Hong Kong in Revolt. Au Loong-Yu

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СКАЧАТЬ was going to be a long-term one.

      Also noticeable was that, following the intensification of the social conflict, the slogan at the beginning of the movement, Hoeng gong jan gaa jau! (‘Hong Kongers, hang in there!’), soon evolved into Hoeng gong jan faan kong! (‘Hong Kongers, resist!’) after Carrie Lam introduced the anti-mask law on 4 October, and further escalated to Hoeng gong jan bou sau! (‘Hong Kongers, revenge!’) after the death of the student Chow Tsz-lok (resulting from his mysterious fall from a height during a protest on 8 November). This anger explained why, even when 2019 drew to an end and radical actions declined significantly, a survey showed that among the 800,000 peaceful protesters on New Year’s Day 2020, 55.6 percent still expected an escalation of their actions in the coming period.²¹ And towards early December there was a lot of hearsay about certain radical protesters making bombs and buying guns from overseas. Some of them, so it was said, had access to dynamite from the movie-making community. Within a few weeks, the police had made numerous arrests of these ‘terrorists’.

      About this time, at the end of 2019, the earlier idea of a ‘yellow economic circle’ began to gather momentum. This was essentially a consumer campaign which encouraged supporters of the yellow camp to buy from ‘yellow’ shops while continuing to boycott Chinese capital and the MTR (which is mainly owned by the Hong Kong government).

      Beijing felt deeply humiliated and began to vent its anger on its own incompetent bureaucrats. Between 4 January and 13 February 2020, Wang Zhiwen, the head of the Liaison Office and Zhang Xiaoming, the head of the HKMAO, were demoted. This was considered as a sign of a power struggle among the Chinese leadership.

      With 2019 having receded into history, one may say that the New Year’s Day march of 2020 was the finale of the great 2019 drama. With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic since January 2020, the new union movement of 2019 proved its strength when the HAEA went on a five-day strike and mobilised seven thousand members to pressure a paralysed government to act.

      AN INITIAL ASSESSMENT OF THE MOVEMENT

      Three Layers Within the Yellow Camp

      On 16 June, two million people marched on Hong Kong Island. This gives us a clue as to the rough size of the yellow camp. Yet within the yellow camp there were at least two categories. If the ‘light yellows’ are moderate because they are more likely to be law-abiding, it is reasonable to assume that they may vote and go to peaceful demonstrations. The ‘dark yellows’ are staunch democratic supporters whom I will define as more ready to participate in banned demonstrations and non-violent civil disobedience and are also more tolerant or even supportive of certain levels of violence from protesters. The first illegal demonstration broke out in Yuen Long on 27 July, with 280,000 on the streets, an angry response to the Yuen Long incident one week prior. The banned march turned into street fighting again after a police attack. From then on this became the norm. On 20 October another illegal march – this time riskier than the first one – in Tsim Sha Tsui drew 350,000 people. No later illegal marches could compare with this. Those who dared to participate in this banned march were more likely to be ‘dark yellow’, and the march can be used as a base for a rough estimate of the size of this group.

      Another category relates to the means the protesters use: jung mou paai (the ‘braves’) versus wo lei fei (the ‘non-violent current’). The former were those who dared to fight the police with bricks and later Molotov cocktails. The latter is often seen as synonymous with the term ‘pan-democrat supporters’. The former consists of those that advocate and make use of force, from throwing bricks to Molotov cocktails, which the latter abstain from doing so. The ‘braves’ first became known when a clandestine group described itself as such and allegedly was associated with a small explosion outside the LegCo building on 9 December 2014. The 2019 ‘braves’ did not necessarily have organisational continuity with the 2014 version; still, the latter might claim the former’s legacy. How large were the ‘braves’? No one knows for sure because of their clandestine nature, but they were much smaller than the ‘dark yellow’ current, although they have made recruits from the latter. Some have estimated their size as being between five and ten thousand, or slightly more (for more see ‘The 1997 Generation’ section in Chapter 2).

      Figure 1 Breakdown of the protest participants

      Political Inclination of the Protesters

The yellow camp itself is differentiated by competitive political inclinations. The CCPOS differentiated between seven categories of political inclination in its October 2019 across-the-board survey (i.e. including the pro-Beijing parties). For our discussion about the yellow camp we choose four of them, as below:²²

      Table 1.1 Political inclinations of protesters, 2014–2019

	September 2014	October 2019
Moderate democrats	37.9%	40.0%
Radical democrats	3.9%	6.2%
Localists	n/a	14.1%
Centre/no political inclination	48.6%	33.5%

      In 2014 there had not been any survey about the localists yet, as it was a new phenomenon. To understand the picture of the localists’ mass base before 2019, we can refer to another study which showed that by March 2016 the localists accounted for 8.4 percent amongst all categories of political inclination.²³ The above surveys show the strength of the localists and how fewer people were neutral in 2019 than in 2014. The ‘radical democrats’ also experienced a significant increase while the pan-democrats’ growth was the least impressive.

Another survey showed the political inclinations of protesters at different protests:²⁴

      Table 1.2 Political inclinations of protesters, June–July 2019

	9 June*	12 June	16 June*	21 June	27 July*
Moderate democrats	43.2%	29.5%	41.1%	29.8%	34.9%
Radical democrats	3.2%	2.1%	3.4%	7.8%	8.5%
Localists	27%	25.4%	18.0%	28.6%	37.4%
Centre/no political inclination	21.1%	38.9%	21.3%	21.1%	8.9% СКАЧАТЬ В начало < 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 > В конец