Politics may be a long and drawn-out process, but for the ongoing peaceful occupation of Hong Kong’s Central district, every changing minute counts.
The Occupy Central protest has not, as originally planned, managed to mobilize the public to block traffic and occupy the financial Central district in the hope of attracting international attention and forcing the Hong Kong government and Beijing to compromise and agree to political reform.
Instead, to everyone’s surprise, civil disobedience began early one morning after clashes between police and protesters outside the government offices and the Legislative Council in the Admiralty district. The Occupy Central protests, then, have in effect become the Occupy Admiralty protest, and it has expanded into the Mong Kok and Causeway Bay districts.
This, the most intense protest in Hong Kong since 1997, will have a significant long-term effect, on numbers of participants and the level and mode of protests, as well as on the economy and political culture in Hong Kong.
As a result of pressure from Beijing and the Hong Kong government’s attempts to procrastinate and divide the territory, protesters have had to discuss whether or not to end the protests. The main organizers have called on protesters to “adjust the level of participation” and return to their daily jobs, and the site of the protests is rife with debate over whether to remain or go home. The fact is that there are still many issues that need to be addressed in connection to this civil disobedience protest.
First there is the most crucial issue: Have the protests been successful? From the perspective of the student alliance that has been leading the protest, ending it without having obtained any promises regarding popular nomination rights or a timetable for political reform would be a failure.
From the perspective of democratic development and changes to the political culture, the protest has aroused local and civic awareness among a generation of Hong Kongers, and this will have positive and far-reaching effects. Democracy cannot be implemented overnight and the answer to the question changes with the perspective of the observer, but it is an undeniable fact that no concrete results have been achieved.
Second, how should this civil disobedience movement be defined? From the beginning, the Occupy Central protest diverged from the plans of the organizers when it comes to the time, place, kind, scope and character of the protest. The label given to it by international media is “Umbrella revolution,” although there is widespread disagreement among participants. The differences between their attitudes and strategy can be seen by looking at Admiralty, where the name “Umbrella movement” is used and where protesters try to create a more orderly and peaceful protest, while in Mong Kok, which has seen several clashes between protesters and people opposed to the Occupy Central movement, the slogans “People decide for themselves” and “Umbrella Revolution” are ubiquitous. The difference in definition will affect how people approach the idea of ending the protest and which decision they will reach.
Third, no protest can go on forever. If the protest must come to an end, how is the movement’s spirit and strength to be perpetuated? Due to systemic and structural limitations, such as the functional constituencies and the separate voting system, it became clear long ago that democratic reform cannot be initiated through Legislative Council politics.
Some people say that now is the time to quit and that they will step up to the plate again “next time,” but given the current stalemate, the “next time” argument does not seem very persuasive to protesters. Starting a “non-cooperation movement” by integrating boycotts and disobedience into everyday life is one possibility, but only time will show if this approach creates a greater response in the short term than the student strike did.
Finally, what can be learned from the Occupy Central movement? Unexpectedly, the Occupy Central organizers lost effective organizational control and leadership at the very outset of the protest, although this did not prevent it from creating an enthusiastic response among students and residents in general. As leadership shifted to student leaders, more forceful and direct government suppression was avoided, and it also attracted sympathy from the general public.
Although coordination and decisionmaking has sometimes been chaotic and vacillating, the maintenance of order emerged spontaneously within the different occupied districts, and this has helped defeat false accusations aimed at the protest. Occupy Central has broken the past pattern of Hong Kong’s democracy movement — gather, march, shout slogans, go home — by bravely trying a more radical strategy, although sometimes the price for doing so will be illegal protests.
Over the past month, the Occupy Central protest has held up a mirror showing Hong Kong’s unfair and distorted system, and the ugly faces of politicians catering to the rich and powerful.
It has also tested everyone’s conscience and reminded pessimistic observers of democratic developments in Hong Kong — including me — that we should remain hopeful for the future and not fear the end of the protest.
Jackson Yeh is a visiting lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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