Over the past few months, Hong Kong has witnessed several protests related to the now suspended extradition bill. The protests’ massive turnout and initial peacefulness have made headlines in many parts of the world. Recently though, things have started to turn ugly. The protests are increasingly looking like riots with tear gas-filled streets, police firing rubber bullets and government buildings being ravaged. Last weekend, even triad gangs joined the fray, assaulting protesters and spreading further chaos. Although I work and live near the area where most protests are taking place, the effect on daily life has so far been limited. Whereas I have previously argued that China’s parliament is flawed, the risks of exposing Hong Kong citizens to the mainland’s opaque legal system needs no elaboration. What does deserve more attention is the fact that the world is closely watching these protests, while most protests on the mainland go by quietly.
Protests and riots are not new to Hong Kong. Some of the anger and bitterness of the 2014 ‘Occupy Central’ movement still lingers, especially amongst the younger generations who are fed up with Beijing’s encroachment and Hong Kong’s gradually deteriorating freedoms. The former British overseas territory has always been restless, trapped between competing world views and struggling to maintain its unique, yet vulnerable identity. Most commentators agree that the current protests are not just about the extradition bill, which may further open the door to China’s crackdown on political dissidents. Ultimately, people are afraid to see their way of life based on Western values such as freedom of speech and democratic institutions, which they have grown accustomed to over the past centuries, change drastically ⎯ with Hong Kong effectively becoming just another Chinese city.
In a vast country like China, it is important to put things into perspective. Yes, the extradition bill-related protests have attracted huge crowds and the storming of the Legislative Council building has been historical. Yet mass protests and even riots are a daily occurance on the mainland. Although official statistics are shaky, it is fair to say so-called ‘mass incidents’ occur frequently and quite often turn violent in almost every corner of China. Earlier this month, residents of Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province took the streets to oppose an already started waste-to-energy plant near the city. These kinds of protests, often related to environmental issues or land expropriation, happen all the time but are barely picked up by Western media.
Although official statistics are shaky, it is fair to say so-called ‘mass incidents’ occur frequently and quite often turn violent in almost every corner of China.
One reason is of course China’s relentless censorship apparatus. Many small protests are rounded up by police forces before they become large enough to reach foreign journalists. More often, people who express their outrange online are taken in by the authorities before a protest can even materialise. In Hong Kong, things are different. Here people are used to freedom of speech and assembly. Compared with the mainland, Hong Kong’s population is highly educated and more aware of political systems in Western countries. If presented with questionable policy proposals, people do not simply bite the bullet and hope for the best. More often, they express their concerns both online and on the streets.
As China develops, it is likely that the Chinese people will become more self-conscious of not only their socio-economic status but also their political thoughts. They may well, just like their counterparts in Hong Kong, demand accountability from their leaders by being able to vote them out of office. In this sense, Hong Kong is very much a test ground for the Communist Party of China (CPC) how to best integrate its top-down, authoritarian approach with an increasingly conscious and critical population. Hopefully, it has by now become clear that pushing through highly sensitive legislation and behaving indifferently towards people’s concerns is not the best strategy.
There is a Chinese saying that “a single hair can move the body”1. I believe Hong Kong acts as such a hair, and if China becomes a ‘moderately prosperous society’ as the CPC strives to, it will have many more body-moving hairs to worry about.
- This saying (牵一发而动全身 – qiān yī fā ér dòng quán shēn) has no clear source. It is sometimes referred to as the butterfly effect, where a small change in an initial condition has a large impact on the overall result. ↩︎
China Hand 