Opinion | Hong Kong’s Protesters Are Resisting China With Anarchy and Principle

HONG KONG — The protests that have roiled Hong Kong for weeks, combining vast marches with small guerrilla operations of civil disobedience, are not the radical development that some say. They are a natural extension of protests past — an upgrade of the 2014 Umbrella Movement’s peaceful tactics of occupation. And they are a natural reaction to changing political circumstances, including a proposed bill that would allow, in effect, the extradition to mainland China of anyone in Hong Kong wanted by the Chinese authorities. The Chinese government’s power grab is accelerating the metabolism of the city’s protest movement.

Most of the leaders of past protests have been sidelined. The academics Benny Tai Yiu-ting and Chan Kin-man, some pro-democracy legislators and other well-known activists have been imprisoned for their roles in the 2014 sit-ins. The so-called Fishball Revolution in 2016 brought some participants, like Edward Leung Tin-kei, lengthy sentences on rioting charges. Others are in exile abroad.

But the absence of these former leaders has had a liberating effect on protesters today. People organize spontaneously using social media and Telegram. Without the old elites, a massive gathering can rapidly splinter or spin off into small, nimble side operations — as happened on Thursday night, when after a big rally calling for support from world leaders attending the Group of 20 summit meeting this weekend, a few thousand protesters marched on to the city’s police headquarters. There is no recognized figurehead to issue instructions, and the people wouldn’t follow those anyway.

On June 21, thousands of protesters surrounded the police headquarters for the first time. They demanded the withdrawal of the extradition bill, as well as the release of protesters who were arrested following an earlier clash with the police and the withdrawal of any rioting charges, which could mean long prison sentences, against them. The foreign media’s favorite icon of the Umbrella Movement, Joshua Wong, who had been released from a short detention just days earlier, addressed the crowd proposing that it vote on an internet forum about whether to continue the siege or leave. It didn’t care for the idea or even much react to his presence.

Pro-democracy legislators, known locally as the pan-dems, aren’t calling for any specific action; their role in the movement is largely supportive and protective. During the night of June 11-12, the police tried to prevent people from mobilizing by going into subway stations, stopping young pedestrians and searching their belongings. As anger mounted within the public, some lawmakers rushed to the scene to intervene. On June 21, Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung, of the Labor Party, stepped in to mediate after protesters held up a police van and heckled the officers inside.

Yet if the movement is leaderless and anarchic, it isn’t chaotic. It has guiding principles that allow participants to self-regulate even as the movement constantly reinvents itself.

Among those principles is “不割席” (“do not split”). Protesters use the expression to say that no one in the movement should condemn or obstruct the actions of fellow protesters they disagree with. People who oppose a given action should sit it out, but not try to prevent it.

The use of force, in particular, is a divisive issue. Some insist on the necessity of keeping the protests peaceful, so that they will seem morally legitimate and may gain sympathy from the broader public. Others — especially younger protesters or protesters who consider that the lengthy sit-ins of the Umbrella Movement failed — believe that some measure of force has become necessary; otherwise, the government will simply ignore them.

The “do not split” idea acts as a bridge between these two factions by promoting mutual respect for diverging views within the protest movement. Not everyone embraces this code of conduct either, but it seems to be prevailing so far. And with good results: The movement remains cohesive despite being disparate. The more radical protesters at the front lines have also largely behaved with restraint — rationally and tactically. They have provoked the police, sometimes forcefully, but not with outright violence.

There was a great turnout for the first big march against the extradition bill on June 9 — about one million people, the city’s largest demonstration until then — but it also felt like something of a last gasp. That night, some younger protesters weren’t done and didn’t want to go home. They went to the Legislative Council building with no plan and hardly any equipment. They knew only that they couldn’t let the bill be passed — or even discussed, as planned, on June 12. If it became law, Hong Kong would never be the same.

It was the Hong Kong police that lapsed into violence on June 12, beating protesters and journalists, and firing off 150 rounds of tear gas against a crowd of peaceful demonstrators. The authorities have since said they were considering just five people on riot-related charges. Officers also lost control emotionally, throwing curses and obscenities at protesters and journalists. (Now there are T-shirts with the slurs.) A few days later, two million Hong Kongers marched again, once more against the extradition bill — which the government had suspended but not fully withdrawn — but this time also against police brutality.

The protesters’ most powerful weapon is the police’s own violence. Or to put the point more bleakly: If the police hadn’t been violent on June 12, would the bill have been suspended?

For years, only peaceful protests have seemed acceptable to the people of Hong Kong. But that’s because until recently they haven’t had to pay the full price for their opinions about politics in Beijing.

During British colonial times, many Hong Kong people identified with mainland China, the motherland, and were deeply interested in developments there. But colonialism also acted as a shield. The British authorities quashed Communist-led riots in 1967. And Hong Kongers could support the student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 without risking any reprisals. They were patriotic from a safe distance.

But after the British handed formal control of Hong Kong to China in 1997, and as political and economic pressure from China intensified, more and more people in the city have identified as Hong Kongers rather than as Chinese, Chinese living in Hong Kong or Hong Kong-Chinese. They have also increasingly borne the brunt of the Chinese government’s growing authoritarianism.

Hong Kongers are finally beginning to emancipate themselves from their old views. But the process is still at an early stage.

Although two million Hong Kongers — another record — took to the streets on June 16 against the prospect of being subjected to Chinese law, not many would say that they want independence for Hong Kong. Even opponents of the extradition bill and veteran proponents of democracy cling to the notion that “one country, two systems” — the principle that formally governs relations between Hong Kong and the mainland, and that is supposed to protect the city’s relative autonomy — still means something. But what is the refusal to be ruled by another state’s laws if not a call for self-governance or independence?

Hong Kongers may be bashful out of fear: The government in Beijing has made clear that it will not tolerate talk of independence. But many people hold these somewhat incoherent positions because they are still in denial.

These contradictions will not last, however; they cannot survive China’s continued encroachment.

There is a lull at the moment. The police are staying put and officials out of view. Protesters are maintaining the pressure with small daily operations: momentarily disrupting public services, delivering petitions to consulates. They also seem to be hoping that President Trump can somehow pressure President Xi Jinping of China when the two leaders meet at the Group of 20 gathering this weekend.

But if nothing gives after the summit, if the Hong Kong government continues to reject the protesters’ demands, the situation will have to get more chaotic. People here know that time is not on their side. And Monday, July 1, is the anniversary of the city’s handover from Britain to China.

This a moment of desperate hope. One-quarter of Hong Kong’s population has marched against Mr. Xi’s attempt to extend the Chinese Communist Party’s absolute rule to the city. After that, how could things go back to normal?

China is likely to seek revenge for our recent audacity. But punishing Hong Kongers would only unite us further.

Lewis Lau Yiu-man is a contributor to Stand News in Hong Kong and Up Media in Taiwan.

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