From our Female Correspondent: Elaine on Hong Kong
“The eruption of the protests last year were part of a long journey that Hong Kong has had to go through for a personal, more local identity.”
Hong Kong. Economic and technological powerhouse, cosmopolitan tourist hub, former British colony. Chinese, but not entirely part of China. This Special Administrative Region has hit the headlines over the past six years for clashes with mainland China over democracy and self-determination. But what does it feel like to grow up in a city caught between two systems? This week I sat down with Hong Konger Elaine, to get her take.
“As someone who grew up in Hong Kong, we see ourselves as very culturally different from mainland China. Of course, we have our British colonial history which has meant that Hong Kong is a lot more cosmopolitan, you see a lot more Western international influences.” Part of this colonial hangover can be seen in the ubiquity of the English language or the fact that activities such as horse racing are popular, but some leftovers hold much greater importance for Hong Kong residents.
“After the cultural revolution and the Tiananmen massacre, Hong Kong was seen – not exactly as a haven, because we weren’t free as a colonial state – but as a place where people could enjoy some freedoms, even just in terms of less censorship.” Today, apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube can all be used in Hong Kong, even though they are blocked in mainland China. “From a media perspective, Hong Kong was always seen as being a lot freer, but that’s definitely something that is on the decline now.”
Elaine before the backdrop of her native Hong Kong
What freedoms does Hong Kong enjoy?
Elaine goes on to tell me that it has become the norm for pro-Beijing moguls to buy up Hong Kong media outlets, such as the South China Morning Post, the widest-read English language newspaper in the region. And herein lies the struggle at the core of Hong Kong – although it enjoys freedoms denied to citizens of mainland China, China’s involvement means that real democracy is totally impossible. As it stands, Hong Kongers still cannot vote for their own chief executive (the head of Hong Kong’s government. Instead they must choose one of a small selection of candidates, put forward by Beijing.
This lacklustre compromise on what rights citizens have is down to Hong Kong’s colonial history. Britain acquired Hong Kong Island in 1842, at the end of the First Opium War, and expanded its foothold over time into neighbouring areas. In 1997, it transferred the whole territory back to China, with the agreement that Hong Kong’s economic and political systems be guaranteed for the next 50 years, along with some basic elements of democracy, such as freedom of speech.
These protected freedoms have meant that, however warranted, Britain has not become the major focus of Hong Kongers’ resentment. “Sometimes in the protests, people would wave British colonial flags, and my friends and I found that a very…confused way of thinking because it’s not like we were free under British colonial rule either. I think Hong Kong is the only former British colony not to get independence afterwards. We continue to be under someone else’s control– we’ve just been handed over to a new master now.”
Elaine makes the comparison with Macau, another southern Chinese area, formerly colonised by the Portuguese. “When Macau was handed back to China, every resident was given a Portuguese passport and told ‘If you don’t want to deal with China, you can move to Portugal.’” In 1997, the British didn’t want to upset China, so no such provision was made for residents of Hong Kong.
CREDIT: Alison Thomas
The evolution of Hong Kong’s relationship with China
And Hong Kong’s “repatriation” came after decades of British efforts to sever any cultural links with the rest of China, meaning Hong Kongers were effectively handed back to a country they felt very little affinity to. “When it was a British colony, the English government purposefully protected Hong Kong from propaganda that the mainland was pumping out, because they wanted to keep the region as a cultural vacuum which could act as an economic window into the rest of China. That affinity to China has been purposefully stopped.”
But the current level of tension between the Hong Kong and China hasn’t always been so palpable. “Growing up I felt like Hong Kong had a really amicable, harmonious relationship with China and we thought it would just slowly open up. My generation saw China as a place to go shopping – there was not as much of an encroachment.” But, as she got older, the relationship shifted. There was an increase in Chinese tourists (in a city which was already very compact) and people would routinely come to Hong Kong to buy things which had been prone to health and safety scandals on the mainland, such as baby formula or eggs. This led to a lack of resources and a sharp increase in prices for property and everyday goods. “The situation has just got worse and worse. China’s aim seems to have been to open up Hong Kong more and more.”
But to see themselves as 100% separate and different from China is, Elaine believes, a mistake. “What I think is damaging is when Hong Kongers confuse the Chinese political state with Chinese culture, because in terms of the cultural perspective, we may have Western influences, but we are Chinese.”
CREDIT: Alison Thomas
What were the Hong Kong protests about?
In fact, Hong Kongers embrace elements of traditional Chinese culture on a daily basis, from food to customs, to medicine. In 2019, many protesters were afraid to go to hospital, as the government would take lists of who had been there in order to arrest people. Instead protesters needing help frequented traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, who specialised in acupuncture or herbal medicine, and would treat them without the risk of repercussions.
The protests were, for Elaine, a way for Hong Kong to find and assert its own identity. The Umbrella Movement in 2014 focussed on universal suffrage and the 2019 protests on the extradition bill, which would allow people from Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China to be sentenced. This was particularly scary because even calling out China could get you into trouble. In 2015, five people disappeared after selling books critical of the Chinese government, only to reappear in Chinese custody.
Fears around extradition, and harsher punishments on the mainland, have been compounded by the recent proposal of a National Security law which would make it a criminal offence to, among other things, “undermine the power or authority of the central government.”
How the Hong Kong protests got smart
The stakes for protesters have always been extremely high, hovering as Hong Kong does on the edge of an authoritarian regime, but a combination of local support and sophisticated organisation helped the 2019 protests continue for over a year. “Any time an altercation happened, people in the crowd would have hand gestures to pass messages back through the crowd saying they needed something. So, if someone got hurt, a specific wave gesture might mean they needed to pass water to the front to help with tear gas - there were all these codes.”
Other tactics included dividing the police by organising protests within 15 minutes, with groups each picking a different area, so the police couldn’t reach them all. Local support was crucial too, from volunteer lawyers helping those who got arrested, to members of the public leaving clothes so protesters could change out of their all-black uniform, or leaving money in train stations so they could buy tickets and avoid using their easily-trackable travel cards. Initially, there was also international condemnation and support from the West, though Elaine mentions that coronavirus has halted this in its tracks.
CREDIT: Alison Thomas
The importance of leadership to a cause
Perhaps most importantly, the protests were kept leaderless, so that key members would not be targeted and abducted as had happened in the past, though Elaine says figures like activist Joshua Wong still have a huge part to play in Hong Kong’s struggles. “These figureheads are so important. Especially in the climate of Black Lives Matter, when you’re looking at the history of the Black Panthers and you see how the FBI took out a whole level of emerging leadership – and of course the injustice of having a leader assassinated will inspire other leaders – but I do think missing leadership is so damaging to a cause.”
“Thank God we have people like Joshua Wong, especially with the way the Chinese government works – it instils so much fear to be that public voice, but then it’s way more powerful.” Protests can be organised anonymously – especially with the availability of technology – but for translating your cause to a global audience, the importance of figureheads cannot be overstated.
Sketching the shape of Hong Kong’s future
So, what is next for Hong Kong? When I ask Elaine if she thinks universal suffrage will ever be a reality in the region, her response is unenthusiastic. She, like many people, see the fight with mainland China as a David and Goliath-sized battle… in an alternative version, where the little guy doesn’t win. But she says the mood in the region is anything but downtrodden.
“It’s like Hong Kong has come out the other side of a huge collective trauma, but no one expected – right from the start – for us to win. We fought the fight, and everyone knows how hard we tried and that was the best we could hope for. Now we just need to adapt. On the ground there’s still a vibrant, defiant energy, like now we just need to find a new way to resist.”
This energy has given rise to a huge cultural Renaissance in the region, with a boom in arts, music, and photography, born out of years of collective suffering. A friend of Elaine’s works for an arts club and was describing how most of the entries to this year’s Human Rights Arts prize were pieces of street photography, capturing the reality of the protests.
“This has been such a galvanising experience to go through as a city. It feels like there is really a move to archive everything, to document now because we don’t know what tomorrow will be like. So we’re busy documenting the emotions which will be processed through art in the future. Hong Kong’s identity was already developing, but I think the aftereffects of this trauma will help to consolidate it.”
CREDIT: Alison Thomas
Special thanks to Elaine’s friend Alison Thomas, for her stunning photographs of the protests.