities now constituted the crime of colluding with foreign governments: calling for sanctions was specifically criminalised. Shortly after the law was passed, Nathan Law announced that he would be going into voluntary exile in order to continue his international advocacy work in safety. However, that will not necessarily make him immune.

Among the many surprises contained in the law was its extraterritorial reach: the National Security Law applies to any breach of its provisions by anyone, anywhere, in the world. This prompted concern among overseas activists and scholars critical of the CCP that not only is it no longer safe for them to set foot in Hong Kong, but authorities may use the law to issue international warrants for their arrest.”

“The law also set up a parallel judiciary, requiring that national security cases be heard only by judges drawn from a panel hand-picked by the chief executive — an arrangement that punched a hole in Hong Kong’s long tradition of judicial independence and the separation of powers, which are fundamental to the common law system.

This was just one of a number of ways in which the law undermined Hong Kong’s rule of law. The National Security Law removed the power of final adjudication from Hong Kong courts: certain serious national security cases can be tried in the mainland (thus effectively introducing the very extradition arrangements that prompted banners, singing songs, posting on social media). Police announced that even the simple act of placing flowers outside Prince Edward MTR station to commemorate the anniversary of the 31 August incident would result in arrests. Shortly after the National Security Law came into force, public libraries pulled books by authors such as Joshua Wong from their shelves as part of a review to ensure that their collections complied with the new law. Police visited pro-democracy restaurants to threaten them with prosecution if they did not remove their Lennon Walls.

Mere accusations in the pro-Beijing press of a breach of the National Security Law is now enough to intimidate people into silence. Most pernicious of all, Hong Kong Police launched with great fanfare a hotline for the public anonymously to report suspected national security violations.”

“Major government-funded art museum M+ — a new world-class facility the size of the Tate Modern on the Kowloon waterfront, due to open in late 2021 — found itself in the firing line of pro-Beijing politicians who alleged that works in the M+ collection by dissident artists such as Ai Weiwei were in breach of the National Security Law and were ‘spreading hatred’ against the country. Another pro-Beijing politician argued that public screenings of documentary films on the 2019 protest movement were inciting terrorism.

For businesses, if it was not already clear in 2019, it became even clearer in 2020 that Hong Kong was no longer a politics-free zone. Companies were called upon to make statements in support of the National Security Law — without even having seen it. Hong Kong and mainland companies quickly fell into line. When the HSBC bank failed to do so, it was subject to a social media shakedown by C.Y. Leung, who wrote on his Facebook page, ‘It’s been over a week, and HSBC still hasn’t expressed a position on the National Security Law,’ adding that HSBC should know ‘which side of their bread is buttered’. HSBC came out and expressed its support a few days later.”

“Long-running satirical comedy skit program Headliner, which had lampooned government and police figures, was axed. Nabela Qoser, the RTHK journalist who had risen to prominence following her sharp questioning of Carrie Lam after the Yuen Long mob attacks, was suspended, placed under investigation due to ‘complaints about her reporting, and ultimately fired. Bao Choy, producer of an award-winning RTHK documentary on the Yuen Long incident, was prosecuted by the government for inappropriate access to a traffic database in the course of her investigative reporting for the programme, convicted, and fined. Observers noted that this was the first and, at this stage, only successful conviction in connection with the Yuen Long attacks.

Reflecting this rapid decline in press freedom, Reporters Without Borders ranked Hong Kong 80th (out of 180 jurisdictions) in its World Press Freedom Index for 2021. This marked a dizzying fall from grace: Hong Kong had ranked 18th in the inaugural index published in 2002, and was at the time the highest-ranked region in Asia.”

“The prosecution had even tried to argue that simply liking a post on social media should be sufficient to attract criminal liability, although that argument did not appear to be accepted by the court.”

“Former lawmaker Au Nok-hin was given a nine-week prison term for assaulting police by speaking over a loudhailer, after an officer complained that the loudhailer was too loud and hurt his ears.

Members of Demosist were arrested and charged with offences under the Trade Descriptions Ordinance after the group supplied face masks with packaging labelled ‘Not made in China.’ (The masks were manufactured in Hong Kong.)”

“Under the reforms:

• All candidates for office will be screened by a new Candidate Eligibility Review Committee as well as the Committee for Safeguarding National Security, to ensure the candidates’ patriotic bona fides. Anyone who is suspected of disloyalty or insufficient patriotism — such as by engaging in acts of dissent against the central or Hong Kong governments — will be prevented from running.
• The Election Committee to elect the chief executive will be expanded from 1,200 to 1,500 seats, and stacked even further with pro-Beijing representatives. District councillors, previously a significant bloc on the Election Committee (and almost entirely pro-democracy after 2019) will no longer be part of the committee at all. In their place, numerous pro-government organisations will have seats on the committee.
• LegCo will be increased from 70 to 90 seats, of which the number of popularly elected geographic constituency seats will be reduced from 35 to just 20; the functional constituencies will have 30 seats (with individual voting replaced by corporate voting in many cases, disenfranchising voters even in these small circles); and 40 out of the 90 seats — almost half the legislature — will be chosen by members of the Beijing-stacked Election Committee from among their own number.
• The geographic constituency seats will be subject to re-districting, which further gerrymanders the electoral map in favour of pro-Beijing parties, splitting traditionally pro-democracy urban seats and combining them with pro-government rural districts.
• Candidates for LegCo must secure separate nominations from representatives of each of five sectors in the Election Committee, including the sectors made up exclusively of Beijing appointees.
• The new system ensures that no pro-democracy candidate will be able to run for office unless specifically permitted to do so by government proxies. There will be no possibility of pro-democracy parties coming anywhere near a majority in either the Election Committee or LegCo, with LegCo effectively becoming a mainland-style rubber-stamp parliament. When activists suggested that people should respond to the reforms by boycotting the compromised elections, or casting blank or spoiled ballots, the government quickly announced that they would amend the law to make it a criminal offence to promote or incite others to do so.”

“They had chanted I want genuine universal suffrage. In 2019, the aspiration was one of their Five Demands. Yet in 2021, Beijing took Hong Kong even further away from that goal. For 23 years after the handover, Hong Kong had a kind of democracy, however flawed and imperfect; now it would have no meaningful democracy at all.”

“The Trump administration announced a series of measures to end Hong Kong’s special trading status with the US, including applying the same tariffs, customs controls, and export controls to Hong Kong as applied to the rest of China, and requiring goods made in Hong Kong to be labelled Made in China. Some bilateral agreements, including those to do with extradition and mutual legal assistance, were suspended.

The US also announced sanctions against a number of Hong Kong and PRC government leaders for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and infringing human rights. Those sanctioned included Carrie Lam; the Secretary for Security, John Lee; the Secretary for Justice, Teresa Cheng; current and former police commissioners Chris Tang and Stephen Lo; Beijing’s key overseers of Hong Kong policy, Luo Huining, Xia Baolong and Zhang Xiaoming; leading members of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee who enacted the national security law; and the leadership of the new national security departments in Hong Kong. All of these individuals, their families, and associated businesses became subject to travel bans, US asset-freezes, and sanctions that prohibited US institutions (including banks) from transacting with them. Carrie Lam declared that being ‘unjustifiably sanctioned’ by the US government’ was ‘an honour, but, with her reliable tin ear, complained about the ‘piles of cash’ at home arising from her inability to receive her salary in a bank account, at the same time as many Hong Kongers were suffering in the pandemic-ravaged economy, with unemployment at a 16-year high.

The United Kingdom declared China to be in breach of the Joint Declaration, arguing that the enactment of the National Security Law had denied Hong Kong the autonomy promised under their treaty. Fulfilling what many saw as a longstanding moral obligation to the people of Hong Kong, the United Kingdom announced that it would grant residency and a path to citizenship to holders of British National (Overseas) passports, the travel documents granted to those born in Hong Kong when it was still a British territory. Tens of thousands began applying under the scheme, with the UK government estimating that, of the over 5 million Hong Kongers who were eligible, some 300,000 would relocate to the UK in the first five years. China responded furiously, announcing it would refuse to recognise BNO passports, and raised the possibility of exit bans.

Numerous other governments, including those in Germany, Denmark, and Australia, gave sanctuary and in some cases granted asylum to exiled Hong Kong dissidents. Most Western countries suspended their extradition agreements with Hong Kong.”

“The protesters in Thailand and Myanmar connected with those in Hong Kong and with supporters in Taiwan in an informal online coalition they referred to as the Milk Tea Alliance, named after the distinctive beverage found in localised forms in all of those locations. Activists shared information and tactics, and supported each other’s online information campaigns with memes, protest artwork, social media posts, and hashtags. Their solidarity came not only from a shared opposition to authoritarianism, but also in their resistance to PRC influence.”

“The millions of people who were on the streets in 2019 are still here. They are resilient and creative, and care profoundly about the future of their city. I always return to this as a cause for hope. The city’s ever-adaptable dissenters still find creative means to protest. When authorities declared that protest slogans were illegal, dissenters held up blank sheets of paper representing the banned characters. When pro-democracy cafés and restaurants were told that their Lennon Walls were inciting subversion, they replaced them with walls of the same colourful notes, devoid of slogans. The semiotics of protest is so strong in Hong Kong that the message is unambiguous, even without the words.”