A Defiant Stand for Freedom

Hong Kong’s struggle against tyranny, and why it matters

By Claudia Rosett

The last time a despotic power devastated Hong Kong was during World War II. 

On December 8, 1941, Imperial Japanese troops poured over the hills from China, overwhelmed the main line of British colonial defenses, and took up positions on the Kowloon peninsula, across the harbor from Hong Kong Island. 

From there, they shelled and bombed the island, then crossed the harbor and on Christmas Day completed a subjugation of the city that lasted until 1945, when Japan lost the war and Britain retook control.
Today, the tyranny ravaging Hong Kong is that of its own sovereign master, the People’s Republic of China. 

The tactics are less broadly lethal but brutal nonetheless, targeting the freedoms vital to the soul of this vibrant city. 

China is trying to grind down Hong Kong’s democracy movement, while preserving global-facing amenities like the airport and the banking system. 

It’s a campaign fought with propaganda, surveillance, arrests, and a local police force turned against Hong Kong’s own people. 

Beijing has threatened Hong Kong with “the abyss” and cautioned that “those who play with fire will perish by it.” 

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping warned in October, clearly aiming at Hong Kong’s protesters, that any attempt to divide China would end in “crushed bodies and shattered bones.”
Contrary to China’s claims, the Hong Kong crisis is not an internal matter. 

It is a violation of China’s treaty promise, after Britain’s 1997 handover of its former colony, that Hong Kong would be governed as an autonomous territory, entitled to all its accustomed rights and freedoms, for at least 50 years—a promise that China dubbed “one country, two systems.” 

It is also a warning to the world of how Beijing views frees societies and what Xi’s “China Dream” of global dominance has in store for them. 

Hong Kong is the only enclave under China’s flag with any freedom to speak out. 

At great risk, Hong Kong’s people have sounded alarms about the methods and ambitions of China’s ruling Communist Party. 

Americans needs to understand why, in this twenty-first-century contest of values, Hong Kong’s fight is our fight, too.
Hong Kong exemplifies the marvels of freedom. 

Built with free trade and minimal government, a haven in British colonial days for refugees fleeing Communist China, it is a mighty entrepôt conjured out of little more than a rocky island, a magnificent harbor, and generations of freewheeling human enterprise.
Until this year, Hong Kong figured on the world scene chiefly as a great place to do business. 

Home to 7.5 million people, with a large expatriate community, including more than 80,000 Americans, the city has long served as a crossroads of Asia and the main conduit for China’s financial dealings with world markets. 

Via Hong Kong, foreign investors in China could rely on the legacy of British law, vastly preferable to the vagaries of China’s Communist Party-driven system. 

China, in turn, could avail itself of Hong Kong’s banking system and trade, leveraging to its own benefit the privileges accorded to a territory operating as part of the free world, though under China’s flag.
At the time of the 1997 handover, many worried that China would plunder Hong Kong outright, killing the golden goose. 

But for more than two decades, no grand crisis materialized. 

Yes, Beijing was leaching away Hong Kong’s freedoms, reneging on the promise of free elections, overwhelming the city’s culture with mainland visitors— and threatening, disenfranchising, and, in some cases, jailing its most active pro-democracy figures. 

And yes, Hong Kong’s people pushed back, staging many demonstrations, some quite large—notably the 2014 Umbrella Movement’s 79-day occupation of Hong Kong’s Central business district. (Umbrellas became the symbol of the protests after they were used as protection from pepper spray.) But these protests were peaceful. 

The world yawned. 

Business carried on.
Then, in 2019, Hong Kong became a battleground. 

As it turned out, China had greatly underestimated the value Hong Kong’s people attached not solely to prosperity, but to freedom. 

In June, Hong Kong’s Beijing-installed Chief Executive Carrie Lam—a longtime Hong Kong civil servant with the political instincts of Marie Antoinette—tried to rush through Hong Kong’s rubberstamp Legislative Council (Legco) a law that would have allowed extradition to mainland China, breaching the protection afforded by Hong Kong’s separate and independent legal system. Faced with local objections that this would spell the end of whatever liberty and justice Hong Kong still enjoyed under the eroding promise of “one country, two systems,” Lam refused to reconsider.
Hong Kong erupted in the most massive protests the city had ever seen. 

It was heroic, given the risks; and heartbreaking, given the prospects. 

On June 9, a record 1 million people marched through the streets, mass protest being their only recourse in a system rigged by Beijing to deprive them of a direct say in their own government. 

Lam shrugged it off. 

Three days later, protesters physically blocked lawmakers from entering the legislature to pass the bill. 

Police responded with teargas, beatings, and arrests. 

When Lam then suspended passage of the bill but refused to withdraw it entirely, denouncing the protesters as rioters, an estimated 2 million people marched—more than one-quarter of the city’s population. 

Lam gave them nothing. 

This focused public attention on Lam herself, and the perils and injustice of a political setup that left Hong Kong’s people no way to choose or depose their own chief executive. 

In short order, Hong Kongers came up with an amplified list of demands, including universal suffrage.
A signal moment came on July 1, the anniversary of the 1997 handover, when protesters broke down doors and windows of the legislature, briefly occupied the main chamber, spray-painted black Hong Kong’s Beijing-imposed emblem of a Bauhinia flower, proclaimed a list of demands for justice and democracy, and graffitied a message in Chinese on the nearby premises: “It was you who taught me that peaceful protests are useless.”
A complex culture of protest rapidly developed, incorporating the lessons of the 2014 Umbrella Movement. 

Some brought their young children to huge, peaceful rallies and marches. 

Civil servants, bankers, teachers, and students participated in city-wide strikes and impromptu demonstrations. 

Old and young linked hands to form human chains for miles, calling for freedom and democracy and chanting the Cantonese slang phrase ga yau, meaning “add oil”—a call to keep going. 

Protesters came up with a haunting anthem, “Glory to Hong Kong,” and began singing it at sports matches, in shopping malls, and while they marched in protest through the streets.

Because leaders of the Umbrella Movement had gone to prison, the protesters of 2019 avoided anointing leaders. 

Crowdsourcing tactics online, under a slogan plucked from a Bruce Lee movie, “Be water,” they staged flash protests around the city. 

They developed a uniform of sorts and an order of battle. 

The “frontliners” wore helmets, goggles, gas masks, and black t-shirts, and wielded as weapons an ad hoc arsenal that escalated from umbrellas, laser pointers, and bricks to Molotov cocktails, slingshots, and flaming arrows. 

Support protesters, including volunteer medical teams and bucket brigades, resupplied the frontlines with everything from bottled water to first aid supplies. 

Across the city, donations rolled in to support the protests: money, food, drink, and protest gear. When police launched a dragnet in August, setting up subway and ferry checkpoints, anonymous Hong Kongers got in their cars and whisked protesters to safety in an impromptu vehicular operation they dubbed “Dunkirk.”
Instead of trying to defuse the protests with talks and compromise, Lam defaulted to the methods of a police state, dispatching Hong Kong’s cops to wield force. 

Hong Kong’s police, once regarded as among the finest in Asia, were transformed into shock troops for China, trying to beat, gas, and terrorize the democracy movement into submission. 

Police began referring to protesters as “cockroaches.” 

Stories circulated that ranks of local cops had been beefed up with members of China’s People’s Armed Police, overheard speaking mainland Mandarin rather than Hong Kong’s Cantonese dialect.

By early December, police had fired more than 15,000 rounds of tear gas, blitzing not only streets across much of the city but also subway stations, residential buildings, shopping malls, and universities. 

They pepper-sprayed pro-democracy lawmakers who were trying to reason with them, shot three protesters with live ammunition, drenched not only protesters but a Kowloon mosque with caustic blue dye from water cannons, and carried out more than 6,000 arrests. 

The protesters escalated their tactics to smashing the windows of pro-Beijing businesses and setting fire to subway entrances and street barricades. 

The police were caught on video beating and kicking trussed-up protesters and launching unprovoked attacks on bystanders and journalists. 

In November, an attempted police raid on Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University turned into a flaming battle, followed by a 12-day police siege from which some protesters escaped by abseiling from a pedestrian walkway or traversing the sewers.
Through it all, Lam remained cloistered in official surroundings, issuing periodic statements that there could be no serious dialogue until “calm and order” was restored. 

Never mind that it was precisely the lack of any genuine government dialogue or compromise that was driving the escalating havoc.
One of the most potent protests came in mid-summer, when thousands of protesters occupied the city’s airport, in a bid to force the government’s hand on a world stage, and in a venue where the police might surely hesitate to respond harshly. 

Hong Kong’s airport is one of the world’s busiest. 

Travelers transiting the outer halls of the huge building found themselves surrounded by Hong Kongers holding up signs in English and Chinese denouncing the encroaching tyranny of China. Protesters packed the arrival hall, their chant echoing through the vast atrium: “Fight for Freedom! Stand with Hong Kong!”
Near the departure desks, beneath an official sign welcoming visitors to “Asia’s World City,” protesters hung a huge banner, flanked by American flags, saying “President Trump Please Liberate Hong Kong.” 

They papered the walls, windows, and baggage carts with signs blasting police brutality and demanding justice. 

On the information desks, they replaced the brochures for shopping, dining, and Disneyland with pamphlets calling for democracy, apologizing to visitors for the inconvenience. 

One young man, wearing the protesters’ trademark black t-shirt and face mask, roamed the halls with a hand-lettered sign offering to explain the situation to baffled travelers: “Feel free to ask me, I do speak English!”
Hong Kong’s government, forced briefly to shut down the airport, finally ended the inconvenience with threats, riot police, pepper spray, arrests, and greatly constricted access. 

Large security cordons now control entry to the building, admitting only those with tickets and passports. 

Teams of security agents patrol the premises. 

Public transport to the airport is now closely monitored and sometimes greatly curtailed, to thwart any crowds heading that way.
This lockdown did nothing to address the protesters’ demands for liberty and justice, but for official purposes it fixed the problem at the airport. 

The government’s solution for the airport appears to be the template for the future. 

In Beijing’s scheme of calm and order, Hong Kong is not a polity of, by, and for the people; it is merely a large asset of China’s government. 

As such, it is the profitable utilities, not the people themselves, that the government would protect, under the cloying slogan: “Treasure Hong Kong: Our Home.”
I’ve loved Hong Kong since I first beheld it, during a family stopover decades ago. 

I lived and worked there from 1986 to 1993, as editorial-page editor of what was then the print edition of the Asian Wall Street Journal. 

With Hong Kong’s glorious sweep of hills and harbor, its kaleidoscopic street life, its savvy mix of Chinese and Western traditions, and the constant hum of commerce, it felt like the most invigorating city on the planet. 

You could fly out of Hong Kong to report on the region’s tyrannies, observing the strictures and enduring the minders of, say, China, Vietnam, or North Korea. 

Then you could return to Hong Kong, with its can-do culture and laissez-faire ways—and exhale. 

In the summer of 1989, returning to Hong Kong after reporting in Beijing on the June 4 Tiananmen massacre, I was speechless with relief. 

Hong Kong residents were staging huge protests against the repression in China. 

I was back in the free world.
That’s not how it feels today. 

In September, Lam finally announced that she would withdraw the despised extradition bill. 

But by then, her administration was importing some of the cruelties of China’s system wholesale.

During many weeks of reporting there since June, I found an atmosphere of defiance edged with fear; a city of people in face masks, keeping a wary eye out for advancing cordons of riot police. 

Under pressure from China, companies such as Hong Kong’s flagship airline, Cathay Pacific, carried out purges of personnel who had in any way shown sympathy with the protesters, an intimidation described locally as “white terror.” 

Hong Kongers, when they take their leave these days, are less likely to say “goodbye” than to warn, “take care.”
How did it come to this? 

The answer tracks back to the era of Queen Victoria, Britain’s Opium Wars, and unintended consequences, good and bad, played out over almost two centuries. 

The British did not set out to develop Hong Kong into a world-class metropolis of millions; they simply wanted a trading post, for the noxious purpose of selling opium into China. 

So they went to war to get it. 

In the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, China ceded to Britain in perpetuity the island of Hong Kong, a name which in Cantonese means “Fragrant Harbor.” 

At the time, it was home to a fishing village, a war prize famously ridiculed by Britain’s foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, as “a barren island with hardly a house upon it.”

The British turned it into a Crown Colony, named its harbor for their queen, and set up shop. 

They fought a second Opium War, and in 1860, China ceded the tip of the Kowloon peninsula, also in perpetuity. 

In 1898 Britain signed a 99-year lease with China for some adjacent turf, called the New Territories, stretching up to the hills that form a natural boundary with mainland China. 

That produced the full map of what we know as modern Hong Kong.
Out of this, about a half century later, came one of the great economic miracles of modern Asia. 

Hong Kong at the end of World War II was a shattered city with a population of less than 600,000. 

In 1949, Mao Zedong imposed his Communist revolution on China. 

Millions fled to Hong Kong, embracing its culture of enterprise and providing labor and talent that under British liberty and law created soaring wealth.
Not that the British permitted genuine democracy in Hong Kong; governors appointed in London ruled the colony. 

But behind that setup were the checks and balances of British democracy, to which the governors were ultimately accountable. 

Hong Kong’s people, post-World War II, had freedom of speech and assembly, and an independent judiciary based on British rule of law.
Hong Kong was a colony richly primed for democracy and independence, in an era when the British empire was breaking up and decolonization was sweeping the globe. 

The United Nations, founded at the end of World War II, compiled a list of colonies slated for eventual self-determination. 

Initially, Hong Kong was on it. 

But in the early 1970s, China swiped away that right. 

In 1971, during Richard Nixon’s rapprochement with China, Beijing’s Communist government took over the UN seat for China, held until then by the rival Nationalist government on Taiwan. 

China immediately joined the UN committee on decolonization. 

Within weeks, the committee removed Hong Kong from its list of colonies, on grounds that its fate was China’s affair. 

That was the end of any UN support for Hong Kong choosing its own future.
When China informed the British that there would be no renewal of the lease on the New Territories, due to expire in 1997, London had no appetite for a showdown over Hong Kong—considered indefensible without the New Territories, and dependent on China for its water supply. 

In 1984, Britain and China signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, scheduling the handover for July 1, 1997. 

This treaty, deposited with the United Nations, stipulated that for 50 years following the handover, Hong Kong would be governed as a Special Administrative Region, enjoying a “high degree of autonomy,” with its people retaining their “Rights and freedoms, including those of the person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel”—and a host of others.
Thus did Hong Kong become the world’s only free society with a distinct shelf date. 

For Britain—handing over a substantially free population to a tyranny—the grace period allowed a face-saving retreat, bolstered by the bequest of a mini-constitution, or “Basic Law” for Hong Kong, hammered out with Beijing before the handover, in which China agreed to the “ultimate aim” of allowing Hong Kong’s people to elect their own chief executive and entire legislature via universal suffrage. 

Conveniently for Beijing, no date was spelled out for this goal.
For China, then miserably self-impoverished by decades of Communist central planning, acquiring Hong Kong was a colossal windfall. 

As a bonus, it carried the implied message that the world’s great democracies, under pressure from Beijing, would not defend their own.
If the promised half century of grace for Hong Kong sounded like a long time back in 1997, it doesn’t anymore. 

Officially, the clock has ticked down to 28 years remaining. 

In practice, if China has its way, the deadline will arrive much sooner. 

Meantime, a generation born in Hong Kong around the time of the handover has come of age. 

Many are descended from parents or grandparents who fled Communist repression in China. 

They describe themselves not as Chinese but as Hong Kongers. 

They are the vanguard of Hong Kong’s protests, and many say they are prepared to die for freedom.
This passion did not appear out of thin air. 

Nor is it a product—as China’s propaganda has charged—of foreign influence organized by sinister “black hands.” 

Hong Kong’s protesters today are heirs to a homegrown democracy movement that dates to British colonial days. 

It was fostered decades ago by leaders such as barrister and former lawmaker Martin Lee, who in 1997 greeted the handover with the defiant declaration: “The flame of democracy has been ignited and is burning in the hearts of our people. It will not be extinguished.” 

Then there’s self-made businessman Jimmy Lai, publisher since 1995 of Hong Kong’s widely circulated pro-democracy Chinese newspaper, Apple Daily, who told me in an interview this August: 

“We can’t give up. If we give up, we will have to endure the darkness of dictatorship.” 

Lee, now in his eighties, and Lai, now in his seventies, both marched at the front of some of this year’s protests.

Down the generations, this movement is packed with brave and articulate figures, including pro-democracy lawmakers whom police during the past six months of protest have tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, and drenched with water cannon. 

Some of the youngest democracy advocates, such as Joshua Wong and Nathan Law, both in their mid-twenties, have served time in prison for their leadership of the 2014 Umbrella movement—and emerged to continue arguing the case for Hong Kong’s rights.
Hong Kong’s passion for democracy was on rich display in elections on November 24 to seats on the city’s district councils. 

These are relatively powerless positions, dealing with local matters such as bus routes and trash collection. 

But they’re the only elections in Hong Kong that entail a genuinely democratic process. 

Hong Kongers turned out in record numbers to send a message at the polls, delivering a landslide for pro-democracy candidates, who won control of 17 of the 18 district councils.
These are valiant achievements against fearful odds. 

Hong Kong’s freedom movement is up against the regime of Xi Jinping, who, since he became president in 2013, has been ratcheting up repression across China, styling himself as the modern Mao. 

Under the label of perfecting “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” the 66-year-old Xi has been establishing himself as president for life of a techno-authoritarian state. 

China’s system now includes a program of “social credit,” meant to engineer human behavior to please the party, and reeducation camps to brainwash Uyghur Muslims. 

Hong Kong’s protesters harbor well-grounded fears that Xi might have similar plans in store for them. 

“If this movement dies, we’ll be living in the Orwellian society that is coming,” says one Hong Kong academic.
Xi has thrown visible support for years behind Lam. 

In 2019, after Lam triggered the huge protests and then further enraged the public with her refusal to concede to any demands or corral the police, she was caught on a recording, leaked to Reuters, lamenting that she could no longer go to shopping malls or a hair salon for fear of “black-masked young people waiting for me.” 

A month later, she incited yet more public fury by invoking despotic emergency powers to ban face masks. 

The following month, Xi summoned her to an audience in Shanghai; Chinese state media reported that he still firmly supported her. 

By then, casualties in Hong Kong were extensive, rubble lined many of the streets, and Hong Kong’s economy had tipped into recession.
Should Americans care? 

Especially since the end of the Cold War, America has spent blood and treasure trying to foster free societies around the globe, on the reasonable theory that this tends toward a safer, more prosperous world. 

It’s a tall order. 

But in Hong Kong, with no grand programs of foreign aid and consultancies, and under the shadow these past 22 years of Chinese sovereignty, a free society has materialized, and its people are calling for us to stand with them against tyranny. 

If we do nothing but watch while China swallows Hong Kong whole, Beijing will learn the relevant lesson.
The endgame here is desperately uncertain. 

Neither America nor any other nation is likely to go to war in defense of Hong Kong. 

An armed conflict, even if meant to defend the city, would likely destroy it. 

But America can enforce its new Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which President Trump signed into law last month, and which requires annual reports on whether China is respecting Hong Kong’s rights under “one country two systems”—and imposes penalties if China is not. 

We can expose the lies with which China tries to discredit Hong Kong’s democracy movement. 

We can sound the alarm generally on China’s maneuvers to undermine the democratic world, and we can build up the U.S. military both to counter directly China’s military rise and to give America’s leaders a stronger hand in dealing with Beijing. 

We could offer asylum to as many of Hong Kong’s people as America can absorb. 

Not least, we can look with respect and gratitude on a people who prize freedom so highly that, while they call for us to stand with them, they themselves, outnumbered and certainly outgunned, are facing down China’s tyranny on the frontlines, in the streets of their own city.

Hong Kong Protesters Call for U.S. Help.

The United States, viewed as a champion of democracy, occupies a symbolic role in the protests. Activists now want President Trump to take a tougher stand against Beijing.
By Edward Wong

Protesters rallying last month in Hong Kong.

HONG KONG — The Hong Kong protests at times seem like love fests with the United States. Depending on the day, demonstrators wave American flags or Uncle Sam recruitment posters, and even dress as Captain America, complete with shield.
The United States represents democracy, and the activists hope that maybe, just maybe, it will save Hong Kong. 

Five months in, they are trying harder than ever to draw the United States into their movement.
The protesters are pressing Hong Kong officials and their overseers, the authoritarian Communist Party leaders of China, for greater democratic rights and rule-of-law in the autonomous territory. 

As they see it, the Trump administration might be able to make demands of Chinese leaders or Hong Kong officials, especially because members of elite political circles want to maintain access to the United States.
Also, they note, the trade war with China, started by President Trump, is adding pressure over all on Xi Jinping.
For the American government, the protests are more complicated — a potential policy dilemma but also a potential point of leverage with Beijing and a way to channel American values to the rest of the world.
“The United States should continue to deter Beijing from use of force, maintain an unblinking eye on Hong Kong, and make Beijing pay a heavy reputational cost for curtailing the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong citizens,” said Ryan Hass, a former State Department and National Security Council official now at the Brookings Institution.
Yet, he added, “I worry that the protesters in Hong Kong risk misinterpreting American sympathy and support of their cause for expectation that the United States will shield them from Beijing’s heavy hand.”
Hong Kong protesters see the United States as a potential savior in their quest for greater democratic rights.

If the protesters are sending out a siren song, some American officials and lawmakers are answering it, eager to show their commitment to the cause.
Members of Congress have appeared in Hong Kong in public displays of solidarity. 

Last month, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, donned an all-black outfit, while Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, posted photographs from a protest.
In Washington, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, has met with activists, pro-democracy politicians and Jimmy Lai, a publisher considered radioactive by Beijing. 

Vice President Mike Pence singled out Hong Kong as a beacon of liberty in a speech, saying, “We stand with you; we are inspired by you.”
And versions of a bill that would give support to the protesters are moving though Congress with bipartisan backing. 

The legislation, among other things, would allow the United States to impose economic sanctions and a travel ban on Hong Kong officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses.
“We hope this bill will pass,” said Selina Po, a 27-year-old protester wearing a mouth mask in the Admiralty neighborhood as she held up a sign with the bill’s name, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. 

“It’s our hope for winning this war. We’re trying all we can.”

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, with Hong Kong activists at a news conference in September.

Greater involvement by Americans could give Beijing more ammunition in its propaganda effort to portray the pro-democracy movement as one stoked by foreign forces.
The Chinese government and state-run news organizations talk about “black hands” behind the unrest and spread conspiracy theories, including one centered on an American diplomat in Hong Kong who was photographed with activists in the lobby of the JW Marriott Hotel.
As the protests persist, American officials are watching for surges in violence and tracking the movement of People’s Liberation Army soldiers into Hong Kong. 

Some are beseeching demonstrators to stick to nonviolent tactics, even in the face of police crackdowns and attacks by people sympathetic to Beijing.
On Sunday, at least six people were injured when a man with a knife who is believed to be against the democracy movement attacked a family at a shopping mall. 

In the melee, the attacker bit off part of the ear of a pro-democracy district council member, Andrew Chiu.

Two Democratic Congressmen, Tom Suozzi of New York and John Lewis of Georgia, the icon of the American civil rights movement, posted a video last month praising the activists for their “great work” and urging them to stick to nonviolence.
Whether the United States takes greater action on Hong Kong hinges on the unpredictable Trump. 

Administration officials and American lawmakers talk openly about checking the authoritarian impulses of the Chinese Communist Party. 

But Trump rarely, if ever, mentions human rights and democracy, and he has not made strong statements on Hong Kong.

In June, he told Xi Jinping on a call that he would stay quiet on Hong Kong as long as Washington and Beijing were making progress on trade talks, according to an American official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In October, the Trump administration imposed some restrictions on Chinese companies and organizations for their roles in the mass repression of Muslims in mainland China, but Trump has held back from harsher actions for fear of upsetting the trade negotiations.
If a Hong Kong bill reaches Trump’s desk, analysts say, he might see it as merely a tool to wring concessions from China and could forego support if a trade agreement were close.
“Strong American bipartisan support for the peaceful protesters is not enough to override Trump’s transactional instincts,” Mr. Hass said. 

“He does not look at Hong Kong through a values-based lens. And as long as he remains president, this outlook will limit America’s responses to developments in Hong Kong.”
Administration officials argue that Trump’s approach gives the United States a stronger hand in constraining Beijing on Hong Kong — even if it appears that Trump just wants to use the Chinese territory to his advantage.
“America expects Beijing to honor its commitments,” Mr. Pence said, “and President Trump has repeatedly made it clear it would be much harder for us to make a trade deal if the authorities resort to the use of violence against protesters in Hong Kong.”
In the eyes of Beijing, there has been no shortage of "provocations" by American politicians. 

On Oct. 22, Ms. Pelosi posted on Twitter a photograph of herself on Capitol Hill with three pro-democracy figures — Mr. Lai, Martin Lee and Janet Pang.
“My full support and admiration goes to those who have taken to the streets week after week in nonviolent protest to fight for democracy and the rule of law in #HongKong,” she wrote.


Nancy Pelosi
✔@SpeakerPelosi
So pleased to welcome Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee and Janet Pang to the U.S. Capitol. My full support and admiration goes to those who have taken to the streets week after week in non-violent protest to fight for democracy and the rule of law in #HongKong.

12.2K
12:04 AM - Oct 23, 2019

On Wednesday, Ms Pelosi slammed the decision by Hong Kong officials to bar the activist Joshua Wong from running in local elections. 

She said it was “another blow against rule of law in Hong Kong and the principle of ‘one country, two systems,’” referring to the foundation for the policy of autonomy that Britain and China agreed would be used to govern the territory.
Ms. Pelosi met Mr. Wong in Washington in September.

Many demonstrators want American intervention and are focusing their attention on the legislation. The mere threat of American sanctions, they say, would give the movement greater voice with Beijing.
On Oct. 14, the night before a vote on the bill in the House of Representatives, protesters held a rally in the Central district to call for its passage. 

Tens of thousands attended, many of them carrying American flags.

American flags have become commonplace at the protests. 

“The power of Hong Kong people alone is limited, and we need other countries, such as the U.S., to help us counter China and keep ‘one country, two systems,’” said Eric Kwan, 32. 

“I doubt the act can be an ultimate game-changer, but I think it is enough to give pressure to China.”
Along with allowing for sanctions, the legislation requires the State Department to review each year whether Hong Kong is still autonomous enough to qualify for the benefits of the 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act, which grants the city a trade and economic status different from that of mainland China.
Some American officials say the bill could harm Hong Kong residents if the United States determines that the territory no longer qualifies as an autonomous entity. 

But the bill’s proponents defend its practical and symbolic value.
“Standing in support of Hong Kongers and preserving Hong Kong’s autonomy should be a priority of the United States and democracies worldwide,” said one of the bill’s sponsors, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida.
The bill passed the House by unanimous vote last month. 

Though the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has not scheduled a vote yet, the measure is expected to pass that chamber easily, with a veto-proof majority. 

Then Trump would have to decide whether to sign it into law.

Paranoid China does not understand Hong Kong's movement

Arrest of Joshua Wong and others will not quell protests
By Chit Wai John Mok

Without a clear marching route, protesters coordinated among themselves.

On August 30, key pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, including Joshua Wong and three lawmakers from the opposition camp, were arrested. 

After months of protests both peaceful and violent against a proposed extradition bill and police brutality, the Hong Kong government, instead of making concrete concessions, has decided to step up repression. 

Protesters responded with more determined action.
What is unusual about this situation is that the anti-extradition bill movement is known for its leaderlessness: not a single person or organization can claim to lead or represent it. 

While it is true that the Civil Human Rights Front, the major umbrella civil society organization, has held rallies, the organization can hardly direct other local protests and militant action. 

So why would the government clamp down on these activists?
There are two major reasons, I would argue. 

First, the government and the pro-Beijing forces may still not believe that a leaderless movement is possible. 

This should not be surprising because Beijing is used to dealing only with concrete organizations. 

To China's political leaders, behind every action, there must always be a mastermind.
The current movement is facilitated by two major digital channels, LIHKG and Telegram. 

LIHKG is the Hong Kong version of Reddit, an online forum where one can debate principles and suggest courses of action for others to vote on. 

Public chat groups in the Telegram app help spread immediate information during clashes. 

Protesters on the front lines also communicate through secret Telegram groups.
Since the beginning of the movement, Beijing's mouthpieces -- such as the newspapers directed by the Communist Party -- kept on attacking long-term democratic leaders and former student leaders, such as the veteran Martin Lee, Albert Ho, Nathan Law and Joshua Wong.
In their eyes, once the ringleaders are captured, the rest of the "bandits" will disperse. 

This is a fundamental miscalculation.
Another possible reason is that the government is escalating its policy of scaring people off the streets. 

In the past months, protesters faced indiscriminate arrests, vicious police violence, thug attacks and verbal threats from Beijing.
Despite all these deterrents, they kept coming out every week. 

The government may want to send a clearer warning to protesters: there will be no mercy. 

Stay off the streets.
The plan did not work well last weekend. 

While the CHRF did call off the rally, thousands of protesters defied the ban and marched on the streets on Saturday.
Without a clear route, protesters coordinated among themselves. 

Information was dispersed through Telegram, and some people on the front lines took up the role of guiding the crowd. 

Protesters also used their own kinds of sign language or simply yelled out to raise alerts on the ground.
The situation escalated very quickly. 

The police fired the first shot in the afternoon. 

Moderates retreated, while militants responded by throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails and setting fires. 

Violent clashes extended into the evening.
At night, Hong Kongers were outraged when the riot police stormed a subway station with batons and indiscriminately beat up protesters and passengers in a train car. 

On Sunday, protesters tried to block the airport.
Hong Kongers were outraged when the riot police stormed a subway station with batons. 

 
Scholars who study protest movements have shown that movement participants and their opponents are always learning from each other. 

Like playing chess, both sides learn by trial and error to find appropriate moves.
In the early stage, when one side escalates, the other side usually follows suit. 

Since the government is far better-armed, protesters have to be more creative to keep the resistance alive.
So far academia is skeptical about leaderless movements. 

One significant example is the Occupy Wall Street movement: the occupation did help change the way people talked about inequality, but it also ended with no concrete gains. 

While leaderlessness is a form of grassroots democracy, some form of organization is always necessary for decision-making. 

The current movement may be a lesson for others.
In the authoritarian government's playbook, there are many different tactics. 

Outright violence is usually the costliest choice: it will help "restore calm," but it will not bring legitimacy. 

Instead, making concession to please moderates is usually a smarter idea.
Carrie Lam's government, however, is fast moving toward the violent and repressive end.
October 1 this year is the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. 

Xi Jinping would not be happy if this highly significant day is marred by anti-Beijing protests, or even violence, in Hong Kong.
Lam does not have much time left, but her tactics are not working. 

Instead of calming the situation, she is sowing more seeds of anger and hatred; instead of listening to the people humbly and appeasing at least the moderates, she is turning her government into a full-fledged authoritarian police state.
Surely there will be more arrests. 

But Hong Kongers will either stay defiant, or retreat tactically and come out again when opportunities are available. 

So what can truly bring peace to the city? 

Beijing knows the answer, and Carrie Lam also knows the answer: nothing other than genuine democratization.

Hong Kong protests: calls grow to give citizens right to live and work in UK

Campaigners say it is time to extend the right of abode previously denied to British National (Overseas) passport holders

By Tania Branigan

Anti-government protesters in Hong Kong call on the British government to declare the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1997 invalid. 

Calls for the UK to restore the right of abode to people in Hong Kong are growing as the political crisis in the former British colony escalates.
As fears of direct intervention by Beijing grow, veteran pro-democracy campaigners have argued that Britain has a responsibility to protect residents who hold the passports it issued ahead of the handover.
Several hundred protesters rallied outside the British consulate on Sunday to demand they receive a full British passport, the Financial Times reported.
In the run-up to Hong Kong’s handover in 1997, Britain replaced the British Dependent Territories Citizens passports held by three million people with the British National (Overseas) passport, which grants the right to vote in the UK, but not the right to live or work here. 

A passionate campaign for holders to be granted the right of abode, particularly in light of 1989’s brutal crackdown on Tiananmen Square’s pro-reform protests, was dismissed – earning the BN(O) the nickname “Britain says No”. 

Craig Choy, a lawyer who has helped to lead the campaign for equal rights for BN(O) holders has compared the treatment of people in Hong Kong to the Windrush scandal.
The passports are available only to those who registered before 1997, and holders are not able to pass their status to their children, but the documents can be renewed at any time. 

The number of valid passports at the moment is thought to be in the tens of thousands, but renewals appear to have risen sharply in years when political tensions have run high.
Anson Chan, formerly the second highest official in the city, said the UK should consider the issue again: “You promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy and basic rights and freedoms – when those are taken away from them, surely Britain has a legal and moral responsibility to deal with the consequences.”
Martin Lee, the veteran Hong Kong campaigner nicknamed its “father of democracy”, said it was all the more pressing to revisit the right of abode and related issues in light of the protest movement and the fact that the “one country, two systems” arrangement which underpins the Sino-British joint declaration was no longer working.
“That’s the obligation of the British government, being the only other signatory to the joint declaration,” he said.
Last month Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said that Britain should grant Hong Kong citizens with BN(O) passports full UK nationality. 

He told the FT that “a few” cabinet ministers were supportive of the decision.

People gather to call on the British government to declare the invalidity of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Sunday. 

Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong before the handover, unsuccessfully urged the UK to give the right of abode to all those holding British Dependent Territories passports.
The late Lord Ashdown, who as Liberal Democrat leader campaigned on the issue, said last year that Britain was “urgently in need of some soul-searching enquiry about our neglect of duty towards our former colonial subjects” which should include considering the rights of BN(O) in Hong Kong.
A government spokesperson said: “We continue to believe that the best solution for Hong Kong, and the British National (Overseas) passport holders that live there, is full respect for the rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.”
Last year, declassified files revealed that Britain even pressured Portugal repeatedly not to grant rights to citizens of Macau before it handed the region back to China, fearing that it would increase the pressure to grant Hong Kong similar rights.
Lisbon granted passports, with full citizenship rights, to anyone born before late 1981 and allowed Portuguese nationality to be passed to their children.
One protester told the Guardian she was planning to renew her BN(O) passport in case of a crackdown by Beijing, even though she did not want to leave her home. 

She added: “I don’t expect Britain to give me residency, but it might help me to get somewhere else.”

Malcolm Turnbull's government urged to publicly stand up to China over Hong Kong

Activists warn of erosion of press freedom, attacks against academics and the disappearance of booksellers.

By Katharine Murphy 

Hong Kong democracy activists Anson Chan and Martin Lee. Lee said he would like the Australian government ‘to voice its concerns publicly as well as in private’.

The prominent Hong Kong democracy activists Martin Lee and Anson Chan have urged the Turnbull government to stand up to China publicly over the deteriorating state of civic freedoms, warning there has been a progressive diminution of the “one country, two systems” policy.
Lee, the founding chairman of Hong Kong’s democratic party, and Chan, a former chief secretary in both the British colonial government of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong special administrative region government under the Chinese sovereignty, made the appeal at the National Press Club on Thursday after a meeting with Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop.
Lee said he would like governments, including the Australian government, “to voice its concerns publicly as well as in private”.

Chan said the success of the “one country, two systems” policy was demonstrably in Australia’s interests, given Australia’s deep linkages with Hong Kong, and given it was in the interests of all foreign powers that China abide by its international obligations. 

She urged Australia to “take a consistent stand on reaffirming your values”.
The public intervention by the two veteran campaigners followed a display by the new generation of democracy campaigners in Hong Kong at a swearing-in ceremony at the legislature on Wednesday.
New parliamentarians from the pro-democracy movement used the swearing-in ceremony as a vehicle to launch fresh protests, with some refusing to read the required oath, which is a precursor to them being sworn in to the legislature.
Lee told the National Press Club he had urged the current crop to take the oath to ensure they took their places in the Hong Kong parliament but he said young participants in the pro-democracy movement were intent on creating a point of tactical difference with the previous generation.
He said if the Chinese government delivered on their undertakings on “one country, two systems” then young people would not escalate their activity to the extent of calling for independence from the mainland.
Lee said he believed the calls for independence were not really serious and most people in Hong Kong did not want to sever ties with the mainland, they wanted democracy.
Chan warned civic conditions were deteriorating in Hong Kong, with a serious erosion of press freedom, attacks against academics and the disappearance of booksellers critical of Chinese leaders.
She said the case of the booksellers had sent a message that “we are no longer safe, even on Hong Kong soil”.
She also pointed to the presence of “paid agitators” in Hong Kong who were pushing a pro-Beijing line and she expressed concern that Beijing’s propaganda machine was infiltrating Hong Kong culture.