▲ Protesters at Hong Kong’s international airport on Aug. 9
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◼ REMARKS Bloomberg Businessweek August 19, 2019
Protesting L ike It’s 2047
are being used regularly against protesters. At one point on
Aug. 11, o fficers fired the gas inside a subway station.
The activists have five official demands: the formal with-
drawal of the extradition bill; the release of arrested protesters;
an independent inquiry into police tactics; the retraction of the
government’s description of a June demonstration as a “riot”;
and the implementation of full democracy. But the protests
have also evolved into something inchoate, unfocused, and
unpredictable. Concentrated at first in Admiralty, the unoffi-
cial government district, they’re now occurring in a wide range
of neighborhoods, shifting from preplanned marches to flash-
mob civil disobedience organized on social media platforms.
In busy subway stations, strangers are sharing pro-democracy
memes and information on upcoming marches via AirDrop,
the Apple tool for device-to-device file sharing.
China’s willingness to tolerate such dissent is wearing thin.
On Aug. 6, the da y after a strike paralyzed much of the city,
government spokesman Yang Guang refused to rule out mil-
itary action and said that Beijing would “never allow” unrest
that would threaten national security. “Those who play with
fire,” he said, “will perish by it.” A week later, he warned that
“the first signs of terrorism are starting to appear.”
That it’s taken more than two decades for military inter-
vention to become a real risk in Hong Kong could be viewed
as evidence that “one country, two systems” was at least a
temporary success. Many in the city were genuinely nervous
before the handover, fearing an abrupt end to civil liberties,
the rule of law, and their ability to make money. Families with
the means bought property abroad, sending their children to
attend school and, if possible, acquire foreign passports. In
the years before the handover, more than 60,000 Hong Kong
immigrants arrived in Vancouver alone.
But as the deadline approached and then passed, the cri-
sis never arrived. Indeed, an unprecedented real estate boom
pushed the skyline and housing prices ever higher. Emigrés
returned as stocks soared and banks expanded their foot-
prints, seeing in Hong Kong a stable, English-speaking base
from which to tap China’s growth. For the most part, Beijing
was content to leave the city be, wary of spooking investors
or killing a golden goose. (Indeed, many members of China’s
elite, or their families, came to own Hong Kong assets.)
Hong Kong’s defenses were certainly tested, but they
proved robust. In 2003 activists organized huge rallies to
oppose Beijing-backed legislation to enshrine harsh penal-
ties for “sedition” against the mainland. That was eventually
shelved, as was a 2012 proposal to require students to receive
“patriotic education” that also engendered opposition.
Until now, the tensest moments came during the 2014
Occupy protests, which demanded the replacement of its par-
tially democratic electoral system and took over part of Hong
Kong’s urban core for more than two months. The official
response was, in retrospect, restrained; police used compar-
atively modest volumes of tear gas and mostly gave demon-
strators a wide berth.
But over the next several years, China’s tolerance for opposi-
tion declined markedly. On the mainland, President Xi Jinping
was engaged in one of the broadest crackdowns on dissent
in decades, detaining thousands and drastically restricting
unsanctioned views. In that context it was inevitable that
the pressure would turn up in Hong Kong, where the local
