The umbrellas, for a brief moment, folded. For many, the largest protest in China in 25 years were as good as finished, and citizens and students alike returned to the hustle and bustle of everyday life in Hong Kong. Small groups punctuated city streets and government buildings, but the throes of thousands passionately protesting for change had dissipated. The government had promised talks with pro-democracy leaders, and the promise of change seemed within reach.
But on Friday, that promise broke through — thousands once again flooded Hong Kong’s twilit streets, in response to the government calling off the talks they had promised only days earlier. “Our Hong Kong, ours to save,” they chanted, proving that a protest many had written off had only just begun.
The story of Hong Kong’s fight for universal suffrage bears many resemblances to public demonstrations both recent and historical — the Arab Spring comes to mind, as does China’s own Tiananmen Square demonstrations a quarter century earlier — but it’s also been a protest which could only have occurred in the present day. Using the tools of social media and the internet, a new generation of Hong Kongers are making sure that the world is watching as they fight for the rights they feel entitled to.
We Canadians could learn a thing or two.
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To understand the protests in Hong Kong, it’s necessary to have a basic understanding of the city’s recent history.
For 150 years, Hong Kong was a British colony. It wasn’t until 1997 that Hong Kong was formally reintegrated into China, and with several caveats: namely, the preservation of the rights and freedoms which are restricted on the mainland, such as freedom of press, freedom of religion, a free market, and a Western-style democratic government.
This ‘one country, two systems’ strategy has since been both one of the most unique and frequently challenged balances of power in the world — Hong Kong’s delicate mix of Western and Eastern cultures is a constant source of anxiety for the Chinese government, who fear that the region’s democratic values will eventually spread to the mainland.
“There’s amazing connections between Hong Kong and Canada. What happens there can have a huge effect on us here.”
When the United Kingdom and the People’s Republic finalized the terms of Hong Kong’s handover, they jointly drafted a new constitution for the region, known as the Basic Law. Among other democratic freedoms, the law promised that Hong Kong residents would eventually be able to elect their own chief executive officer by popular vote. In 2007, a decade after Hong Kong rejoined China, this clause was finally agreed to by the Chinese government: in 2017, they claimed, Hong Kongers would finally be able to vote in their own representative. One person, one vote.
As you may have guessed, there’s a catch. On August 31, the Chinese government clarified the fine print of their previous promise. Before appearing on a ballot, each candidate must first be approved by a group of pro-Beijing loyalists — essentially, the same process through which Hong Kong’s previous leaders have been chosen.
Politically, Hong Kong is split into two groups: pro-Beijing royalists and pro-democracy regionalists. The former currently constitutes the majority of Hong Kong’s electoral committee, which was in charge of electing Hong Kong’s leaders — including incumbent Chief Executive, Leung Chun-ying — without any input from the people. The announcement that the predominantly pro-Beijing committee would play a role in a supposedly ‘democratic’ election was met with serious backlash from pro-democracy activists, most of whom are either professors or students in Hong Kong’s secondary schools and universities.
It doesn’t help that, despite Hong Kong’s status as the world’s third-most prominent financial centre, its population of over seven million has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. Many young people in Hong Kong are unable to find work, and stay with their parents well into their 20s.
Given China’s aspirations to become the world’s foremost economic powerhouse — the country is worth 24 times as much as it was during Tiananmen Square — the balance in Hong Kong is exceedingly fragile.
Though smaller demonstrations bloomed intermittently throughout the region in early September, it wasn’t until the arrest and detainment of 17-year old Joshua Wong Chi-fung — a local celebrity and leader of the student activist group Scholarism — that groups of protesters swelled from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands, blocking streets and flooding business and shopping districts.
By September 26, the protests began in earnest, and the world immediately began to take notice. The use of umbrellas by protesters to block pepper spray and tear gas from riot police inspired a new name for the demonstrations: the Umbrella Revolution.
“Hong Kong students crave change in the form of democratic freedom and universal suffrage.”
The Chinese government’s fears of a politically autonomous Hong Kong are best expressed in an op-ed published by the People’s Daily, a Communist newspaper headquartered on the mainland: it warned that the protests “cannot win people’s hearts and will ultimately fail.” Measures have been taken to restrict internet access on the mainland and in Hong Kong by Chinese officials: Instagram has been blocked in many areas, and posts on Weibo — China’s version of Twitter — have been deleted or blocked at an alarming rate. Any mention of Hong Kong’s protests or electoral reform are strictly forbidden.
In response to increasing political oppression and violent tactics from the Communist party — attacks on protesters by violent pro-Beijing mobs on October 3 reek of government involvement — protesters have maintained a nonviolent, measured approach. Their insistence on cleaning the garbage in Hong Kong’s streets, handing out free water and umbrellas to fellow protesters, and avoiding violent confrontation is unique among large-scale protests; it’s an approach which has endeared spectators worldwide to Hong Kong’s cause.
It’s also arguably the only reason that the protests showed any hope of enacting real change in the past week. Preliminary talks between pro-democracy groups and the Hong Kong government seemed poised to begin, and many were tenuously optimistic that change might actually come. But as of publication date, protests have once again erupted in Hong Kong’s streets — demonstrators are determined to see real progress from their efforts, and the fallout of government talks have only further mobilized Hong Kong’s cause.
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Hollie Ivany is a Canadian expat living and teaching in Hong Kong with her husband. Through email correspondence, she shared her experience with the protests in the streets of her city.
“It’s been a sea of ups and downs for the movement,” she writes. “Despite challenges and fierce opposition from government, police and some Hong Kong citizens, protesters have mostly remained calm, optimistic and cheerfully defiant.” According to Ivany, the protests have been made up predominantly of students, though she notes “veteran Hong Kong protesters have been largely visible and active [. . .] as well as university professors, youth and church group leaders, former/current government officials, and even some Hong Kong celebrities.”
The student groups at the forefront of the protests — including the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism, the group led by Joshua Wong — have been campaigning for democratic rights in Hong Kong for years. They’re part of a new guard of Hong Kongers, a generation born into the region’s post-colonial era of expanded rights and freedoms. Unlike those who have come before them, these young people are unafraid to challenge the powers that be on issues of democratic rights, income equality, and increasing cultural tensions; and they’re intent on sharing their message of positive change with the world.
“Students are heavily involved because they are idealistic, passionate, and energetic. They crave change in the form of democratic freedom and universal suffrage,” says Ivany.
“These kids are aware and certain of what they want for Hong Kong — a bright future that resembles the unique and prosperous Hong Kong they have grown up to love, one that they feel is slipping away under China’s iron fist, and one that, despite its charm, has always been riddled with income inequality and other socioeconomic issues that are in major need of fixing. The time is definitely now, especially since the 2017 elections are approaching.”
The protesters and unafraid to challenge the powers that be on issues of democratic rights, income equality, and increasing cultural tensions.
“There’s definitely more willingness among students [in Hong Kong] to get out on the streets,” says Jeremy Brown, an SFU history professor and expert on contemporary China. “Their response shows that it’s not quite working for them, that there is an expectation of democracy, there is hope for democracy in Hong Kong.”
Brown, who has written extensively on the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989, notes that the Hong Kong protests have been a comparative success — there have been relatively few injuries and no known casualties, and students have earned the chance to open a political debate on existing issues in Hong Kong society which would have been inconceivable only a quarter century ago.
When I spoke to Brown, the protests had reached a brief but tense state of calm. “[This break is] good for the students, because they can go rest, and they can say that they’ve actually achieved something, because the chief executive said ‘Okay, we will talk, we will have dialogue,’ and that’s more than they got before. And the whole world has paid attention to it, in part because of social media and because of Twitter and Youtube.”
As of this article’s publication, this promise has not been kept — demonstrators have been denied the chance to engage in an open dialogue with the government, and have retaliated by reconvening in groups around the region’s government buildings. Rested and reinvigorated, it remains to be seen what gains the protests will make the second time around.
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Given the failure for it’s worth asking: what has been accomplished so far by the Umbrella Revolution?
According to Ivany, the movement has already inspired real, palpable change among Hong Kong’s residents; change that won’t be receding anytime soon. “Hong Kong is different now — its young people have created and experienced something that put a stop to their society and made headlines all over the world. They realize there is power in numbers. ”
Though Hong Kong and Vancouver are separated by over 10,000 kilometres of Pacific Ocean, an invisible thread ties our two cities together. Many SFU students are originally from Hong Kong, and count among its citizens friends and family members; numerous others have connections to expats from Vancouver living and working in the region. Economically, culturally, and otherwise, the ties between Vancouver and Hong Kong are strong, and the effects of the protests have been keenly felt here, in our city.
On Sunday, October 5, I was lucky enough to attend a public demonstration at the Vancouver Art Gallery in support of Hong Kong’s protesters — hundreds of Vancouverites chanted along to cantopop and held up handmade signs, expressing solidarity with Hong Kong’s demonstrators and urging the Chinese government to make concessions.
“The largest group of foreign passport holders in Hong Kong is Canadian,” Brown says. “About 15 per cent of the people in Hong Kong have Canadian passports. There’s amazing connections between Hong Kong and Canada; Vancouver especially. So it matters, it definitely matters — what happens there can have a huge effect on us here.”
The example of Hong Kong’s student protesters is also one Canadian students should be mindful of. For almost two sustained weeks, tens of thousands poured out their of classrooms and homes in a show of unified support for their rights and freedoms, attracting the watchful and sympathetic eyes of the world. On a daily basis, our own freedoms are being challenged: pipelines threaten to run through Burnaby Mountain, tuition fees continue to rise, campuses neglect to protect students against sexual assault, and corporations pollute our environment and deplete our natural resources.
It’s a different battle we fight, to be sure. We should count ourselves lucky that our most basic rights aren’t challenged as they are in Hong Kong. But the example of these students, bravely fighting for the right to universal suffrage and freedom from a corrupt and repressive system, is one we in Canada — especially university students — should be paying close attention to.
