Hong Kong Protests Worsen, Send Echoes of Tiananmen

Over the past week, protests in Hong Kong have continued to grow in scale as more and more students and pro-democracy activists take to the streets, leading to mounting tensions between the people and Chief Executive CY Leung’s government. The roots of this movement can be traced back all the way to 1997, when China regained control of Hong Kong from the British in what was called the handover. Although the territory’s rights are still restricted, the Chinese government offered some form of autonomy to Hong Kong’s government according to the “one country, two systems” policy. Most importantly, this decree gives the people of Hong Kong the right to assembly, something that people in Mainland China do not benefit from.

One part of this agreement, however, that the Chinese government made back in 1997 was that 20 years later, in 2017, Hong Kong would be allowed to hold fully democratic elections. This would allow the Special Administrative Region to elect its own leaders, whether or not their positions aligned with those of the Chinese Community Party. With this date slowly but surely approaching, however, the Chinese government has taken recent measures that consist in it essentially reneging on that promise: at the end of August, it established that any candidates put on the ballot would have to be approved by a committee of 1200 members. The views of the members of this committee, however, are widely considered to reflect not those of Hong Kong’s population but rather those of the CCP. Any candidate attempting to get on the ballot would have to be approved by over half the members of this committee. This would, thus limit the candidates that Hong Kong’s population could vote for to those allied to the CCP. In principle, the CCP is holding up a certain portion of its agreement by granting Hong Kong universal suffrage, but it is not upholding the expectations of democracy that Hong Kong’s population had. Although in previous years candidates were not elected democratically, candidates needed only one eighth of the committee’s approval. This allowed representatives of the Democratic Party in Hong Kong to have at least a certain role in the electoral process, whereas it will now no longer be represented. Thus, despite the establishment of universal suffrage in Hong Kong, democracy there has actually taken quite a hit with this decision by the CCP.

The reaction? Hong Kong’s worst protests since China regained control of the territory in 1997. On September 26th, about a month after the release of this statement, a movement called Scholarism occupied the space in front of government headquarters and was later joined by the movement commonly known as Occupy Central, which has in fact been in the works since 2013. They started in major thoroughfares of the city, including shopping centers and the Central Business District, and continued at the location of CY Leung’s speech celebrating National Day, where Leung reasserted his support for the CCP’s decision. This provoked the protesters’ demand to meet with high-level officials of Hong Kong’s government, showing how important transparency in government is for these pro-democracy supporters. After the given deadline for the government to meet with protesters came and went, the organizers of the movement even went so far as to demand the immediate resignation of CY Leung, a request he promptly denied. Leung is widely considered to be a puppet of the CCP and unreflective of the views of the people. This sentiment is in fact so strong that protesters clearly specified that they would refuse to meet with Leung himself, and only with other high-level members of the government.

In response to these protests, an unprecedented police crackdown occurred. More than just an assertion of control, the violence of the reaction reflects just how threatened the Chinese and Hong Kong governments are by these protests, and how intent they are on sticking to the status quo. Police made extensive use of pepper spray and tear gas on protesters, who often shielded themselves using umbrellas. These have now become a symbol of the demonstration, which has been dubbed the “Umbrella Revolution” by the media and by people on social networks. On these networks, however, the Chinese government has been increasing its censorship of posts related to the protests in a show of technological force, demonstrating that it will take whatever measures necessary to retain control of the situation. This is clearly an attempt to mitigate the information that comes out of Hong Kong into Mainland China, and thus to avoid any kind of civil unrest even closer to home.

But the protesters have made clear that they too, like the government, intend to hold their ground. It appears clear that these protests are about more than fully democratic elections in 2017 but about the preservation of a certain level of autonomy, whether economic, political, or even cultural from the Communist government of China. The CCP’s recent reassertions over its control of Hong Kong threaten the fragile order that has survived since 1997, and Hong Kong’s population fears that the few legal rights that it does have compared to China may be eroded even further. As the protests continue, many are reminded of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Although the current level of violence is and probably will be nowhere near what it was in Tiananmen, it is still by its simple existence a threat to the Chinese government, and could be an important turning point in the history of Hong Kong and China as a whole.