The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 18 | Issue 10 | Number 4 | Article ID 5399 | May 15, 2020

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Hong Kong in 2020: Pandemic, Protest and Great PowerRivalry

Mark W. Frazier

Abstract: This article addresses the return ofpopular protests in Hong Kong in 2020, afterthe government’s adoption of emergencymeasures to address the COVID-19 pandemic inHong Kong and following calls by the ChineseCommunist Party for the government to take amuch more repressive stance against protests.The pandemic has also accelerated thedownturn in U.S.-China relations. The articlereviews the parallel, and at times intersecting,evolution of popular protests and pandemiccontrol measures in Hong Kong. It also outlinesthe ways in which the 2019 protests weredepartures from previous protest cycles.

Keywords: Hong Kong, democracy, protests,pandemic, U.S.-China relations, ChineseCommunist Party

Source: The Economist November 23, 2019

The downward spiral in U.S.-China relations inthe midst of a blame game over the COVID-19p a n d e m i c h a s r e v i v e d c o n c e r n s(https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-china-

e n t e r i n g - n e w - c o l d - w a r - a m i d -coronavirus-2020-5) that the two countries areentering a 21st century version of the ColdWar. If this is the case, Hong Kong will likelybecome a flash point in the conflict. Amidst thepandemic, whose first cases appeared in HongKong in January 2020, the government of HongKong has embarked on a massive crackdown onthe opposition and signaled to would-be protestorganizers that demonstrations will be metwith brutal police force of the sort witnessed atmany of last year’s marches and sit-ins.Meanwhile, the leaders of the ChineseCommunist Party (CCP) and its representativesin Hong Kong are pressuring the governmentto re-introduce controversial legislationtargeting threats to “national security.”

The U.S. Congress and Trump administrationresponded to last year’s protests in Hong Kongby passing the Hong Kong Human Rights andDemocracy Act, which provides for sanctionsagainst those deemed to be violating humanrights in Hong Kong, and for the possiblerevocation of Hong Kong’s distinct tradingstatus with the United States (after which HongKong would be treated as any other city inChina in terms of trade and investmentpolicies). One could expect both of thosepossibilities to materialize in the coming yearas the protests in Hong Kong revive and U.S.-China relations worsen across a number offronts.

The massive street protests that drew theattention of the world in 2019 may not berepeated in terms of their size and duration,but it’s reasonable to expect large-scalemarches and rallies (approved or otherwise)

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throughout the summer of 2020. LegislativeCouncil elections are to be held in September,raising the possibility of election violence. It’salso reasonable to expect Hong Kong police tocontinue their use of coercive tactics on crowdsof protestors, involving teargas, rubber bullets,or worse. Just recently (May 10-11), riot polices e t u p o n(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/11/carrie-lam-blames-hong-kong-education-system-for-fuelling-protests) peacefulprotestors with pepper spray in several mallsand other venues, arresting an estimated 200people—including two student journalists aged12 and 16.

Many expect a new wave of protests in HongKong this summer, but they will take place inglobal context transformed by the pandemicand the collapsing state of U.S.-China relations.Pandemic control measures by the Hong Konggovernment can be used to render any protestan illegal act and justify police measuresagainst an “unlawful assembly.” The HongKong government, no doubt with Beijing’ssupport, seems to have calculated that thepandemic presents an opportunity to harassopposition figures and to use brute forceagainst any signs of protestors gathering in thestreets and public spaces of the city. Thegovernment’s calculation seems to assume thatthe rest of the world, including the UnitedStates, will be sufficiently pre-occupied withmanaging the COVID-19 crisis to pay muchattention to events in Hong Kong. But thiscalculation ignores the rising levels ofA m e r i c a n s ’ d i s a f f e c t i o n(https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/04/21/u-s-views-of-china-increasingly-negative-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/) with China, aheated presidential campaign in whichcandidates will criticize each other’s stance onChina, and the seeming drift toward a new ColdWar. In this context, vivid displays of policebrutal ity against protestors, and thepersecution of opposition figures in Hong Kongmay draw global attention and compel the

United States and other governments torespond with sanctions or other measures.

This essay looks at the intersection of protestand pandemic in Hong Kong, and thedangerous convergence of the crackdown inHong Kong with a new low in U.S.-Chinarelations.

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While the Hong Kong government shed itsformal colonial status with the transfer ofsovereignty from Britain to China in 1997, thegovernment of the Hong Kong SpecialAdministrative Region (HKSAR) is pushing theCCP’s agenda to impose unpopular measureson a citizenry that is increasingly alienatedfrom China, especially among those born justbefore or after 1997. In mid-April, Luo Huining,Beijing’s newly-appointed Director of theCentral Government’s Liaison Office called fort h e H o n g K o n g g o v e r n m e n t(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/china-official-hong-kong-luo-huining-pushes-national-security-law) to pass legislation toidentify and sanction those who endangernational security. The draft of such a billsparked Hong Kong’s first mass protests whenit was first introduced in 2003. The occasion onwhich Luo made his announcement was theChinese government’s officially designated“National Security Education Day.” Many HongKongers, he intoned, “have a weak concept ofnational security.” National security legislation,Luo said, should be passed by the Hong Konglegislature “as soon as possible.” Carrie Lam,the Hong Kong Chief Executive, added her ownremarks on the “holiday” by noting that illegalprotests were threats national security (alongwith hate speech and acts of terrorism). Dayslater, on April 18, the Hong Kong policearrested 15 members of the opposition,including the elder statesman of the pan-

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democrats, the 81-year-old Martin Lee. He andothers were charged with participating in anillegal protest last year. They await a courthearing on May 18.

The arrests drew international condemnation(https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3081597/hong-kong-justice-secretary-and-no-2-official-say-unlawful), from the UnitedNat ion ’ s Human R ights O f f i ce , theInternational Bar Association, and mosttellingly, from the Trump White House.Attorney General Will iam Barr called(https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-u-k-condemn-hong-kong-arrests-democracy-advocates-n1187231) the arrests “an assault onthe rule of law” that “demonstrate[d] onceagain that the Chinese Communist Party cannotb e t r u s t e d . ” B a r r ’ s o w n a s s a u l t(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/us/politics/barr-flynn-case-justice-department.html) onthe rule of law in the United States, one wouldsuppose, makes him uniquely qualified torecognize it when he sees it. But his statement(along with the response of Secretary of StateMike Pompeo) was clearly part of a new effortto single out the CCP as the source ofAmerica’s grievances against China, for itsmishandling of the initial outbreak ofcoronavirus cases in Wuhan, and now for thecrackdown on the opposition in Hong Kong.While not inaccurate, these statements doeverything to bolster the CCP’s claims that theHong Kong opposition and protestors arealigned with “hostile foreign forces” (i.e., theAmerican government and NGOs) that aid andabet protests in order to sow instabilityanywhere they can in China. Pompeoannounced on May 6 that the State Departmentwould delay its legally-mandated report toCongress (as required by the Hong KongHuman Rights and Democracy Act) assessingthe autonomy of Hong Kong from China. Thereport would presumably be updated to reflectrecent developments in Hong Kong.

What Pompeo and others in the U.S.

government have failed to grasp is that thesituation in Hong Kong is not simply another“pro-democracy” movement. The protests areincreasingly resembling a much morecomplicated movement against a quasi-colonialpower. Aspirations for universal suffrage(meaning direct elections of the ChiefExecutive and a more representativelegislature) are indeed an important part of theopposition’s demands. But as in many anti-colonial struggles, the population is dividedbetween those who feel loyalties to andidentification with the imperial center—orsimply accept the inevitability of the status quoand oppose the actions of the protestors—andthose who advocate a separate identity andeven the radical stance of independence.Episodes of violence, usually involving policesetting on crowds of protestors, fuel furtherprotests as anniversaries are marked andpatriotic martyrs are commemorated. Throughsuch linked events, a sustained protest cycleforms that can stretch over years, involvingviolent conflict, arrests, and convictions.

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Pandemics and protest first coincided in HongKong in 2003, the year that the SARScoronavirus, believed to have originated up thePearl River in Guangzhou, inflicted a publich e a l t h c r i s i s(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539564/) on the city from March until June,during which 1,750 cases were recorded and286 Hong Kong residents died. At the verysame time as the SARS pandemic, Beijingpressed the Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa topass legislation defining threats to nationalsecurity, in line with Article 23 of the BasicLaw. (This is the same measure that Beijing isnow insisting that the Hong Kong governmentpass.) An unprecedented march of 500,000took place on July 1, 2003 to mark the

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anniversary of the transfer to PRC sovereigntyand to show widespread opposition to theArticle 23 legislation. Tung was compelled towithdraw the legislation. After SARS, wearingmasks in public became commonplace in HongKong, especially during flu seasons. BeforeSARS, an outbreak of avian influenza (H5N1) inlate 1997 (the first case was identified(https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/5/2/99-0202_article) in May) closed schools and compelledthe new Hong Kong government to ramp upsupport for epidemiological research and publichealth infrastructure. A subsequent epidemic ofswine-derived flu (H1N1) in 2009 elicited whate x p e r t s v i e w e d(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705741/#b5) as a positive public healthresponse, as the Hong Kong government hadinvested heavily in research, testing, andcontainment capacities.

In the decade that followed SARS, the HongKong government was also deepening itslinkages with the mainland through the “CloserEconomic Partnership Agreement” (CEPA),which was signed on June 29, 2003, just daysbefore the July 1 protest march. CEPA gaveHong Kong companies and traders preferentialaccess to the PRC markets. At the same time, itset the stage for a rapid expansion in tourismthat would eventually see 51 million annualPRC visitors to the city of 7.4 million residents.

As several Hong Kong-based scholars havechronicled, this deepening of trade, tourism,

and migration from the PRC gave rise to a“localist” movement. The label (using thedifficult to translate “bentu”) had been appliedin different contexts before 1997, but asS e b a s t i a n V e g h a s s h o w n(https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/article/rise-of-localism-and-civic-i d e n t i t y - i n - p o s t h a n d o v e r - h o n g - k o n g -q u e s t i o n i n g - t h e - c h i n e s e -nationstate/0CB49E98FE9112E330BF365D842FDF01), activists and academics revived theterm in connection with local heritageprotection movements in 2006, when protestsoccurred to oppose the demolition of the StarFerry and Queen’s Piers. Localist discourse wasnot explicitly anti-colonial in the sense ofcalling for independence, but promotedawareness of Hong Kong’s indigenous historyand culture, as distinct from that of the PRC.Localist movements organized numerousmobilizations in the 2010s—all of which can beconnected to the 2019 protests. Among thesewere a 2009-10 campaign to block thedemolition of a New Territories village that wasin the path of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-HongKong express railway. The protest failed toblock the railway and the residents wereforcibly relocated, but it signaled the uneaseamong the Hong Kong public with thedeepening sense of integration with themainland. When the Legislative Council(LegCo) session to approve the financing of therailway was held, an estimated 10,000protestors held a sit-in outside the LegCoBuilding. Some of them broke into the LegCo,where police used pepper spray to clear thearea. In 2012, protests again asserted thedistinctiveness of Hong Kong identity when amovement, led by the 16-year old Joshua Wong,formed to oppose measures by the Hong Konggovernment to introduce “moral and nationaleducation” (meaning a PRC version of Chinesehistory) into the school curr iculum.Demonstrators staged a large rally and sit-in atthe Civic Plaza outside LegCo Building. Theprotests succeeded and the governmentwithdrew the curricular reforms.

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The localist sentiment was also prominentduring the Umbrella Movement in 2014. Alsoknown by its original moniker of OccupyCentral with Love and Peace (OCLP), theprotests began in response to Beijing’sannouncement that year for a revised electoralsystem that still denied citizens the means todirectly elect the Chief Executive. But it wasalso described by one of its founders Benny Taias a “ loca l i s t democracy movement(http://oclp.hk/index.php?route=occupy/article_detail&article_id=69).” The reference wasagain to a local culture and identity that wasdistinct from mainland China in terms ofpolitical culture in addition to language,history, and much else. Student protestorslaunched a class boycott, and in late Septemberoccupied Civic Square. They were set on bypolice using pepper spray, and their use ofumbrellas to shield themselves from teargasand pepper spray gave the movement its name.The movement, which occurred over a 79-dayperiod in three locations in the city, came to anend in December, largely through attrition anda government strategy to let the occupiedspaces provoke disapproval and even counter-mobilization of citizens who opposed thedisruptions to mobility and their livelihoods.

The aftermath of the Umbrella Movement saw awidespread crackdown by Beijing and the HongKong government and at the same time,intensified localist sentiment. The opposition orpan-democrats divided along severaldimensions, but the most basic weregenerational and political—with the youngeractivists eschewing the parties and electoralstrategies of the older democrats in favor ofdirect action, and a third camp that was moreexplicitly localist, including some candidatesand parties competing for legislative seats whoovertly called for Hong Kong independence.(The Hong Kong government outlawed thesepart ies and even prohibi ted e lectedrepresentatives from taking seats in thelegislature in 2016.) At the same time, Beijinglaunched a sweeping “counter-mobilization” –

pushing for the arrests of the leaders of theOCLP campaign, the student leaders in theUmbrella Movement, and much else. Perhapsoverly confident in the wake of these measures,Carrie Lam decided to use a murder case thathappened in Taiwan involving a Hong Kongresident to introduce the extradition bill inearly 2019.

Amidst the 2016-18 crackdown, Hong Kong’shealthcare sector drew accolades for its world-leading standards. Hong Kong’s healthcaresystem, based on the British National HealthService model, offers free high-quality healthcare, even if it leads to extended wait times forpatients and longer working hours for doctorsand hospital staff. Hong Kong was rankednumber one in the 2018 Bloomberg’sH e a l t h c a r e E f f i c i e n c y I n d e x(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/u-s-near-bottom-of-health-index-hong-kong-and-singapore-at-top), a measure thattakes into account life expectancy, averagehealthcare costs per capita, as well as healthspending as a share of GDP. (The United Stateswas near the bottom of the list of 56 middle andhigh-income economies). But the 100,000medical workers in Hong Kong’s first-ratepublic hospitals would soon find themselves inthe middle of street battles between protestorsand police—and by November 2019 would treatan estimated 2,100 wounded protestors, evenas Hong Kong police sought to interrogate andarrest suspects inside public hospitals(https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2019-11-22/hong-kong-hospitals-find-themselves-on-protest-frontlines).

What became the city’s largest protestmovement began with marches against theextradition bill in April. On the weekend beforethe bill’s first reading in the LegCo, a marchthat drew one million took place on June 9. Asthe bill moved to its second reading a few dayslater, on June 12, protestors massed outside theLegCo, where police attempted to break themup using a reported 150 rounds of teargas, in

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q u a n t i t i e s(https://qz.com/1681379/hong-kong-police-fired-over-1000-rounds-of-tear-gas-since-june/) thatexceeded the 87 rounds used during the fullstretch of the 2014 Umbrella Movement. Inresponse to the blatantly repressive tactics bythe Hong Kong police, an estimated 1.5 to 2million people took part in marches on June 16--the largest in the city’s history.

But the large marches and concentrations ofdemonstrators in prominent civic spaces, arepertoire derived from 2014 and before, soongave way to the unprecedented tactics ofroaming “flash protests” in symbolicallyimportant venues such as shopping mallsassociated with mainland Chinese corporations,transportation hubs that linked with themainland, and so forth. What was also apparentby mid-summer 2019 was that the protestswere led by no formal group or spokespersons,and in this sense leaderless. Social media appscould be used to quickly mobilize largenumbers of protestors, and provide participantswith a range of information on the whereaboutsof police, sympathetic shopkeepers, andmedical volunteers. They were, an example ofwhat recent social movement scholars havet e r m e d “ c o n n e c t i v e a c t i o n(https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661)” based on information sharing acrossnetworks rather than the conventional forms of“collective action” involving hierarchicalorganizations deploying resources to mobilizeparticipants.

What was also distinctive about the 2019protests—and related to the facility with whichsocial media apps were used—was the age ofthe participants. A recently published study(https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26838911) by Francis L. F. Lee and colleagues confirmswhat many reports noted anecdotally last year.According to surveys of 12,231 respondents at19 venues between June 9 and late August, 61percent were under age 29—but the morecompelling observation was that those under

age 19 accounted for 11.8 percent of theprotestors. (Another 22 percent were ages 20to 24).

As the protests stretched across the summer,including dramatic scenes of thugs attackingmetro passengers, protestors occupying theHong Kong airport, and a general strike thatshut down public transportation, the HongKong government responded by drawing on thelegacies of its colonial predecessor. Following aseries of violent episodes during an October 1protest (China’s National Day), Carrie Lamannounced that the wearing of masks in publicwould be banned—this was to better identifyprotestors and arrest them using surveillancetechniques. To justify what seemed a violationof civil liberties, she invoked the EmergencyRegulations Ordinance, which the colony’sBritish governor drew up in order to force anend to the crippling 1922 Seaman’s Strike. (ASouth China Morning Post columnist(https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3025849/what-hong-kong-leadership-can-learn-1922) noted last yearthat the governor at the time, Reginald Stubbs,showed more competence than Carrie Lamdoes now because after ending the strike, hebrought both sides to the negotiating table,which resulted in workers’ gaining substantialwage increases.) On October 5, the day afterthe mask ban went into effect, riot police couldbe seen setting upon those wearing masks inpublic places. The ban was challenged in court,but was upheld by the Court of Final Appeal inApril of 2020, with the stipulation that policecould arrest anyone wearing a mask at an“unlawful assembly.”

By then, the mask ban had been renderedirrelevant by the massive citizen response tothe government’s bungled attempts to copewith the spread of the coronavirus. Carrie Lamwas in Davos at the World Economic Forumwhen the first cases emerged in Hong Kong,and she was slow to act when she finally didreturn, postponing calls to close the border

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with China and even declining to wear amask—which her civil servants also abjured atfirst. And yet despite these delays, Hong Kongwith i ts high-density residences andneighborhoods had suffered only 1,039COVID-19 infections and four deaths by earlyMay 2020. Hong Kongers have attributed thesuccessful outcome not to anything that theHong Kong government did to protect them,but largely to the actions of the medicalcommunity and civil society organizations(https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive / 2 0 2 0 / 0 5 / h o w - h o n g - k o n g - b e a t i n g -coronavirus/611524/). In February, medicalworkers launched a strike to demand thedistribution of masks free to the public and theclosing of borders with China. The Hong Kongauthorities soon complied with both demands.As COVID-19 hot spots such as New York Citystruggled with mask and personal protectiveequipment supplies in March, in Hong Kongthere were teams of volunteers venturing toevery corner of the city to ensure that allresidents had masks and related protections.

Photo Credit: AFP

As the summer approaches w i th i t sanniversaries marking recent and past dates oflarge-scale protests and rallies on June 4, June9, June 12, June 16, July 1, and others, theHong Kong government will very likely invokethe Emergency Regulations Ordinance not onlyto uphold the mask ban but also to prohibit any

large gathering. In March 2020, during a briefuptick in new COVID-19 cases, Lam announceda ban on gatherings of more than four people.When the cases were brought under control byearly May, she announced an extension(https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-hongkong/hong-kong-to-relax-some-restrictions-as-new-coronavirus-cases-dwindle-idUSKBN22H0TH) of the ban to lateMay—permitting gatherings of eight. As theprotest anniversaries approach in June, it is allbut assured that the Hong Kong governmentwill turn down protest permit applications.Undeterred, protestors (very likely wearingmasks) will hold marches and rallies on thestreets and in symbolically important venues.Invariably, the Hong Kong police will be sent into arrest the protestors. Even a minor act ofviolence by the latter, such as property damageto shopfronts, will be framed as evidence forwhy Hong Kong needs the national security lawto punish those who threaten public order:those regarded as a “pol i t ica l v i rus(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/china-calls-hong-kong-protesters-a-political-virus),” in the words used on May 6 by the CCPofficial in charge of Hong Kong affairs.

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The chances for some compromise overelectoral reforms, investigations into policeconduct during the protests, and amnesty forthose arrested for taking part in “illegal”protests now appear, in the midst of the HongKong government’s crackdown, even moreremote than last year. While some westernobservers worry about a military interventionthat replays scenes of Beijing on June 4, 1989,it’s clear that a different form of intervention isalready under way. The CCP has outsourcedrepression to the Hong Kong government andits own police and security forces. But thisrepressive move, in the context of U.S.-Chinatensions, is not without costs for Beijing.Miscalculations over Hong Kong could bring onsome version of a “Berlin crisis” in a new Cold

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War—not with walls and airlifts but with an unend ing cyc le o f suppress ion andcorresponding sanctions.

Mark W. Frazier is Professor of Politics at The New School for Social Research and Co-Director of the India China Institute at The New School. He is the author of The Power ofPlace: Contentious Politics in Twentieth Century Shanghai and Bombay(https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/power-of-place/ABCF391BBC4AC6676347C21A421F4824) (Cambridge University Press, 2019).