Financial Times Europe - 09.11.2019 - 10.11.2019

9 November/10 November 2019 ★ FT Weekend 3

J

oshua Wong plonks himself

down on a plastic stool across

from me. He is there for barely

10 seconds before he leaps up

to greet two former high school

classmates in the lunchtime tea house

melee. He says hi and bye and then

bounds back. Once again I am facing the

young man in a black Chinese collared

shirt and tan shorts who is proving such

a headache for the authorities in Beijing.

So far, it’s been a fairly standard week

for Wong. On a break from a globe-

trotting, pro-democracy lobbying tour,

he was grabbed off the streets of Hong

Kong and bundled into a minivan. After

being arrested, he appeared on the

front pages of the world’s newspapers

and was labelled a “traitor” by China’s

foreign ministry.

He is very apologetic about being late

for lunch.

Little about Wong, the face of Hong

Kong’s democracy movement, can be

described as ordinary: neither his Nobel

Peace Prize nomination, nor his three

stints in prison. Five years ago, his face

was plastered on the cover of Time mag-

azine; in 2017, he was the subject of a hit

Netflix documentary,Joshua: Teenager vs

Superpower. And he’s only 23.

We’re sitting inside a Cantonese tea-

house in the narrow back streets near

Hong Kong’s parliament, where he

works for a pro-democracy lawmaker.

It’s one of the most socially diverse

parts of the city and has been at the

heart of five months of unrest, which

hasturned into a battle for Hong

Kong’s future. A few weekends ear-

lier I covered clashes nearby as pro-

testers threw Molotov cocktails at

police, who fired back tear gas.

Drunk expats looked on, as tourists

rushed by dragging suitcases.

The lunch crowd pours into the

fast-food joint, milling around as staff

set up collapsible tables on the pave-

ment. Construction workers sit side-by-

side with men sweating in suits, chop-

sticks in one hand, phones in the other. I

scan the menu: instant noodles with

fried egg and luncheon meat, deep fried

pork chops, beef brisket with radish.

Wong barely glances at it before select-

ing the hometown fried rice and milk

tea, a Hong Kong speciality with British

colonial roots, made with black tea and

evaporated or condensed milk.

“I always order this,” he beams, “I love

this place, it’s the only Cantonese tea-

house in the area that does cheap, high-

quality milk tea.” I take my cue and set-

tle for the veggie and egg fried rice and a

lemon iced tea as the man sitting on the

next table reaches over to shake Wong’s

hand. Another pats him on the shoulder

as he brushes by to pay the bill.

Wong has been a recognisable face in

this city since he was 14, when he fought

against a proposal from the Hong Kong

government to introduce a national

education curriculum that would teach

that Chinese Communist party rule was

“superior” to western-style democracy.

The government eventually backed

down after more than 100,000 people

took to the streets. Two years later,

Wong rose to global prominence when

he became the poster boy for the

Umbrella Movement, in which tens of

thousands of students occupied central

Hong Kong for 79 days to demand genu-

ine universal suffrage.

That movement ended in failure.

Many of its leaders were sent to jail,

among them Wong. But the seeds of

activism were planted in the generation

of Hong Kongers who are now back on

the streets, fighting for democracy

against the world’s most powerful

authoritarian state.

The latest turmoil was sparked by a

controversial extradition bill but has

evolved into demands for true suffrage

and a showdown with Beijing over the

future of Hong Kong. The unrest in the

former British colony, which was

handed over to China in 1997, represents

the biggest uprising on Chinese soil

since the 1989 pro-democracy move-

I decide it would be a good idea to

redirect our conversation by bonding

over phone addic tions. Wong ,

renowned for his laser focus and deter-

mination, replies to my emails and mes-

sages at all hours and has been

described by his friends as “a robot.”

He scrolls through his Gmail, his

inbox filled withunread emails, show-

ing me how he categorisesinterview

requests with country tags. His life is

almost solely dedicated to activism. “My

friends and I used to go to watch movies

and play laser tag but now of course we

don’t have time to play any more: we

face real bullets every weekend.”

T

he protests — which have

seen more than 3,300 peo-

ple arrested — have been

largely leaderless. “Do you

ever question your rele-

vance to the movement?” I venture,

mid-spoonful of congealed fried rice.

“Never,” he replies with his mouth

full. “We have a lot of facilitators in this

movement and I’m one of them... it’s

just like Wikipedia. You don’t know who

the contributors are behind a Wikipedia

page but you know there’s a lot of collab-

oration and crowdsourcing. Instead of

just having a top-down command, we

now have a bottom-up command hub

which has allowed the movement to last

far longer than Umbrella.

“With greater power comes greater

responsibility, so the question is how,

through my role, can I express the

voices of the frontliners, of the street

activism? For example, I defended the

action of storming into the Legislative

Council on July 1. I know I didn’t storm

in myself... ” His phone pings twice.

Finally he succumbs.

After tapping away for about 30 sec-

onds, Wong launches back into our con-

versation, soundinggenuinely sorry

that he wasn’t there on the night when

protesters destroyed symbols of the Chi-

nese Communist party and briefly occu-

pied the chamber.

“My job is to be the middleman to

express, evaluate and reveal what is

going on in the Hong Kong protests

when the movement is about being face-

less,” he says, adding that his Twitter

storm of 29 tweets explaining the July 1

occupation reached at least four million

people. I admit hat I am overcome witht

exhaustion just scanning his Twitter

account, which has more than 400,000

followers. “Well, that thread was actu-

ally written by Jeffrey Ngo from Demo-

sisto,” he say, referring to the political

activism group that he heads.

A network of Hong Kong activists

studying abroad helps fuel his relent-

less public persona on social media and

in the opinion pages of international

newspapers. Within a week of his most

recent arrest, he had publishedop-eds

in the Economist, the New York Times,

Quartz and the Apple Daily.

I wonder out loud if he ever feels over-

whelmed at taking on the Chinese Com-

munist party, a task daunting even for

some of the world’s most formidable

governments and companies. He peers

at me over his wire-framed glasses. “It’s

our responsibility; if we don’t do it, who

will? At least we are not in Xinjiang or

Tibet; we are in Hong Kong,” he says,

referring to two regions on Chinese soil

on the frontline of Beijing’s drive to

develop a high-tech surveillance state.

In Xinjiang, at least one million people

are being held in internment camps.

“Even though we’re directly under the

rule of Beijing, we have a layer of protec-

tion because we’re recognised as a global

city so [Beijing] is more hesitant to act.”

I hear the sound of the wok firing up in

thekitchen and ask him the question no

everyone’s minds in Hong Kong: what

happens next? Like many people who

are closely following the extraordinary

situation in Hong Kong, he is hesitant to

make firm predictions.

“Lots of think-tanks around the world

say ‘Oh, we’re China experts. We’re born

in western countries but we know how

to read Chinese so we’re familiar with

Chinese politics.’ They predicted the

Communist party would collapse after

the Tiananmen Square massacre and

they’ve kept predicting this over the

past three decades but hey, now it’s 2019

and we’re still under the rule of Beijing,

ha ha,” he grins.

While we are prophesying, does

Wong ever think he might become chief

executive one day? “No local journalist

in Hong Kong would really ask this

question,” he admonishes. As our lunch

has progressed, he has become bolder

in dissecting my interview technique.

The territory’s chief executive is cur-

rently selected by a group of 1,200,

mostly Beijing loyalists, and he doubts

the Chinese Communist party would

ever allow him to run. A few weeks after

we meet he announces his candidacy in

the upcoming district council elections.

He was eventually the only candidate

disqualified from running — an order

that, after our lunch, he tweeted had

come from Beijing and was “clearly

politically driven”.

We turn to the more ordinary stuff of

23-year-olds’ lives, as Wong slurps the

remainder of his milk tea. “Before being

jailed, the thing I was most worried

about was that I wouldn’t be able to

watchAvengers: Endgame,” he says.

“Luckily, it came out around early

May so I watched it two weeks before I

was locked up in prison.” He has already

quoted Spider-Man twice during our

lunch. I am unsurprised when Wong

picks him as his favourite character.

“I think he’s more... ” He pauses,

one of the few times in the interview.

“Compared to having an unlimited

superpower or unlimited power or

unlimited talent just like Superman, I

think Spider-Man is more human.”

With that, our friendly neighbourhood

activist dashes off to his next interview.

Sue-Lin Wong is the FT’s South China

correspondent

TAK YU CHA

CHAAN TENG

2 Kwong Ming St, Wan Chai,

Hong Kong

Hometown fried riceHK$62

Vegetable and egg fried

rice HK$58

Hong Kong style milk tea

HK$24

Lemon ice tea HK$24

Total HK$168 (£16)

ment in Beijing. Its climax, of course,

was the Tiananmen Square massacre,

when hundreds, perhaps thousands,

of people were killed.

“We learnt a lot of lessons from

the Umbrella Movement: how to

deal with conflict between the more

moderate and progressive camps,

how to be more organic, how to be

less hesitant,” says Wong. “Five years

ago the pro- democracy camp was far

more cautious about seeking interna-

tional support because they were afraid

of pissing off Beijing.”

Wong doesn’t appear to be afraid of

irking China. Over the past few months,

he has lobbied on behalf of the Hong

Kong protesters to governments around

the world. In the US, he testified before

Congress and urged lawmakers to pass

an act in support of the Hong Kong pro-

testers — subsequently approved by the

House of Representatives with strong

bipartisan support. In Germany, he

made headlines when he suggested two

baby pandas in the Berlin Zoo be named

“Democracy” and “Freedom.” He has

been previously barred from entering

Malaysia and Thailand due to pressure

from Beijing, and a Singaporean social

worker was recently convicted and

fined for organising an event at which

Wong spokevia Skype.

The food arrives almost immediately.

I struggle to tell our orders apart. Two

mouthfuls into my egg and cabbage

fried rice, I regret not ordering the

instant noodles with luncheon meat.

I

n August, a Hong Kong newspaper

controlled by the Chinese Commu-

nist party published a photo of Julie

Eadeh, an American diplomat,

meetingpro-democracy student

leaders including Wong. The headline

accused “foreign forces” of igniting a

revolution in Hong Kong. “Beijing says I

was trained by the CIA and the US

marines and I am a CIA agent. [I find it]

quite boring because they have made up

these kinds of rumours for seven years

[now],” he says, ignoring his incessantly

pinging phone.

Another thing that bores him? The

media. Although Wong’s messaging is

always on point, his appraisal of journal-

ists in response to my questions is pierc-

ing and cheeky. “In 15-minute inter-

views I know journalists just need

soundbites that I’ve repeated lots of

times before. So I’ll say things like ‘I have

no hope [as regards] the regime but I

have hope towards the people.’ Then the

journalists will say ‘oh that’s so impres-

sive!’ And I’ll say ‘yes, I’m a poet.’”

And what about this choice of restau-

rant? “Well, I knew I couldn’t pick a five-

star hotel, even though the Financial

Times is paying and I know you can

afford it,” he says grinning. “It’s better to

do this kind of interview in a Hong

Kong-style restaurant. This is the place

that I conducted my first interview after

I left prison.” Wong has spent around

120 days in prison in total, including on

charges of unlawful assembly.

“My fellow prisoners would tell me

about how they joined the Umbrella

Movement and how they agreed with

our beliefs. I think prisoners are

more aware of the importance of

human rights,” he says, adding that even

the prison wardens would share with

him how they had joined protests.

“Even the triad members in prison

support democracy. They complain how

the tax on cigarettes is extremely high

and the tax on red wine is extremely

low; it just shows how the upper-class

elite lives here,” he says, as a waiter

strains to hear our conversation. Wong

was most recently released from jail in

June, the day after the largest protests in

the history of Hong Kong, when an esti-

mated 2m people — more than a quarter

of the territory’s 7.5m population — took

to the streets.

Raised in a deeply religious family, he

used to travel to mainland China every

two years with his family and church lit-

erally to spread the gospel. As with

many Hong Kong Chinese who trace

their roots to the mainland, he doesn’t

know where his ancestral village is. His

lasting memory of his trips across the

border is of dirty toilets, he tells me,

mid-bite. He turned to activism when

he realised praying didn’t help much.

“The gift from God is to have inde-

pendence of mind and critical thinking;

to have our own will and to make our

own personal judgments. I don’t link my

religious beliefs with my political judg-

ments. Even Carrie Lam is Catholic,” he

trails off, in a reference to Hong Kong’s

leader. Lam has the lowest approval rat-

ing of any chief executive in the history

of the city thanks to her botched han-

dling of the crisis.

I ask whether Wong’s father, who is

also involved in social activism, has

been a big influence. Wrong question.

“The western media loves to frame

Joshua Wong joining the fight because of

reading the books of Nelson Mandela or

Martin Luther King or because of how

my parents raised me. In reality, I joined

street activism not because of any one

book I read. Why do journalists always

assume anyone who strives for a better

society has a role model?” He glances

down at his pinging phone and draws a

breath, before continuing. “Can you

really describe my dad as an activist? I

support LGBTQ rights,” he says, with a

fist pump. His father, Roger Wong, is a

well-known anti-gay rights campaigner

in Hong Kong.

I notice he has put down his spoon,

with half a plate of fried rice untouched.

Lunch with the FT oshua WongJ

‘With greater power

comes greater

responsibility... The

question is, can I

express the voices of

the frontliners, of the

street activism?’

After three stints in prison, the 23-year-old

activist has become the face of Hong

Kong’s protests. Over fried rice and milk

tea, he talks toSue-Lin Wongabout

Spider-Man, defying Beijing — and why

the western media are so predictable

‘We used to play laser

tag. Now we face

real bullets’

NextGen

NOVEMBER 9 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 11/20197/ - 17:59 User:andrew.higton Page Name:WKD3, Part,Page,Edition:WKD, 3, 1