Protests against a controversial extradition bill in Hong Kong that began on June 9 have evolved over 49 days into something more. Annie Zhang, the founder of social media platform “Matters” and former chief executive editor of Hong Kong-based Initium Media, analyzes why the protests in Hong Kong have changed in focus and where they may be heading.

(This is part two of Annie Zhang’s essay Hong Kong: A City on the Brink)

4. Be Water

Early on, the Los Angeles Times compared the Hong Kong anti-extradition protests to a machine or self-learning AI similar to a colony of ants or bees, that depends on all participants openly learning and collaborating with each other. Hong Kongers have embraced this sentiment with a Bruce Lee saying: Be Water.

On an American talk show in 1971, the martial arts film star described the power of water:

"Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

June 21 represented a pivotal moment in the movement as protesters surrounded Hong Kong Police Headquarters. At the start of the day, the phrase “be water,” which had been occasionally mentioned online, was transferred to the protest site as a reminder to the demonstrators and has since been used by more Hong Kongers as a slogan or hashtag to describe the movement.

On that day, tens of thousands of demonstrators surrounded the police headquarters in Wan Chai – unprecedented in Hong Kong’s history – to express their anger over the police department’s excessive use of force against protesters and suspected abuse of power.

With the police and the demonstrators on edge, pro-democracy councilors, social workers and priests all tried to mediate out of fear that bloody clashes could erupt, knowing full well that an attack on the headquarters would draw more than just tear gas or rubber bullets.

Amazingly, despite the surging anger and emotions at the site, the young, masked protesters bandied around the message: “We can stay. We can leave. But we cannot charge; be water.”

To make sure that everybody in the tightly packed crowd was on the same page and getting the same information, they devised hand signals to convey specific messages, such as people in front needing facial masks, eye masks and water or telling people in back to sit down, rest, move back, or not push forward. At night, when clashes were most likely to erupt, the demonstrators decided to vote on whether to stick around or head home.

Although the vote never came off, participants abided by the principles of “Be Water” and dispersed like water. On July 1, when protesters occupied the Legislative Council, the same scene re-emerged. Masked demonstrators spent five to six hours breaking open the Legislative Council’s main door, but they quietly seeped away like water prior to the midnight deadline set by police to clear the venue. The four protesters who were unwilling to leave and wanted to “fight to the death” were pulled out by protesters who rushed back into the building to get them.

How did this all come about? Not only were people at the heart of the scene amazed, observers around the world also expressed surprise at the protesters’ flexibility.

On July 1 when protesters occupied the Legislative Council, they stuck to their “Be Water” principles and dispersed like water. (Source: GettyImages)

So when, according to Bruce Lee’s philosophy, can you ignore the cup and teapot and care only about water? That can only happen when you have total confidence in the water, and you know the water will not leave you behind. In terms of the movement, “Be Water” has emerged as a slogan because protesters have confidence that public opinion is behind them.

In fact, popular support for the anti-extradition movement has exceeded 60 percent from the beginning, underpinning the “Be Water” philosophy that has stood in stark contrast to the government’s clumsy, slow and rather weak responses to events.

5. Together We Stand/No One Left Behind

During the protest on June 16 that drew 2 million demonstrators, according to organizers, another slogan surfaced: “No One Left Behind.”

Protesters also changed from white to black shirts for the first time to commemorate the suicide of a member of the resistance movement – a 35-year-old named Marco Leung – in Admiralty a night earlier.

Wearing a yellow raincoat that symbolized democracy, 35-year-old Marco Leung stood on the edge of a work platform at a job site in Admiralty 10 stories above ground for five hours, having unfurled two banners against the proposed extradition legislation. One read “No Extradition to China” and the other smaller one said: “Complete withdrawal of the extradition bill. We are not rioters. Release the students and the injured. Carrie Lam step down. Help Hong Kong.”  

Despite efforts by the police, firefighters and lawmakers to talk Leung down, “Raincoat Man” as he has become known plunged to his death.

The last image of “raincoat man” Marco Leung, whose suicide was followed by other supporters of the movement taking their lives. These deaths led to the slogan “No One Left Behind.” (Source: Wikipedia)

Leung was the first person in the movement to commit suicide after clearly expressing political demands. As tensions in the city rose following his death, at least four other people took their lives after posting suicide notes referring to the movement’s demands on social networks.

Another participant, who got into an argument with family members after returning home from a protest, fell to his death from a tall building while drunk, but it could not be confirmed for sure whether he committed suicide. 

These five protesters who lost their lives cast a heavy shadow over the movement, stirring up both pessimism and outrage.

The rapid diffusion of information through social media made it impossible to contain the dissemination and discussion of the suicides within the framework of traditional news ethics, and in the second half of June, the feelings of pessimism and despair spread online.

                       

Psychological hotlines of major institutions were getting 20 to 30 calls a day for help, and people who had written online notes announcing they were committing suicide were discovered in pretty much every area. Professional social workers and netizens formed rescue teams of different sizes that rushed around to find people on the verge of taking their lives, persuade them to hang on and save them. “No one left behind” became a widely used catchphrase among movement participants both online and offline.   

The human toll has also injected even more steely outrage among front line activists. In undisclosed interviews, more than one of them has expressed a determination to fight to the death, saying: Some of our comrades in arms have already fallen, I will not give in. Whether bullets or riot offenses, I will not give in.     

That resolute attitude has intensified clashes on the front lines, making it harder for police to drive back or disperse protesters. Pepper spray, batons, and tear gas are less effective than initially and even standoffs with rubber bullets are lasting longer as the movement’s willingness to resist has been pushed to the extreme.

This explains the chanting of “together we stand” by protesters behind the front lines, symbolized by protesters forcibly removing the few activists who wanted to stay in the Legislative Council and fight to the death on July 1.

Since then, the unyielding will of people on the front lines combined with the strong desire for unity among other supporters represented by the slogan “together we stand, no one left behind” has embodied the movement’s mainstream spirit.

6. Liberate Hong Kong, the Revolution of our Times

By the end of July, the movement had reached an unprecedented level of tension.

In mid-July, I saw “Liberate Hong Kong, the Revolution of our Times” for the first time on a Lennon Wall in a tunnel in Tai Po in the New Territories, and my heart skipped a beat.

The demands of the anti-extradition bill movement have steadily evolved, and activists are now calling for a strong escalation in action and pushing for a revolution so that Hong Kong becomes a Hong Kong that belongs to Hong Kongers. (Source: GettyImages)

On the night of July 21 in Sheung Wan, when protesters surrounded China’s liaison office in Hong Kong and hurled eggs and ink-filled balloons at the building, police responded by firing 55 rounds of tear gas, 24 sponge rounds and five rounds of rubber bullets. As that happened, young, black-shirted protesters chanted: “Liberate Hong Kong, the Revolution of our Times.”

This was the slogan shouted by Hong Kong independence activist Edward Leung in February 2016 during civil unrest in Mongkok that led to violent clashes between police and local residents. Then 24 years old, Leung also used the slogan in his campaign for a Legislative Council seat in a by-election later that month.

His advocacy of “armed resistance” and “liberating Hong Kong” pinched two particularly sensitive nerves among mainstream Hong Kong society and the territory’s authorities: advocacy of the use of violence and support for Hong Kong independence from China.

These two appeals were both rejected by Hong Kong’s pan-democrat forces, which had traditionally called for non-violent protests and argued against cutting ties with China, to the point of even trying to help build a democratic China. Leung finished a distant third in the by-election, but he did pick up 66,000 votes, or about 15 percent of the total, mostly from younger voters. 

He and Hong Kong Indigenous, the localist group he represented, may have had many young supporters, but Leung came under heavy pressure politically in the following months. He was barred from running in the 2016 Legislative Council election and left Hong Kong Indigenous the next year. In June 2018, Hong Kong’s High Court convicted Leung of “assaulting a police officer” and “rioting” during the Mongkok unrest and sentenced him to six years in prison. He was immediately taken into custody.

In the second half of July, as the anti-extradition bill movement penetrated communities around Hong Kong, its spectrum broadened, and mainstream society gradually became more tolerant of “violence.” Growing numbers of young people evoked Edward Leung – this young, seemingly fleeting, political figure – and embraced his “liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of the times” slogan. It began to appear on Lennon Walls in Sha Tin and Tai Po, with the message “thank you Edward Leung” sometimes written next to it, and soon echoed at the movement’s most intense rallies.

Yet the complex undertone of this slogan can no longer be explained in the context of how Edward Leung used it a few years ago. Shouting the slogan now appears to be a call for a strong escalation in action and a revolution after weeks of protests failed to deliver results. This generation clearly wants Hong Kong to become a Hong Kong that belongs to Hong Kongers.

A well-known Cantonese term “lam chau” (攬炒) has also gained a following and provides another interpretation “liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times.” The term means jade and stone burning together, but an English translation offered on a Lennon Wall offers a more straightforward explanation: “If we burn, you burn with us.”

As these more fiery slogans and phrases replace the “Be Water,” “no blood,” and “no divisions” sentiments seen in previous weeks, many people sense that the movement will soon arrive at a critical juncture.

Entering a Dark Passage

Another sign that a tipping point may loom has come from China’s government and official media.

Around the third week in July, the Chinese propaganda machine sprang into action. Up until then, news from Hong Kong about the protests had generally been censored, but suddenly, distorted or outright false descriptions of what was happening in the territory were fed back to people on the mainland, inciting public hostility toward Hong Kong. That quickly triggered posts on the internet wondering why the People’s Liberation Army had not yet gotten involved.

The Xinhua News Agency and China’s foreign and defense ministries ramped up the anti-Hong Kong fervor to varying degrees with hardline positions and threats. In Hong Kong, unidentified forces began playing up violent events. The tarnishing of the emblem on China’s Hong Kong Liaison office stirred up the emotions of 1.4 billion Chinese while the indiscriminate attacks by gangsters at the Yuen Long MTR station the same day led to panic in Hong Kong. It would appear that the movement may very well be heading for darker days.

As with the escalation of the protesters’ rhetoric, these official acts did not occur in a vacuum. From June to July, the leaderless demonstrators developed an effective self-learning mechanism that enabled them to evolve, and the authorities’ script had to follow suit and evolve as well.

These “authorities,” of course, are comprised of more than just the Hong Kong government, which has not been making decisions independently since the protests erupted in June. Beijing may have been busy trying to figure out why its intelligence network, from Hong Kong’s government and pro-establishment camp to China’s Hong Kong and Macau infrastructure, failed to provide any warning of the problems, but it has also been directly monitoring Carrie Lam and helping her devise strategies.

Beijing is closely overseeing Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s actions and setting strategy. (Photo by Ming-Tang Huang/CW)

That process can be roughly broken down into five stages:

Stage 1: From June 9 to June 12, Carrie Lam’s administration tried to suppress the budding protests and ram the extradition bill amendments through the Legislative Council, but it completely misjudged public opinion and the movement’s departure from the organizational methods of the past. As a result the strategy failed and triggered an even bigger and more determined public opinion backlash.

Stage 2: On June 15, Lam made a concession for the first time, announcing that deliberation of the extradition legislation would be “suspended.” But having already missed the opportune time to offer a concession, the announcement not only failed to mollify public opinion but led to an even greater eruption. So this tactic also failed.

Stage 3: From June 16 to July 9, the Hong Kong government kept a low profile and generally remained aloof. Reports indicated that Beijing was collecting intelligence and devising a new strategy for the territory. In confronting the protests, the government did what it could not to respond to or ignore demonstrations, avoid conflicts and even try to let the protests get out of hand, hoping that would lead to a turnaround in public opinion. The siege of police headquarters on June 21 and the forced entry into the Legislative Council on July 1 both occurred during this period. But the protesters continued to abide by their “Be Water” philosophy and prevented any major clashes from erupting, keeping public opinion firmly on their side.     

Stage 4: In the wake of the July 1 occupation of LegCo, Lam made her second concession on July 9, seemingly to prevent greater harm from being done, announcing that the controversial legislation was “dead.” By this time, however, resentment over police brutality and pessimism and anger over the series of suicides had built up, and Lam’s rhetorical response to the demand for the bill to be withdrawn could not satisfy the protesters, ensuring that the momentum would steam ahead.

Stage 5: In the second half of July, China let loose its propaganda machine inciting hostility toward Hong Kong on the mainland. At the same time in Hong Kong, unidentified forces stepped up the violence. On July 21, the Yuen Long gangster attacks seemingly set off a dark passage for the movement, and on July 27, when protesters rallied in Yuen Long to express their indignation over the apparent collaboration between the police and organized crime, law enforcement authorities used force to clear the scene.

Has the government heard the people’s voices? (Photo by Ming-Tang Huang/CW)

A person familiar with how the authoritarian machine works was extremely concerned about the tactics described above. Based on how the script has developed so far, it could easily end up with Beijing saying “the movement is out of control, the Hong Kong government is ineffective, and China needs to get involved one way or the other.” At the very least, the hawks in Beijing are increasingly likely to be able to sell this solution, the person believes.

This is why, with the movement at a critical juncture, countless moderate social groups and pillars of society in different fields are speaking out and trying to promote reconciliation.

The script is the script, however, and history is history. All transcendent historical possibilities come down to human beings. We are still part of history, and there remain many ways to make our efforts felt.

Have you read?
♦ For Hong Kong, No Turning Back
♦ Hong Kong Violence Reveals True Face of One Country, Two Systems
♦ Will Taiwan Go the Way of Hong Kong?

Translated by Luke Sabatier
Edited by Sharon Tseng