From Hong Kong Pencil Pusher to Political Firebrand

By MICHAEL FORSYTHE and ALAN WONG

HONG KONG — Yau Wai-ching seemed destined to lead an ordinary life.
Twenty-two years old and a newly-minted college graduate, she was already lost in the anonymity of the hundreds of thousands of workers commuting from this city’s high-rise apartments to its glass office towers. 

Her job: processing membership applications at the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
That was three years ago.
Now, Ms. Yau is one of the best-known and most provocative public figures in this former British colony of 7.3 million, part of an expanding, youth-centered movement that backs more autonomy and, in her case, outright independence from China.
In September, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Hong Kong’s 70-seat legislature. 

And last month, when taking the oath of office, she altered the words, using both an expletive and the term “Chee-na” instead of China, which many people understood to be a reference to a demeaning term for the country that was used during the World War II era.
Her extraordinary public act of defiance enraged the leaders in Beijing. 

On Wednesday, the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily cited one mainland scholar who referred to Ms. Yau and a fellow pro-independence colleague as a “pustule” that had to be removed.
The following evening, Hong Kong’s government was told that China’s Communist Party-controlled Parliament would take the extraordinary step of ruling on the legality of her oath, which was already being argued in a local court. 

Beijing has never intervened in a Hong Kong court case without being asked by local officials or judges before, raising alarms that the city’s considerable autonomy from the mainland, guaranteed by an international treaty, was being undermined.
Beijing is also outraged about a trip that Ms. Yau and her colleague, Sixtus Leung, known as Baggio, took to Taiwan last month to meet with pro-independence students there.
But for now, she and her young staff are settling into spacious offices on the 10th floor of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council building. 

Bottles of wine and Belgian beer, and three large megaphones, lay strewn about the messy office during a visit late last week. 

On her desk was a copy of “The Godfather,” by Mario Puzo, which she is eager to read.

Ms. Yau at her swearing-in ceremony on Oct. 12. She used an expletive and laid out a banner that read “Hong Kong Is Not China.”

On a whiteboard, written with blue marker, was the now-famous variation of “China” she had voiced at her inauguration. 

From the window next to her desk, the local headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army looms.
It was the road in front of the army headquarters — a building which also served as a British military installation — where Ms. Yau’s transformation began two years ago, on Sept. 28, 2014. 

It was there and then that she first experienced the political life: joining thousands of people in a standoff against the police.
As remarkable as Ms. Yau’s rise from office worker to radical lawmaker may seem, her personal transformation is far from unique here. 

She is just one of hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers whose lives were altered by the pro-democracy protests that swept the city two years ago.
A generation of young people forged their political identities as they rallied — ultimately unsuccessfully — against China’s decision to put strict controls on planned elections for the city’s chief executive. 

To them, it was a betrayal of the promises made more than a generation ago that led to Britain transferring sovereignty to China, with the promise that Hong Kong would enjoy a high degree of autonomy until at least 2047.
“All of us had the same mission, that we had to stop the government and try to get our democracy,” Ms. Yau said in an interview.
After a few days, she became disillusioned with the main body of protesters who had set up camp on the thoroughfares around the Legislative Council building and the main government offices. 

The atmosphere was like a “festival,” she said.
“When I came out from my home I thought I had to fight, to have a war with the government,” Ms. Yau said.
When the protests ended after 79 days in December 2014, most participants resumed their daily routines. 

But not Ms. Yau. 

She volunteered for the newly formed Youngspiration party and ran for a seat in a local district council in 2015. 

She lost, but was spurred to run for the legislature after violent clashes broke out in February.
Her experience in the youth movement slowly transformed a quiet young woman into an outspoken, irreverent young politician. 

Together with Mr. Leung, she has helped to trigger what may turn into a constitutional crisis, should China’s Parliament move to block them from taking office.
Mr. Leung recalled that when Ms. Yau joined the Youngspiration party in early 2015, she used to keep to herself.
“She didn’t know how to express herself. To be blunt, she was quite a nerd,” he said. 

“But in the two years since she’s been forced to speak and has changed a lot.”
Ms. Yau’s experience until 2014 offered few clues to suggest she would become so passionate about Hong Kong’s future. 

Her parents — both retired civil servants — wanted her to work for a few years in her steady job and then, perhaps, go to graduate school. 

Until 2014, she complied.
But, as Ms. Yau describes it, she could not countenance students — some still in high school — confronting the police on Hong Kong’s streets while she worked at a comfortable desk job just blocks away. 

“They are too young to bear this kind of social responsibility,” she said. 

“I had to pay something for this place.”
Some of her experiences as a student suggest that, if anything, she strongly identified with the Chinese nation, if not the Communist government that has run it since 1949.

Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung inside the Legislative Council late last month.

At Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, Ms. Yau studied Chinese literature. 

She said she enjoyed writing fictionalized accounts of the romantic intrigue — especially homosexual relations — in China’s imperial dynasties, notably the Qin, the first dynasty that flourished more than 2,200 years ago. 

As for China’s last dynasty, the Qing, she said she had little interest because its rulers — the Manchus — were foreigners.
“I don’t think it is a real dynasty for Chinese people,” she said.
Even before she attended college, she said she was particularly affected by the Analects, the collection of sayings and ideas attributed to the philosopher Confucius. 

In some ways, they have helped shape her still developing worldview, particularly her strident anti-Communism.
To Ms. Yau, the government in Beijing has, through its political campaigns, destroyed much that is good about Chinese society. 

She considers Taiwan, which Beijing holds is a breakaway province, a better guardian of Chinese traditions, and that Xi Jinping’s recent emphasis on Confucian values is superficial and not in keeping with the true spirit of the sage.
But even if China abandoned Communism and embraced its thousands of years of history, Ms. Yau said her loyalties lie with Hong Kong, which embarked on a very different path after the British established their colony in the 1840s. 

She sees Hong Kong’s civil liberties — the same ones that allowed her to protest and then win a seat on the legislature — as being under mortal threat by an ever-intrusive mainland government.
At 25 years old, she has come under intense criticism for her inauguration, during which she laid out a blue banner that read “Hong Kong Is Not China.” 

Even some of her allies considered her profanity-laced oath childish.
That speaks to the divide between older pro-democracy supporters, who accept Chinese sovereignty, and many in the younger generation, who do not. 

Emily Lau, the longtime head of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, said it was unwise of Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung to use the term “Chee-na.”
“I don’t agree with that at all and understand why many people feel infuriated and insulted,” Ms. Lau said, adding that she also strongly disagreed with the pro-Beijing camp’s attempt to prevent the pair from taking office.
Ms. Yau, now in danger of losing her seat, did not want to comment on her oath, citing a court case on whether she will be allowed to retake the pledge. 

Even so, on Wednesday she and Mr. Leung tried to retake their oaths, unannounced, in a chaotic and aborted legislative session. 

The body’s president called their action “ridiculous” and asked them to leave.
“We have to protect our own values, our freedoms,” Ms. Yau said. 

“Some people have to stand up and fight for these kind of things.”

Independentist Hong Kong Lawmakers Draw Blunt Response From China

By MICHAEL FORSYTHE and ALAN WONG

The recently elected Hong Kong lawmaker Sixtus Leung, center with glasses, was restrained by security officers after trying to retake his oath of office on Wednesday.

HONG KONG — It started with an oath of office that two young, newly elected lawmakers altered to insert a derogatory term into the formal name of Hong Kong’s sovereign ruler, the People’s Republic of China, with one also adding a crude epithet.
In addition to substantially revising the pledge of loyalty that all members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council are required to take, the lawmakers, Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus Leung, known as Baggio, displayed a banner with the words “Hong Kong Is Not China” at their swearing-in.
And China is responding with some bluntness of its own.
Hong Kong’s government, loyal to Beijing, has asked the court system in the city, a former British colony, to review whether the council can let the lawmakers retake their oaths of office.
The Hong Kong government and Beijing want the two representatives, who support independence for the territory, to vacate their seats rather than simply retake the oaths.
A court in Hong Kong is set to hold a hearing on the matter on Thursday.
But a fusillade of invective against the pair in China’s state-controlled news media on Wednesday is leading to fears, backed by reports in Hong Kong news outlets, that Beijing may circumvent Hong Kong’s legal process by issuing a rare interpretation of the city’s mini-constitution that would effectively bar Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung from office.
That prospect has alarmed people in the political, academic and legal communities in Hong Kong.
The city has a strong and independent legal system, inherited from the British, that China has vowed to honor until at least 2047, as part of the agreement that paved the way for the resumption of Chinese rule in 1997.
But a clause in the city’s mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law, gives China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, final say over interpretations of that constitution, though the provision has rarely been invoked.
If the Congress’s standing committee, which is in session, rules on the matter, it would amount to mainland China, where there is no tradition of independent courts and no expectations of genuine debate on legal interpretations, overriding the highly developed Hong Kong court system.
The committee may meet to discuss the matter as early as this week.
The independence of Hong Kong’s judiciary is one of the reasons that so many multinational companies, banks and law firms have their Asian headquarters in the city.
Eric Cheung, a law lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, said in an interview that any interpretation by the National People’s Congress “fundamentally undermines our rule of law and the interpretation power of our courts.” 
On Wednesday, the Hong Kong Bar Association said in a statement that an interpretation by Beijing would “deal a severe blow to the independence of the judiciary and the power of final adjudication of the Hong Kong court.”
It added, “The irreparable harm it will do to Hong Kong far outweighs any purpose it could possibly achieve.”

Yau Wai-ching and Mr. Leung outside the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong on Wednesday. Hong Kong’s government, loyal to Beijing, has asked the court system to rule on whether the council can let the two lawmakers retake their oaths.

The actions of Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung, as well as other advocates of greater self-determination for Hong Kong, have touched a raw nerve in Beijing, which harshly suppresses independence movements in other parts of China, such as Tibet and Xinjiang.
But in Hong Kong, which was promised considerable autonomy under the “one country, two systems” principle, people are free to express such sentiments without fear of arrest.
That freedom was on display on Oct. 12, the day they took their oaths, when Mr. Leung and Ms. Yau pronounced China “Chee-na,” which is similar to a derogatory term for China used during World War II.
With its normal instruments of authoritarian repression of limited use in Hong Kong, China has turned its propaganda arms on the pair.
On Wednesday, the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily published an interview with Mo Jihong, a legal researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who called Ms. Yau’s and Mr. Leung’s actions “obvious malice.”
“Such things cannot be allowed to happen in China’s territory,” Mr. Mo said.
“If Hong Kong cannot deal with it properly, the central government should make a decisive move: It cannot allow a festering pustule to become the bane of your life, and it must nip the trend of Hong Kong independence in the bud.”
Ms. Yau, 25, and Mr. Leung, 30, were also strident in pushing back against the possibility of intervention by the Chinese Communist Party.
In a chaotic scene on Wednesday, they burst into the legislative chambers and tried to retake their oaths.
They were unsuccessful.
The council’s president said their actions were “ridiculous.”
“My concern is the destruction of ‘one country, two systems,’ ” Ms. Yau told reporters.
“Once the C.C.P. government chooses to interpret the Basic Law, it means that the dictatorship of the C.C.P. government has come to Hong Kong, which all Hong Kong people don’t want.”
And Mr. Leung brought up a point that seems obvious to many in Hong Kong.
The move for independence is new and is a direct outgrowth of the last time the National People’s Congress chose to set rules on how Hong Kong runs its affairs.
That was in 2014, when the congress set strict guidelines for elections for Hong Kong’s top official that all but guaranteed that only pro-Beijing candidates could appear on the ballot.
That decision set off enormous protests that led to the founding of Mr. Leung’s and Ms. Yau’s political party, Youngspiration.
The main belief guiding supporters of independence is that China’s interference undermines “one country, two systems.”
“ ‘One country, two systems’ and Hong Kong independence are the two models for Hong Kong’s political system,” Mr. Leung told reporters.
“When you destroy one option, you inevitably promote the other option.”
The 2014 ruling was telegraphed well ahead of time.
But news of a possible intervention by the National People’s Congress on the oath-taking caught many people by surprise.
In the issue involving the two lawmakers, the principal relevant law is a local ordinance on oath-taking, said Mr. Cheung, the legal scholar.
That shouldn’t be in the jurisdiction of the National People’s Congress, he said.
What’s more, the congress would be acting pre-emptively and not allowing the court proceedings in Hong Kong to run their course.
Since 1997, China’s legislature has made only four interpretations of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, and customarily that has been only after a request by Hong Kong’s highest court.