Mass protests in Hong Kong, Sunday 18 August. Photo: Kevin Cheng via twitter [1].
A huge and illegal march in the middle of a thunderstorm demonstrates that the people of Hong Kong are still determined to fight to preserve their freedoms. The organizers claim 1.7 million people turned out, but it is impossible to give an accurate figure because transport chaos meant that people joined the march at different points and many never even managed to reach it. Unlike in previous weeks [see article below], there were no confrontations with the police, despite the fact that they had banned the march. Faced with a tidal wave of people they made no attempt to stop or divert the marchers, who took over the roads at will. This week, there was no teargas, no baton charges, no arrests.
The march, called in solidarity with the young woman whose right eye was very seriously injured in last week’s battles, came at the end of dramatic protests and ideological struggle. A five-day occupation of the airport ended on Tuesday with some clashes between police and protesters. The occupation began with a simple demonstration in the Arrivals Hall, with protestors leafletting passengers about the situation in the city, but they then moved to the Departure Hall, stopping people catching their flights. The pro-Beijing media jumped on the chance to interview angry businessmen and tearful tourists whose travel plans had been disrupted. On Tuesday, some militants seized two mainland men, whom they thought were spies, and ill-treated them. It turned out that neither were spies and one was a journalist for the Global Times (a rabidly nationalist rag and Beijing’s answer to the Daily Mail). These events gave the police an excuse to intervene and provided ammunition for the propaganda war against the movement.
At the same time Beijing has stepped up its pressure. There has been extensive TV coverage of the mainland People’s Armed Police practicing anti-riot drills just across the boundary in Shenzhen and senior government figures frequently threaten intervention. Pressure on Hong Kong businesses to back the government has increased. Two senior Cathay Pacific executives ‘resigned’, allegedly because of their initial failure to condemn the movement. On 19 August, Finnair, for whom China is their second largest long-haul market, threatened its Hong Kong staff with disciplinary action if they supported the movement and de-recognized the flight attendants’ trade union. Online retailer Amazon apologized for selling a ‘Free Hong Kong’ t-shirt even though it has no operation in China. Local oligarchs, like Li Ka-Shing, have become increasingly vocal in their support for the government. The media have been full of events at the airport and condemnation of what Beijing is now describing as ‘near terrorism’ by demonstrators. What is more, they loudly proclaim that foreign ‘black hands’ – meaning CIA agents, or possibly James Bond – are behind the movement.
For its part, after weeks of silence and inaction, the Hong Kong government has at last done something. On Thursday they announced $HK19.1 billion (about £2 billion or $US4.27 billion) in tax cuts and subsidies. According to the Financial Secretary: ‘the measures are definitely not related to the political difficulties we are facing’ but are a response to economic problems. People are happy to get a small handout, but hardly anyone sees these steps as anything other than a pathetic attempt to bribe people into passivity. As a leading Democratic Party politician told the Financial Secretary: ‘This is a political issue, not an economic issue, stupid.’
Beijing and their local allies have two objectives in this propaganda war. The first is aimed at the mainland population. They want to brand the unrest as a foreign-inspired attack on Chinese national unity, echoing the imperialist seizure of Hong Kong by the British back in 1842. They want people to believe that the movement’s aim is independence because that will make them bitterly hostile. Nationalism is one of the main ideological props on the Communist Party and even mainlanders who agree on the need for radical democratic changes invariably baulk at the prospect of national self-determination for Tibet or Xinjiang, let alone Hong Kong. A population that is hostile to the struggle is unlikely to see it as an inspiration and a model to be emulated in Shanghai or Beijing.
The other aim in the propaganda war is to try to separate the most militant protesters, who have battled the police over the last few weeks, from their mass of supporters who have supplied the infrastructure of assistance that has allowed the struggle to go on for so long. Painting a movement that contains many currents of opinion as dominated by mindless thugs who want either anarchy or independence is a crude attempt to manufacture a split that will weaken and demoralize all sections of the opposition.
At the same time, this propaganda serves to unite and mobilize Beijing’s own supporters inside Hong Kong. They do have supporters. On Saturday the ‘Safeguard Hong Kong Alliance’ held a rally outside the government offices in support of the police. Although dwarfed by Sunday’s turnout, the rally was still very large. The crowd sang the Chinese national anthem, waved the national flag and was addressed by a succession of business leaders and pro-Beijing politicians condemning violence and supporting the police. Even more worrying, the South China Morning Post reported on Sunday that groups of men wearing white had been crossing the border into Hong Kong the day before. According to their source: ‘I don’t rule out the possibility that they came to Hong Kong to throw their weight behind somebody.’ Given that on two previous occasions, in Yuen Long last month and in North Point a couple of weeks ago, organized groups of men in white shirts attacked demonstrators, the danger is that local reactionaries are being supplemented by mainlanders in order to expand such attacks.
It is nonsense to suggest that the movement is organized and inspired by the US or the UK. The idea that Donald Trump (elected President by less than 50% of US voters) or Boris Johnson (elected Prime Minister by less than 1% of British voters) would lift a finger to help the people of Hong Kong is laughable. More seriously, movements that can put hundreds of thousands of people on the streets week after week, and are able to mobilize up to a quarter of the local population for big events, are not produced by the machinations of secret agents. They are produced by very real economic, social and political conditions that drive people to demonstrate despite the heat and the rain because they are no longer prepared to suffer in silence. True, there is one elderly woman who is on every demonstration waving a large Union Jack. True, there are a few people who carry US flags. True, some of the leaders of the democratic parties are only too happy to hob-nob with reactionary US politicians. True, and more seriously, a large student rally on Friday evening called for support from the USA and the UK governments. But there is no evidence at all that any of these people are pawns of foreign forces or anything other than Hong Kongers who want the promise of steady progress towards democracy, made to them by both Britain and China before the handover, to be realized in their lifetimes.
Last weekend there were four demonstrations and marches in support of the movement, all of them peaceful. At the end of the huge demonstration on Sunday there was an online debate amongst the militants as to whether to march on and besiege the Chinese government’s Liaison Office in Sheung Wan, a tactic that would unquestionably have led to a bitter battle with the cops. The overwhelming vote was against the suggestion. In the current circumstances this was unquestionably the correct decision. The importance of the Sunday march was that it demonstrated that there is still massive popular support for the complete withdrawal of the extradition bill, for a public enquiry into the policing of the protests, the resignation of the chief executive, the dropping of charges against those arrested and the government ceasing to call demonstrations ‘riots.’ It was of central importance to demonstrate on a massive scale that the propaganda campaign of the last two or three weeks has not split the movement or cowed people into passivity.
There is little doubt that Hong Kongers will continue to resist, but there is mood of doubt as to whether they can win. One commentator drew a parallel with the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. Her thinking is that Hong Kongers, like Poland’s Jewish population, are trapped with no prospect of escape and that resistance, however doomed, is the only recourse in such a situation. That is both overdramatic and over-pessimistic. The Beijing government may be prepared to shed blood to restore order but it will not launch a war of extermination against the people of Hong Kong and there are signs that the movement can still find ways of spreading and increasing the pressure for change. Some civil servants are calling for strike action in support of the movement. Students are discussing a plan for a boycott of schools and universities every Monday once the term starts. On Saturday, 20,000 teachers responded to a call by the Professional Teachers’ Union and marched in support of the demonstrators. Sunday demonstrated that the anger and determination of Hong Kongers is as widespread as ever. Over the last weeks, the innovation and resourcefulness of the mass movement has been as prominent as the courage and determination of the militant vanguard. Those qualities can ensure that the protests take new forms that are capable of putting yet more pressure on the government to make concessions.
Colin Sparks
• RS 21, 19 August 2019:
https://www.rs21.org.uk/2019/08/19/hong-kong-mass-protests-in-the-rain/
Tensions rise in Hong Kong
Colin Sparks reports on the latest developments in Hong Kong, where the movement on the streets is showing impressive resilience as direct pressure from Beijing builds.
Protests at Hong Kong airport. Photo via twitter @HansonKuang
Hong Kong airport shut down on Monday and was severely disrupted again on Tuesday as thousands of protesters occupied the terminals. The spontaneous protest was in response to the shocking police violence in the days before. On Sunday night a medical volunteer was rushed to hospital when a hard object, allegedly a police bean bag round, shattered her protective eye shield. She is in danger of losing the sight of one eye. The same evening, police fired tear gas grenades inside one MTR station and beat protesters fleeing down an escalator in another. Cops disguised as protestors have been infiltrating demonstrations and making arbitrary arrests. Elsewhere, the indiscriminate use of tear gas in residential areas has brought locals out to join demonstrators resisting the police. There is no doubt there has been a sharp escalation in police violence.
Hong Kong’s bosses swing behind the local government
The escalation is part of an intensified campaign to crush the mass movement against the proposed extradition law that shows no signs of abating. Last week, for the first time, a group of the largest construction companies issued a statement backing the government. They, and other big businesses, had been conspicuously silent over the demonstrations until recently because they feared that the new law could be used against them. Almost all Hong Kong big businesses are heavily involved in the mainland. Their worry is that if they make the wrong deal with the wrong person they could find themselves whisked away to face trumped-up charges in a mainland court that boasts a 95 % conviction rate. Some had told their staff they could take time off to demonstrate if they wished. That has changed. What has shifted their view is that Beijing is putting more and more pressure on them to back the government. Last week, they summoned 500 of the local elite – tycoons and local pro-Beijing politicians – to a meeting in Shenzhen where, allegedly, they were lectured on the need to put their weight behind Chief Executive Carrie Lam and the Hong Kong police.
A good example of the business capitulation is that Cathay Pacific airline, part owned by the British-based Swire conglomerate, on Thursday issued a statement saying that it had no interest in the private activities of its employees, many of whom have been supportive of the protests. On Friday, the Beijing air travel regulator demanded that Cathay banned staff protesters from working on flights using Chinese airspace. Within hours, Cathay had caved in and suspended a pilot charged with rioting and sacked two ground staff who had leaked confidential information. On Tuesday, the chief executive of the main Cathay shareholder, Merlin Bingham Swire of Swire Pacific visited Beijing and the company issued a statement that they are:
deeply concerned by the ongoing violence and disruption impacting Hong Kong. We resolutely support the Hong Kong SAR government, the chief executive and police in their efforts to restore law and order.
They are not only complying with all of the demands but dancing to Beijing’s tune in order to maintain their profitable China-based operations.
At the same time, Beijing is increasing direct pressure on the movement. The tone of the official press is becoming much harsher, with some now speaking of the demonstrators as potential terrorists. At least 12,000 Chinese paramilitary armed police, the government’s weapon of choice for crushing popular resistance, were shown on state TV moving to just across the Hong Kong boundary in Shenzhen. The Chinese government may not yet be ready to intervene directly in Hong Kong but it is clearly making preparations to do so if need be. For the moment, Beijing is still hoping that the mass movement will run out of steam, the militant vanguard will become exhausted, and the local police can re-establish control unaided. They recognise that the occupation of Hong Kong, and the likely bitter resistance it would encounter, would exact a huge political and economic price.
The movement today
There are few signs so far of the scale of the movement falling off. The airport occupations, taking place on working days, show that thousands of people are prepared to sacrifice time and money to back the campaign. In locality after locality, the vanguard’s sieges of police stations gain support from local residents, notably in the working class area of Kowloon and the New Territories. The daily 4 pm police press conference was broadcast live on Monday and in offices across Hong Kong people were gathered around screens in anger and disgust at the explanations for extreme police violence offered by the senior officers.
That is not to say there are not problems ahead for the movement. At the beginning, the brave young fighters were, literally, at the head of marches of hundreds of thousands of people. The police have responded by banning marches. Although thousands ignore the bans and march anyway, the vanguard have changed their tactics to what amounts to urban guerrilla warfare. Their slogan ‘Be water, my friend’ means that relatively small groups confront the police in one place and then quickly move elsewhere, forcing the cops to disperse across the city in pursuit. These are brilliant and inventive tactics, but they are only available to the most determined fighters. They retain mass support, but most of the time the masses are now just that: supporters. They no longer have the same central role in the movement. That is why events like last week’s strikes, demonstrations by lawyers and civil servants, demonstrations by health workers against increasing police violence, and the occupations of the airport over the weekend are so important. They are actions in which thousands of people play an active part in building the movement.
This is a movement without any clear, central, leadership. The marches that take place in defiance of police bans are called by all sort of people: the one in Taipo last Saturday was called by a local church leader. Others are the result of online discussions between participants. In the confrontations with the police intense discussions take place about tactics between the fighters and there is admirable unity in action once a decision is reached. Individual democratic politicians have been present at many of the worst confrontations but the traditional democratic parties have been unable to provide any real leadership. Even the young leaders thrown up by the 2014 Occupy movement have been more or less marginalized.
What does the movement want?
This lack of a central leadership is a great strength of the movement and has meant that it has been able to display the amazing flexibility, innovation and resourcefulness that have kept it alive against fierce repression. On the other hand, it is a weakness because it is not clear today exactly what its political goals are. The original demand was for the withdrawal of the extradition bill, and that remains a central plank. After the first confrontations new demands were added, more or less by popular acclaim: the resignation of the Chief Executive, Carrie Lam; a public enquiry into police behaviour; the dropping of all charges against protestors; and withdrawal of any attempt to call the demonstrations riots. Subsequently, the key slogan of the most militant demonstrators has become: ‘Liberate Hong Kong: Revolution of our Time!’ What this means is not clear. The slogan was coined in 2016 by an independence advocate, Edward Leung Tin-kei, and some of the people using it today undoubtedly want Hong Kong to break away from the PRC. For others, though, it is a more general demand for the democratization of Hong Kong politics along the lines promised in the handover negotiations and subsequently refused by Beijing and their local stooges. They wish to preserve the unique aspects of Hong Kong life and culture that distinguish it from the rest of China. For some, no doubt, it is simply a concise way of putting the original demands. Even if the government was prepared to compromise to achieve peace, it is unclear exactly what sort of concession would be sufficient to halt the movement.
So far, however, the local government has made not one single concession to any of these demands. Having said the original bill is ‘dead’ they refuse even formally to withdraw it. It is very difficult to see how Beijing, which today calls the shots in official policy, will ever allow them a single backward step. To concede to any of the demands would be to display weaknesses that they fear would be picked up by one or more of the many other discontented groups in China. Unfortunately for the movement, there is very little sign of any support for their stand in the Chinese heartlands.
Is there support on the mainland?
The Communist Party has built its current legitimacy around delivering a strong and united China. They have banged the nationalist drum on any and every opportunity. One example is that the Beijing government demanded that airlines changed their schedules that suggested that Taiwan is a separate country because the suggestion that it is not an integral part of the People’s Republic, ‘hurt the feelings of 1.3 billion Chinese’. This propaganda has been buttressed by the very real advances in Chinese economic, political and economic power, and the fact that significant sections of the population have experienced rising living standards. The state media in the mainland have harped constantly on the violence of the demonstrators, the alleged influence of foreign agitators, and on the alleged demand to break away from China, which they claim is what motivates the militants.
For their part, the bulk of the movement has made little effort to build support on the mainland. There is a strong current of xenophobia against mainland Chinese amongst Hong Kongers, most of whom see themselves as members of a quite distinct society. These feelings are sometimes expressed in terms of abuse and open hostility to mainlanders. There are a few voices calling for attempts to build links between the struggle in Hong Kong and those on the mainland. The most famous is ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung, the former Trotskyist, and one of the elected representatives banned from the Legislative Council. He and the other militants who share his outlook have long argued that without mainland support Hong Kong will always be under pressure from Beijing, and that their demands for democratization can find an echo amongst the workers and peasants who suffer much more from Beijing’s rule than do Hong Kongers, but the people arguing for this viewpoint are few in number and their voices are not influential in the movement.
The consequence is that there seems to be very little support for the Hong Kong struggle among mainlanders, and much active hostility. One index of this pervasive nationalist hostility to the movement is that mainland Chinese students in Australia and Canada have mobilised against students from Hong Kong and elsewhere who have expressed support for the demonstrations. While some ethnic minorities hostile to Han Chinese domination, in Tibet or Xinjiang, might see Hong Kong as a kindred struggle, it is unlikely that any of the many discontented groups in the Han heartlands will express support. Although Beijing clearly fears the contagion of democracy spreading across China if they make any concessions to Hong Kong, there is as yet no evidence of that taking place.
The future of the movement
The outcome of the ten-week crisis is impossible to predict because it depends on too many variables. One major variable is the endurance and resourcefulness of the movement and in particular whether it can continue to build mobilizations that allow the masses to participate fully. The courage and stamina of the front-line fighters is admirable, but without mass support that will eventually wither. That mass support can only be sustained if it can find expression in actions like the one-day strike, the sectoral mobilizations and the airport occupations, in which the broadest range of people can participate.
The other major variable is the Chinese government. At the moment they are clearly hoping that their local stooges can outlast the movement but if it continues to go forward then sooner or later they will have to make a decision. They will have to balance the costs of finding some concessions that will defuse the movement against those of what will likely be a bloody and protracted occupation of the territory. Whichever choice they make, they will have to pay a price. If they choose the ‘Tiananmen option’ then there will inevitably be a huge international backlash that will have serious economic and political effects. If they choose to make concessions then they will still face a discontented city which will, if not today then tomorrow, have shown that with courage and determination, it is possible to win substantial gains against even an unashamedly authoritarian regime.
Colin Sparks
• RS 21, 13 August 2019:
https://www.rs21.org.uk/2019/08/13/tensions-rise-in-hong-kong/