Closeted communist: Beijing represses Hong Kong with active Tim Cook's help

Apple bans an app because Hong Kong protesters use it to avoid the murderous, out of control police

https://boingboing.net

Hkmap Live is a crowdsourced app that uses reports from a Telegram group to track the locations of protesters, police, and traffic, as well as the use of antipersonnel weapons like tear gas, mass arrests of people wearing t-shirts associated with the protest movement, and mass transit closures in proximity to demonstrations (it's a bit like Sukey, the British anti-kettling app).
The escalation of indiscriminate violence by Hong Kong's police has driven mainstream opposition to the Chinese state and the Hong Kong authorities. 

The protests continue to grow, the police continue to attack families, elderly people, bystanders, and the main body of protesters, with no mercy or quarter -- including the on-camera, point-blank shooting of an unarmed, nonviolent protester. 

In this context, Hkmap isn't just a way for protesters to evade police, it's a survival lifeline for innocent people facing an occupying army of sadistic armed thugs.
But Iphone owners in Hong Kong can't access the Hkmap Live app anymore. 

Apple has removed it from the App Store, telling the app's creators that "Your app contains content - or facilitates, enables, and encourages an activity - that is not legal ... Specifically, the app allowed users to evade law enforcement."
This isn't the first time that Apple has used its monopoly over which apps can be used on Ios devices to help the Chinese state abuse human rights: in May 2018, the company removed all working VPNs from the App Store, leaving only compromised ones that the Chinese state could surveil.
Apple is America's largest tech company, and its corporate communications have presented the company as an ethical alternative to "surveillance" companies like Google, but while Apple doesn't spy on you to advertise to you, it certainly is willing to facilitate state spying on its customers for the purpose of abetting their arbitrary arrest, torture, and executions.
Moreover, Apple often describes its locked-down App Store model -- which uses technical countermeasures and legal threats to prevent its customers from installing apps that it hasn't approved -- as a way of defending its users' security from unethical apps (this was a claim that was repeatedly raised last year when Apple led an industry coalition that defeated 20 state-level Right to Repair bills).
But Apple's absolute control over the App Store means that when a state suborns the company to serve as part of its anti-democratic enforcement system, users are corralled in its walled garden where they are easy pickings for murderous authoritarians and their hired killers.
Moreover, this outcome is entirely predictable: when you design your device so that users can't override your decisions, you practically beg authoritarian governments to order you to make decisions that help them control their citizens.

HKmap.live 全港抗爭即時地圖@hkmaplive
"Your app contains content - or facilitates, enables, and encourages an activity - that is not legal ... Specifically, the app allowed users to evade law enforcement."@Apple assume our user are lawbreakers and therefore evading law enforcement, which is clearly not the case.
164
8:58 PM - Oct 1, 2019


Pinboard@Pinboard
It appears that Apple has rejected an app that warns Hong Kongers about police activity. The Hong Kong police force shot a high schooler in the chest yesterday and put seventy people, from 11 to 75, in the hospital. That app saves lives in Hong Kong. Let me tweet about it a bit https://twitter.com/hkmaplive/status/1179108329240424448 …
HKmap.live 全港抗爭即時地圖@hkmaplive
"Your app contains content - or facilitates, enables, and encourages an activity - that is not legal ... Specifically, the app allowed users to evade law enforcement."@Apple assume our user are lawbreakers and therefore evading law enforcement, which is clearly not the case.
751
5:14 AM - Oct 2, 2019

Hong Kong Is Winning the Global Public-Opinion War With Beijing

The city’s protest movement has unofficial representatives, crowdfunded advertising, viral videos, and much else that has caught Chinese off guard.

By CHRIS HORTON

The Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigners Joshua Wong (far left) and Denise Ho (left) testify in Congress.

TAIPEI—Months of protests in Hong Kong have pitted residents of all ages and backgrounds against their police force, local government, and the Chinese Communist Party, and there is no question of who is less powerful.
Yet in a parallel battle over international public opinion, it is Beijing and its minions that are outgunned. 

This weekend that mismatch was once again highlighted by the thousands of people in cities across Australia, Asia, Europe and North America coming out in support of Hong Kong, but also in a much broader sense, against the CCP. 

Here in Taipei alone, thousands of Taiwanese and Hong Kongers marched through the streets on a rainy Sunday, told by Denise Ho, one of the most visible faces among Hong Kong’s unofficial diplomatic corps, that her home and theirs shared the same fight against Beijing.
These latest worldwide, pro–Hong Kong rallies are the most recent iteration of what supporters of repressed groups in East Turkestan and Tibet, as well as those who back Taiwan’s sovereignty, have all struggled to do: Mobilize large communities internationally to denounce the Chinese Communist Party.

The relative success of Hong Kong’s protest movement is all the more significant because it’s occurring alongside Beijing expanding its propaganda efforts globally, as state-owned outlets trumpet China’s vision of the world in multiple languages. 

This global campaign is the biggest challenge to China’s rulers by the territory since 1989, when, still a British colony, its residents took part in demonstrations in solidarity with protesters in Tiananmen Square, while also providing financial and material support.
From Oslo to Osaka, Congress to the United Nations, Taiwan to Twitter, Hong Kongers have taken their DIY approach to protest to a global audience. 

Celebrity supporters testify in high-profile settings; highly targeted, crowdfunded media campaigns aim to keep the issue in the spotlight; and viral videos, catchy slogans, and even a movement anthem and flag help magnify the message on social media.

On September 17, a panel of witnesses including Ho and pro-democracy campaigner Joshua Wong testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in Washington, the latest in a string of public appearances for the two activists around the globe. 

Ho has been especially active, shuttling back and forth between Hong Kong and elsewhere to promote her message of resisting Beijing to receptive crowds, especially in Taiwan.
Earlier this month in Taipei, Ho spoke and performed at the Asia installment of the Oslo Freedom Forum. 

Only days before, she had been in Melbourne, where she appeared in public with the Chinese dissident artist Badiucao, designer of the unofficial Hong Kong protest movement flag. 

In Taipei, Ho took the stage to a screaming crowd of hundreds of admirers, their phones raised to record her appeal to democratic Taiwan, whose way of life is also under threat from China. Describing the struggle of Hong Kongers, who cannot rely on their own government to counter China’s narrative, Ho struck a pragmatic tone. 

“When the system fails us,” she said to the attentive crowd, “we take things into our own hands.”
Wong, who rose to international fame as one of the leaders of the pro-democracy, Occupy-style Umbrella Movement of 2014, has also been busy on the diplomatic front. 

Prior to his congressional testimony, he stopped in Germany, urging its government to cease exporting crowd-control weapons to Hong Kong and to put human rights in Hong Kong on the agenda in Berlin’s trade talks with Beijing. (Germany's foreign minister, Heiko Maas, met with Wong on September 10.)
Wong’s German visit came after he and fellow activists visited Taiwan, where he implored the ruling party to pass an asylum law that would make it easier for Hong Kongers to seek refuge here, territory the CCP claims despite having never controlled it.
Although neither Wong nor Ho has been appointed by the current protest movement to represent it abroad—a remarkable feat of the demonstrations is that they have been largely leaderless—the general consensus in Hong Kong seems to be that they are well-known names and faces who offer the advantage of signal-boosting.
While in Taipei mid-month, Ho told me she thought of herself as a mediator or spokesperson for the movement at large. 

“I’m not seeing myself as a leader of any sort,” she said. 

“I am, on the other hand, one of the participants of this movement: I have been on the streets with these people. I have been teargassed.” 

She added that, as a “recognizable face,” she saw herself “as a conduit that can bring stories of these people to the world.”
In July, Ho scored one of the first public-relations victories abroad for Hong Kong’s protesters when, speaking at the United Nations in Geneva, she described growing police brutality against Hong Kongers and called on the UN to remove China from its Human Rights Council. 

During her remarks, she was interrupted twice by China’s representative to the body on procedural grounds. 

More recently, while in Washington, Ho and Wong were joined by other activists and congressional leaders for the launch of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a D.C.-based lobbying group for the movement.
Ho and Wong are far from the only diplomats working on behalf of the movement. 

In June, a crowdfunding drive raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from more than 20,000 donors, paying for full-page ads in more than 10 major international newspapers, urging the G20 summit in Osaka to raise Hong Kong’s plight. 

How much impact the campaign had is unclear, but Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did bring up Hong Kong’s protests with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping when the two met on the sidelines of the summit. 

Another crowdfunded ad campaign is under way, this time targeting papers on October 1 to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, a particularly sensitive date for the CCP. 

The campaign is not the only bit of rain to fall on the party’s parade—Hong Kong’s government announced on September 18 that it had canceled the fireworks show planned for the anniversary.
Unlike East Turkestan or Tibet, both of which the Communists forcibly took control of in the 1950s, Hong Kong was handed over peacefully by the British in 1997, following 150 years of colonial rule. 

At the heart of the agreement between London and Beijing was an arrangement whereby Hong Kong would maintain its separate political and economic system and enjoy “a high degree of autonomy,” with Beijing handling national security and diplomacy.
This “one country, two systems” arrangement has allowed Hong Kong to have a free internet, for example, whereas Beijing heavily restricts the web within China and even went so far as to either partially or completely shut down the internet in East Turkestan—the size of western Europe—for 10 months.
Today, many Hong Kongers worry that their internet access may go the way of China’s, adding a sense of urgency to their attempts to use it to organize themselves and to reach the outside world in order to spread their message and counter Beijing’s narrative. 

Twitter, in particular, has become an important virtual battleground for foreign hearts and minds.
The Chinese authorities appear to agree. 

On September 3, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published an investigation into the methods used in a disinformation campaign aimed at Hong Kong that Twitter has attributed to Beijing, a first. “Efforts by the Chinese government to leverage Twitter to redirect and recast political developments in Hong Kong—both in terms of covert information operations and through its state media—highlight just how powerful Twitter is as a tool of statecraft,” Danielle Cave, deputy director of the ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre, told me.
Hong Kong’s protesters have also recognized the global influence of Twitter in the information domain and are themselves trying to use Twitter diplomacy to share breaking developments and to connect with journalists, Cave noted. 

This includes providing images and videos of events on the ground, often in real time, and generating new hashtags, including ones that highlight violent incidents and police brutality. (The protesters’ tool of choice for coordinating rallies has thus far been the encrypted messaging app Telegram, but that can’t match Twitter’s global reach or public-broadcasting capabilities, nor does it have the ear of global stakeholders that the protesters seek to engage.)
Hong Kongers have, so far, proved a nimble David to China’s clumsy Goliath. 

But the CCP does occasionally score points. 

Donald Trump, for example, parroted the Chinese government’s line on the Hong Kong protests when he called them “riots” in early August, a characterization that many viewed as a win for Beijing.
In other incidents, however, the tendency of Chinese nationalism to backfire on the foreign stage has hampered the Communist cause. 

Among these incidents are violent Chinese-student reactions to pro–Hong Kong demonstrations at Australian universities, with the Chinese embassy expressing support for the students’ actions on social media afterward. 

Debate in Australia regarding the ability of China to control public speech there has since intensified. Elsewhere, Montreal’s Pride parade excluded Hong Kong participants after receiving threats from pro-Communists.

At the parade, many onlookers were aghast when, during the moment of silence for those who have died from HIV/AIDS, Chinese participants sang their national anthem.
“The most basic weakness of the external communications of the Chinese party-state is the fact that foreign audiences, and their values and interests, are never truly considered,” David Bandurski, co-director of the China Media Project, told me. 

“Sure, the messages are directed at foreigners, but the language is still the internal and insular language of the party-state.”
In this sense, Bandurski said, these propaganda efforts are not really external at all.
“Try as it might to raise the volume on China's singular, restrained voice, the party-state is still talking to itself, or shouting at its own wall,” Bandurski said. 

“The louder that voice becomes, the more uncompromising and aggressive it sounds.”

7 Ways Hong Kong Protesters Used Low-Tech Hacks to Fight Back

For the past months, the people of Hong Kong have used some ingenious methods to withstand a high-tech police force.
By David Hambling


Hong Kong has seen a struggle between a powerful high-tech police force and peaceful pro-democracy protesters. 

This week, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announced she would withdraw a controversial extradition bill to allow suspects to be extradited to mainland China, giving in to the protesters' main demand. 

Lam’s climbdown signals victory for low-tech ingenuity over the police state, won with umbrellas, traffic cones, Allen keys, and the philosophy of Bruce Lee.

1 Holding Back the Tears
Tear gas has been the Hong Kong police’s main weapon for breaking up demonstrations. 

Protesters developed tactics to neutralize the tear gas with quick-reaction squads. 

Early tactics involved smothering the grenade with a wet towel or trying to throw it back with heat-proof gloves, but things have now evolved.
In this video, as soon as a grenade landed near the protesters' lines and started spewing gas, the first squad member rushed out and placed a traffic cone over the top of the device, so that the cloud could not spread. 

A second squad member then poured water through the hole at the top of the traffic cone, from a plastic bottle dousing the grenade.
Another surprisingly effective new tactic is to stick the still-smoking grenade in a thermos flask full of mud to douse it.

2 Umbrella Squad

The umbrella is one of the symbols of the Hong Kong protests, and the protesters are sometimes called the Umbrella Movement. 

The umbrellas are a visible sign of protest, but they also have practical uses: Demonstrators started bringing them to protests in 2014 as protection against pepper spray used by the police. 

Sometimes the protesters lock umbrellas together to form the modern equivalent of a shield wall against spray.
Umbrellas are also used for screening. 

When tear gas grenades are being doused, other team members hold up umbrellas to hide their colleagues from police observation and prevent rubber bullets being aimed at them.
Protesters employed umbrellas in their actions to bring the transport system to a halt, using them to jam subway doors open.

3 Bluetooth Revolution

Smartphones are a powerful tool for a surveillance state, allowing them to track people and monitor their activities via social media postings. 

Protesters are careful not to post from demonstrations, or take selfies. 

They've also found ways to use apps for their own ends.
Some protests are organized via the secure Telegram app. 

Chat groups can have tens of thousands of members, and a polling function allows the participants to vote on what action they should take. 

This is sometimes used tactically, to decide whether a protest should remain in one spot or move on.
The authorities have tried to stop this type of activity by cutting the phone signal in specific areas. Protesters responded by using alternative technology, in particular the AirDrop function built into iPhones and the Bridgefly app, both of which communicate via Bluetooth.

4 Laser Weapons
There are no official figures, but the South China Morning Post estimates that there are at least 50,000 CCTV cameras in Hong Kong. 

Surveillance is everywhere, and the authorities have increasingly been combining it with facial recognition technology to identify target protesters.
Protesters wear gas masks not just against tear gas, but also to obscure their faces. 

And, unsurprisingly, they've also started bringing down the masts that support CCTV cameras. 

In a novel tactic, laser pointers are used to defeat the cameras and dazzle police, making protests look like something out of Star Wars.
Laser pointers have become a protest tool in their own right. 

After a student was arrested for possessing a pointer, hundreds of protesters turned up to shine lasers at the dome of the Hong Kong Space Museum to show support.

5 Hard Headed Protest

Many of the protesters wear yellow hard hats, partly as protection against the batons that Hong Kong police wield enthusiastically. 

Others have taken to wearing sports helmets, and local shops have sold out of all types of protective headgear.
Like the umbrella, the hard hat has become a symbol of the resistance, so people have started wearing them as a form of mute protest against the authorities. 

Commuters and shop assistants can be seen wearing them, some customized with messages like “We Love Hong Kong” or “I just want to get home safe.”
In a pointed show of solidarity, Hong Kong journalists wore helmets at a police press briefing. Because you can’t arrest someone just for wearing a hat, can you?

6 "Be Water"

The Hong Kong protestors built barricades and blocked streets, but they didn't stay long. 

They often dispersed as soon as the police showed up in force, using phone apps to coordinate their actions in flashmob-type actions before riot police could respond.
“We’re going around to stop the police from catching us,” one woman told reporters. 

“We need to be like water.”
“Be Water” has become one of the slogans of the movement. 

It's taken from the philosophy of Hong Kong martial arts movie legend Bruce Lee, who advocated that one “must be shapeless, formless, like water.”
The whole protest movement is deliberately formless, so there are no leaders to arrest. 

And its fluid tactics—disappearing when the opposition is strong and appearing where they are weak— successfully outmaneuvered the police.

7 Hand Signals
Allen keys, pliers, and scissors have been vital weapons in the protestor’s armory. 

The scissors cut cable ties securing street barriers, and the Allen keys unlock the nuts that fasten them together. 

This way protestors can remove obstacles and use them to build their own barricades outside police stations and other strategic spots.
Because such tools are in short supply, Antony Dapiran of the New Statesman observed crowds of protesters using special hand signals to request relevant items, which were then passed along by a human chain to where they were needed. 

These chains can stretch more than a kilometer in an impressive display of coordination, a low-tech, but effective distribution system.

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.

Thousands of protesters sit in at Hong Kong airport to reiterate their ‘five demands’

• “Please forgive us for the ‘unexpected’ Hong Kong,” said the leaflets that were handed out to arrival passengers at the Hong Kong International Airport. “You’ve arrived in a broken, torn-apart city, not the one you have once pictured. Yet for this Hong Kong, we fight.”
• The demonstrations started as peaceful political rallies in June but have escalated to a wider, pro-democracy movement.

By Grace Shao


Several hundreds of protesters, many of them young and donning black T-shirts, handed out anti-government flyers in more than 16 languages to arrival passengers at the Hong Kong International Airport on Friday.
“Please forgive us for the ‘unexpected’ Hong Kong,” the English leaflets read. 

“You’ve arrived in a broken, torn-apart city, not the one you have once pictured. Yet for this Hong Kong, we fight,” the flyers said according to Reuters.
Protesters said they wanted to reiterate their demands and put their case “in front of an international audience,” according to social media posts from demonstrators.
The massive travel hub connects the city to more than 220 global destinations and served 74.7 million passengers last year, according to the airport’s website.
Airport authorities said only departing passengers with travel documents will be allowed to enter Terminal 1 on Friday morning, as the airport braces for what protesters are describing as a three-day event. 

The terminal serves long-haul flights.
Online platforms such as Instagram, Telegram, Airdrop and local Hong Kong forums have become the main means of organization among protesters because they give some anonymity to users.
The demands were originally released in July, a day after a small group of protesters stormed the Hong Kong legislature:

1. a full withdrawal of a proposed bill that would allow Hong Kong people to be extradited to mainland China
2. a retraction of any characterization of the movement as a “riot”
3. a retraction of charges against anti-extradition protesters
4. an independent committee to investigate the Hong Kong police’s use of force
5. universal suffrage in elections for the city’s chief executive officer and legislature by 2020.

So far, Hong Kong authorities have given no concessions, though Chief Executive Carrie Lam “suspended” the extradition bill last month.
Thursday afternoon in the United States, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman called China a “thuggish regime” for disclosing photographs and personal details of a U.S. diplomat who met with student leaders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
Beijing on Wednesday released a photo showing leaders of the movement — including Joshua Wong, the face and leader of the 2014 Umbrella Movement— with an American diplomat. 

Chinese authorities have asked the U.S. to explain why that contact was made and to explain the nature of their relationship.
On Friday morning, officials confirmed that the police commander who dealt with the 2014 demonstrations has been recalled to help settle the ongoing social unrest.
Alan Lau Yip-shing, a former deputy police commissioner, has been appointed to handle large-scale public order events and to direct activities around the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, which is October 1.

Why are Hong Kongers protesting?
Hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong have taken to the streets since early June, spurred by opposition to a bill that would allow people in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China. 

That proposal has been suspended — though not fully withdrawn.
Demonstrations have since evolved into a movement calling for autonomy, full democracy and the ousting of the embattled leader Lam.
Beijing has responded saying Hong Kong is facing its worst crisis since the handover from the United Kingdom in 1997, and the communist government has used increasingly pointed language to describe the protests.

Problems that go beyond politics
The demonstrations started as peaceful political rallies but have escalated to a broader, pro-democracy movement. 

The size of crowds on the streets and rising violence have called the well-being of Asia’s financial hub into question.
Flights were canceled by Hong Kong’s largest airline, Cathay Pacific on Monday, as part of a general strike that halted the city.
The United States raised its travel warning for Hong Kong on Wednesday, advising Americans to exercise caution when visiting the city.
Also Wednesday, a senior Cathay Pacific executive said the company is facing a decline in bookings for travel to Hong Kong. 

The “double digits” drop is largely due to widespread protests in the Asian financial center, he said.
Retail, real estate and other business sectors have also seen sales declines over the last few months. The city’s public transit system has also been disrupted on multiple occasions.
The discontent from protesters may go beyond politics. 

While the city’s rich have grown richer, the wealth gap in the city has grown wider, according to David Dodwell, a long-time observer of Asia politics.
Many people feel left behind and neglected by the government, and their frustration is fueling increasingly disruptive protests that have coursed through the city, said Dodwell, who is executive director at HK-APEC Trade Policy Group and a former Financial Times Asia correspondent.
“There is a very widespread anxiety in Hong Kong among the ordinary working person about their prospects going forward,” Dodwell told CNBC. 

He added that more than 90% of local Hong Kongers work for small and medium-sized enterprises, which have not seen the kind of economic growth that big multinational corporations have.

Freedom Fighters

For Hong Kong’s Youth, Protests Are a Matter of Life and Death

By Mike Ives and Katherine Li

Protesting against the proposed extradition law in Hong Kong on Sunday.

HONG KONG — They are on the front lines of every demonstration, dressed in black T-shirts and pumping their fists as they march through Hong Kong’s sweltering streets.

They organize on encrypted messaging groups and hand out helmets and goggles at rallies. 

When the police fired tear gas at them, they chased the smoke-emitting canisters and doused them with water.
Hong Kong’s youth are at the forefront of protests this month that have thrown the city into a political crisis, including a vast rally on Sunday that was perhaps the largest in its history. 

Organizers contend that close to two million of the territory’s seven million people participated, calling on the government to withdraw proposed legislation that would allow extraditions to mainland China.
For the many high-school and university-age students who flooded the streets, the issue is much bigger than extradition alone. 

As they see it, they are fighting a “final battle” for some semblance of autonomy from the Chinese government.
“The extradition law is a danger to our lives,” said Zack Ho, 17, a high school student who helped organize a boycott of classes. 

“Once this passes, our rule of law would be damaged beyond repair.”
They are a generation that has no memory of life under British rule, but they have come of age amid growing fears about how the encroachment of China’s ruling Communist Party — and an influx of people from mainland China — are transforming Hong Kong and what they believe is special about it.
Such fears stem from the ousting of opposition lawmakers, the disappearance of several individuals from Hong Kong into custody in the mainland and the intensifying competition for jobs and housing in a city with soaring inequality. 

Many young protesters see the extradition bill as hurting the territory’s judicial independence — in their view, the last vestige of insulation they now have from Beijing’s influence.
Youth activism in Hong Kong had ebbed in recent years, after protests demanding a direct say in the election of the territory’s chief executive ended in failure in 2014. 

The most prominent leaders of what became known as the Umbrella Movement or Occupy Central were jailed, and their legions of young supporters were left bitterly disenchanted.

Joshua Wong, who became the face of the Umbrella Movement protests in 2014, was released from prison in Hong Kong on Monday.

But the extradition legislation pushed by Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, has re-energized young people. 

Residents express worry that Beijing will use new extradition powers to target dissidents and others who run afoul of Communist Party officials on the mainland.
The young people driving the Umbrella Movement fought for the cause of universal suffrage, said Leung Yiu-ting, the student union president of Hong Kong Education University. 

But the extradition fight, he added, is “a matter of life and death.”
Compared with older generations, young people in Hong Kong feel less affinity with mainland China and are more likely to see themselves as having a distinct Hong Kong — as opposed to Chinese — identity. 

Beijing’s efforts to grapple with this have backfired; when officials tried to impose a patriotic education curriculum in schools in 2012, young people led the protests against it.
That was the beginning of this generation’s political awakening, which has accelerated along with the erosion of the civil liberties promised to Hong Kong upon its return to Chinese government in 1997. Those freedoms have long set Hong Kong apart from the mainland, and as they have begun to fray, young people say they feel the threat more sharply.
No one has emerged as the face of the current youth movement as Joshua Wong, then 17, did during the Umbrella protests five years ago. (Mr. Wong was released from prison Monday after serving a month of his two-month prison sentence.)
That is at least in part because of fear. 

“Who’s going to be quite so willing, openly, to take six years of jail as the prize for the protests?” said Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy Hong Kong lawmaker, referring to a sentence handed down last year to Edward Leung, a local activist, for his role in a 2016 clash between protesters and the police.
Instead, organizers have operated behind the scenes by spreading messages about protests and other acts of civil disobedience through social media, word of mouth and secure messaging apps like Telegram.

Students taking part in a strike at Tamar Park in Hong Kong on Monday.

One result was that high schoolers and university students turned out in large numbers at a mostly peaceful march one week ago Sunday, and also occupied a highway on Wednesday outside the Legislative Council. 

Medical students and other volunteers provided first aid and free supplies from makeshift tents.
“They are compromising our future, and for what?” Terrence Leung, a recent college graduate, who like many others was demonstrating on Wednesday in a black T-shirt and a surgical mask, said of the pro-Beijing lawmakers who championed the extradition bill.
But in both protests, some among the young demonstrators challenged the authorities with force. 

The demonstrators tried to occupy the area outside the Legislative Council — or, in Wednesday’s case, tried to storm the complex — with force, pushing metal barriers and tossing bricks, bottles and sticks at riot police officers.
The police responded with pepper spray and batons. 

On Wednesday, police also fired 150 canisters of tear gas and, for the first time in decades, rubber bullets. 

Videos of officers beating protesters and firing volleys of tear gas that sent thousands fleeing drew wide condemnation across the city.
Public anger only grew when Lam compared her response to the opposition with that of a mother with a willful child.
Linda Wong, a barrister who organized a rally attended by women who described themselves as mothers opposed to how the police had responded to the young protesters, disagreed with Lam’s characterization.
“They came out not for personal interests but for the greater ideal of Hong Kong,” said Ms. Wong. “A good mother shall listen to her own child, and apparently Carrie Lam refuses to do so.”

A mass rally on Sunday. Organizers have spread messages about protests and other acts of civil disobedience through social media, word of mouth and secure messaging apps like Telegram.

The police said Monday that 32 people have been arrested since Wednesday’s event, including five for rioting.
“Fear is striking in all of our hearts,” said Mr. Leung, the student union president, referring to the possibility of being prosecuted.
Another risk is that the leaderless nature of the movement raises the possibility of more bloodshed. Analysts say that if demonstrations descend into violence, the authorities would have an easy excuse to prosecute young protesters, discredit them as radicals or attack them with a vengeance.
“If I were them, I would be cautious not to press the advantage too far,” said Andrew Junker, a sociologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who has studied the Umbrella Movement.
Faced with another enormous protest on Sunday, Lam issued a public apology for causing so much anger over the extradition law. 

Her apology came a day after she promised to shelve the plan indefinitely, but not withdraw it.
This was perceived as too little, too late, and it especially enraged younger protesters, who were bewildered that Lam seemed deaf to the concerns of more than a million demonstrators.
“Sometimes I think to myself, is it because I have not done enough? What else could have been done?” said So Hiu-ching, a 16-year-old high schooler who attended a student strike at a park near government offices on Monday morning.
“I go home and cry,” she said, “but after that, I have to get up and try to rally more people.”

Hong Kong extradition: How radical youth forced the government's hand

By Helier Cheung

Wednesday's protesters came prepared for tear gas

In just one week Hong Kong has witnessed two of its largest ever protests, as well its most violent protest in decades. 

At the forefront of these demonstrations are young people, many barely out of their teens. 

How did they get radicalised -- and how did they manage to force the government's hand?
"We screamed at people to run."
"My parents kicked me out after the protests."
"It was the first time I got tear-gassed -- tears were coming uncontrollably out of my eyes."
"I'm afraid to give my real name."
These are not words anybody would have expected to come out of the mouths of Hong Kongers -- and certainly not ones aged between 17 and 21.
Until recently the stereotype of a "typical" Hong Kong teen would have been one more interested in studying or making money than political activism or creative thinking.
But last week saw the streets around Hong Kong's legislature taken over by young people wearing masks, setting up barricades, and throwing gas canisters back at police.
Many of them were even too young to have taken part in the last Hong Kong protest to hold the world's media rapt -- the 2014 Umbrella protests, when tens of thousands of people slept in the streets for weeks, demanding democratic elections.

Fear of the Chinese future
The 2014 protests -- which were also known as the Occupy Central protests -- ended without any concessions from the government.
This time round it has been different.
The latest demonstrations, against a controversial bill that would allow people in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China has, strikingly, forced the government to apologise, and pause its plans -- effectively shelving them say many analysts.
So what is different this time round? 

And what role has this generation of young activists risking tear gas, rubber bullets, and even arrest (let alone their future employment prospects) played?
Hong Kong's youth have experienced something of a political awakening in the last two decades -- the proportion of registered voters aged 18-35 rose from 58% in 2000, to 70% in 2016.
And it's not surprising, when you consider that Hong Kong's political future is an increasingly pressing issue.
The territory currently enjoys special rights and freedoms due to a handover agreement between the British, who previously colonised Hong Kong, and the Chinese government.
But in 2047, the agreement enshrining Hong Kong's special status expires -- and nobody really knows what will happen then.
For today's youth, 2047 feels strikingly close -- and their protest is driven by this uncertainty, as well as a feeling that the Chinese government is closing in anyway.

Protests returned to Hong Kong streets following the suspension of the extradition bill

No longer certain the system will protect them, they are modifying their protest techniques and learning the art of sophisticated dissent.
Every single protester I interviewed who had taken part in Wednesday's unauthorised protests asked me to protect their identities -- fearing arrest.
"We kept face masks on at all times during the protest, and afterwards we tried to delete our records on our iPhones and Google Maps," says Dan, an 18-year-old student who helped protesters build a barricade with fences.
Some have taken to buying paper train tickets, rather than using their prepaid travel cards -- on the basis this could make it harder for the authorities to trace their whereabouts.
Meanwhile, many have become cautious about what they say on public social media -- and are only willing to communicate on secure apps with self-destruct functions, such as Telegram.Jackie has been sleeping at university - fearing police could arrest her at home

"During the Occupy protests, most of us didn't think about protecting ourselves, we used Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp to spread messages. But this year, we see that freedom of speech is getting worse in Hong Kong," says Jackie, a 20-year-old student leader.

A broken relationship
Several people -- including students and teachers from Hong Kong's most prestigious institutions -- have been arrested, some of them from hospital where they were having injuries treated.
A 22-year-old who was identified as the administrator of a Telegram group sharing information about the protests was also arrested on "public nuisance" charges.
Jackie fears that, amid all this, student leaders involved in Wednesday's protests may be targeted because of their higher profile.
"I've been sleeping at my student union office because I'm afraid of being detained if I go home," she says.
This is typical of a more broken relationship with law and order officials, and compared to earlier protests, these activists have diminished faith in police.
On Thursday, rumours circulated that police intended to search student bedrooms at a dormitory at the University of Hong Kong , where two residents had been arrested the previous day.

Image Copyright @HongKongFP@HONGKONGFP

Amid the panic, students quickly called local legislators and lawyers, who surrounded the building -- although ultimately, no police entered the hall.
Dan says police actions during the Occupy protests -- where a number of police were jailed for beating up a protester -- had also damaged his trust.
"Before that, I believed police were supposed to be law abiding and help citizens… now, I realise that some police may let their personal emotions get the better of them."Dozens were injured in Wednesday's clashes, including 12 police officers

These students and young workers seem more willing to defy public assembly laws, and risk arrest for a cause, than previous generations of protesters.
They argue they have more to fight for, as they have come of age in a more precarious political environment.
Tom, 20, helped manage supplies during Wednesday's protest, and says he's an activist because of "the era I'm growing up in".
His generation grew up experiencing witnessing political rows, such as plans in 2012 to make children take Chinese "patriotism" classes, that critics said would "brainwash" students and gloss over the Chinese government's human rights abuses.

How Hong Kong demonstrators organised protests

"I've seen government policies and moves to suppress the freedoms we have grown up with -- and it makes me feel strongly that I don't want Hong Kong to lose its core rule of law and freedoms."
Other young people have complained about government policies, including the recent introduction of a law punishing those who disrespect the Chinese national anthem, the disqualification of pro-democracy and pro-independence legislators, and the jailing of a pro-independence activist.
The Occupy protests have left a clear -- if complicated -- legacy for today's protesters.
Many of Wednesday's protesters were too young to take part in 2014's protests -- but see them as both an inspiration and a lesson learned.
Ben, 20, says his parents did not let him join the Occupy protests.
But now, as a university student, he takes a leading role organising protests and legal support for students at risk of arrest.University students Ben and Tom helped the protesters with supplies and legal advice

He describes the 2014 protests as a "failure" -- as the protesters were split over their goals, including what sort of "universal suffrage" would be acceptable.
But this time, there is a crucial difference -- because protesters are not demanding more democracy, but fighting to keep what rights Hong Kong currently has.
There is a greater incentive to stay united, because protesters are "fighting to make sure we don't lose our existing freedoms", he says.
The Occupy protests spurred more young people to get involved in student politics and gave them the confidence to claim the streets as their own.
Jackie, who helped run a first-aid station last Wednesday, describes them as her "political awakening".
"Previously I was not that involved in politics -- but the movement made me realise how important it is."
They also taught today's youth just how to prepare for standoffs with the police.
On one university campus, students stockpiled dozens of bags and cardboard boxes of medical supplies, such as inhalers for people affected by tear gas, and saline water to wash away pepper spray.
Students said many items had also been donated by members of the public.
This meant that they were a much more effective crowd on the Wednesday when things turned violent.Students bought and stockpiled inhalersThey also prepared large amounts of drinking water

What do their parents think of all this? 

It varies.
Ingrid, 21, joined Wednesday's protests after she finished work, helping to deliver first aid materials to the frontline.
She says her parents, who supported the police, kicked her out of the house after she went home -- although they let her return a few days later.
Meanwhile, Jackie "didn't dare" tell her parents and grandparents about her role organising the protests, but when they saw her on the news they were supportive and asked her to stay safe.
Of course, it would also be a mistake to treat these protests as purely a youth movement.
Leader Carrie Lam also came under pressure from several quarters, including from businesses groups, her church, and her alma mater.
St Francis Canossian College was among the hundreds of groups to issue a petition against the bill -- a significant move in Hong Kong where the top schools are considered highly prestigious, and alumni networks are influential and a source of pride.
One alumni who signed, 22-year-old Aubrey Tao, said Lam often quoted the school motto, and she hoped to show her that "as a Franciscan, you shouldn't rule in this way".Aubrey Tao, who did not attend Wednesday's protest, says the bill rekindled her concern for politics

But it was the unauthorised, youth-led demonstrators on Wednesday -- and their ability to camp out in numbers, organise and force the police hand -- which many see as a critical factor in forcing the government to stop and pause.
The wider population could easily have condemned the students -- as they have done with previous protests that turned violent.
But it seems this time, they felt the police went too far.
During clashes, riot police responded with rubber bullets, beanbag shots and 150 canisters of tear gas -- more than was used during the entire 79 days of the Umbrella protests.Police defended their approach, saying it was necessary to respond to the "riot", and that protesters had attacked officers with bricks and iron poles.
Some protesters who spoke to the BBC also confirmed they saw water bottles, or sticks, being thrown at police by others.
Nonetheless, the sight of young protesters being pepper sprayed and facing large amounts of tear gas still left many angry at the authorities -- and at Lam, who had defended the police.Organisers say 6,000 people took part in a "mother's rally" on Friday

In one viral video, a middle aged woman was seen screaming at police officers, reminding them "you are going to be dads in the future".
Following the clashes, church groups went to join the protesters on the streets, singing "Hallelujah" to the police for hours.
And thousands of women gathered for a "mother's rally", holding placards with slogans such as "don't shoot our kids".
As the public mood intensified, former government officials began to speak out, urging Lam not to rush through the legislation at such a heated time.
Even some pro-Beijing lawmakers and officials started calling for a delay, admitting they had underestimated the public reaction to the bill -- a significant response in a legislature where only about half the seats are directly elected by the public, and pro-Beijing groups hold the balance of power.Protesters have called on Carrie Lam to resign

It's not clear where Hong Kong goes next -- Lam announced on Saturday that the bill would be paused, but even more people took to the streets on Sunday, demanding it be withdrawn entirely.
Some at Sunday's rally were protesting for the first time, saying they had come out to take a stand against police violence, and show their support for the young protesters.
What is clear is that the events have changed perceptions of protests in Hong Kong.Journalists accused the police of being heavy handed to the press -- and wore their riot gear at a briefing in protest.

Tom says the anti-extradition movement "broke through the past 30 years of protest traditions".
"We never would have thought before that singing hymns in front of police for hours, mothers gathering for a protest, or reporters wearing their riot gear in a silent protest, would have worked."
Ingrid, who says she was tear gassed for the first time in her life on Wednesday, described the experience as agonising.
"It stung, I couldn't see -- and I was in a dress and boots. I didn't know that water reacts with the itchiness -- so when I took a shower I actually felt like I was in hell, it was scalding. I never want to hear that popping sound [of a gas canister] again."
And yet, she said she would keep protesting.
"My concern for how this city I call home will turn out far outweighs my fears for my personal safety."

Chinese Cyberattack Hits Telegram, App Used by Hong Kong Protesters

By Paul Mozur and Alexandra Stevenson

The police used tear gas as protesters came closer to the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong on Wednesday. Protesters used the app Telegram to organize, but the police were watching.

SHANGHAI — As protesters in Hong Kong retreated from police lines in the heart of the city’s business district, a new assault quietly began.
It was not aimed at the protesters. 

It was aimed at their phones.
A network of computers in China bombarded Telegram, a secure messaging app used by many of the protesters, with a huge volume of traffic that disrupted service. 

The app’s founder, Pavel Durov, said the attack coincided with the Hong Kong protests, a phenomenon that Telegram had seen before.
“This case was not an exception,” he wrote.
The Hong Kong police made their own move to limit digital communications. 

On Tuesday night, as demonstrators gathered near Hong Kong’s legislative building, the authorities arrested the administrator of a Telegram chat group with 20,000 members, even though he was at his home miles from the protest site.
“I never thought that just speaking on the internet, just sharing information, could be regarded as a speech crime,” the chat leader, Ivan Ip, 22, said in an interview.
“I only slept four hours after I got out on bail,” he said. 

“I’m scared that they will show up again and arrest me again. This feeling of terror has been planted in my heart. My parents and 70-year-old grandma who live with me are also scared.”
Past the tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray, the Hong Kong protests are also unfolding on a largely invisible, digital front. 

Protesters and police officers alike have brought a new technological savvy to the standoff.
Demonstrators are using today’s networking tools to muster their ranks, share safety tips and organize caches of food and water, even as they take steps to hide their identities.
The Hong Kong authorities are responding by tracking the protesters in the digital places where they plan their moves, suggesting they are taking cues from the ways China polices the internet.

Demonstrators on Tuesday night outside the Hong Kong government complex.

In mainland China, security forces track chat messages, arrest dissidents before protests even occur, and are increasingly detaining people over posts critical of the government. 

The Hong Kong police have visited the mainland at times looking at ways of stopping "terrorism".
“We know the government is using all kinds of data and trails to charge people later on,” said Lokman Tsui, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Protesters used some of the same tools to organize in 2014, when the Occupy Central demonstration shut down parts of the city for more than two months. 

But their caution shows a growing awareness that the new digital tools can be a liability as well as an asset.
The police during the Occupy protests used digital messages to justify the arrest of a 23-year-old man, saying he used an online forum to get others to join in. 

One message that then spread over the WhatsApp chat service included malware, disguised as an app, that appeared to be for eavesdropping on Occupy organizers. 

Researchers said the malware came from China’s government.
“People are minimizing their footprints as much as possible,” Dr. Tsui said. 

“In that regard, it’s very different from five years ago. People are much more conscious and savvy about it.”
This week’s protests were sparked by the Hong Kong government’s plans to enact a new law that would allow people in the city to be extradited to mainland China, where the court system is closed from public scrutiny and tightly controlled by the Communist Party. 

On Thursday, city officials delayed plans to consider the legislation.
Telegram said on its Twitter account that it was able to stabilize its services shortly after the attack began. 

It described the heavy traffic as a DDoS attack, in which servers are overrun with requests from a coordinated network of computers. 

In his tweet, Mr. Durov said the attack’s scale was consistent with a state actor.
Beijing has been blamed in the past for attacks that silence political speech outside mainland China’s borders. 

In 2014, an informal online referendum about Hong Kong’s political future drew what at that time was one of the largest such attacks in history. 

A separate cyberattack in 2015 hijacked traffic from Baidu, the Chinese search engine, to overload a website hosting copies of services blocked in China, like Google, the BBC, and The New York Times.

In Hong Kong, the authorities focused on Mr. Ip, the chat room organizer, whom they saw as a ringleader. 

He said that the police arrived at his door with a warrant around 8 p.m. 

More than 10 officers demanded he unlock his phone, explaining that they were searching for extremists in the chat groups he administered.

Police officers stopped and searched people on Tuesday night ahead of planned protests.

At first he refused, but when they threatened to use a device to break into his Xiaomi 6 smartphone, he relented and entered the password. 

They then downloaded his chat records.
The officers searched his apartment, where he lives with his parents, but backed down after the parents complained that they were searching through things that were not his, he said. 

The police officers implied that they had found him based on his phone number, which was linked to his identification.
While Telegram conversations can be encrypted, the service does not have end-to-end encryption for its group chats, said Dr. Tsui, the communications professor. 

After Mr. Ip was arrested, groups distributed warnings to use new pay-as-you-go SIM cards or register foreign numbers online to join groups.
In a statement, the Hong Kong police’s Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau said he had been arrested because he was suspected of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. 

He was released on bail, but the police said an investigation was continuing. 

Mr. Ip said he had not attended any protests this week.
Many of the protesters are college-aged and digitally savvy. 

They took pains to keep from being photographed or digitally tracked. 

To go to and from the protests, many stood in lines to buy single-ride subway tickets instead of using their digital payment cards, which can be tracked. 

Some confronting the police covered their faces with hats and masks, giving them anonymity as well as some protection from tear gas.
On Wednesday, several protesters shouted at bystanders taking photos and selfies, asking those who were not wearing press passes to take pictures only of people wearing masks. 

Later, a scuffle broke out between protesters and bystanders who were taking photos on a bridge over the main protest area.
For some, the most flagrant symbol of defiance came from showing one’s face.
On Wednesday, as demonstrators prepared for a potential charge by the police, a drone flew overhead. 

The protesters warned one another about photos from above, but Anson Chan, a 21-year-old recent college graduate, said she was unconcerned about leaving her face exposed, potentially revealing her identity.
Ms. Chan said she felt compelled to join the protests out of concern about the proposed law.
“Once people get taken to China, they can’t speak for themselves,” said Ms. Chan, who had traveled nearly two hours from Lok Ma Chau in northern Hong Kong to show support and hand out supplies after seeing scenes of violence on the news.
The mainland’s restrictions were on the minds of many.
“The bottom line is whether to trust Beijing,” said Dr. Tsui, the communications professor. 

“This is a government that routinely lies to its own citizens, that censors information, that doesn’t trust its own citizens. You can’t ask us to trust you if you don’t trust us.”
“These kids that are out there, all the young people, they’re smart,” he added. 

“They know not to trust Beijing.”