With Love and Peace

Protests at Causeway Bay

Sunday night, 28 September, began in a joyous mood. My ultimate team Hong Kong Junk had just played our best tournament in years, narrowly losing in the finals of the inaugural Turn Up Taipei to take 2nd place. Sweaty and exhausted with mixed emotions, we arrived at Taipei Taoyuan Airport and took advantage of the free wifi. We were immediately greeted with a bombardment of texts about riot police and goggles and tear gas. I came back to Hong Kong to hear the airport's public announcements about how due to an "incident at Admiralty" that public transportation to Hong Kong island were limited. The initial impact of the events took me completely by shock. Momentum had picked up over the weekend and protests that were supposed to take place for the October 1 National Day were pushed forward to carry on with the success of the student's strike. Then the tear gas came down and the umbrellas came up and Hong Kong social media blew up. The situation was so unclear as I made my way home - among the rumors I heard were the movement of People's Liberation Army (PLA) tanks down the eastern harbour tunnel and that work would be cancelled on Monday.

But Monday morning proceeded as normal. The subway was not filled with policemen and the office was not abuzz with talks about rebellion. I figured that like most post-tournament Mondays, I'd be the most exhausted person at the office. But I bumped into my coworker whom I saw for the first time without gel in his hair. I casually asked him if he'd gone to the protest and he nodded yes. When he told me he arrived at Occupy Central around 10, I figured he meant AM. I realized my faulty assumption when he told me he slept a bit on a skybridge and then came straight to work. He had heard about the escalation of the police reaction mid Sunday and decided he needed to participate. He then brought a change of clothes into the office, went off the to protests, came back in the morning and showered in the office. That was when I saw the real conviction of the youth of Hong Kong, whom this protest is really for.

It's been a few days and I have a lot of thoughts on this #Umbrella Revolution. I'm not at a position to give a sophisticated analysis of the entire political dynamics. There's too much to talk about and I couldn't do it justice. I'm not an expert on Hong Kong either and while I do care passionately about Hong Kong, I don't care the same way the organizers of these protests do. I'm not an expert on the People's Republic of China either, and I don't know exactly how they are thinking. But I'm coming in from an international perspective, born in a democracy to two parents born in Hong Kong. My mother's family has been based in Hong Kong for 5 generations, while my father's Hong Kong fled from Shanghai to Hong Kong after the Chinese Civil War, and from Hong Kong to Sierra Leone following the more violent 1967 riots. In my three years here, I've learned a lot about Hong Kong and China but wouldn't say I've particularly gotten closer to becoming a Hong Konger. I'm very much an expat and it's reflected in the way I spend my free time and consume my media. Still, I'd like to think I have absorbed enough about Hong Kong, China and the international world to give a nuanced opinion of the views of these three parties.

Ocupar centro

• Background: These movements have been a long time coming. Hong Kong was separated from China and a British colony during a very tumultuous time in China's history. The fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Japanese invasion, the Chinese Civil War, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square crackdown took place in mainland China whilst Hong Kong took in refugees and developed into an industrial manufacturing economy, a shipping hub and then a global financial services hub. Most Hong Kongers can trace their family back to mainland China within one or two generations. Many came to Hong Kong for a reason and have acute memories of the Cultural Revolution and lasting resentment against the Communist government. These feelings propelled loads of Hong Kong residents to emigrate in anticipation of the 1997 Handover. The fears did not totally materialize when the Handover came to pass, with free press, free internet and left-handed driving continuing uninterrupted. But this does not mean those fears went away. The Basic Law, Hong Kong's current Western-style legal system, was set up in a Sino-British joint treaty and guaranteed to last for 50 years, but with the signees of this treaty all likely to be dead by 2047, it's anyone's guess what the situation will look like then. Since 1997, many Hong Kongers have been very aware of little signs of China's infringement upon their autonomy. The announcement of a "National Compulsory Education" was deemed a form of patriotic brainwashing and met with enormous protests and ultimately revocation. This democracy issue is another sign of infringement. I find it a little strange that the British, which never allowed any semblance of democracy upon Hong Kong colony, stuck this provision of transition towards democracy into their treaty. It sounds an awful lot like passing the buck and seems to rely on some premise that a country can go from unready to ready for democracy. This democracy has been pushed back to 2017, but now that the PRC government has declared that it will be "democracy with Chinese characteristics" or as my uncle called it, "choosing between several assholes." As we have seen, the Hong Kong people have not taken well to this PRC declaration.
• When I first came to Hong Kong, I thought locals were pretty politically apathetic. I thought that people didn't really care about world events because Hong Kong had absolutely no say in them. I thought that people felt powerless in their own situation but not the need to complain because life in this first world city was pretty good. To be fair, I was coming from Washington, DC where if you're politically apathetic, you basically have to give up going to bars every four years. I've definitely come around on this opinion. Hong Kong's position as a financially strong but politically handcuffed entity does lend itself to a very unheroic notion of great power without great responsibility. Nonetheless, many Hong Kongers have shown that they will not shut up because they are well fed; they are extremely passionate about their own future and have well-formed ideas of justice, political process, human rights and social welfare. 
• Protests create surreal scenes. My friend texted a picture of a major highway in Causeway Bay shut down and compared it to "I Am Legend", the movie about a post-apocalyptic New York City devoid of human life. I was shocked the other day to walk out of my apartment and onto Nathan Road and to find the busiest road in Kowloon closed to vehicle traffic. Walking down the middle of the road towards the protest in Mong Kok did not feel like real life. A bus was parked in the middle of the intersection. I don't know how it got there but it was being covered with paper slogans.



Not pictured: wild cheetahs

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  Occupy Mong Kok

• Protests lend themselves to bandwagons and people wanting to feel a part of something special. I don't know if this has always been the case for all of history, but social media certainly adds another layer. Many people treat social media as a place to showcase your special moments, and so when special moments happen to you or your surroundings, people may feel a pressure to have to broadcast it. I've certainly been Instagramming the protests - I almost feel I have to or I'm expected to, to be the on the ground journalist for my friends. I don't want to get this post on a social media tangent, but I do want to point out behavior that our society should be careful of. We should be aware of the uncomfortable position of protest tourists, who unassumingly revel in the hardships of committed protesters because it makes for impressive pictures. We should be conscious of meaningless shout outs of encouragement to the protesters just because we want to remind the world that we are in Hong Kong, or we are connected to Hong Kong, or we are Economist-reading politically aware people. This protest works if it is not about you. It's about the people of Hong Kong using the avenues available to them to stand up for their rights and negotiate with the PRC government as best they can. To note: I haven't seen any particular social media behavior that I find truly objectionable, but I want people to be aware of their own role.
• In a related aspect, most of my friends here are expats or overseas educated Hong Kongers. The issues at hand are important to all of us, but I can't honestly say it's equally important. For ex-pats, we love this city but we can leave whenever we want. The worst case scenario for me is a one way ticket to Boston. Similarly, many Hong Kongers have Canadian/American/British/Australian passports and speak English as their best language and could leave easily, albeit with tears in their eyes. For the vast majority though, while emigration is an option, it's not the preferred option. Hong Kong is such a unique city that an unusually high percentage of people who leave eventually return due to homesickness. Outside of Guangdong, it's the only place with Cantonese as an official language and lots of residents aren't particularly keen to cut it elsewhere in Mandarin or English. To me, the conversations about the protests I've had with true locals are very different from the ones I've had with westernized locals and expats. Love for the city overlaps all these groups, but their alternative realities differ, and that very much matters.
• A lot of Hong Kongers are on board with these protests, including much of my upper management, which you might not expect if you buy into all the economic disruption the protests are theoretically causing. Not all of them are, including youths who don't agree with disrupting public areas and commerce, an older generation who thinks this whole charade is pointless, and a small minority of strident China Nationalists.
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• There are two major issues at hand. The first one is the headline regarding democracy in Hong Kong. The second is the gradual erosion of promises made by the PRC government. I feel that these issues are distinct but parallel and shape the direction and mission of the protests.
• Democracy - This is the one that Communist Party supporters will stand up and argue with you all night. The issue can be examined ideologically across East vs West. Since the liberal revolutions that replaced monarchies with democracies in Europe and continuing through the Iron Curtain, Westerners tend to associate democracy with progress and development. It's a fundamental pillar of the American Dream and as an American, I find it unnatural to argue against democracy, ever. But whereas the Western world is largely made of First World democracies and Third World dictatorships, Asia is home to Third World democracies and First World semi-authoritarian regimes. China firmly believes that the West has had far too much influence on deciding how the rest of the world should run their affairs, and that not all Western technologies and systems are spun out of gold. They'll insist that China is too populous and too undeveloped a country to effectively run as a democracy, and that the authoritarian government makes quick and firm decisions that have brought it unparalleled economic development that would simply not have been possible under democratic rule. And they'd have a very good point. Westerns jump back and retort that this marvelous economic growth has not benefited everyone equally, and that minorities and political dissidents are being severely repressed and that these human rights violations, a hallmark of authoritarian regimes, trump any economic gain because you can't put a price on a human life. And they'd be right too. The Chinese can then say "in China you are watched and you know it. In America you are watched and you don't know it." And they'll say, "we are going to vet the candidates before democratic elections in Hong Kong. Isn't that what the big corporations and major donors do in the United States elections?"  And Americans can respond with, "we are focused on fixing a maligned but just system while you are focused on perfecting a broken system." Anyway, it's a tough and long debate and not one I had in high school world history, but one you need to have if you want to understand why Beijing is against true democracy in Hong Kong.
• Another debate I am particularly focused on is what happens if true democracy is won in Hong Kong. So then we can elect a candidate we want (yes I get to vote), who hopefully will be a capable and representative leader, and we will have for the first time a government legitimized by the people. But what will that government be able to do? Their power is still limited in scope. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong is essentially a glorified mayor, able to control inglorious municipal services. I'm not sure he/she would be any more able to make decision on Chinese immigration into Hong Kong, or compulsory national education, or the possibility of a mandatory draft in Hong Kong were China to engage in warfare. Furthermore, local social justice issues are not necessarily better addressed even with a legitimate government. It would take more than a popularly elected Chief Executive to change social ills especially with some prejudices held by the majority of the population.
• The second, and arguably more motivating, factor that Hong Kongers are fighting for are the eroding freedoms (or perceptions thereof) from the Chinese government. If the Chinese government take away the promise of democracy from the Hong Kong people without resistance, then they can slowly take away the remaining freedoms that distinguish the SAR from the PRC.  My coworker pointed this out succinctly to me by teaching me a new 成語or proverb: 《溫水煮蛙》 The proverb means that if you throw a frog into boiling water, it'll freak out. But if you throw it into room temperature water and slowly boil the water, it won't realize it is being boiled. You can argue that the distinction between voting for your China pre-approved mayor and your unapproved mayor is not worth blockading city blocks, but if you don't send the message, you don't know what's next. And this isn't mindless paranoia. I believe China's plan all along starting from 1997 was for it to catch up with Hong Kong in development and society over 50 years and for Hong Kong to become more Chinese. The catchup part of the plan has worked, but the Hong Kong assimilation has not. China is acutely aware that Hong Kongers are not on the path of submitting lovingly to their motherland, and Hong Kongers want to make acutely known that they have no intention of doing so.
• I believe that the Chinese government has a hard time grasping this. They probably hoped that by now Hong Kong would love to be a part of almighty China. To China, it's as if East Germany had reunited with West Germany and been like actually, can we keep our state-owned enterprises? That's why they wanted to institute the national compulsory education, to teach the youth of Hong Kong that China is pretty great.



Sign at the edge of the Mong Kok protests. Translation: You are now leaving Mong Kok People's Square and returning to the world of CY Leung.

• The gap between Hong Kong and China sometimes surprises me when I think of it. After all, most Hong Kongers are only a couple generations removed from China. They may have inherited the history and home traditions, but the daily lifestyle has evolved so much in Hong Kong that traveling to China precisely is traveling to a foreign country. Even though this generation generally speaks Mandarin decently, they tend to absorb a lot more Taiwanese culture than they do mainland culture. There's also plenty of prejudice against mainlanders that reveals the lack of mutual understanding between the two. I've seen many Western-educated Hong Kongers, who would never make racist comments about other races, say extremely offensive things about mainlanders and not feel bad about it. "It's not racist because we're all the same race." There has just been this gap between the two cultures, where public spitting is ok in China and not ok in Hong Kong, where public urination is looked down upon in China and total bloody murder in Hong Kong, which the majority of people don't fully appreciate the nuances. I would probably harbor these same prejudices had I not spent the summers in Beijing and been forced to grapple with the realities of living in China.
• I wondered if there were many people in the mainland anxiously watching over these events. I wondered if there were many people in the PRC who want to protest against the government but can't, and look to Hong Kong as their inspiration. It's hard to understand China, every time I think I learn something about their people I meet someone who defies everything I've learned, but I don't think this is really the case. The majority of people in China do not think about Hong Kong very much. It's not in the top 100 pressing issues in China. Moreover, a lot of mainlanders think of Hong Kongers as arrogant and  think they're super special. Coupled with the Chinese media's disgustingly deceptive coverage of this and I think the general attitude in the mainland towards this unrest is simply indifference.
• I've read some Western perspectives that miss the situation. This happens a lot actually. A writer who somehow has a job with the Economist said after Beijing announced their election policy that China missed a golden opportunity to experiment with democracy within their state. From a Western mindset, this sounds like a clever use for this Hong Kong situation. I don't know how the Chinese government thinks, and with their incredibly opaque method of announcing decisions, it's very hard to really understand how they think. But I don't think anyone was thinking of Hong Kong as an experiment ground for an eventual transition to democracy as so much as a potential model for separatist groups within China to cling onto. China doesn't want to admit that perhaps its form of government isn't the best way to handle affairs. And it doesn't want to give too much power away to Hong Kong, or else Tibet and Xinjiang will demand the same. I'm extremely aware that I as a Westerner, often do miss the boat on the type of thinking between Chinese and Hong Kong parties. 
• The economic argument is one that I see more from the banking community and generally more conservative thinkers. Hong Kong may be a towering skyscraping economy, but it's completely dependent on China. This isn't really an argument, as Hong Kong literally gets the majority of its water and electricity from China, and doing business with China is the economic backbone of the city. Detractors of Hong Kong will say that it is already overtaken by Shanghai, and that its position as the gateway to the west is an obsolete role. Shipping can go straight to Shenzhen now and there's really no need for Western businesses to base their operations from Hong Kong. It's another common Western fallacy to think that Western businesses, and the Western 2% of the population, are what makes this city great and special. Even if Hong Kong fails to outshine major Chinese cities in the near future, economics is not a zero-sum game. This city has reached critical mass where it wields too much influence to fade, its industries too diverse for the economy to drop off, and its people too well-educated to fail to adapt. Outsiders should not underestimate the self-contained parts of Hong Kong's economy either, the significant amounts of work done in Hong Kong by Hong Kongers for Hong Kongers. 
• China has all the power. They really can afford to sit back and watch, because there's really nothing Hong Kong can do. Foreign powers and the UN are pretty limited too. The UK, as the treaty signer, can insist that China uphold the stipulations of the treaty but they wouldn't be able to do much more than pound their chest unless they impose economic sanctions. These would probably hurt the UK more than they would hurt China. The best move China could do is to give Hong Kong its own Scottish referendum and have it vote for its own independence. Once Hong Kong becomes independent, they can roll their tanks in and take it over and rip up the Sino-British treaty and the Basic Law.  And nobody would do anything about it. In all seriousness, I don't know who will hold out longer.



Occupy Central

• Many people are bringing up the Tiananmen Square protest, which began as a non-violent student protest as well and kept on for four months. A few days into this one, I can't believe they kept on for four months, although to be fair they were occupying the square and not real streets and business districts. That one ended with tanks, and we are very much hoping history does not repeat itself 25 years later. I think that the serious protesters right now are not expecting to encounter serious violence, but if things change, I believe there are some who will sacrifice their lives if they need to.
• For me, Hong Kong is a pretty great city. Keeping the status quo and continuing to address the local social issues is the ideal solution.  I don't know if such semi-autonomy could be an acceptable permanent situation, but it seems to me the most pragmatic one.

So that's a lot of thoughts. I just spent 7 hours putting this together. I don't know how long this will last and even whether history will particularly remember these days, but I do feel moved to support it and learn as much as I can about the issues at hand.

To be honest, I don't know a lot of Cantonese songs. There are only a handful I ever pick during karaoke sessions here, but one of them is 海闊天空 by the best Hong Kong band ever, Beyond. This song has been played a lot in recent days, and though it's not written with these politics in mind, it's very applicable and resonates with people.

原諒我這一生不羈放縱愛自由

Forgive me for I've been a wild person all my life rejoicing in freedom

也會怕有一天會跌倒

But I also fear that I would one day fall

背棄了理想　誰人都可以

Abandon one's ideals, anyone can do

那會怕有一天只你共我

I'm not afraid if one day it's just you and me.

The song touches on the basic human desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I think it's reminding people that behind the layers of politics and history, we share all the same fundamental desires and we are fighting to uphold these desires. I hope this is the message that gets sent and heard.