Without Hong Kong the rise of China would not have occurred as it has. Both China and the Soviet Bloc abandoned their “socialism” and returned to capitalism between 1980s and 1990s, yet the former benefited from a huge industrialization drive while the latter suffered from de-industrialisation. This difference was due to a combination of many factors. But one such factor that gave Beijing an edge was that it had Hong Kong (and Taiwan) as leverage.(1)
One country, two capitalist systems
Already in the Mao era, Hong Kong was so essential to Beijing that it tolerated the continuing presence of the British colonial government there in exchange for use of the free port through which China earned one third of its foreign currency during the Cold War. The greater the failure of Mao’s project, the more Beijing had to rely on Hong Kong to fund its import of technology and other necessities. Beijing had enthusiastically supported the world anti-colonialism movement but its inconsistency over Hong Kong’s colonial status was mocked by Moscow in the early 1960s(2), leading China to request, successfully, that the UN remove Hong Kong from the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories in 1972 after its accession to the UN a year earlier. For the 4 million Chinese in Hong Kong, Beijing’s action looked like a doctor treating a person with an arrow wound by merely removing the end part of the arrow – although Hong Kong was no longer listed as a colony, its people continued to be subjected to British rule.
When Mao died the country was in dire situation. Deng’s “reform and opening” policy essentially abandoned Mao’s “communism” and pursued a full reintegration with global capitalism, and he did not mind his party leaders at all levels getting rich first. To accomplish that he needed Hong Kong.
Hong Kong was described as China’s gold-laying goose. Deng Xiaoping met Margaret Thatcher in 1984 for the signing of the Joint Declaration, and said that Hong Kong’s capitalism would be preserved for fifty years because, with the help of Hong Kong, “China hoped to approach the economic level of advanced countries by the end of that time.”(3) However, since the 1980s Hong Kong’s contribution to China’s rise is not only confined to its investment in China during the first phase of “reform and opening”, nor its earning of foreign currency. On 13th November 2018, Xi Jinping made a speech to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of “reform and opening”, and he especially thanked two former Chief Executives (CEs) of Hong Kong.(4) One was C.Y. Leung, who had helped in designing the land auction system for China (actually copied from Hong Kong); the other was T.C. Hwa, who had helped Beijing in connecting China with the US. It was the Hong Kong business elite who helped in the drafting of many commercial and stock market laws since the early 1990’s. Laura Cha Shih May-Lung, currently chairperson of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited, was also a key Hong Kong figure in helping Beijing to connect to the global market, and was appointed as the Vice-Chairperson of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) from 2001 to 2004, the first ever non-Mainland Chinese to be given such a high level Chinese government job. Concerning lower level economic activities, Hong Kong managerial professionals helped train the first batch of Chinese managers and supervisors in the early 1980s.
Hong Kong’s influence did not stop at the economy. In academia, Hong Kong’s support was also essential in this period; for instance, the department of social work in higher education were not founded until the early 1980s, with the direct help from Hong Kong academia. Hong Kong’s civil associations also began to help to promote NGOs in Mainland, covering a large range of areas, from women and labour rights to community work. Hong Kong popular culture, from its music and its TV programs to Jin Rong’s Chinese martial arts novel has been widely popular since that time. In general Hong Kong’s relative freedom and its relatively better protection of human rights have long been envied by Mainland people, and the latter have also picked up some of these concepts, which the Party dislikes. Hong Kong is also famous for putting out a huge volume and variety of biographies about top CCP leaders, telling all kinds of their secrets (not necessarily reliably), that chiefly target Mainland visitors, who numbered 47.2 million in 2014, or 78 percent of the total number of visitors.
In the early 1980s Deng Xiaoping made a famous remark about his promise of “one country two systems” for Hong Kong, saying that “horse racing will continue, and the dancing parties will go on, and so does the capitalist life style there”. Although common people do gamble in horse racing and dance occasionally, this message was chiefly for the Hong Kong tycoons and politicians. From the very beginning when the CCP started negotiating with the UK on the handover of the city, it made it very clear that when it promised “Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong”, it never meant all Hong Kong citizens but mainly the local elites.(5)
By then there was a popular saying among these tycoons – “politically it was Beijing who will take over Hong Kong, economically it would be us who take over Mainland China.” But China has been too big and its state bureaucracy too powerful for them to take over China’s economy. What they only succeeded was helping the CCP to transform China into capitalist state. Beijing has always insisted that Mainland China remains to be “socialist”, while only Hong Kong is “capitalist”. In essence, I argue, both are capitalist, although quite different from each other. The former is a kind of state capitalism, while the latter a laissez faire capitalism. The two capitalism compliments each other. The Hong Kong free port status has allowed China’s capitalism to “walk on two legs”; while the Mainland’s state capitalism has helped to protect China from predatorial global capitalism, Hong Kong gives Beijing a “window” to the latter as well. With the help of Hong Kong (and also Taiwan) Beijing has been hugely successful in making China rise up. Yet the asymmetry in size between the two sides has determined that Hong Kong would be gradually integrated into the “Greater China”. Since then its supporters have been telling Hong Kong people that Hong Kong’s importance to Beijing has been diminishing. In appearance it is true. Whereas in 1983 Hong Kong’s GDP was 13.1 percent of China’s, it fell to 3 percent in 2013.(6) In contrast Chinese companies’ share of the Hong Kong stock market was negligible before the1990s, in 2006 it accounted for 47.7 percent of the stock market(7) and further rose to 56.9 percent in 2013.(8) Since then Beijing supporters’ conclusion is that Hong Kong’s usefulness to China is finished, and that the Hong Kong goose should therefore behave itself. Gradually Beijing began to impose ever more hard-lined policy over Hong Kong. It wants to keep Hong Kong’s capitalism but not its autonomy and its political liberties.
But this is not entirely new. One could trace that mindset back in the 1980s, when Beijing was explicit in allying with the local tycoons so as to fend off the democratic movement in Hong Kong. In 1987 Deng told them that there must be no attempt to copy the Western parliamentary democracy, nor division of power.(9) The huge support for the 1989 democratic movement from Hong Kong once again reminded Beijing that it must not allow this to happen again in the future when it took back the city. That is why when Beijing designed the Basic Law for Hong Kong in 1990 it included Article 23 on national security, which aims at restricting the city’s political liberties, and requires that the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) must enact local laws accordingly. The essence of Beijing’s policy has been merely making use of Hong Kong for its modernization project but without the democratic participation of the people. This determines that the main difference between Chinese capitalism and Hong Kong capitalism is that in the former the Chinese ruling class prefers an open dictatorship of a party which upholds the worst form of state capitalism, namely bureaucratic capitalism, and does away with any pretence of “government by consent”, while in the latter some ‘direct election’ of the legislature has been allowed to put a gloss on the Hong Kong oligarchy. The freedom of the press and other political liberties are more substantial and thus beneficial to the weak but flourishing social movement. Despite the drawbacks of Hong Kong legal system, inherited from the colonial government, it’s independence of judiciary still makes it better than the Mainland counterpart in terms of human rights protection. China’s court has a close to 100 percent conviction rate, while in 2017 Hong Kong after trial conviction rates was 53.4% in Magistrates’ Courts, 69.2% in District Court and 65.3% in Court of First Instance.(10) Beijing hates the Hong Kong judiciary and had openly and secretly put pressure on it. It favours its own system of allowing the party secretaries to put into jail anyone they dislike. It doubly hates its social movement. With China’s rise, especially when Xi Jinping took power, Beijing now has become confident in asserting direct control over Hong Kong. The theme of this chapter is to show the forces at work which makes these two systems necessarily collide with each other, even if they are both capitalist.
Hong Kong and “Foreign Forces”
It is rare to find a city in the world like Hong Kong which is so small yet involves multiple great power players– China, the UK and the US. Britain emerged from the Second World War much weakened, and its recovery of Hong Kong owed much to the US, and any serious discussion of Hong Kong cannot leave out the US. According to the wartime agreement, when Japan surrendered to the Allies, the former’s army in Hong Kong would surrender to the Chinese government and nobody else. When the time of Japanese surrender came, the KMT government under Chiang Kai-shek planned to send the army to Hong Kong to take it back. Yet London had no wish to comply with the wartime agreement. Aware of its own weakness, it successfully sought Washington’s help. The US supported Britain because it was keener to contain the communist threat than to honour any agreement or previous rhetoric about de-colonisation. Under US pressure, Chiang gave up the idea of recovering Hong Kong. This was how British rule over “a borrowed place at a borrowed time” could continue after the war, and how the US began to have a bigger role in Hong Kong as well.
Between 1949 and 1979 Hong Kong was in a strange situation; for the west it was the outpost of the Cold War; for Beijing it was a breathing space amidst the UN trade embargo. Thus, despite the two sides’ deep hostility against each other, their immediate interest over Hong Kong ironically converged in the maintenance of its status quo. With Britain’s continuous decline in international status since the war, both the US and UK (and later to a lesser extent the EU) all consider themselves as having a legitimate interest in Hong Kong. The Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 over Hong Kong’s handover to China was first and foremost a trade-off between the two countries: in exchange for the UK giving up Hong Kong to China, the UK (and also the West in general) was going to agree that Hong Kong would continue to be treated as a separate customs territory in relation to China and that, under “one country, two systems” the west’s economic interest in Hong Kong would also be fully protected. Beijing’s plan, on the other hand, was to strike a compromise for the moment but stage a counter attack later – Deng expected China would need at least fifty years to rise up. The under-the-table contest between the two sides has never stopped, especially after Beijing’s crackdown on the 1989 democratic movement.
I. Background Leading to the Umbrella Movement
The absence of an anti-colonialist movement
The 2019 Hong Kong Revolt exhibits multiple features. Most have their roots in the historical trajectory of this city. One of these is that since the end of the WWII there is an absence of any big enough and locally initiated anti-colonial movement, despite the great waves of anti-colonialist movements were sweeping all over the world. In 1967 there was a violent campaign against the colonial government, but it was a movement initiated from Beijing during the madness of the Cultural Revolution, which did not enjoy local support. Beijing halted the campaign quickly and returned to its long time policy of tolerance of the British colonial government.
Three things shaped the majority of local people’s political apathy in general:
1) the fact that a big part of the Hong Kong population were refugees from Mainland China and most of them only wanted to work hard and earn money; This refugees mentality partly contributed to their political apathy;
2) the economic take-off did begin to provide upward mobility to both the poor and the lower middle class;
3) the idea of the left or of socialism was deeply discredited by the CCP and this made an independent and leftist labour movement unattractive. The combined result of these three factors determined that however badly the colonial government treated local Chinese people the colonial city still provided a better life than “communist” China, and that looking for an alternative was necessarily futile. Hence the local people never bothered to support any idea of anti-colonialism. That also explains why the thin layer of leftist youth currents in the 1960s-70s which campaigned for anti-colonialism, remained very small and then close to extinct since the 1980s.
The local aspiration for democracy and real autonomy was always weak until the outbreak and then suppression of the 1989 democratic movement in Mainland China. The colonial government, faced with a rising expectation for political reform (but also driven by its hidden agenda to balance itself against Beijing), channelled this aspiration into election campaigns through granting partial direct elections to local people in 1991. The colonial government knew very well that it would be the local liberals (not to be confused with the Liberal party, a business class party), more locally well known as “pan-democrats”, who would benefit from this political reform. The liberals won a majority of the partially directly elected seats in the legislature. They then told the Governor of Hong Kong that the latter should now appoint them to form a cabinet. They were, however, reproached by many local people. Singapore’s long-time leader Lee Kuan Yew told a British diplomat in 1993 that, “Hong Kong people would not applaud dissident voices. Like Singaporeans, they just wanted good government.”(11) This might be a bit overstated but in general the local people were not yet ready to fight for democracy.
On the other hand, in 1990 Beijing promulgated the Basic Law of Hong Kong, and would put into effect in 1997 after it took back the city. The Law does vaguely promise universal suffrage, step by step after 1997, but with no time-line. Hence for every “election” for both the executive and the legislature the arrangements have to be promulgated by Beijing anew. The liberal’s agenda has always been to work within the constraints of the Basic Law to achieve the expansion of direct elections. We shall see how the liberal’s plan has been shattered to pieces since 2012 when Xi Jinping took power. Xi himself probably had no idea that when he refused to honour the Basic Law’s promises this also made way for the beginning of a great revolt.
Ten years before the Umbrella Movement in 2014 there were already signs of a new generation with very different perspectives and expectations—social and political— when compared to previous generations. It is the collision between Beijing’s policy and Hong Kong’s new generation which gave rise to the Umbrella Movement. Although here we must add that the previous absence of anti-colonial movement, or any sizeable social movement, kept Hong Kong Chinese from developing their political ability which would have consequences for them even when they later began to rise up against the establishment.
A young generation versus Xi Jinping
The HKFS (Hong Kong Federation of Students), along with the Scholarism, were the two main student organizations which took bold actions that triggered off the Umbrella Movement in 2014. Yet even two years before the Umbrella Movement there were little signs that the students in Hong Kong would be able to provoke such a massive occupation for so long.
In general Hong Kong students were conservative. They took little interest in student unions elections and in politics, keeping the unions weak. Founded in 1957, the HKFS was not political at all until 1970, and when it became more political, it became pro-Beijing. The 1960s worldwide radicalization of youth did not reach Hong Kong until 1970 and was less about anti-capitalism than about nationalism. The resumption of UN membership by China in 1971, replacing Taiwan, followed by Nixon’s visit to China the next year, greatly enhanced the international status of China, and this in return encouraged a rise of nationalism in the colony, expressed first in the language rights movement and then by the Defend Diaoyu Island (for Japan it is called Sankuku Island) movement. The HKFS was involved heavily in both movements. The 1970’s generation, in comparison with their parents, were more sensitive to social unjust while also more educated. Yet this youth nationalism soon abandoned its sensitivity towards the unjust colonial order, and was soon channelled into supporting the Chinese government, which meant practically supporting Hong Kong colonial rule although decorated with anti-colonial rhetoric. From then on, the HKFS took no interest in social protests. Later evidence proved that Beijing had been successfully infiltrating the HKFS. The fall of the Gang of Four in 1976 deeply discredited Maoism and Beijing, and since then the HKFS became less pro-Chinese government but also went into long term decline. Since the 1980’s it allied to the liberal and supported its appeal for more local political participation. It only officially broke with the Chinese government after the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.
The 1997-1998 Asian economic crisis marked the beginning of a new period, when thousands of civil servants came out to the street to protest against privatization. The 2005 anti-WTO Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong, especially the Korean farmers’ radical actions, inspired many young people. From then on one witnessed a continuous radicalization of youth. The founding of the LSD (League of Social Democrats) in 2006 drew a thin layer of young people’s support. This was followed by the 2007 Defence of the Queen Pier campaign, a conservationist movement, which for the first time drew hundreds of young activists. This was also the time that Beijing began to be more aggressive towards Hong Kong again after its set back in 2003, when 500,000 people took to the street to protest against Beijing’s attempt in tabling the bill for the Article 23. Firstly, it made the Hong Kong government endorse the Speed Train project so as to promote even closer integration between Guangdong and Hong Kong, followed by the National Education project to promote “patriotism”. These were immediately met with resistance from the young people, first in 2010 and then in 2012, and they at least won the second battle through radical civil disobedience. A young generation who were more radical had finally arrived at the scene, prepared to take over leadership from the pan-democrats for a new round of struggle.
The CCP learnt its lesson. This also explains why in 2010 Beijing, in a last-minute deal with the Democratic party, did increase the number of seats for the 2012 direct election by five (but balanced by increasing five indirect elected seats as well), so as to pacify discontent over Beijing’s reluctance to fully implement universal suffrage (previously out of a total of 60 seats in the legislature half of it were directly elected, the other half by “functional constituency” which mostly controlled by business class). By 2013 the democratic camp began to press Beijing to keep up its momentum for political reform in the upcoming 2016 election. It was also the moment when the democratic camp began to talk about occupying Central.
Ming Pao Daily conducted a survey among the participants of the 1st July march in 2013, a regular annual democratic march since 2003. It showed that interviewees over 50 years old were much more likely to join the coming occupation movement than young people.(12) In the end, however, it was mainly young people who joined the Umbrella Movement. A survey by two scholars in the late October during the occupation showed that 61% of participants were under 29 years old.(13) A second study by Wai-yin Chan also confirmed this.(14)
In facilitating the Umbrella earthquake, two tectonic plates were already in motion. The first was the decay of Hong Kong’s plutocratic capitalism, which had been blocking the upward mobility of the young generation. Students’ mentality began to change. Unlike the past, in recent years student groups started to appear at the May Day march. Many students now knew that they would be workers rather than middle class. The HKFS had also become more concerned about labour rights. On September 22nd, 2014, during the class boycott, HKFS Secretary General Alex Chow made a speech to his fellow students stressing the need to overcome the wealth disparity. This was something new.
The second was the development of a new generation’s democratic consciousness. The young intellectuals of the 1970s (who later became the pan-democrats) had much lower political expectations. They never dared to fight for their right to legitimate stake in the constitutional arrangements between Britain and China. Nonetheless, the mainstream pan-democrats and their election campaign did help, to some extent, the liberalisation in the last years of the colonial rule and to advance a local democratic awareness. Hong Kong people had never enjoyed such free and open air. In this environment, teenagers, compared with their parents’ generations, grew up with more democratic and civic consciousness, and nurtured higher social and political expectations.
The Hong Kong youth also looked to Taiwan for inspiration. In March 2014 the Sunflower Movement broke out in Taiwan. It opposed the trade treaty with Mainland China, and was initiated by students with massive support. Their slogan “ziji Taiwan zijijiu”, or “Our Taiwan has to be saved by ourselves”, was copied and adapted by the Hong Kong students a week before the outbreak of the Umbrella Movement which reads “Our government should be elected by ourselves”.
The CCP’s offensive continues
Beijing began to target the culture and language of Hong Kong. It has long been promoting the replacement of Cantonese with Putonghua as a teaching medium in the city. Prior to this, Hong Kong people never made an issue of their mother tongue. In 2008, the Hong Kong government began to push for implementation. This angered local people, especially when the latter witnessed what had happened to Guangzhou people. For more than two decades the Party began to promote “tuipufeiyue” there, literally meaning “promote Putonghua and abolish Cantonese”, not only in schools but also on the radio and TV broadcasting, resulting in the young generation no longer being able to speak their mother tongue. The provincial government also started to post advertisements with the words, “Be civilised, speak Putonghua”. Eventually this triggered off a, “defend Cantonese movement”, culminating in tens of thousands of people taking to the Guangzhou streets on 25th July, 2010.(15) It died out following the increasing repression since 2012. Hong Kong people saw their future in this case and therefore resisted the policy of replacing Cantonese with Putonghua, and have been successful for the time being. But the tension around language, started unilaterally by Beijing, remains. With Xi Jinping’s succession to power in 2012 this has become even more sensitive. The name “Xi Jinping” is often abbreviated as “Xizong”, meaning “Xi the commander”. In Cantonese it is pronounced as “Jaap jung”, which could also mean “bastard”. Local people usually use this abbreviated name with full awareness of how this sounds in Cantonese.
Forced assimilation over language is always a sign of colonisation. But even the British colonial government never attempted to eliminate Cantonese from schools, let alone the media. Why did Beijing? Surely it has been doing this to the Tibetans and Uyghurs, but this might seem to be “rational” from the position of Great Han Nationalism because both languages were not Chinese. Cantonese is also a Chinese language and it is different from Putonghua only as a spoken language; the writing systems are basically the same. The reason can be found in the Party’s idea of “national unification” and “socialism”. In 1956 the State Council had already set the task of “complete unification of Han language” under Putonghua. The Party wanted to phase out all other “dialects” (e.g. Cantonese) so as to serve “the course of socialist construction”.(16) Behind this grand rhetoric of “nation” and “socialism” there is an entrenched interest of the “core” against the “periphery”: Beijing sees “dialects” as potentially dangerous because it may promote a local awareness or even “separatism”, especially so when officials sent by Beijing to oversee the provinces often do not understand the local “dialects”. And where Cantonese is concerned, Beijing dislikes the fact that in many parts of Guangdong province, since the1980s, the local people have always watched Hong Kong television (in Cantonese). Would Hong Kong become more attractive than Beijing to residents of Guangdong? Would this lead to a strong local identity which would eventually threaten the Central government’s hold over the province?
Another showdown between Beijing and Hong Kong soon erupted. For the 2017 Chief Executive election arrangement Xi Jinping rolled out a reform package which, in exchange for granting universal suffrage Beijing would continue to have complete control over the nomination of the candidates of the CE election, to the extent that even moderate liberals stand no chance. The democratic camp was angry as they saw this as Beijing’s stubborn refusal to honour its commitment to grant universal suffrage to Hong Kong, as stipulated in the Basic Law. Thus, the so-called 31st August 2014 Decision by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress not only met with wide spread discontent but also antagonized even the pan democrat parties. But it first and foremost angered the youth. For them, the 31st August Decision proved the complete failure of the pan-democrats’ strategy of trying to win democracy within the framework of the Basic Law. The angry new generation now came up with the new and dangerous idea of self-determination, however rudimentary. The result was the Umbrella Movement, which signified the beginning of a long struggle between two visions of Hong Kong, namely those of Beijing and of the new generation.
II. The Umbrella Movement
The Umbrella Movement is sometimes depicted as a “revolution”. It was not. It never aimed to overthrow any government, be it the one in Hong Kong or the one in Beijing. Every revolution helps to expose the deep contradictions of the society. The Umbrella Movement, while not a revolution, was still significant enough to expose the major contradictions of this supposedly peaceful city. By looking at the multiple class players within and outside of the movement, between Beijing and Hong Kong, we will be able to grasp the dynamics of the social conflict and more importantly how the contest between a Hong Kong people looking for autonomy and an absolutist state may shape China’s course in the future.
The movement was defeated, and was followed by a period of reaction. Yet it is still memorable because it was simultaneously:
1) the first radical civil disobedient movement in the thirty years of the Hong Kong democratic movement;
2) daring enough to stand up to Beijing to demand more political rights than the Hong Kong liberals dared to ask for, and more than Beijing was prepared to give; 3) a locally initiated democratic movement with massive support.
There have always been local people who have practiced civil disobedience to demand more radical change, but their numbers have previously been very small. While the pan democrats once enjoyed mass support, they never practiced civil disobedience. The 1989 Hong Kong people’s solidarity campaign with the Mainland Chinese’s democratic struggle was even more massive, but it was not a movement about Hong Kong democracy itself. The 1967 city guerrilla warfare conducted by the local CCP in opposition to the colonial government was even more radical in action, but it was initiated from Beijing.(17) Only the Umbrella Movement was a radical civil disobedient campaign which was simultaneously locally initiated, massive, semi-spontaneous and targeting Beijing rather than just the Hong Kong government, and as such it qualitatively raised the Hong Kong democratic movement to a higher level.
The 79 days of the Umbrella Movement can roughly be divided into three stages:
1. The prelude: from the Trio’s issuing of the “Occupy Central with Love and Peace” statement in March 2013 until the class boycott on the 22nd September 2014.
2. The high point: from September 26th until the battle to defend Mong Kok in the middle of October.
3. The low point: From the dialogue between the government and HKFS on 21st October until the clearance of the last occupation site on 15th December.
The prelude: The Trio and the students
There was a prequel to the Umbrella movement. In March 2013, two well known academics, Dr Benny Tai, Dr Chan Kin-man, and one Reverend, Chu Yiu-ming (what I call the Occupation Trio), proposed the Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) whose main purpose was to conduct a civil disobedience action the next year to demand genuine universal suffrage. The months in between would be dedicated to three deliberation days in all parts of Hong Kong to discuss and select three political reform packages for a civil referendum on the 22nd June 2014.
To the left of the Occupation Trio, there were the HKFS and a dozen groups which also demanded civil nomination of the CE, a demand which the Trio and pan democrats only picked up reluctantly later when it was clear that the proposal won public support. As a whole, Benny Tai had created a new hope, which inspired 780,000 members of the general public to vote in the referendum.
It was the Trio, not any pan democrat party, which initiated the occupation appeal, showing the latter’s increasing irrelevance as a force for social change. Through years of participation in elections for a semi-legitimate representative government they were increasingly co-opted. They usually won one third of the seats on the legislature through winning 55-60 percent of the vote in the direct elections. This should not lead us to believe that they ever possessed any consolidated mass base. Fragmented into pieces, even the largest party, the Democratic Party, claimed to have only seven hundred members, and even fewer active members.(18) Smaller opposition parties might have not more than a hundred members (though this weakness by political parties is also shared by civil society in general, for instance the trade union). The liberals believed Beijing’s promise of universal suffrage for so long that they were among the last to realise that this was wishful thinking.
But even the Trio’s credibility eroded quickly due to their inaction after the June referendum. For a year the Trio was talking about occupation. The lack of political courage by the Trio increasingly disappointed many who waited and waited for their decision to go ahead with occupation. This compelled the HKFS to go ahead with their own plan to occupy Central on the 2 July 2014. 511 protestors were arrested but not charged. The Trio and the pan democrats refused to take part and were deeply discredited for this. Angered by Beijing’s 31st August decision, the Trio later did plan to hold a three day occupation starting on the National Day, 1st October.(19) But by that time the Trio had lost much of its credibility among students and social activists. Again, it was the HKFS who took the initiative and launched a one week class boycott on 22nd September. The movement began to gather momentum.
The HKFS moreover called for “self-determination”, making Hong Kong responsible for itself without being subject to the Basic Law. This was a big step forward for democratic awareness. The second breakthrough was that they dared to put civil disobedience into practice, which led to the occupation later. In two critical moments, the HKFS compelled Benny Tai to pass the baton to the new generation.
Before the university students and HKFS entered the political arena, high school students had already participated in social movements. The anti-national education movement of 2012 saw the birth of a high school students’ organisation, Scholarism. This represented the participation of a younger generation in a way which had not been seen before.
Throughout September, Scholarism encouraged high school students to set up organisations at school. On the 10th September it announced that 88 high school students from across Hong Kong were setting up a “political reform concern group” to promote a class boycott, followed by a second class boycott on the 26th September and a rally at the government headquarters. 1500 high school students coming from one hundred secondary schools participated.
Climax: The masses take to the political stage.
During the class boycott the HKFS and Scholarism decided to stage a rally on the 26th September, outside the Civil Square where the government headquarters is located. During the night they then suddenly occupied the square with around one hundred supporters. They were arrested the next day. Yet when the news spread more than 50,000 citizens came to the scene to protest against the arrest. They were met with tear gas, but they refused to give up the streets to the police. It was named the Umbrella Movement because the protestors held up umbrellas to protect themselves from the pepper spray. The occupation was kicked started by the spontaneous struggle of the masses which far exceeded the Trio’s original plan of “occupation with peace and love”. Therefore, one may say that the Trio’s Occupy Central action as planned never really occurred even if it was the Trio, in the face of the spontaneous occupation, who announced at 1:40 am on 28th September that their plan had been put into action.
What was immediately embarrassing to the Trio was that the moment they made their announcement, nearly half of the occupiers left. Most of them were students, and they left for different reasons. Some thought that the Trio opportunistically wanted a free ride on a spontaneous movement and hence they refused to recognise the Trio as their leaders. Others left because they were prepared for a class boycott alone but not for an occupation.
While the HKFS was prepared for the occupation, many students were not. The students’ departure sent the occupation into crisis. Their leaving also looked like a vote of no confidence in the HKFS. This incident also exposed the divisions between the HKFS and their fellow students. The lack of a strong relationship between HKFS and students can therefore be traced back to the climax of the movement. Actually, in the course of the entire Umbrella Movement, only about thirty or so students actively participated in the work of HKFS. The HKFS’s lack of a mass base foretells its downfall after the Umbrella Movement.
Meanwhile Long Hair Leung Kwok-Hung from the LSD unsuccessfully begged the masses to stay. The HKFS students talked through the night with their fellow classmates to try to stabilise those who remained. The future looked bleak. Many occupiers who remained received the rising sun the next morning with a heavy heart. I and my friends stayed all night there and witnessed everything, and then suddenly woke up to the shining sun. Feeling that this might be the end of the actions we went to have dim sum in a nearby restaurant instead and then went home for a rest. To everyone’s surprise, it was the spontaneous intervention again of a hundred thousand ordinary citizens, by occupying the main streets in the early afternoon of 28th September which not only saved the movement but took it to a much higher level. The size of the occupation was nearly double the previous evening. Most of them did not know about the moment of split among protestors the night before, and many more joined for the first time because they were angry at the police’s arresting students and also for their firing tear gas at the protestors the previous afternoon. At this time, the movement moved beyond the range of the students, and evolved into a movement of the middle and lower classes. I went back to the place and witnessed how the masses had already taken the streets and were confronting the police without fear. The police fired teargas and we all ran. But the crowd came back again and again. I fell to the ground and immediately someone rushed to pour water to wash my eyes. “This was the date of the birth of the Hong Konger community”, I said to myself, and wrote an article with this title. Our refugee identity was gone for good.
At the same time, the leading role of the students was now replaced by the general public. The occupation even far exceeded the imagination the HKFS had envisaged. Even when everyone on the streets received the message from HKFS that the police would open fire and that they were asked to withdraw, they did not obey and continued to fight until Admiralty (where the government headquarters is located) was fully occupied. Similar occupation occurred in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay as well. Towards midnight the fighting was over, the police retreated, and then we toured around the area. What a scene! The roads were empty of cars, and people moving around to build barricades. Near Central we saw a crowd of occupiers arguing among themselves as to which directions the cops might attack again and accordingly where the barricades should be built. Instead of the noise of traffic in the middle of the roads there was now only noisy debate. And barricades! That was unimaginable even a day before. From this it can be said that the Umbrella Movement represents another example of the masses making history. Countless great movements which have driven history forward have resulted from spontaneity rather than the careful planning of emperors or wise men. And so the politically apathetic people of Hong Kong, this time, also unexpectedly made history.
Indeed, throughout the world there have been very few occupations like it, which have gone beyond the occupation of a square to take over four major shopping areas. Occupy Wall Street in 2011, for instance, only occupied Zuccotti Park. In Hong Kong, however, four (although it was soon reduced to three) shopping districts were occupied for more than two months, with parts of major roads closed and traffic had to be diverted. While this occupation did not fully paralyse the three busy shopping areas it greatly humiliated the SAR government.
Besides from the occupation, the class boycott also continued. On September 29th, ten thousand students from eight tertiary institutions jointly held a boycott. Following a call from Scholarism, on that day five thousand students from fifty secondary schools also boycotted classes.(20) On the same day the HKFS called for a general strike, and this was soon echoed by the Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU). To the credit of the HKFS, it constantly resisted pressure from the Trio and pan-democrats to give up the occupation.
Hong Kong government under siege
The moment Beijing made the 31st August Decision, the Hong Kong government became constitutionally bound by it. The people knew well that they had neither the institutional means nor enough strength to make Beijing change its mind. But what drew hundreds of thousands of people to confront police repression on the 28th September was not only that they still believed in the value of the demand for universal suffrage. They were first and foremost angered by the feeling that “we never saw the government that hard line in dealing with peaceful protests, we must rise up against it” that led many to take part in such great civic disobedience, never seen in the preceding 50 years.(21)
But the reason that the widespread occupation could last for 79 days was also because the police, instead of escalating its action after it was proved that merely teargas would not be able to chase away the protestors, halted their action altogether, and eventually retreated. There were reports suggesting that there was disagreement at the top of the government in which the dove eventually had the upper hand. There is no proof but the fact that the repression halted on the 28th suggests that there may be other forces at work within or outside of the Hong Kong government which had not subscribed to the hard-line of the CE, CY Leung. It became visible when, on 23rd October, 1314 civil servants publicly released a statement condemning the two mainstream civil servant unions’ position of supporting the government and opposing the occupation as “not representing them”.(22)
Neither was the police force homogenous. After the 9.28 confrontation, there were reports that the police were divided as well, although the nature of police hierarchy makes it very difficult for dissidents to speak out. An anonymous letter was post on-line by a self-claimed old police veteran, advising that the rank and file need not support the management’s hostility towards the Umbrella movement and that they got nothing if they whole heartedly cracked down on protestors because it was always the officers who reaped all the benefits (awards, promotion etc) for any successful action while the rank and file were blamed if anything went wrong.(23)
At the height of the occupation, two police vehicles, loaded with lunch boxes for the policemen tried to enter from the square into the government building and were stopped by the occupiers. The occupiers then searched the police cars to make sure they were not loaded with weapons.(24) The fact that the police complied showed the strength of the occupation. It should not surprise us if the high command of the police gnashed their teeth upon witnessing this.
The Empire strikes back
Less than a week after the outbreak of the occupation a dark force descended on the protestors, however. For two days big crowds of mafias attacked the occupiers in Mongkok. Many condemned the police for doing nearly nothing in stopping the violence when it began, and suggestions were made that the police might have had a hand in this. The police quickly denied it. Circumstantial evidence showed that the mafia were paid by people connected to the pro-Beijing camp. A well-known mafia head, also an actor in his own right, admitted that the local mafia had to answer the call from Beijing in order to survive. It is an open secret that Beijing, working hand in glove, has vigorously “tongzhan” (here this means co-opt) the Hong Kong mafia to make the latter work for it before and after 1997. Back in 1993 the then head of the Ministry of Public Security, Tao Siju, told the local press that in Hong Kong not all mafia are equally bad and that certain mafia here are patriotic. Surely “patriotic mafia” could also “serve the people”.
Meanwhile the Alliance for Peace and Democracy, founded by pro-Beijing parties and mass organizations in July 2014, began to counter-mobilize against the Umbrella Movement with obvious government support. The mafia intervention and the government backing of this alliance deeply convinced many here that the time when government officials remained neutral (in appearance at least) had gone completely, and that now everything had gone wrong in Hong Kong. If the local people did not resist then Hong Kong would soon be daai luk faa, or “mainlandised”. Hence the participants in the Umbrella movement became more determined to hold their line. This laid the ground for the big resistance on 17-18th October when the police attempted to clear the occupation in Mong Kok, and eventually the brave protesters took back the street there and the police experienced another humiliating defeat.
The battle in Mong Kok and all later events also shed light on the plan of Beijing to impose control over Hong Kong. mysterious dark forces, orchestrated by the CCP, were mobilized once the occupation broke out, which included the mafia, the secret CCP branch in Hong Kong (which may have hundreds of thousands of party members), secret agents, “tongxianghui” – or associations of fellow provincials or townsmen, which were founded by Beijing to rope in those once Mainlanders who have since migrated to Hong Kong to work among the latter. These associations also took part in the counter mobilization during the Umbrella movement.
An alliance of students and young working people.
As discussed earlier, it was the solidarity of ordinary citizens with the students on the 28th September that led to the birth of a large movement. According to the opinion poll conducted by the Chinese University after the end of the Umbrella Movement, 33.9 percent of the interviewees supported the occupation, and for those who did not oppose the occupation 20.1 percent had joined the occupation.(25) While the claim by the Apple Daily that 1.2 million citizens had taken part in the occupation may be too bold a claim, the Umbrella Movement did enjoy vast popularity.(26)
But who were these citizens? We now need to distinguish the term “student” from the term “youth”. Although a survey revealed that a majority of Umbrella Movement participants were young people, most were not students. According to the study conducted by Cheng Wai Edmund and Yuen Wai-hei, 61 percent of occupiers were aged 29 and below, while 24 percent were aged 30 to 39, but students only accounted for 26 percent. This means that most occupiers were working adults. According to the two scholars mentioned above, 37 percent considered themselves as lower middle class and 30 percent grassroots and therefore these two groups “constituted the majority of occupiers”.(27) Wai-yin Chan’s study again confirms this.(28) Furthermore, according to a survey, 63.5 percent of Umbrella Movement participants earned less than 20,000HKD per month of which 46.9 percent earned less than 14,000HKD – an income level of common working people.(29)
Lau Sai Leung, a local academic, claimed that the Umbrella Movement was a middle-class movement.(30) This is debatable. Firstly, it forgets the role of the grassroots. Secondly, although 37 percent considered themselves as lower middle class (see above), this is more a subjective perspective. Wai-yin Chan’s study also finds that 66.7 percent of occupiers had college education but this is not a reliable measurement for being “middle class” as higher education is no longer a guarantee of upward mobility. Some people observed that the occupation at Admiralty involved a lot of white-collar workers and so hastily concluded that it was middle class. The “middle class” discourse here simply repeated the mistake of grouping professionals such as lawyers with school teachers and other general white-collar workers as “middle class” and as such different from the working class. This is to forget that the many white-collar workers, despite earning more than manual labourers, are still wage earners. And judging from the poll on the earnings of the occupiers we will argue that the occupation movement was chiefly composed of young wage earners whom the students allied with. It is they who made the occupation happened. But soon the Umbrella Movement also exposed its weakness.
The spontaneous nature of the occupation made it dominated by a strong mentality of spontaneity and a hostility towards organization, seeing the latter as equivalent to negative authority. A comparison with the Occupy Wall Street movement might be useful. The OWS was also dominated by an autonomous sentiment but it managed to run a mass general assembly as the decision-making centre of the occupation. To this end, they developed a set of hand signs for voting. This was the direct democracy of a mass general assembly. In the Hong Kong occupation, nothing like that happened. It was not until the latter half of the occupation and only in the Central site that the HKFS began to host a platform for discussion. Even this was targeted by the “anti-authority” people and was harassed from time to time. There has always been an over-dosage of individualism and highly competitive spirit among HongKongers, or even one may say an “anarcho-capitalist” mentality.(31) This kind of mentality might have its root in a combination of factors which had arisen throughout the unfolding of Hong Kong’s own history: the absence of an anti-colonial struggle, the refugee/immigrant mentality, the atomization of people brought about by the success of a “free-trade regime” etc. We shall see how this mentality among young people was taken advantage of by the xenophobic “localists”.
The failure of the “general strike” and the weakness of Labour
On the day of the class boycott on the 22nd September, 25 trade unions and civil society groups issued a joint statement accusing the existing political system as “repressing the demands of grassroots labour and making the potential to improve people’s livelihoods more difficult”. The statement not only called for universal suffrage but the implementation of standard working hours and a universal pension as well(32). Then after September 28th, the HKCTU called a general strike (social workers had already gone on strike earlier in September). The result was that only one and a half unions (the Swire beverages workers union and the Professional Teachers’ Union, HKPTU) responded to the call—by half I mean that the HKPTU was only half-hearted in its support of a general strike. It is a pity that although a large number of workers came out and took part in the occupation, the majority were not prepared to go on strike. Were workers not angry about their social status? No. In many areas of the occupied districts, whether in the form of spontaneously put up posters or street discussions the voice of workers was strong in condemning the large consortia, disparity between rich and poor, expressing resentment that wages were not keeping up with inflation and that rents and prices were too high. However, they did not go further than to express their opinions and did not promote collective struggle by the labour movement or anti-establishment consciousness. Both the weakness of the labour movement and the hegemonic position of centre right liberal ideas determined that the Umbrella Movement largely remained a single issue movement for universal suffrage as outlined above. This is a major difference from overseas occupation movements. When the Occupy Wall Street movement broke out in 2011, there were occupations in response all over the world. One of the common features of these occupations was opposition to capitalism’s disparity between rich and poor. Their slogans of differentiating the 1 percent and the 99 percent have since become widespread. In fact, shortly after the occupation of Wall Street in 2011, there was also a response in Hong Kong but there were not many participants and it had no effect. The subsequent Occupy Central and Umbrella Movement never related to this earlier occupation nor to its social and economic demands.
Although there has been a politicisation in the last seven or eight years, the working class is still very individualistic and rarely shares a feeling of common destiny. On the contrary, most people still believe that it is through individual competition that they can lift themselves out of poverty. The trade unions’ organisation rate in 2017 was 25 percent, not a particularly low figure.(33) The problem is that this is only on paper. The not too low organizing rate is accomplished through ridiculously low union dues(34), so low that the main trade unions do not rely on membership dues for their funding but on running re-training programs funded by the government, opening supermarket for their members and/or foreign funding, especially from the US.(35) Few members are really active. Although there are many “industrial unions”, most of them are either very small or just workplace unions, or worse craft unions. Given this situation for the labour movement, the earlier call to go on strike would surely be unsuccessful.
The CTU leadership, for two decades, followed the pan-democrats’ advocacy of democracy within the Basic Law constraint without any criticism. Even after its leader, Lee Cheuk-yan, founded a small Labour party (only a handful of CTU unions joined the party) in 2011, his party continued to follow the liberal right’s political line, although in terms of labour rights both the Labour party and the CTU have become more out-spoken in the past ten years and moved a bit closer to the centre left since then. Yet their political stand made it difficult to re-connect with the rising young generation who despised the pan-democrats. Their failure in implementing a successful strike in October 2014 doubtlessly added to their failure. On the last big occupation actions on the 30th December at Admiralty, there was a symbolic moment: the protesting youth handed Lee Cheuk-yan a helmet, practically asking him to join their occupation of the main road outside the government’s headquarter, but Lee refused.
The League of Social Democrats (LSD) is another centre-left political party, although it actually does not have any trade union base. Contrary to mainstream reports, even its being a “leftist” party is a very recent thing. Their three founders were also legislators. Raymond Wong Yuk-man was for a long time a KMT supporter and lecturer at a KMT supported college. The second leader, Albert Chan, was a member of the Democratic party for a long time and never considered being leftist. Only Long Hair had a history of being a Trotskyist in the 1970-80’s era. The LSD’s funder and adviser, Stephen Shui is explicitly right wing. In his 2008 essay, he advocated the building of a right wing party with a program which included opposition to the trade unions, opposing government welfare provisions, and supported tax cuts across the board (which in practice means a tax reduction for the rich).(36) In 2011 the other two leaders split from the LSD and only Long Hair remains. Only after this split did the LSD became centre-left leaning. During the Umbrella Movement, they were on the frontline in launching the occupation. Long Hair ‘s kneeling on the ground and begging the students to stay in the early hours of 28th December became legendary.
Above I used the “left and right” political spectrum to describe Hong Kong political parties, but readers must be aware that this is not how Hong Kong people see it. One special thing in Hong Kong politics is that instead of a political spectrum with a left -right binary, it only has the binary of “pro-democracy” or “pro-Beijing”. This Hong Kong style politics leaves little space for left leaning people (see Chapter Six). Since 2010 there had been small signs of a growing left-right differentiation in Hong Kong politics, as young people began to set up some left wing groups. This pressurised the leader of the CTU, Lee Cheuk Yan, who responded with founding his small Labour party. In general both endeavours lacked a real mass base, and both had little impact on the Umbrella Movement.
The Xenophobic ‘Localists’
Soon after the Umbrella Movement began, some “localists” began to mount attacks on the so called “Left Pricks”. Eventually they would emerge as the major beneficiaries of the Umbrella Movement.
Western media tends to view the Hong Kong localists in a positive way, seeing them as democratic fighters against Beijing. Yet the picture is far more complicated. Before the Chinese term “localism” entered into usage among social activists and academia, there was already a visible new trend since the turn of the century, when the voice of conservationists who were chiefly concerned about preserving old architecture / streets became noticeably louder. Eventually this unfolded into the above mentioned Defence of the Queen Pier campaign in 2007. Although defeated, it greatly promoted the idea of “localism”, which is a mixture of feelings of at least two things:
1) resisting the government’s re-development plans which was seen as destructive to local culture and collective memory;
2) resisting cross border infrastructure projects involving Mainland China so as to protect local autonomy, for instance the 2009-10 anti-high speed train project which would result in the relocation of some villages. The most active groups, like the Land Justice League, did not claim to be leftist openly even if some could be seen as such. However, it was the right wing of these very mixed “localist” discourses which eventually grew bigger and bigger. The latter type of ‘localists’, as they called themselves, were actually more like nativists and as such very xenophobic. I will use the term “localist” to refer to a current which emphasises local values yet its concrete interpretation varies greatly, and the term “nativist” or “xenophobic localists” to describe those localists who are clearly right wing and anti-immigrant. Several years before the occupation movement this current already began to have a hearing among young people. Their spokespersons were Raymond Wong and scholar Chin Wan-kan (or Chin Wan). Together with Raymond Wong’s apprentice Wong Yeung-tat they constituted a “xenophobic trio”, and were nicknamed as ‘Two Wong and One Chin’. Each had their own organizations though. Their followers’ actions in the occupation area were:
1. to silence the voices of other democrats.
2. to incite the masses to achieve their goals.
3. to use violence or threaten to use violence.
4. to make racist statements about Chinese people, calling them “locusts” which should be ousted.
5. to attack Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong as stealing welfare from the government.
The nativsts put out stickers with the words “mat seon zo gaau, tai fong saan seoi” (Don’t trust the “left pricks”, be vigilant to any call of disbandment), which mainly targeted the HKFS and social organizations and activists who took part in occupation, who were allegedly guilty of empty talk while secretly wanting to disband the occupation. Yet the attack itself was nonsense. Their slanders aimed to discredit the democratic forces within the movement by hinting that they were somehow associated with Beijing.
The nativist accused occupiers like HKFS of planning to derail the movement through early disbandment. This is also false. It was actually the nativist who gave up the occupied Canton Road in Tsim Tsa Tsui to the government soon after it was taken by protestors.
They also attacked organizations which hoisted flags or hosted open street forums followed by harassing pickets from these organizations. This is the reason for one strange phenomenon in the Umbrella Movement; there were many tents in the occupation areas, but very few flags since those who hoisted flags would be harassed. However, the democratic forces usually made no response to their attacks which only further emboldened the latter. The author personally witnessed how the nativist forced the CTU booth to lower its flag at the Admiralty site. Meanwhile a small band of leftist put up stickers everywhere with the words “man zyu ji zing, bat jung mit seng, jin leon zi jau, bat jung gaau faa” (Democratic debate yes, silencing other voices no! Freedom of speech yes, stigmatising no!) They were too small to check the rise of these nativists however.
The xenophobic trio also ferociously attacked the HKFS. On 12th October, on the call of Chin Wan, the nativist went to Mong Kok to disrupt the HKFS street forum. I was present and intervened to condemn their act, saying that this is destroying democracy. The audience applauded. They knew. On similar occasions when nativists or mafia like people came out to disrupt street forums or wanted to dominate the public debate common citizens might come forward and shouted: “you can’t stop others from speaking! Speak one by one!”
The xenophobic trio’s agitation against the democratic forces was packaged as being more radical. Their slogan was “HKFS does not represent us”. Their line of argument was that “since the HK government does not represent us so as the HKFS, or XXX”, and so accordingly they opposed all signs/symbols of leadership or political representation: stages, flags, speakers, an assembly, voting etc, summing up in the slogan of caak daai toi, or “dismantle the big stage”, and put it into practice whenever the HKFS held a discussion forum with a stage. Their accusation against HKFS was surely nonsense. The HKFS never claimed to representing everyone, and the forums they organized did not reject pluralism. If the nativist did not like the HKFS forum they could always convene their own forum. The fact that they chose to disrupt the HKFS’s forums implied that they were a force of destruction in the movement. Actually their actions of “dismantling the big stage” were just a means to build their own “stage” – soon after the end of the Umbrella movement they began to strengthen their own organisation so as to run for the 2016 election. This political legacy would also dominate the 2019 Revolt.
The xenophobic trio could not mobilize more than a hundred people at its height, while the democratic parties and social movement organisations were far stronger in number. The xenophobic trio was successful only because the democratic forces were totally unprepared.
There is a grain of truth in the attack on authoritarianism in the democratic movement. The pan-democrat parties and their umbrella organisations were not well known for respecting pluralism and tolerance within civil society. But any genuine democrat or socialist could tell you that the real alternative to authoritarianism does not lies in the complete rejection of organisation, assembly and democratic decision per se. Doing this is in fact stopping people to empower themselves.
Some think that the xenophobic trio and their core supporters are Communist Party’s provocateurs. It is difficult to prove how far the provocateurs infiltrated the movement though.(37) Suffice to say that the actions of the xenophobic right do what the CCP wants to do but cannot do by itself, namely to discredit the occupation by manufacturing violence and skirmishes.
We must also add that there is support for this current among certain social strata which we must not overlook, lest we fall into a pure and simple conspiracy theory. Certain youngsters supported the “localists” as they saw them as “anti-authority” parties. In April 2016, two years after the occupation, the Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey of the Chinese University conducted a survey on public support for political parties. The survey shows that the “localists” enjoyed 8.4 percent of support, especially among youth between 18-29.(38) Although it must be added that people favouring the same term “localism” do not mean that they have the same interpretation.
“Localism” in the Eyes of Great Han Chinese Perspective
Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong, professors from the University of Science & Technology and the Polytechnic University, respectively, wrote a joint essay Localists and ‘Locusts’ in HK: Creating a Yellow Peril/Red Menace Discourse in 2015. In the same year they also gave a talk to a Belgium delegation of unionists in Hong Kong under the same title. The essay and the talk provided a comprehensive picture of these xenophobic localists. However, their argument gave the impression that the xenophobic localists had dominated, if not led, the Umbrella Movement. They suggested that HKFS leaders were sharing the xenophobic localists position by saying that “the nativists also garnered some support among erstwhile leaders of Occupy Central…the deputy head of the HKFS, Lester Shum shouted ‘Self-Determination for HongKongers.’’’ (39) The problem is why would demanding for self-determination be evidence that the HKFS leader is associated with the nativists? Wasn’t Lenin a strong advocate for it as well? What makes the nativists nativists is not their demand for self-determination, but their xenophobia position and their use of violence to attain their aim. Secondly, in their presentation to the Belgians the two scholars also claimed that one of the two occupation sites (Mong Kok) was mainly a localist camp. This is not true either. They have strong presence there but Mong Kok was not dominated by them. One simple fact is that other non-nativist activists hosted regular popular forums there, including the later date legislator Lau Siu Lai.
Lastly, when the two scholars tried to associate the HKFS with the xenophobic localists, they forgot that the latter hated the former and had physically harassed them for their “left pricks” sin. The HKFS, however inadequate it might have been, it was a democratic force by then, never nativist.
Sautman and Yan tried to present the rise of the localists as entirely locally bred. They first found its roots lay in the sharp inequality in the city and added that, “If poverty and inequality have not, in themselves, produced nativism, diminished prospects for young people may still play a role.” They then argued that “the localist worldview in fact overlaps with that of some pan democrats in ‘Yellow Peril’/‘Red Menace’ conceptions.”(40) Hence in one stroke they link up the pan democrats with the Yellow Peril discourse. The pan democrats were kind of centre right, associating them with nativist is, by then at least, going a bit too far. More important is that not once do Sautman and Yan mention Beijing’s reactionary policy role in the growing influence of the nativists. Instead I will argue that Beijing is the major factor which have helped to promote this nativism. It is Beijing’s policy of imposing its Orwellian society on Hong Kong which has driven many local people, especially the youth, into being “localists”, although with quite different interpretations among themselves. I will elaborate more on this topic in later chapters. For here it is enough to say that in 2003 when Beijing tried and failed to impose its National Security Bill on Hong Kong there was no visible presence of any kind of localism. Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong argued at length that the localists’ complaint about Hong Kong accommodating too many Mainland visitors was unfounded by comparing similar figures with the number of visitors to New York, London and Paris. This is a misplaced argument as it is not just about how many square feet foreign visitors occupy on average. Of the fifty-one million Mainland Chinese visitors to the city in 2018, sixty-one percent are day-trippers and a significant portion of them are parallel traders, and it is what they buy that matters. A year before the Umbrella Movement, the SAR government had to enforce a restriction on visitors buying baby formula in the face of huge local discontent about parallel traders buying out baby formula and leaving some local parents with nothing to feed their babies. The tainted milk incident in 2008 in the Mainland had entirely discredited the Chinese baby formula industry and hence the exodus to Hong Kong to get baby formula. This kind of cross-border purchase also applies to hospital beds for expecting mothers, and with the local real estate market. Mainlanders, unable to right the wrongs of their government, flock to Hong Kong to find a replacement. With such a huge population, China’s visitors/parallel traders surely add new problem to this small city. And this aspect is just one of the hundreds of events which continue to alienate the local population.
The Local Tycoons
The business class is not known for supporting democracy. Indeed, it has always been on the side of Beijing. On 25 July 2014, five main chambers of commerce released a statement condemning the planned occupation. On 21st September, a delegation of local tycoons including Li Ka-Shing were invited to visit Beijing, and received and lectured by Xi Jinping on how the Central government opposes any “illegal” actions in Hong Kong. What followed was even more interesting. On 25 October, at the height of the Umbrella movement, the Xinhua News Agency released an English commentary headlined “Hong Kong tycoons reluctant to take sides amid Occupy turmoil”. It is worthwhile to quote the SCMP report on this piece of Xinhua’s news at length:
“The article - which singled out Li Ka-shing of Cheung Kong (Holdings) and three other magnates - was removed at 7pm. The retracted commentary did mention Li calling on the protesters to go home and not to ‘let today’s passion become tomorrow’s regrets’. Yet, it added: ‘Asia’s wealthiest man did not make it clear whether or not he agrees with the appeals of the protesters.’
“At issue is their failure to take action. It is no secret that many tycoons in Hong Kong campaigned against C. Y. Leung in the 2012 election. It was not a fight about ideology but who got to eat the cake - the old or the new interest groups.” (41)
What should be noted is that after the incident Li Ka-Shing still did not make any high public gesture to satisfy Beijing. This is because he and other tycoons had a lot of grievances waiting to be vented. Their political representatives, the Liberal Party, had long lost Beijing’s favour since 2003 when its leader, James Tien, in the face of huge opposition to the National Security bill, made an U-turn and declared he no longer supported the bill. This probably had a bearing on the defeat of the party’s former leader Henry Tang’s CE election campaign in 2012 (for more see Chapter Two). The tycoons were not happy with all these.
Contrary to the pan-democrats’ and Benny Tai’s hope that the Hong Kong business class would come out in support of democracy(42), the latter chose to side with Beijing, although increasingly they were side-lined by Beijing. There was one exception though: Jimmy Lai, the media tycoon. He has been an ally of the pan-democrats for decades, and his newspaper Apple Daily became powerful pro-Umbrella media. In terms of shaping public opinion among democratic supporters the daily is actually more powerful than the pan-democrat parties combined. Beijing attacked Jimmy Lai as inviting “foreign intervention” and suggested that he was linked to the US. What can be sure is that although the daily is a vocal critic of Beijing and a voice for universal suffrage, it has also been keen to advocate a free market program and to cultivate a pro-US establishment discourse since its founding. Jimmy Lai also funds a lot of pan-democrat parties as well.
The low point and clearance of the occupation
The strike at the end of September to beginning of October was unsuccessful and so the movement was not able to escalate itself into a bigger movement. The movement now began only to consume itself. The lack of organisation made things worse. From the very beginning of the occupation, according to the HKFS leader Alex Chow, the Trio vetoed the idea of forming a common front to coordinate the occupation from the very beginning.(43) Whereas the pan-democrats, during the solidarity campaign with the 1989 democratic movement in China, formed such a broad alliance to lead the campaign, the Trio and the pan-democrats in the Umbrella Movement refused to apply this successful experience to the occupation in 2014. Although throughout the movement there was a small platform including the Trio, the pan democrats, the HKFS, Scholarism and certain representatives from civil organisations, it was no leadership organisation as it only served the purpose of exchanging ideas and if ever there were decisions they were not binding.
The dialogue between the government and the HKFS on 21st October did not achieve anything. By that time the movement had already declined. Although in Admiralty there were 1681 tents, many of these were unoccupied. It was only at the weekend that the occupied areas were livelier, and this was only comparatively so.
The CCP mouthpiece, presenting itself as a friend of small business owners, attacked the occupiers for obstructing their businesses. Polls from the Chinese University’s Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey showed that while in October 37.8 percent supported the occupation by December this had fallen to 33.9 percent. In the same period, those opposing the occupation increased from 35.5 percent to 42.3 percent. This was what the government had been counting on.
On 25-26th November the police clearance of Mong Kok was successful. Everyone now could feel the end was approaching. In response to the police, the HKFS proposed the occupation of the Lung Wo Road, just outside the government headquarters, on 30th November. Around 2,000 people adhered to the call that night and successfully occupied it, although not for long. For those who took part in the action that night is difficult to forget. Thousands of protesters, mostly young people, was confronting the police defence, waiting for the signal to act. The skyscrapers in the background in Central, already fully decorated with Christmas lighting, were flashing with colourful lights. What a wonderful scene, I thought. Suddenly on my far left side, hundreds of protestors clashed with the police and soon all the others followed and the police defence was broken through. After more back and forth clashes the police retreated, and the protestors occupied Lung Wo Road. It was a beautiful song, but it was a swan song. When daybreak came I was woken up by noises and which for a moment confused me. The police came back, ferociously attacking protestors and soon took back the road. The Occupation Trio was annoyed by the action, and eventually gave themselves up to the police in early December, when the movement was still going on. On 11st December, the main occupation site in Admiralty fell to the police, 247 were arrested. I was among the arrested but all were released without charges, for the time being. In a few years two of the Occupation Trio would go to jail, along with many others. The protestors hung a big banner from the footbridge across the main road with the words “we will be back”. On 15th December the occupation site in Causeway Bay was also forcibly cleared by the police.
At the beginning, the Umbrella Movement was just like any other drama; it had a script, it had a director and it had actors. Just as the curtain began to rise, however, the actors went into revolt and started to act as they pleased. The police were sent to repress them, but this only displeased the audience, who joined in with the actors to drive away the police and to establish a People’s Theatre putting on a voluntary show. But despite much discussion they were unable to agree with each other on the script and so it came about accidently that the audience and actors were together starring in a dramatic improvisation. But half way through the production everyone ran out of ideas. No play can be performed when there is no longer any dramatical conflict and the actors and audience are exhausted. At this moment the police outside broke into the theatre and drove everybody away, thus ended the play of the Umbrella Movement.
The historical significance of the Umbrella Movement was not that it achieved anything substantial, rather it on the one hand awakened many thousands of common people, and on the other hand the awakened masses now learnt, through bitter experiences, that although democracy is highly desirable, they still lack the political ability to seize it from the grip of the party state.
January 2020
Notes :
1. See the author’s 2012 book China Rise, Strength and Fragility, Merlin Press, p. 28-9.
2. State-Business Relations and Industrial Restructuring, Alex H. Choi, in Hong Kong’s History: State and Society Under Colonial Rule, edited by Tak-Wing Ngo, Routledge, 1999, p. 145.
3. Deng Xiaoping: Xianggang 50 nian bubian zhu hua xiandaihua (Deng Xiaoping: Hong Kong Capitalism Remains unchange for Fifty Years so as to Help China’s Modernisation),
https://www.mingpaocanada.com/tor/htm/News/20141231/HK-gaa1h_r.htm
4. Xi Jinping: Gangao yao “zijue weihu guojia anquan”, jian fangwentuan tisidian xiwang , yu duowei qingnian datai dati (Xi Jinping: HK and Macao should “Consciously Protect National Security”, He Raised Four Hopes When Receiving Delegates Visiting Beijing and He Calls for Helping Youth by Providing them Ladders and Platforms ), Mingpao Daily, 13th November, 2018.
5. Xu Jiatuan huiyilu (Memoirs of Xu Jiatun), Hong Kong United Daily News Co. Ltd, 1984, P. 121. Xu Jiatuan was the head of the Hong Kong New China News Agency, who was also a de facto top diplomat representing China and who defected to the US in 1989 after the Tiananmen crackdown.
6. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD
7. Huigui shinian de Hong Kong (Hong Kong economy 10 years after the handover), Guo Guocan, Joint Publishing (HK) Co. Ltd, p. 208.
8. - Xianggang jingji maoyi gaikuang(Briefing for Hong Kong Economy), Hong Kong Trade Development Council, http://hong-kong-economy-research.hktdc.com/business-news/article/%E5%B8%82%E5%A0%B4%E7%92%B0%E5%A2%83/%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E7%B6%93%E8%B2%BF%E6%A6%82%E6%B3%81/etihk/tc/1/1X000000/1X09OVUL.htm
9. Wu Bangguo: Xianggang zhengzhi tizhi de zuida tedian shi xingzheng zhudao (Wu Bangguo: The Most Significant Characteristic of Hong Kong Political Institution is its Executive Dominated System ), http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/npc/wbgwyz/hyhd/2007-06/06/content_366599.htm
10. Prosecutions Hong Kong 2017, https://www.doj.gov.hk/eng/public/pdf/pd2017/statistics.pdf
11. -Zhi zhonggong wu “yifa xianquan” gainian, Lee Kuan Yew yushi gang burong yijianzhe (The CCP does not have the idea of limiting power by laws, said Lee Kuan Yew, and that Hong Kong is not going to tolerate dissidents), Apple Daily, 4th January, 2020. /
12. Wucheng yu 50 sui youxingzhe cheng jiang zhanzhong (Half of those more than Fifty Years Old Marchers Said They Would Occupy Central), Mingpao, 3rd July, 2013.
13. Houyusan yundong: gaobie zhengzhi lenggan de niandai (Post Umbrella Movement: Farewell to the Era of Political Apathy), 29th November, 2014,
14. Yusan yundong de jusan: tufa, zizhu he suipianhua (The Coming Together of the Umbrella Movement and its Disperse: Contingency, Autonomy and Fragmentisation), The Age of Social Movement—Hong Kong’s Resistance Politics and its Path, edited by Cheng Wai Edmund and Yuen Wai-hei, The Chinese University Press, 2018.
15. 2010 nian Guangzhou wanren shangjie cheng yueyu (Ten Thousand Took to the Street to Support Cantonese in 2010), Apple Daily, 25th July, 2014.
16. Yueyu de zhengzhi, (The Politics of Cantonese), by Wai Tim Chi, https://www.ln.edu.hk/mcsln/46th_issue/key_concept_01.shtml
17. Xianggang liuqi baodong shimo – jiedu Wu Dizhou (The Beginning and the End of the 1967 Riot – Understanding Wu Di-zhou),Chengxiang, Chapter Five, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 2018.
18. Former Chairperson of the Democratic party mentioned the figure in a 2015 Hong Kong and Taiwan Exchange Conference.
19. Chen Jianmin zibian yishu wu Linzheng Liu Jianghua: minjian gongtou baogao guanyuan liu shuhua (Chan Kin-man Self-Defense: Recalling Meeting with Carrie Lam; The Officials Left the Report on the Civil Referendum on the Sofa), Ming Pao Daily, 30th November, 2018.
20. Ming Pao, 30th September 2014.
21. Yusan yundong de jusan: tufa, zizhu he suipianhua (The Coming Together of the Umbrella Movement and its Disperse: Contingency, Autonomy and Fragmentisation), The Age of Social Movement—Hong Kong’s Resistance Politics and its Path, edited by Cheng Wai Edmund and Yuen Wai-hei, The Chinese University Press, 2018.
22. Yiqun Xianggang gongwuyuan zhi shimin de gongkaixin (An Open Letter to Hong Kong Citizens from a Group of Civil Servants), Mingpao, 22nd October 2014,
23. Laochagu xiegei lanshan tongshi de xin – baishan tongshi wukan (Old Veteran’s Letter to Front-line Colleagues –Supervisor Grade Colleagues Need Not be Bothered), http://news.discuss.com.hk/viewthread.php?tid=23843299&page=1&pid=398641118#pid398641118
24. Cheng shiweizhe zu jiuhuche , ziji beima “heijing” (Policeman Said Protestors Blocked the Ambulance, Himself being Scolded as “Bad Cops”), Ming Pao, 29th November, 2018.
25. Xianggang minyi yu zhengzhi fazhan diaocha jieguo (Results of A Poll on “Hong Kong Public Opinion and Political Development”), 18th December, 2014. http://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/ccpos/images/news/TaskForce_PressRelease_141218_Chinese.pdf
26. Zhongda mindiao tuisuan 120 wanren ceng canyu zhanling yundong (Chinese University Poll Calculated that 1.2 Million People Took Part in the Occupation),Apple Daily, 19th December, 2014,
27. Yusan yundong : Zhongguo bianchui de kangzheng zhengzhi (The Umbrella Movement: Political Struggle at China’s Frontier), 21st Century Magazine, February 2015 . http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ics/21c/media/articles/c147-201501017.pdf
28. Yusan yundong de jusan: tufa, zizhu he suipianhua (The Coming Together of the Umbrella Movement and its Disperse: Contingency, Autonomy and Fragmentisation), The Age of Social Movement—Hong Kong’s Resistance Politics and its Path, edited by Cheng Wai Edmund and Yuen Wai-hei, The Chinese University Press, 2018.
29. Umbrella Profiling, https://www.facebook.com/umbrellaprofiling
30. Lau Sai Leung in the League of Social Democrats seminar report, 31st January 2015.
31. Some left-wing anarchists sympathised with the people who advocated the idea of “down with the stage” (which means down with leaders). This is strange. In general, anarchists are against the establishment of fixed organisations but support the direct democracy of a mass general assembly.
32. Fandui renda cubao luozha jiyao zhenpuxuan yeyao gaishan minsheng (Oppose the NPC’s Rough Decision, Demand for Genuine Universal Suffrage and Improvements to People’s Livelihoods), https://www.inmediahk.net/20140923b
33. Annual Statistical Report of Trade Unions in Hong Kong 2017, https://www.labour.gov.hk/tc/public/pdf/rtu/ASR2017.pdf
34. Around the world, union membership dues often comprise 1-2% of monthly salaries and only this level of contributions would be able to support the strike fund. In Hong Kong union membership dues usually only consist of an annual fee of a hundred or so Hong Kong dollars, or 0.05 percent of the average annual wages (2018) . This, of course, could not support a strike fund.
35. or instance at the height of the Umbrella Movement, according to the following report, the CTU received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy to the tune of 151,840 US$ for the year of 2014-5. Shou meizuzhi 900 wan, zhigongmeng: laogong yongtu (CTU Received 9 Million HK$ from US Organisation while CTU Responded that the Funding is for Subsidizing Labor), Ming Pao, 14th October, 2014.
36. Jianli zhenzheng minzhu youpai (The establishment of a genuine democratic right wing party), Hong Kong Economic Journal, 28th October 2008.
37. On the 2nd October, the author participated in a street forum in Admiralty held by the New Democratic Movement. They had not yet begun when three or four young people and one middle aged person came over and loudly and publicly accused them of using group discussion to hijack the movement. Friends of the New Democratic Movement asked them to discuss. Afterwards the author followed the man to other locations and was surprised to hear him explain to the masses that, “if there was no Communist Party then Hong Kong people would not even have any water to drink”.
38. Suoshao shimin ziren shuyu bentupai? (How many people see themselves as localists?), Mingpao, 14th April, 2016.
39. -Localists and “Locusts” in Hong Kong: Creating a Yellow-Red Peril Discourse, https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mscas/vol2015/iss2/1/
40. -Localists and “Locusts” in Hong Kong: Creating a Yellow-Red Peril Discourse, https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mscas/vol2015/iss2/1
41. Beijing wants tycoons to take action, not just pay lip service, SCMP, 1st November, 2014, http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1629442/beijing-wants-tycoons-take-action-not-just-pay-lip-service?page=all
42. - Zhanling zhonghuan duitan xilie: kewang er bukeji de puxuanmeng (Dialogue Series on Occupy Central – An Universal Suffrage Dream which is on the Horizon but Unattainable) https://news.mingpao.com/pns/%e5%89%af%e5%88%8a/article/20130324/s00005/1381740233525/%e4%bd%94%e9%a0%98%e4%b8%ad%e7%92%b0%e5%b0%8d%e8%ab%87%e7%b3%bb%e5%88%97%e5%8f%af%e6%9c%9b%e8%80%8c%e4%b8%8d%e5%8f%af%e5%8d%b3%e7%9a%84%e6%99%ae%e9%81%b8%e5%a4%a2
43. Alex Chow’s speech at a seminar held by the Link of Social Democrats, 31st January, 2015.