29 Jun 20 | News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”114095″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]The Covid-19 pandemic has been largely contained in Hong Kong, with only about a dozen community cases over the past two months and all imported cases detected and isolated upon arrival. I was beginning to allow myself to feel less depressed about the situation in the city, even though I continued to worry about how coronavirus was affecting the rest of the world. And then, in late May, Beijing announced the National Security Law for Hong Kong, bypassing the city’s Basic Law and Legislative Council.
The law came out of nowhere, with the stated targets of so-called secession, terrorism, subversion, and collusion with foreign governments. When did they start planning it? Who was involved in drafting it? How is it going to be implemented? It was a devastating day in Hong Kong when the news was released, and I am certain many were plunged into yet another emotional and psychological abyss. I myself felt angry, helpless and wistful for ‘simpler’ days when the news wouldn’t break your heart or make your blood boil on a daily basis.
If last year’s extradition bill, which was withdrawn in September after mass protests, didn’t drive people away, the national security law has already sufficiently frightened many to make plans to leave. Whatever confidence they might have had in the city’s democratic future has been crushed. Like a skull being smashed against the wall by the Chinese Communist Party. The opacity of the law, combined with the severe sentencing—the city’s sole delegate to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee Tam Yiu-chung has even suggested life sentences for some infractions—are making people relocate. Those who have no means to leave are like silent lambs under knives that can fall at any time.
The National Security Law is particularly chilling for the following reasons: the speed of its introduction; the top-down approach, which has completely disregarded the opinions of people here; the way it has been cloaked in secrecy for spurious reasons – not even Hong Kong’s puppet chief executive Carrie Lam has seen the text, and nobody will until it is passed. The lack of means for Hongkongers to express their views and push back—and the inevitability of the law being passed (although I have to admit I still harbour some naïve belief that some miracle might happen and reverse the situation). Most worryingly, there is the way a similar law has been used in mainland China to attack dissidents, including democracy advocates such as the late Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo and human rights lawyers such as Wang Quanzhang, not to mention academics and labour activists who are not household names. I fear we only have the worst case scenarios to look forward to.
What we are witnessing is the rapid evisceration of “One Country, Two Systems”, the principle by which Hong Kong has been governed since the 1997 handover. By removing the legal firewall between the mainland and Hong Kong, Beijing is reneging on its pledges in the 1984 Sino-British Declaration. While Hongkongers have long come to distrust the Chinese government, this is the final betrayal, after their concerns voiced repeatedly in popular protests, and elections in 2016 and 2019, have been dismissed.
This also has implications for a world that is turning increasingly authoritarian. And China, with its overseas initiatives such as Belt and Road, is pulling other countries further into its ambit and dependency on it. The Chinese government does not hesitate to interfere in other countries, demanding publishers and organisers of events withdraw items that displease it, such as a recent photography exhibition in Belfast, where the Chinese consulate requested a photograph of the Tiananmen “Tank man” be removed (the request went unanswered). As China’s economic heft in other countries increases, such demands and interference will only become more common.
History has shown how precipitous change for the worse can be. Countries in the West and elsewhere have long accommodated China out of economic pragmatism; only now are many of them waking up to the dangers of appeasement. The Chinese Communist Party has no intention of yielding any power, either at home or abroad, and what it has done in Hong Kong with the National Security Law should be a wake-up call for countries everywhere.
Monday 29 June 2020[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
15 Jun 20 | China, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”113563″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]An extraordinary event in the history of not just Hong Kong but of the world took place exactly one year ago. A massive crowd, which according to some estimates was around two million strong, marched through the streets of the most cosmopolitan city on the China coast to call for the withdrawal of a proposed extradition bill that many felt would undermine the rule of law in Hong Kong. They also took action to express their anger at the brutality police had shown in dealing with a protest a few days before. And they demonstrated to show, more generally, that they were concerned that key features of local life that made the city different from its mainland neighbours, including greater freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, were under threat.
The marchers marched because they felt that the Chinese Communist Party leadership was failing to respect the second two words in the “One Country, Two System” framework that was supposed to structure relations between Beijing and Hong Kong for the first 50 years after the 1997 Handover that changed the latter from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. Xi Jinping and company were failing to respect the promise that Hong Kong would enjoy a “high degree of autonomy” until 2047. The marchers marched because they felt that Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam, chosen through an election in which fewer than 2,000 local residents were eligible to vote, was aiding and abetting this process. She was, in fact, the one who was championing the hated extradition bill, which would allow activists to be taken over the border to stand trial on the mainland if Beijing wished this to happen.
What made the march extraordinary in world historical terms? Even in an era that is witnessing wave after wave of protest struggles, the size of the crowd was unusual. There are few if any examples of roughly a quarter of the members of a sizeable political community taking to the streets at once. Yet, as Hong Kong is home to fewer than eight million people, that is what happened on 16 June 2019.
To mark that anniversary, we are publishing an excerpt from the closing pages of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, a work written by historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom, with contributions by the journalist Amy Hawkins. Published earlier this year by Columbia Global Reports, it places that massive mid-June march and related 2019 events into historical and comparative perspective.
Vigil – whose lead author has recently contributed both a short story and two commentaries to Index and spoke last year at an Index event on a panel with the Guardian’s Tania Branigan that focused on the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen – makes particularly fitting reading right now. This is because in recent weeks Beijing and its local allies have made their most disturbing moves yet to destroy what little is left of the “autonomy” Hong Kong was promised. Showing disrespect for the Chinese national anthem has been criminalised, for example; highly respected figures in the democracy movement known for consistently advocating moderate tactics have been arrested; and Beijing has announced it will impose a sweeping new anti-sedition law on Hong Kong.
Resistance continues. Activists face greater risks than ever, however, as mass arrests and police brutality have become routine. In line with arguments in Vigil, the Hong Kong democracy movement increasingly resembles the against-long-odds efforts to combat autocratic rule waged in Poland after martial law was imposed there late in 1981 or the protracted anti-colonial struggle against powerful, recalcitrant empires that have been carried out in many parts of the world.
***
Water by Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Hong Kong has long been a place with varied and deep associations with water. “Harbor” is the second term in its two-character name, coming after a word most often translated as “fragrant”. Fish and seafood figure centrally in the storied local cuisine. Hong Kong first gained economic importance due to its role as a hub of trade involving vessels that moved goods across rivers and seas. Humid air, mist, and the torrents of water that lash the city during typhoons are key parts of the local climate. Umbrellas served as protest symbols in 2014. While the city teetered on the brink in 2019, activists striving to create a new alternative world in the streets and in malls and in airport arrival and departure halls in the midst of scenes of destruction, urged one another to “be water,” to adapt their tactics continually to changing circumstances. To resemble “water” means to be flexible in one’s actions, going one place but quickly heading to another if there is too much resistance. The idea can be traced back to longstanding Chinese philosophical traditions, especially Daoism (though metaphors linked to water are important in Confucian texts as well). It has a more specific referent, though, to perhaps the most famous Hong Konger, martial artist and movie star Bruce Lee. “Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow. Be like water,” he said. “Now water can flow, or it can crash! Be water, my friend.”
There’s also the metaphor of the hundred-year flood, the (inaccurate) myth that rivers overflow their banks once a century. Just as the 2019 protest movement was underway in Hong Kong, the author Adam Hochschild published a powerful essay about the parallels of American politics in the years 1919 and 2019. Hochschild conjured up the image of a very particular sort of hundred-year flood: the unleashing of ugly nativist rhetoric in America during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, and now again during that of Donald Trump. Focusing as I have on the events treated in the preceding chapters on my mind, his essay set me wondering whether there were parallels and imperfect analogies linked to events of a century ago worth considering when trying to make sense of the current Hong Kong crisis. There are, I think—providing that we place the past of Shanghai, once the most cosmopolitan city on the China coast, beside Hong Kong’s present.
What exactly happened in that great port of the Yangzi Delta one hundred years ago? There was a dramatic series of protests in which young people took leading roles. There was a general strike. On the whole, the protesters behaved in peaceful ways, but there were some ugly incidents, during which they roughed up people they viewed as outsiders. One goal of the movement was to stop a widely disliked document from going into effect. The protesters directed much of their ire at government officials they viewed as immoral and too ready to do the bidding of men in a distant capital. They also called for the release of protesters who had been arrested and complained about police using too much force in dealing with demonstrators. The movement became in large part a fight for the right to speak out. The protests in the city were preceded by, built on, and expanded a repertoire of action developed during a series of earlier struggles, as some participants in the 1919 demonstrations had been part of shorter waves of activism in 1915 and 1918 and in some cases even in 1905. New tactics were added to the mix in 1919. So were new symbols: for example, a distinctive type of headwear became associated with the protests, as students eschewed wearing straw hats made in Japan for locally made cotton ones.
This analogy is far from perfect. The Shanghai protests of 1919 were part of a nationwide struggle, known as the May Fourth Movement, in honor of the day of the year’s first major demonstration, which took place in Beijing. The current crisis, by contrast, began and has stayed centered in Hong Kong, as did the 2014 Umbrella Movement before it. There have been many more arrests this year, and there were no paving stones thrown or fires set by activists in Shanghai a century ago. The document the protesters of 1919 disliked was not a local bill but an international accord: The Treaty of Versailles, the post–World War I agreement that they objected to because it passed control of former German possessions in Shandong Province to Japan rather than returning them to Chinese control. While one student died from the injuries he received at the hands of the police during the initial protest on May 4, 1919, many fewer demonstrators and bystanders were injured in any part of China one hundred years ago than have been injured in Hong Kong during 2019.
The protesters of 1919 even succeeded in gaining more concessions from the warlords in control of Beijing than those of 2019 have managed to secure. In the immediate wake of the Shanghai General Strike, which stands out as one of the most important of all May Fourth Movement collective actions, three officials that the students claimed were too cozy with Tokyo were removed from their positions and the protesters arrested in Beijing were released. The Chinese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, who had a role in the proceedings as both China and Japan had come into World War I on the side of the Allies, refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles. These successes by the protesters help to explain why the May Fourth Movement has long been hailed in China as a triumphant struggle. By contrast, while Carrie Lam withdrew the extradition law in September, there have been no moves toward concession regarding the other key demands of the protesters. The authorities have not released those who have been arrested, appointed an independent commission to investigate allegations of police violence, nor retracted their description of early protests as “riots.” Lam has not resigned. There is no universal suffrage in Hong Kong.
But while the May Fourth Movement has a hallowed place in Chinese history now, it was for decades considered largely a failure. While the Chinese delegation to Paris refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles, the accord went into effect anyway. Former German territories in Shandong fell under Japanese control. The May Fourth activists were no more successful at preventing territory they cared about from going from the control of one colonial power to another. And the Japanese seizure of Shandong, which was preceded by its seizing of Korea and Taiwan, was followed in 1931 by Tokyo taking Manchuria and later moving further into China and other neighboring lands.
Japan asserted in many cases that it was not taking over territories, but freeing them from colonial rule, and allowing them to be governed at last by locals. They made this claim about Shanghai, proclaiming in the early 1940s that it was finally liberated from all forms of foreign control, even as Japanese troops and Chinese puppet officials control the city. They made this claim about Manchuria as they put Pu Yi, the ethnically Manchu former Last Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, on the throne, as a ruler beholden to Tokyo. They did not talk of a single empire with multiple systems, but rather of a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Beijing, too, does not talk of having an empire, but its handling of Tibet and Xinjiang rhymes with Tokyo’s imperial approach. Beijing’s dreams for Hong Kong, which are nightmares to those on the streets, rhyme with Tokyo’s proclamations about Shanghai. The terms are new— “One Country, Two Systems,” “Greater Bay Area”—but when it comes to fantasies and raw power, there are disturbing echoes.
History does not repeat itself. In 1919, the Western powers actively aided Japan’s move into Shandong. Viewed within a hundred-year framework, the limited international concern about Hong Kong’s fate is deeply worrying. So, too, are the signals some world leaders, including Vladimir Putin and Donald J. Trump, have been sending to Xi Jinping during the current crisis, which convey a sense that whatever he does will be just fine with them, as long as it does not impinge on their plans for their own nations. Hundred-year floods can wreak many different kinds of damage.
Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink was published in February 2020. To read more about the book click here[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
04 Oct 19 | News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”110170″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]“Every Hong Kong protester is my biggest inspiration. You guys think I am brave? Those young kids, 16 and 17 years old, are risking their lives at every protest. They are the people who inspire me, they are the people who motivate me to do more work to share their story with you guys.” These words, from the Chinese dissident artist known as Badiucao, were met with rapturous applause from the audience at the private screening of the new documentary about his life, China’s Artful Dissident.
The invitation-only screening was held at the Tate Exchange and hosted by Index On Censorship. Badiucao, who until recently had kept his identity a secret in an attempt to protect himself and his family from the Chinese government, was present, alongside the filmmaker Danny Ben-Moshe.
The film cannot fail to move and inspire. It documents Badiucao’s move into political activism after watching a documentary about the Tiananmen Square massacre, the details and death toll of which the Chinese government has done its best to suppress, and his move to Australia in 2009 to escape the censorship and artistic oppression in China.
The last part of the documentary shows the lead up to an exhibition of Badiucao’s work in Hong Kong. It ends on a heartbreaking note when the exhibition is cancelled following threats to Badiucao’s family in China. This was the reason Badiucao revealed his identity; it became clear that the Chinese government had already discovered it.
The screening was followed by a Q&A with Badiucao and Ben-Moshe, chaired by Martin Rowson, the political cartoonist and regular contributor to Index on Censorship magazine. Responding to a question about his safety in Australia, Badiucao described it as “a problematic country” and that he may have been naive to think he could entirely escape the influence of Beijing.
“Australia can be an example of how China is projecting its threat all over the world,” he said.
Addressing current counter-protests from the Chinese diaspora specifically, Badiucao said:
“You have to remember that when we grow up in China, we grow up with an entire machine of propaganda, it will take a very long time for people to walk out of this shadow.”
He expressed concern that people may view the Chinese population, the counter-protesters in particular, as brainwashed, aggressive nationalists who don’t deserve democracy.
“As a consequence, the far right will rise, xenophobia will rise, discrimination will rise, racism against China will rise. Ultimately this solution will not solve the problem, it just pushes the Chinese back to Beijing.”
Badiucao’s career goal, he explained, is to destroy censorship using art. He said: “I’m very proud and honoured that my work is recognised and used by the Hong Kong protesters.” He also said that his art is a way to record history to act as counterpoint to the Chinese government, who rewrite history.
Badiucao is now living in Australia and having revealed his identity, he is followed, sees strange cars outside his home and receives daily threats via social media. He made light of those that daily detract him.
“We call them 50 cent, because when they send me a death threat, they get 50 cent deposited into their bank accounts,” he said of China’s infamous trolls.
All of this is the price he pays for simply expressing himself through his art.
Click here to read more about Badiucao and to see an exclusive cartoon of his in the new magazine[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
04 Sep 19 | China, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”108932″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]The Anti-Extradition Bill Movement began with the Hong Kong government’s attempt to amend the extradition bill, which would allow people residing in Hong Kong to be extradited to and tried in the mainland China. Within months, the protest developed into a massive and sustained movement. In one of the many marches, two million Hong Kongers showed up. Protesters also extended their goals and demanded the government investigate police brutality, drop charges against protesters who had been arrested, and implement democratic reform.
Scholars, commentators, and international observers alike are all stunned by the movement. We, common Hong Kongers, are also surprised by our own actions.
We have not achieved our goals yet, so it may sound overconfident to say that protesters worldwide can draw lessons from us. However, this movement grew out of a period of abeyance following the 2014 Umbrella Movement. We may not be able to tell others how to win a battle, but people can learn from us on how to mobilise and how to sustain a mobilisation.
Lesson One
Be tolerant to your fellow protesters who do not strictly share your tactical principles or ideologies.
The Umbrella Movement ended with a split within the opposition camp. Pan-democrats and traditional left-leaning movement groups split with localists, and militants engaged in heated and sometimes toxic verbal quarrels with pacifists and moderates. Social media such as Facebook magnified the mutual resentment. It was very demoralising.
The current movement sees a curious reengagement between militants and moderates. One major reason, of course, is that the government has become more oppressive. Blatant police brutality naturally unites people of all ideologies. Yet, we should also attribute the maintenance of unity to protesters’ willingness to learn from each other and to tolerate differences.
We may already have forgotten, but the first major resistance against the extradition bill was not on the streets. It was within the legislature. Pan-democratic lawmakers, many of whom were not comfortable with physical conflicts, made a “leap of faith” and became more militant. They filibustered, occupied chambers, surrounded a pro-Beijing lawmaker who tried to illegitimately chair the bill’s committee, and clashed with security officers. Their willingness to break some taboos earned them certain recognition from radicals and militants.
The first major test of unity came when militant protesters stormed into the legislature on 1 July, the anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China. The breaking of windows and vandalism could have easily alienated moderates. Yet, the militants tried hard to explain their action to seek understanding, and professed a strong sense of determination. Moderates, including the pan-dems, decided to not sever ties with them.
Another trial came when the controversial brawl at the airport broke out. The tying up of a reporter from the Global Times, who protesters believed was an undercover police officer from China, was certainly quite hard for moderates to swallow. However, some militants apologised the next day, providing moderates with the space to continue to stay united.
While radical militants repeatedly attacked police stations, moderates have so far tried to understand their anger and rejected the government’s accusation of riots. When moderates held a massive march the weekend after the airport demonstration, militants, despite believing that peaceful tactics were “useless,” joined in.
This unity is, of course, far from perfect. Moderates and militants continue to exchange strongly worded jibes and critiques. But both sides are more willing than before to cross the aisle. The classical tactic employed by the Chinese Communist Party to quell dissidents is the “united front”: unite with secondary enemies while attacking the major ones. In some sense, Hong Kong protesters have finally adopted this principle. Tactical and ideological differences are secondary, the primary enemy is the government. If the CCP wants to divide and destroy, then we need to unite and resist.
Lesson Two
Be water, be creative, and be humble.
“Be water” is probably the highest principle of mobilisation in this movement. The idea comes from the martial artist and film star Bruce Lee: “Be formless, shapeless, like water… Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” The point is to reject any form of tactical formalism.
During the Umbrella Movement, one of the major difficulties that occupants faced was that it was very costly to maintain an occupied area. It required a sustained flow of resources, a continuous presence of a critical number of occupants, and constant alert over police attack. Contentious action is tiring. Rest is much needed.
This time, protesters have adopted a repeated pattern of “march, attack and rest”: taking action (peaceful or militant) on a weekend, go home and then come out on the streets again next week.
A sustained and prolonged movement is very tiring. Creativity helps. Newness of action encourages people to fight on. The repertoire of tactics has expanded rapidly in this movement. The “traditional” marching route begins in Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island, and ends at the government headquarters. All three million-strong marches roughly followed this route. Yet, protesters have taken an unprecedented step: holding marches and assemblies all over Hong Kong.
When I joined the march on the streets of Kowloon in July, the experience was refreshing. I never imagined I could walk on roads outside the iconic Peninsular Hotel. Sometimes a new action can be very random. When the police violently arrested a student for buying laser pointers, and accused him of possessing “offensive weapons”, people were outraged. Some angry protesters surrounded the police station and were later dispersed by tear gas. On another night, protesters held a “stargazing assembly” outside the Space Museum. All the participants brought laser pointers along. It turned into “a symphony of lights” and, eventually, a dance party.
Hong Kongers are also humble enough to learn from foreign examples. In 2014, protesters imitated the Lennon Wall in Prague and made up one of their own at the occupied zone with colorful postscripts. This time, Lennon Walls sprang up everywhere. The one near the Tai Po Market subway station developed into a spectacular “Lennon Tunnel.” And on 23 August, the 30th anniversary of the Baltic Way, when a human chain stretched across the Baltics in opposition to Soviet rule, we gathered together and built our Hong Kong Way.
Scholars of social movements such as Sidney Tarrow have long been studying how movement tactics diffuse. Some tactics are modular, meaning that they are prevalent and adaptable to new settings. Yet, each specific action also has to resonate with local cultures in order to be effective and affective. In this sense, Hong Kongers “indigenised” both the Lennon Wall and the Baltic Way.
The Hong Kong Way is especially telling. Protesters formed human chains modelling three major subway lines. Moreover, one chain extended onto the symbolic Lion Rock and participants lit it up with cell phone flashlights. When protesters hung a huge yellow banner on that hill in 2014, the “Lion Rock Spirit,” which originally represented economic development, was redefined to a spirit for democracy. The spirit was redefined again by the Hong Kong Way, professing unity, persistence and hope in the face of oppression and darkness. Others far away can learn from us, just as we have learned from those far away from us in space and time
Lesson Three
Stand up to bullies.
When kids are bullied, we teach them to stand up. Retreat or concession will only embolden the bullies. But, when it comes to politics, we seem to quickly come up with the conclusion that “politics is the art of compromise”. It is very common to hear people saying: “Beijing is too strong, don’t oppose it.” “We can gain so much by befriending China, what is the point of becoming its enemies?” But condoning bullies always has consequences. We all know that.
When the Hong Kong government first introduced the proposed extradition amendments, many believed that there was no way to stop the legislation process. The almighty Beijing was behind Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong, and civil society was suffering from demobilisation after 2014. The first march against the bill was so small and seemingly insignificant that no one paid serious attention to it. Lam and her colleagues were emboldened, and belittled all opposition voices, including those from the legal sector. People were outraged, and momentum was built up step by step. Our mobilisation eventually forced Lam to suspend the bill (though we are demanding a complete withdrawal).
We still do not know whether we will come out victorious. But we know that we have to fight on. For if we concede now, we will suffer from serious consequences.
Hong Kong’s aviation industry is probably one of the most progressive sectors in the city. Beijing was not happy when a small number of pilots and cabin crew voiced support for the protests. The CCP pressurised the airlines to take action. The biggest Cathay Pacific, owned by conglomerate Swire, launched a heavy crackdown against its own managers and employees to kowtow to Beijing. The reason for surrendering, of course, is the company’s heavy reliance on China’s market and airspace. By conceding to bullying, Cathay Pacific not only lost Hong Kongers’ support, but also allowed Beijing to further step up its repression. Hong Kong cannot become another Cathay.
The fight against the extradition bill is Hong Kong’s battle against Beijing’s bullying. We have conceded so much in recent years that we have learned that, in fact, concession will only invite more intrusive oppression, and even violence. This is not to say that one can start an outright war with a bully without assessing one’s own costs and benefits. Yet, principled self-defense is always necessary. If you do not stand up, no one will stand up for you.
Be water, my friend. Also, be brave and be principled.[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1567590823109-829eac1b-4d0e-1″ taxonomies=”581″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
