Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s 2020 work provides an overview of Hong-Kong’s struggle for self-determination.[1]
In October 2014, protestors hung a banner reading “implement dual universal suffrage” on Lion Rock, overlooking Hong Kong. Photo: Kevin Cheng/USP United Social Press.[2]
Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink presents an image of Hong Kong in a waning phase - not because of the spirit of its people, which is as strong as ever - but because of a looming Beijing and the decline in Western support for Hong Kong. Despite the seeming inevitability of formal mainland absorption, Wasserstrom offers hopeful examples throughout the book suggesting that Hong Kong residents continue to maintain their existential identity, desire for liberty, and quest for independence.
I. Hong Kong through Wasserstrom’s Eyes
Vigil opens with a chronicle of various “disappearances” in both the culture of Hong Kong and the physical city itself. Despite being promised “a high degree of autonomy” even after the British Handover of the colony in 1997, the boundary lines between China and Hong Kong have begun to blur at an increasingly rapid rate. Wasserstrom transcribes several interviews in which people now refer to the Hong Kong region as the “Greater Bay Area”,[3] notable dissidents in Hong Kong have been imprisoned (or simply gone missing)[4], and the Mandarin language is used significantly more often in Hong Kong compared to years prior when native Cantonese was the dominant language.[5] On paper, freedom of speech, assembly, and protest are still protected in Hong Kong under its Constitution - the Basic Law. But in an increasing number of places, such as West Kowloon Station, a train terminal connecting Hong Kong to the mainland in 2018, passengers are explicitly subject to mainland Chinese laws rather than Hong Kong laws.[6]
According to Wasserstrom, the mainland’s attempts to interfere with Hong Kong’s political autonomy are not limited to train stations. One of the main subjects of discussion throughout Vigil is the deeply unpopular extradition bill introduced by Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, in 2019. The bill would allow mainland China to extradite citizens of Hong Kong to the mainland and subject them to laws of the Chinese government.[7] According to protestors, this extradition bill flies in the face of the Chinese government’s repeated promise of “One Country, Two Systems” and undermines the legal freedoms that Hong Kong citizens have tried so hard to maintain. Wasserstrom recounts his experience of being present in the streets for one of the largest protests against the extradition bill, explaining that “outrage over the extradition bill was palpable” when over 180,000 Hong Kong residents took to the streets to commemorate the June Fourth Massacre of likely thousands of people in Tiananmen Square in 1989.[8]
Next, Wasserstrom offers a brief history of Hong Kong, explaining how the British colony grew from a humble town to a shining metropolis at the epicenter of commerce in Asia. This evolution was due in large part to Hong Kong’s physical location as a port city and status as a colony of the British Empire. Hong Kong’s extraordinary growth also stemmed from its legal freedoms that allowed investors to form and deploy capital as they saw fit – a contrast to the dire political situation in mainland China. Wasserstrom explains that many citizens and commentators expected the Handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, an act negotiated by Margaret Thatcher and Zhao Ziyang, to mean instant subjugation of Hong Kong (much like Shanghai’s fall to Beijing in 1949), but the negotiation resulted in what seemed to be a far more amicable agreement. The agreement stipulated that Hong Kong was to remain highly autonomous until 2047 and allowed to apply its own Basic Law.[9]
Wasserstrom writes that the reason Hong Kong was permitted to retain autonomy even on paper is likely due to the city’s capacity for wealth creation: “Gaining prosperous Hong Kong would be an economic boon to China and it would be left largely as it was to ensure it remained an attractive locale for investors and companies.”[10] He contrasts this with the views of other less optimistic commentators, including Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong. In an interview referenced in Vigil between Wasserstrom and Patten, the former governor agreed with Wasserstrom’s sentiment about how rapidly Hong Kong was being assimilated into the mainland saying, “When the snow starts melting, it melts quickly.”[11]
Despite the pessimism of many commentators about the future of democracy in Hong Kong, Wasserstrom does recount some victories that Hong Kong citizens have won since the Handover. A security bill introduced by Hong Kong’s first chief executive Tung Chee-Hwa akin to the American Patriot Act, but with much more draconian provisions against “subversion” of the Chinese Government, was shelved after a massive protest on July 1, 2003.[12] At the time of Wasserstrom’s writing, students and academics in Hong Kong were largely successful in staging massive protests and mobilizing huge amounts of people to take to the streets in demonstrations against mainland encroachment on Hong Kong. Among these protests, the “Umbrella Movement” was perhaps the most ubiquitous, with activists taking to the streets wielding umbrellas to shield themselves from the natural climate of rainy Hong Kong and the tear gas of police. The umbrella became a symbol of the city and of the movement. Wasserstrom sums up the motivations of these protests, saying “Every political battle [in Hong Kong] has had to do with Beijing gaslighting on universal suffrage. . . [d]emocracy is and always has been the dominant issue in Hong Kong politics.”[13]
Despite the Umbrella Movement’s awesome display of democratic spirit, including a seventy-nine-day occupation of Hong Kong’s business district by 100,000 residents and constant skirmishes with police, the “foremost demand of the Umbrella Movement - the right to directly elect the chief executive [of Hong Kong] by ‘universal suffrage’” was left unmet. According to Wasserstrom, these occupation movements eventually subsided due to attrition and the fatigue of the protestors, rather than overt suppression by the Chinese Government.[14] In the ensuing months, arrests of leaders of the movement, like Joshua Wong, occurred. On July 1, 2017, Xi Jinping, the paramount leader of China, visited Hong Kong. The visit was accompanied by the largest display of military force ever seen in the region and punctuated by a speech from Xi Jinping that made it very clear that Hong Kong was under direct Chinese control.[15]
Wasserstrom eventually circles back to the protests over the 2019 extradition bill introduced by Chief Executive Carrie Lam, explaining that these protests were orders of magnitude beyond the Umbrella Movement in 2014, both in number of protesters and in degree of violence.[16] Despite this increased pressure from Hong Kong residents, the mainland has largely refused to give an inch in its ultimate subjugation of the city. Wasserstrom concludes with an honest picture of Hong Kong’s quest for independence, saying, “It has become clear that there is little stopping Beijing from destroying many of Hong Kong's institutions, even if it continues to be frustrated. . . in its ability to stamp out attachment to signs of local identity and crush the Lion Rock spirit.”[17]
II. Muddy Waters: Personal Observations on Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink
The Chinese Government’s repeated use of vague language to pretend to appease Hong Kong residents and other concerned parties shone through in Wasserstrom’s book. Bearing in mind that some of the imprecisions he relates may be due to translation between Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, I could not help being reminded of George Orwell’s 1984 throughout the book, and, in fact, 1984 is referenced by numerous interviewees in the book. Hong Kong residents interviewed cited 1984, The Hunger Games, and various Chinese literature as inspiration for their freedom fighting. More than anything, however, the Chinese government’s actions reminded me more of a perhaps lesser-known work of Orwell’s prose - Politics and the English Language. In that essay, Orwell observed that many acquiesences of liberty in history occur first through concessions in language. He writes, “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. . .. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called ‘elimination of unreliable elements.’ Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.”[18]
Wasserstrom’s report is replete with examples of the Chinese Government using vague, imprecise, or misleading language to obfuscate the reality that Beijing will not allow Hong Kong to remain a democratic and independent city-state. From changes in common referents (Hong Kong is now “the Greater Bay Area”) to shifts in the vernacular itself (from usage of Cantonese to Mandarin, increasingly) to annexed exceptions to democratic processes in the Basic Law of Hong Kong, it is clear (if one reads between the lines) that China has no interest in honoring the latter half of its promise of “One Country, Two Systems.”
Having canvassed more recent reports on the state of Hong Kong’s relationship with the mainland, it seems that Wasserstrom’s description of Hong Kong as “on the brink” was prescient.[19] More recent works suggest that most of the city-wide protests in Hong Kong effectively ceased in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and police used laws prohibiting gatherings of more than four people (laws enacted in the name of public health), to violently break up protests.[20] Specifically, the “Prohibition on Group Gathering”, an ordinance promulgated on March 29, 2020, authorized Hong Kong police to “demand personal details and inspect the proof of identity as well as disperse prohibited group gatherings”. By commandeering a law intended to reduce the spread of contagious disease and instead use it for suppression of political dissent. The Chinese government (via legislators in Hong Kong) continues to show its willingness to wield language to serve its own subtextual ends.
In sum, Wasserstrom’s thesis seems to hold true – Hong Kong is a city with a strong democratic spirit, but ultimately the residents are powerless to put a stop to their assimilation into the mainland. From Wasserstrom’s anecdotes, it seems that Hong Kong is under siege culturally as well as literally. This being said, perhaps there is hope for a free Hong Kong someday, as long as the Lion Rock spirit.
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[1] See Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink 13-14 (2020).
[2] Kevin Cheng, Hongkongers light up city’s mountaintops with protest demands during lantern festival, Hong Kong Free Press (Sep. 14, 2019, updated Mar. 31, 2020), https://hongkongfp.com/2019/09/14/hongkongers-light-citys-mountaintops-protest-demands-lantern-festival/.
[3] See id. at 15-16. Specifically, Wasserstrom quotes Johnathan Choi Koon-Shum, the “chairman of the local [Hong Kong] Chinese General Chamber of Commerce” as saying “We will no longer be Hong Kong people, but Greater Bay Area people” referring to the construction of the Express Rail Link connecting Hong Kong, Zhuhai, and Macau. A different interviewee, a woman using the express rail to go shopping in Hong Kong, was quoted in a Guardian article as saying “It’s all the same. We can go there. They can come here.” in response to a question about whether the interviewee was concerned about the disappearance of the distinction between Hong Kong and mainland China.
[4] See id. at 17. In 2015, five people associated with a publication known for producing tabloids containing content about the private lives of Beijing leaders disappeared from Hong Kong. Some of those kidnapped “were pressured into making televised ‘confessions’ as the price of regaining their freedom.
[5] See id. at 21.
[6] See id. at 14.
[7] See id. at 23.
[8] See id.
[9] See id. at 29.
[10] See id. at 33.
[11] See id. at 36.
[12] It must be noted that since the finalization of the text of Vigil in 2019, a national security bill has been reintroduced in response to the 2019-2020 protests in Hong Kong. On May 21, 2020, the Chinese government proposed this bill to apply to Hong Kong via Annex III of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, a provision which allows the Chinese Government to impose laws, bypassing Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. This bill was passed by the mainland in the 13th National People’s Congress and Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress under the provisions of Article 18 of the Basic Law on June 30, 2020. See AFP, Hong Kong to Create More National Security Crimes, Chief Exec. Carrie Lam Says, Hong Kong Free Press (Jan. 12, 2022)
https://hongkongfp.com/2022/01/12/hong-kong-to-create-more-national-security-crimes-chief-exec-carrie-lam-says/; see also China Law Requires Hong Kong to Enact National Security Rules as Soon as Possible, Reuters (May 21, 2020) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parliament-hongkong-legislation-idUSKBN22Y0CG; see also Grace Tsoi and Lam Cho Wai, Hong Kong National Security Law: What is it and is it Worrying?, BBC News (June 28, 2022) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52765838.
[13] See id. at 39.
[14] See id. at 57 -58.
[15] See id. at 60.
[16] See id. at 74.
[17] See id. at 84. The “Lion Rock spirit” Wasserstrom alludes to is a reference to the mountain that overlooks the city of Hong Kong. This mountain has come to symbolize the spirit of Hong Kong residents. The symbol originated in a public broadcast series Below Lion Rock, that ran from the 1970s to the 1990s, and depicted a community of “hard working, self-reliant people.” The Lion Rock was also the site of a demonstration for universal suffrage in Hong Kong which involved the unfurling of a massive banner that spanned the length of the Lion Rock cliff face with the characters “I want real universal suffrage” depicted on it. (see also Yuen Chan, The New Lion Rock Spirit – How a Banner on a Hillside Redefined the Hong Kong Dream, Huffington Post (Dec. 29, 2014) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-new-lion-rock-spirit_b_6345212.
[18] See George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, Horizon (1946) https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/.
[19] See infra note 9 for examples.
[20] See Mary Hui, Hong Kong Police are Using Coronavirus Restrictions to Clamp Down on Protestors, Quartz Economics, (April 1, 2020) https://qz.com/1829892/hong-kong-police-use-coronavirus-rules-to-limit-protests.
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