8 JUNIOR SCHOLASTIC / NOvembeR 17, 2014

international

Joshua Wong, a skinny 18-year-old with black glasses and a shaggy bowl haircut,

doesn’t fit the typical profile of a revolutionary. But this fall he has whipped up massive crowds of young people in Hong Kong to demand democratic elections. Wong’s fiery speeches challenging China’s government have won him an almost rock-star status.

“If students don’t stand in the front line, who will?” says Wong.

In late September, Wong led activists in a surprise charge on a

Hong Kong public square. Police arrested him and attacked the protesters with pepper spray.

The crackdown had the opposite of its intended effect. As word got out on social media, thousands more people joined the protests against China’s Communist leaders. Normal activity in the bustling city came to a halt. The protesters shielded themselves from tear gas with umbrellas. That gave their campaign a symbol and a name, the Umbrella Revolution.

Police used chain saws

to take apart barricades that protesters had built to block roads. Dozens of people were arrested. Officials hinted at worse to come. If the sit-in continued, the “consequences will be unimaginable,” said the government-controlled People’s Daily newspaper.

The protesters are demanding the right to elect

Hong Kong’s leader without interference from officials in

Beijing, China’s capital. Like the Tiananmen Square protests 25 years ago (see sidebar), their protests have been a P

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Protesters are demanding democratic elections for Hong Kong, but China’s leaders have other ideas

Hong Kong

Words to Know• activist (n): a person who

takes action on one side of a controversial issue

• occupation (n): the act of taking possession of a public place and holding it

The BaTTle For

NOvembeR 17, 2014 / JUNIOR SCHOLASTIC 9

continued on p. 10

direct challenge to China’s leaders.“This is already much bigger

than anything the Beijing or Hong Kong [officials] expected,” Larry Diamond, an expert on democracy at Stanford University, told The New York Times. No one knows how they will respond to the standoff.

Two Systems?Hong Kong is a complicated

place. It consists of the Kowloon Peninsula and some 240 islands off the southeastern coast of China (see map, p. 11). Technically, it is a part of China. But for about 150 years, Hong Kong was a British colony (see “Key Dates,” p. 10). Under Britain, it became a major international trading port. It had a Westernized society, a tradition

of free speech, and a lively press. By contrast, the rest of China has been strictly controlled by the Communist Party since 1949.

In 1984, Britain signed a treaty with China agreeing to return Hong Kong to China in 1997. Many Hong Kongers worried that the Communist government in Beijing would threaten the freedoms they had long enjoyed.

As part of the handoff, China agreed to a compromise. The arrangement is known as “one country, two systems.” Under this plan, Hong Kong would become part of China but operate under different rules for 50 years. The

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For the people of Hong Kong, the 1989 protests and crackdown by the Chinese government in

beijing’s Tiananmen Square have cast a long shadow. That spring, China seemed to be on the edge of major change. Communist leaders had freed the economy from many of its controls. That spurred a decade of economic growth. but many Chinese also wanted new political freedoms along with a higher standard of living. Pro-democracy protests broke out around the country.

The most dramatic one took place in beijing’s central square. Tens of thousands of people gathered there in late April. A month later, police still couldn’t break up the protests, so the government called in the army. Live Tv coverage of the clash shocked the world. The image of a lone man stopping a line of tanks (above) symbolized the standoff. Then the army opened fire, killing hundreds. The army reclaimed the square and the protests ended.

As police attacked Hong Kong crowds with tear gas this Sep tem-ber, memories of Tianan men Square remained raw. “We prefer to be ruled by a [democracy],” one protester told a reporter. “We don’t want to be ruled by a country that massacres its own people.”

Tiananmen Square 1989

Teenage activist Joshua Wong fires up

pro-democracy crowds in

Hong Kong in September.

10 JUNIOR SCHOLASTIC / NOvembeR 17, 2014

city’s free-wheeling financial system would remain in place. Freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and the press would be protected.

But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Many people in Hong Kong worry about increasing interference from Beijing. They have resisted having to take Chinese “patriotism” classes. Activists also insist that they won’t accept China’s strict control of the Internet. In China, tens of thousands of government censors block websites that are critical of the government. This censorship system is known as the “Great Firewall.”

This fall, the tension between the “two systems” led to the cur-rent standoff. In 2007, the Chinese government promised to let Hong Kong choose its leader, called the chief executive. That was due to start in 2017. But in August, the government announced that all

candidates will have to be screened by a committee dominated by people loyal to Beijing.

To Hong Kong’s young activists, this was a call to take to the streets. “I came here because I don’t want to lose my Hong Kong,” protester Bo Au-yeung, 20, explains. “I don’t want Hong Kong to be the next China.”

“The central government has given us false promise after false promise,” 17-year-old Hans Chow tells JS. “We want to have equal rights to live free and vote for our leader. It’s as simple as that.”

A War of PatienceWhat will become of the battle

of wills between the protesters and Chinese officials? As JS went to press, that was unclear. Government officials agreed to talk to protest leaders. After that, life in Hong Kong largely returned to normal. But the talks have been unproductive, and a core group of protesters has remained in place.

So far, their “occupation” has been orderly. The students have B

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Umbrellas first used to block the sun became the protesters’ defense against tear gas, and a symbol of defiance.

been careful to clean up their trash. They have even been doing their homework. They use social media to coordinate their efforts, and have downloaded an app called FireChat. It lets them communicate when officials block the Internet.

Would China turn to violence? Derek Tan, 17, believes that “no strongman in China can afford the consequences of a bloody suppression.” That would hurt China’s prestige and the region’s economy, he tells JS. Still, Hong Kong’s Beijing-appointed chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, insists that the government won’t give in to the protesters’ demands.

Chen Yun-chung, a professor at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, says Joshua Wong and other youths are in it for the long haul, but are realistic. “They know that they might not get what they want, but they are prepared to fight on.”

“Don’t think that this will be over soon,” Wong has said. “This is [basically] a war of patience and a test of our endurance.”—Bryan Brown and Patricia Smith

hong Kong & China Key Dates

1842 China gives Hong Kong Island to Britain after losing the

First Opium War.

1898 Britain leases all areas of Hong Kong from China for

99 years.

1949 The Communist forces of Mao Zedong win a civil war

and establish the People’s Republic of China.

1984 Britain agrees to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.

1997 Hong Kong is handed back to China.

2007 China agrees to allow Hong Kong to directly elect

its leader in 2017.

2014 China denies open nominations for Hong Kong’s

chief executive, spurring protests.

Why might China treat the Hong Kong protests differently from those in Tiananmen Square? Cite evidence from the article.

Your Turn

TAKLAMAKANDESERT

HI M

AL A Y A S

KUNLUN SHAN

TIEN SHAN

(MOUNTAINS)

QILIAN SHAN(MOUNTAINS)

(MOUNTAINS)

East ChinaSea

Bay of Bengal

AndamanSea

Gulf ofThailand

PACIFICOCEANSouth

ChinaSea

Sea of Japan(East Sea)

YellowSea

Bo Hai

Gulf ofTonkin

KoreaBay

Mt. Everest29,029 ft

20°N

10°N

30°N

40°N

50°N

TROPIC OF CANCER

130°E

140°E

150°E

120°E110°E

100°E

90°E

80°E

70°E

MYANMAR(BURMA)

BANGLADESH

INDIA

AFGHANISTAN

TAJIKISTAN

KYRGYZSTAN

MONGOLIA NORTHKOREA

SOUTHKOREA

JAPAN

TAIWAN

RUSSIA

NEPAL BHUTAN

LAOS

CAMBODIA

THAILAND

PHILIPPINES

VIETNAM

GO

BI D E S E R T

Chan

g Jian

g (

Yangtze River)

Yalu

Rive

r

Amur River

Brahmaputra River

Chengdu

Mekong River

TIBET

Macao HongKong

HAINANISLAND(CHINA)

Shanghai

Wuhan

Harbin

Yumen

Ürümqi

ChongqingLhasa

KAZAKHSTAN

PAKISTAN

Beijing

Huang He (Yello

w Riv

er)

Tianjin

CHINA

Scale:0

0 400 KM

200 MI

National capitalCityInternational borderRegional border*Disputed border

*Not all regions or provinces areshown or labeled on map.

Great Wall

U.S.

EQUATOR

Area of map

VictoriaHarbour

HONGKONGISLAND

LANTAUISLAND

KOWLOON

South China Sea 0 5 MI

Main protest sites

HONG KONG

NOvembeR 17, 2014 / JUNIOR SCHOLASTIC 11

maPsearCH

Questions 1. Hong Kong lies near what body of water? 2. What peninsula forms part of Hong Kong? 3. Where are the main areas of protest? 4. What are China’s two major west-to-east

rivers? 5. What river lies on China’s northeastern

border with Russia? 6. Which country shares the longest border

with China?

7. About how many straight-line miles separate Hong Kong from China’s capital?

8. Hong Kong is located just south of what named line of latitude?

9. What city in China is located at about 40ºN, 116ºe?

10. What structure begins near the gulf of bo Hai in eastern China and ends at about 40ºN, 100ºe?

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