Hong Kong at the Crossroads
| Author | Ka Po Ng |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/2041905819891371 |
DECEMBER 2019 • POLITICAL INSIGHT 29
On October 4 2019, Carrie Lam,
Chief Executive of Hong Kong’s
government, announced that she
was invoking a century-old colonial-
era Emergency Regulations Ordinance to ban
masks at protests. Lam, who had earlier returned
from the National Day military parade in Beijing,
said that she wanted to ‘stop the escalating
violence and restore calmness in society’. Her
move had the opposite eect. That evening
masked protesters continued to march on the
streets and clashed with the police.
Hong Kong’s experience of such unrest is
limited. The emergency law was last brought
into force to quell riots in 1967, when the violent
mass struggles and political extremism of the
Cultural Revolution in mainland China spilled
over into Hong Kong. Allegedly masterminded
by communist party supporters undercover
in Hong Kong and led by trade unionists,
protesters tried to turn dissatisfaction with
working conditions and public grievances
about socioeconomic inequality into a
political movement to overthrow the colonial
government through murder, arson and
improvised explosions. Although the savagery
was nally stopped by the police with the
support of British forces, over 250 bombs and
other forms of violence had left 51 people dead
and more than 800 injured.
The riot police returned in 2005. They
had to use force over several days to scatter
demonstrators who came from dierent parts
of the world to protest against a World Trade
Organisation Ministerial Conference in Hong
Kong. The unpreparedness of the police was
plain to see. At one stage police shields were
seized by demonstrating Korean farmers.
Although these street actions appeared to
have only short-term eect on the locals, they
Hong Kong at
the Crossroads
From a trading port more than a century ago to a global financial centre
today, Hong Kong has rarely been associated with political violence.
That has changed in recent months. Ka Po Ng examines the risks posed
by China’s growing reliance on force to suppress Hong Kong’s protestors.
provided the police with an opportunity to pick
up again the skills of crowd control and, more
importantly, set examples for the Hong Kong-
wide protest movement almost a decade later.
Umbrella Movement
Hong Kong passed from British to Chinese
hands in 1997, becoming a Special
Administrative Region (SAR) of China. The rst
major sign of domestic unrest was in August
2014, when the Chinese National People’s
Congress passed resolutions to prevent the SAR
from direct electing its head of government
and legislative members. In response, some
100 student activists laid siege to government
headquarters.
Hoping to ‘nip social unrest in the bud,’ (which
has been Beijing’s policy priority in dealing with
mass incidents), the government responded
with forceful suppression. Contrary to their
calculation, the use of batons, pepper spray and
tear gas against unarmed students infuriated
the public and simply brought more people
on board. What had started as student protests
soon sprawled into the ‘Occupy Central’, or
‘Umbrella’, movement. Financial and business
Political Insight December 2019.indd 29 05/11/2019 10:15
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