'I Absolutely Will Not Back Down.'

Meet the Young People at the Heart of Hong Kong's Revolution
By Laignee Barron

Photographs by Adam Ferguson

“Only when there is chaos in society does the government pay some attention to our demands. I think that all police are the same. Maybe I hate them too much, but I think that whatever protesters do, whether they slash their necks or whatever, I think there’s no problem.” — Jane, 21

At 15 years old, Yannus is too young to drive a car, buy a beer or donate blood. 

But he says he is willing to give his life in the “final battle” for Hong Kong.
“Maybe I will die for this movement,” he says, at the edge of one of the pitched battles that demonstrations have frequently become over the past eight months. 

As protesters beside him pour Molotov cocktails, the teenager straps on a motorcycle helmet to hide his face from cameras and facial-recognition software. 

Like every protester TIME spoke with, Yannus gave a pseudonym out of concern for his safety. 

But in his pocket he keeps a handwritten will, addressed to his parents and friends. 

“I’m ready,” he says, tapping it.

“We front liners are just a group of students, born in Hong Kong. We have no training or professional knowledge. I won’t reveal how much I’ve escalated my use of violence, or any future plans, but I absolutely will not back down.” — Sylvia, 23 

Young people around the world, in the Middle East and Latin America and beyond, are railing against sclerotic regimes, economic frustrations and backsliding democracy. 

In Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous enclave of China with liberal traditions, the protesters are seeking to “reclaim” their city from authoritarianism. 

At the movement’s core are high school and university students who cast themselves as urban street fighters, willing to gamble away their futures if it helps preserve their home.
When marchers first took to the streets in June, they had one goal: the withdrawal of a proposed bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. 

The legislation was eventually scrapped, but the demands broadened amid growing fears that Beijing is eroding the unique freedoms — of press, assembly, speech — that differentiate this cosmopolitan hub of 7.5 million from the rest of China. 

The endgame remains murky, with no consensus among protesters over whether to ultimately seek independence, universal suffrage or some other semblance of greater autonomy. 

For now, they have rallied around a common enemy.

"I join demonstrations, but I don’t stand in the front line. I mostly do backup and raise awareness. I’ve organized a lot of activities at school, such as a class boycott. We’ve organized film screenings and talks, hoping to politically enlighten the younger students." — Boris, 16

"My father and mother are opposed to me going to the protests. They don’t want me to protest — they call it rioting. Every time I go, I need to hide myself. [My father] doesn’t know I’m on the streets." — Jeff, 15

November brought not a climax but a crescendo, when police besieged two university campuses where protesters had barricaded themselves with stockpiled weapons, including bows, arrows and meat cleavers. 

In daring escapes, students abseiled down multi-story buildings to waiting motorcyclists or swam out through sewers. 

The standoff gave way to relative calm during local elections on Nov. 24 in which pro-democracy candidates won a landslide.
But the rallies continue, intermittent and vast. 

Organizers contend 1 million gathered on New Year’s Day to show anger at the police’s handling of the unrest. 

The city’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, conceded on Jan. 7 that protest violence will persist this year.

"I've tasted tear gas. I've been hit by a rubber bullet. I set roadblocks. No one taught me, I just saw people do it and I tried to help. I feel nervous. I can’t be scared, though, because I stand in the front lines and people stand behind me. I need to protect them. Some of them are younger than me." — Zita, 16

To end the upheaval, the city’s government has two options, says Andrew Junker, a sociologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

Either they can “arrest their way out of it,” he says, or they can give in to some of the protest demands, like a formal investigation into police brutality. 

Without political concessions, he warns, insurgency “is the logical outcome.”
Many of Hong Kong’s young combatants already say they would rather be martyrs than inmates, especially when convictions for offenses such as arson can lead to life sentences in prison. 

“I would rather die than be arrested,” says Calvin, 21. 

“If I die, at least the fury would sustain this movement.”

"I study public administration. Initially I considered joining the government — to change them by becoming part of them. But that’s too naïve. We have to do something outside the system like we’re doing now. If we join the system, there will only be two outcomes. Firstly, I will be destroyed by the system. Secondly, nothing happens and I am assisting the system, helping it to become worse." — Matthew, 22

"At the start of the movement, I was a peaceful protester. But after one million, two million people marched on the streets and the government didn’t respond, I decided to join the camp of more radical protesters. We won’t give up because we have already started on this path of no return. We believe that we cannot lose this time." — Kelvin, 20

Calvin considers himself part of Hong Kong’s so-called chosen generation, poised to collide with an increasingly assertive Beijing. 

Born around the time the U.K. ceded control of its colony in 1997, this Hong Kong generation barely identifies with the world’s ascendant superpower, mostly seeing it as a threat to their way of life. Beijing agreed to maintain Hong Kong’s separate legal and political systems only until 2047. 

Those who expect to be in late middle age by then fear they have the most to lose if the freewheeling city fails to preserve its autonomy.
On top of that, Hong Kong is one of the world’s most expensive cities, where economic inequality is starkly visible, luxury apartments towering over “coffin” homes made up of tiny subdivided cubicles. Like others of their generation around the world, they endure a “precarious status,” says Edmund Cheng, a political scientist at the City University of Hong Kong, “meaning uncertainty in the future in terms of job prospects and in terms of social mobility.” 

Cheng says young Hong Kongers have found both a collective identity and a sense of purpose on the protest front lines.

"My family thought I was a peaceful guy, marching. Then I told them that I was going to the front line. Since then, they worry about me." — King, 17. "My parents don’t know we’re dating. They are supportive of the protests, but they’re worried about my safety, even if it’s a peaceful rally." — Ceci, 17

But in their quest to safeguard their city, they have plunged a thriving metropolis into chaos. 

In the past, the pro-democracy uprisings mostly consisted of marches so orderly that after candlelight vigils, citizens stayed to scrape wax. 

Now, high-traffic neighborhoods denser than Manhattan have become scenes of bloody, fast-moving battles.
At protests, violent confrontations routinely unfold as crowds thin and stroller-pushing families and older couples retreat. 

Masked agitators coordinate anonymously via encrypted messaging apps. 

Dressed in black and donning Guy Fawkes masks, they smash streetlights, burn train stations and vandalize stores they deem pro-Beijing. 

Some adopt tactical positions: “Firefighters” extinguish smoking gas canisters, while “fire magicians” pitch Molotov cocktails. 

“Chargeboys” have bloody welts from rushing police. 

“We are not scared of dying,” goes one typical chant.

"As a medical student, providing first aid is something I can do to help. The worst injury I had to treat was a protester who got hit in the head with a tear-gas submunition. Her whole head was bleeding, and she was coughing up blood." — July, 23
"It is scary to be on the front lines, but that’s not going to stop me from protecting the people behind me, from protecting Hong Kong. Even though I wasn’t born until after 1997, I can see with my own eyes that Hong Kong is sinking. It is moving backwards." — Ben, 20

Protesters have grown more radical, authorities more repressive, and the middle ground is vanishing. Retail outlets now identify as “yellow” (pro-protests) or “blue” (pro-authorities), and people vote accordingly with their wallets. 

Police have seized weapons caches and defused several homemade bombs, including two found on school grounds. 

A man critical of the protesters was set alight in November, while police have shot three protesters with live ammunition, nonfatally. 

There have been two protest-related deaths: a university student who fell from height during clashes with police, and an elderly cleaner struck by a brick lobbed by a demonstrator.
Among the dozens of protesters interviewed by TIME for this story, there is widespread certainty that escalation is the only way to confront Beijing. 

The nonviolent Umbrella Movement of 2014 failed to achieve its goals of electoral reform, and today’s generation of protesters is unwilling to abide by red lines. 

“Some people might say we have to kill a police officer,” says M., who asked to be identified only by her initial. 

“I would not stop them.”
Even veteran pro-democracy activists are loath to condemn violence and have credited the front liners, or “the braves” as they are called in Cantonese, with forcing the government to backtrack on the extradition bill. 

And while protest fatigue has set in, public opinion remains largely unified against the government. “The middle and the professional classes are furious at the government and are furious [that] they have been losing economic power for the last 15 years,” says Junker.

"I joined the front line at the end of September. A lot of us have been arrested. Being arrested is not that scary. I am just worried what will happen if we lose this protest ... I really love this place. It has loved me for 19 years, and if it takes me 10 years in prison to save Hong Kong, then I am willing to do this." — Edison, 19

Further concessions appear unlikely, however. 

Instead of acceding to political demands, Beijing has appointed a new director of the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong to act as enforcer. 

Since June, nearly 7,000 people have been arrested, more than 1,000 under the age of 18. 

The next generation of Hong Kongers are already mobilizing to join the fight, with 12-year-olds spotted on the front lines and elementary school students staging strikes and singing the protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong.”“If they keep arresting us until no one is left on the streets, then the activity will go underground,” says Sabrina, a 19-year-old student. 

Behind her, on a highway divider near Victoria Park, a line of graffiti spells out the front liners’ ultimatum: Freedom or Death. 

“There will be no telling,” she says, flashing a smile, “when we will come back out and strike again.”

China’s long surveillance arm thrusts into Canada

State intimidation and electronic surveillance can be highly effective. It's affecting China's 180,000 students in Canada, as well as journalists.
By DOUGLAS TODD 

Tibetan Chemi Lhamo, student-union president at the University of Toronto, was barraged with a 11,000-name petition from people with Chinese names, demanding she be removed. Police are also investigating possible criminal threats against her.

What does a superpower do when pandas, private persuasion at the highest echelons and trumpeting the value of “harmony” are no longer winning global friends?
If you’re the leaders of increasingly autocratic China, you clamp down, especially on your own people. 

You spread an evermore elaborate system of surveillance, monitoring and pressure on citizens in your home country and in foreign lands.
You press your overseas contingent, including Chinese students you have in Canada, to attack disapproving speakers. 

You suddenly toss two Canadians in secret isolation cells in China and, this week, accuse them of spying. 

And then you dismiss Canadians as “white supremacists” if they get riled or defend the lawful arrest and bail of a Huawai executive in Vancouver.
Back home, you develop an invasive mobile phone app and make sure its downloaded by most of the 90 million members of your ruling Communist party. 

You take DNA samples from millions of the Uyghur Muslims in China, because genetics can be used to track their moves. 

You bully Chinese journalists at home and abroad.
And it works.
State intimidation and electronic surveillance can be highly effective, no matter which regime brings it into oppressive play.
It’s not just China. 

Often times in Canada it is global agents of Iran’s regime, who spy on the anxious Persian diaspora in this country. 

And this year Saudi Arabia expanded its watching game with a high-tech app by which male guardians could track the movement of Saudi women abroad.
When people know, or fear, they are being watched through technology or by clandestine agents of the state, they understandably grow nervous — and compliant.
The only hope is this culture of watchfulness doesn’t always work. 

A University of B.C. professor who specializes in Asia tells me how an apparent culture of subjugation is playing out on campus.
The majority of the many students from China that the professor comes across are self-censoring.
They don’t go to possibly contentious events about China. 

They don’t speak out in classes. 

A few patriotic ones feel it’s their duty to criticize the professor for exposing them to material that does not hold the world’s most populous country in a positive light. 

A few very privately offer the faculty member their thanks for the chance to hear the truth.
“Mostly, however, I find my undergrads in particular to be profoundly uninterested in politics and proud of their country’s rise,” said the professor, who, like many academic specialists on China these days, spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Metro Vancouver campuses host almost 50,000 of the more than 180,000 students from China in Canada.
Mandarin-language students in Canada are “the major beneficiaries of the rise” of China, said the professor. 

“They don’t want to rock the boat and the more aware ones are discreet about their critiques. They have decided to tread carefully, which suggests a consciousness that they could be under surveillance.”
If that is the look-over-your-shoulder reality for students from China in B.C., imagine how it is for those on some American and Ontario campuses, which have had high-profile outbreaks of angry pro-China activism.
National Post reporter Tom Blackwell has covered China’s recent interference in Canadian affairs. He’s dug into how University of Toronto student president Chemi Lhamo was barraged with a 11,000-name petition from people with Chinese names, demanding she be removed. 

A Canadian citizen with origins in Tibet, which China dominates, Lhamo was also targeted by hundreds of nasty texts, which Toronto police are investigating as possibly criminal threats.
A similar confrontation occurred in February at McMaster University in Hamilton, where five Chinese student groups protested the university’s decision to give a platform to a Canadian citizen of Muslim Uyghur background. 

Rukiye Turdush had described China’s well-documented human-rights abuses against more than a million Uyghurs in the vast colony of East Turkestan.
The harassment is escalating. 

Even longtime champions of trade and investment in Canada from China and its well-off migrants are taken aback. 

Ng Weng Hoong, a commentator on the Asian-Pacific energy industry, is normally a vociferous critic of B.C.’s foreign house buyer tax and other manifestations of Canadian sovereignty.
But Ng admitted in a recent piece in SupChina, a digital media outlet, that Chinese protesters’ in Ontario “could shift Canadians’ attitude toward China to one of outright disdain and anger at what they see is the growing threat of Chinese influence in their country.”
It certainly didn’t help, Ng notes, that the Chinese embassy in Ottawa supported the aggressive protesters. 

“The story of Chinese students’ silencing free speech and undermining democracy in Canada,” Ng said, “will only fuel this explosive mix of accusations.”
Some of the growing mistrust among Canadians and others has emerged from multiplying reports of propaganda and surveillance in China.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping is attempting to control followers through a dazzling new app, with which China’s Communist Party members are expected to actively engage. 

The New York Times is reporting China has been swabbing millions of Uyghur Muslims for their DNA, the genetic samples being used to track down those not already sent to “re-education” camps.
China’s pressure tactics are also coming down on journalists. 

The Economist reports students from China trying to enroll in Hong Kong’s journalism school are being warned against it by their fearful parents. 

They’re begging their offspring to shun a truth-seeking career that would lead to exposing wrongdoing in China, which could result in grim reprisals against the entire family.
Within the Canadian media realm there are also growing private reports that Mandarin-language Chinese journalists at various news outlets across this country are being called into meetings with China’s officials, leading some Chinese reporters to ask editors to remove their bylines from stories about the People’s Republic of China and its many overseas investors.
It’s always wise to be wary of superpowers. 

But China’s actions are cranking suspicion up to new levels. 

China’s surveillance tactics are making it almost impossible for that country to develop soft power with any appeal at all.
While some observers say many of the people of China are primed for more reform, openness and media freedom, it’s clear the leaders of China have in the past year been going only backwards, intent on more scrutiny and repression.

The big thief who cries thief

China Accuses Taiwan of Using Students for Espionage

By Sui-Lee Wee and Chris Horton

Beijing is hostile toward President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, whose party is skeptical of closer ties to China.

BEIJING — China has accused intelligence agencies in Taiwan of targeting mainland students on the island, drawing accusations of hypocrisy from Taipei as it investigates espionage by Beijing.
The accusations against Taiwan were first made on Saturday by the state broadcaster China Central Television, and at least six other news outlets followed with reports on Sunday and Monday. 

They included The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid owned by the Communist Party’s official newspaper.
The reports cited cases from as far back as 2011, and said that in addition to students, a hotel employee and a driver for a travel agency had been targeted to provide information.
The news reports come at a time of increased Chinese pressure on Taiwan, which China’s communist government has never ruled but claims as part of its territory. 

Taiwan is scheduled to hold local elections in November, which will weigh reactions to the first two years of President Tsai Ing-wen’s leadership.
Beijing is hostile toward Ms. Tsai, whose party is skeptical of closer ties with China, and it has stepped up pressure on the island since she took office, increasing its military activities near Taiwanese waters and airspace, and poaching some of Taiwan’s few remaining allies.
In a statement on Sunday, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which handles cross-strait policy, blasted China’s accusations as hypocritical.
“Aside from strengthening its internal control requirements,” the statement said, China “has also continually extended espionage activities beyond its borders.”
“Taiwan calls on China to rein itself in from this precipice as quickly as it can,” it added, “otherwise it will produce an even more unfavorable impact on cross-strait relations.”
For seven decades, Beijing has sought to absorb Taiwan, where Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government fled after losing the Chinese civil war. 

It has not renounced the use of force to achieve this goal. 

Few in Taiwan are in favor of unification with China, which would in theory be under a “one country, two systems” arrangement similar to the one in Hong Kong, where the influence of the central government in Beijing is eroding local semiautonomy.
“Due to the presence of ‘Taiwan independence’ forces on the island, the Taiwan authorities have increased the number of spies that they have dispatched to the mainland, and their activities have become more frequent and arrogant,” The Global Times article said. 

“This makes our enemy situation on the hidden front more serious and the anti-espionage task more arduous.”
The article also said the United States had “repeatedly tried to clash with the mainland’s red line on the Taiwan issue, which may further destabilize the Taiwan straits.”
With relations between the United States and Taiwan improving under the Presidents Trump and Tsai administrations, the Chinese state news media has increased its attacks on Taipei, declaring that Beijing would go to war over the island.
Ms. Tsai briefly stopped in Houston and Los Angeles in August, despite vehement opposition from China, and received a warmer reception than previous leaders of Taiwan had.
In a statement on Sunday, An Fengshan, spokesman for China’s Taiwan affairs office, said that Chinese national security organs had started cracking down on "possible" espionage by Taiwan.
China-Taiwan relations had improved under the previous administration in Taipei, and educational exchanges progressively increased. 

Beginning in 2008, students from designated parts of China were allowed to study in Taiwan for up to a year, up from four months. 

A 2010 law then allowed Chinese undergraduates to pursue degrees in Taiwan, after the island provided some safeguards.
The number of nondegree-seeking Chinese students in Taiwan grew to 34,114 in 2015 from 823 in 2007, according to the Ministry of Education in Taipei. 

The number of Chinese studying for degrees rose to 7,813 in 2015 from 928 in 2011, the first year they were allowed to go to Taiwan.
In comparison, the number of students from Taiwan attending universities in mainland China was 10,536 in 2015, China Daily reported, citing Ministry of Education figures.
But China suspended official contact with Taiwan in 2016 over Ms. Tsai’s refusal to recognize the “one-China” principle, and last year Beijing halved the number of students allowed to study in Taiwan.
The Global Times, citing an unidentified national security official, said that students in the fields of politics, economics or national defense were the most frequent targets of Taiwan’s spies, in the hope that they would gain important positions in mainland China with access to confidential files.
The article identified and published the photographs of three people it said were Taiwanese spies, two of whom it claimed worked for Taiwan’s military intelligence bureau. 

It said they had befriended students before asking them to provide sensitive information from the mainland.
One of them initiated a sexual relationship, the article said, while another helped a student find people to interview for his thesis. 

A third entertained a political science student and her friends.
The article did not say if any of the three had been arrested.
In its statement on Sunday, the Mainland Affairs Council questioned the credibility of the Chinese accusations.
“How could average exchange students possess confidential materials and intelligence,” it asked, “and what would an intelligence officer gain from setting a honey trap for them?”
The governments of China and Taiwan have spied on each other regularly since 1949. 

Taiwan is investigating recent allegations of Chinese espionage on its territory, with two high-profile cases involving fringe pro-unification parties.
Three members of the New Party, including its spokesman, Wang Ping-chung, were indicted in June on charges of violating Taiwan’s National Security Act. 

Prosecutors said they had found evidence that the party had received money from China and that the three had engaged in espionage activities.
That case stemmed from the espionage conviction of a mainland Chinese man who had graduated from a university in Taiwan.
In a separate case, last month investigators in Taiwan raided the residence of Chang An-lo, head of the China Unification Promotion Party. 

Chang, a former leader of one of Taiwan’s main organized crime groups, is accused of receiving illegal funds from China for his party, whose members have attacked pro-independence youth here, as well as from practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that is banned in China.
Chang said he had made money by doing business in China and denied receiving funds from Beijing.
The People’s Daily said the government would give 500,000 renminbi, or $73,000, to informants providing information on spies.
The Global Times, citing an unidentified national security official, said that China would be lenient with students who pleaded guilty and repented. 

The official urged students to be vigilant and to refuse any “free lunch.”