A Tiny Minority of Hong Kong People
I will never forget my first glimpse of Hong Kong’s Central skyline. I was on a shuttle bus from the airport. It was 2001, and I was…
I will never forget my first glimpse of Hong Kong’s Central skyline. I was on a shuttle bus from the airport. It was 2001, and I was visiting the city for the first time. I arrived some time in the late evening, and by the time I got to Kowloon station via the Airport Express, it was late. The bus came up a ramp, out onto the street, and turned left. Suddenly, there it was; the iconic skyline full of bright lights and tall buildings. I realized there was nothing between it and me but the bus window.
Four years and several more visits later, I moved to Hong Kong as an aspiring academic grateful to live in what I thought of as the best, most exciting city on Earth. I felt as though I had accomplished a major achievement, and settled into my new life as an assistant professor. I taught graduate and undergraduate classes, and I am sure that in those first few years I learned as much if not more than I taught.
I lived and worked in a place that refers to itself as “Asia’s World City.” It has always been a slightly ill-fitting (if self-anointed) label, but in recent years it has become overwhelmingly so. Luckily, you can fax your complaints to the relevant government department; it is, after all, the 21st century, and Hong Kong is a ‘tech hub.’ I tried as much as I could to ignore politics, since it always seemed to do the same to me. Unfortunately, it became part of my job, in ways I find particularly bothersome. I taught at the university level in Hong Kong for almost two decades. I watched politics turn from an abstraction that students openly dismissed as irrelevant to something that affects them very directly.
Over a decade ago, when Hong Kong first started discussing the addition of a Liberal Studies curriculum to their education system, I was conflicted. On one hand, I thought it would be good to finally teach students about thinking as an educational exercise rather than the extant system of rote memorization. Faculty would frequently bemoan the paucity of intellectual curiosity in students, but I always asserted that if you spend twelve years teaching people to cram facts into their head only to regurgitate them on command, you can expect little else.
At the same time, I warned my colleagues (and others) that critical thinking was a Pandora’s Box that, once opened, was never going to close. If you teach young people to ask questions, sooner or later they’re going to ask questions you don’t like. Did people really want their children to start asking questions? How prepared were they for young people to start inquiring as to exactly why they should work like dogs to provide for their parents simply because their parents did it for them? Did their parents want them to be a doctor because it’s what the student wanted, or because the parents wanted to brag, or because doctors make more money, so the parents wouldn’t need ‘fruit money’ in their old age? Were people really prepared for that line of questioning?
The government must have known, deep down, what would happen with Liberal Studies and critical thinking. One reason I know this is the attempt to teach it as a subject, rather than a process, as in “Critical thinking is when people think like this,” the same way you might teach nuclear fission. It’s something people do, but other people, not us, you understand. Luckily that particular approach wasn’t taken. For several years, I enjoyed seeing a sea-change in my students’ thinking; even outside of political matters, their perspectives became much more nuanced and complex. They began to see themselves in social, cultural, and political contexts in a way that just a few years ago would have been unimaginable. It was, in retrospect, a very wonderful, easy, and naïve time, at least at first.
But it didn’t take long for things to change. Fifteen years ago, I couldn’t get my students to talk about politics. They were very clear about wanting to get a degree to get a job and buy a flat, and anything outside of that was unimportant, especially if it wasn’t going to be on the exam. Broadly speaking, Liberal Studies began to change that. More specifically, the 2012 drive for National Education showed that things were already very different. Suddenly young people were very interested in politics, if only, as Pericles once said, because politics was interested in them. Two years and 87 canisters of tear gas later, 2014's Occupy Central became the biggest manifestation of the political awareness of Hong Kong young people in half a century. I remember several things about that time very clearly. The most salient is how many young people would come up to me and want to talk about politics. This was a novel experience for me, but I was very, very happy. I was surprised by both their eagerness and their aptitude. I had always known these kids were smart enough; they just never had the chance or the training to engage in critical thinking. The other salient memory is seeing the first signs of authoriarian backlash. In 2016, a woman was convicted of assaulting a police officer with her breast.
It is unclear if her bloody nose was a result of her own breast or police conduct during her arrest.
My clearest memory of June 12, 2019, is very difficult to talk about. Even thinking about it, as I am doing now, bothers me. The day had started off in an almost festive mood, reminiscent of the almost carnival atmosphere of Occupy; people had filled Harcourt Rd. and were beginning to set up that remarkably organic infrastructure that supplied protesters with necessities. It was all very light-hearted and fun. At least until the police decided that having empty water bottles thrown at them was life-threatening and began firing rubber bullets and tear gas into a peaceful, if rambunctious, assembly. If I say I knew it would happen, it’s only because I am an old, cynical man who trusts authority to only ever do the wrong thing. Which of course they did. None of that was especially memorable to me. It was something else.
She was a teenager, sitting under one of the overpasses, and I can’t say what time it was. But it was definitely after it had started. She wasn’t crying, but she was so terrified by what was happening that she was visibly shaking. It went on for what seemed forever. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t say or do anything. I stood there, hoping at least that it might help to show her that she wasn’t alone. I doubt it did. I have never felt so powerless before, and I began to be very angry. What happened that day was a surprise, but the protesters adapted with typically speedy efficiency. There’s a famous video clip of a journalist being offered protective gear by protesters, and I saw that happen a lot. Young people were constantly asking me if I was okay. “Don’t worry,” I would say, “I’m an American.” It always worked; they either laughed or said, in serious tones “Oh, you’re used to this.” I had never been in a protest in the US, but living there makes you familiar, if not comfortable, with a level of violence that is unheard of in Hong Kong. It’s not a good thing, and I am not saying it is. It was only a good thing for the police, who ran rampant.
Over the course of that summer, I observed many of the protests first hand. I am not a journalist by profession, but it should be noted that at the time, there was no official criteria or regulation of journalists. Even the New York Times was responsible for printing their own press credentials. This is relevant because the government made vociferous claims about ‘fake journalists,’ even though the same government had no system by which to designate journalists as legitimate. Apparently, it rested simply on their choice. For years, some people took my presence at protests as proof of nefarious skullduggery perpetuated by the CIA, or NED, or any other three-letter acronym that tested the limits of their spelling abilities. One night, as I saw someone taking my picture, I asked a friend to request that the photos be deleted so I didn’t end up being branded a CIA agent (again) in pro-Beijing media. So when the story came out, the fact that I asked them to delete the photos was taken as proof that I was CIA! No, really.
I do sincerely give them credit for finding the single worst image of me on the Internet.
Later that year, Carrie Lam stated that ‘foreign penetration’ of campuses was rampant. We were told that the protests had been fomented by outside forces, much the same way China is claiming that the recent ‘blank paper’ Covid protests are an attempt by outsiders to disrupt the nation. The creeping specter of Western taint was an ever-present threat. One of communism’s great hallmarks is that whenever something goes sideways, it is always the product of ‘foreign meddling’ or ‘foreign forces.’ It’s never considered that maybe Chinese people have agency and want something different than what the government tells them they want (or forces on them). The same government endlessly warns about ‘pernicious Western ideas’ sullying the minds of young Chinese citizens, but no one ever asks if those ideas include Marxism, Leninism, or communism. It also doesn’t stop politicians from sending their children to Ivy League universities or foreign boarding schools. That’s somehow different.
After politics became interested in students, it started to become interested in education itself, as well as the people who deliver it. The fall term of 2019 was a challenge, because the protests were continuing. They eventually reached the campuses themselves. “University campuses are just like cancer cells” said the police in 2019. They could perhaps be forgiven for fearing something they have little to no experience with. Some say calling the police 毅進仔/Yi Jin Jai is classist and elitist, but it should be remembered that this started only after the police taunted the residents of Lek Yuen public housing estate about being poor. Too poor, perhaps, to buy their credentials from an overseas degree mill, as numerous officers were shown to have done.
One reason I strongly resent the ineptitude of local governance is that it interferes with my job. Ideally, I am an arbiter of correct and incorrect; of truth and falsehood. It’s my job to tell students when they are right or wrong, and to make sure they base their perspectives in logic and factual evidence. That’s hard to do when your ‘leaders’ display a profound level of ignorance. In 2020, as the government started to put the pernicious Western influence of Liberal Studies in its crosshairs, Regina Ip famously said that “Critical thinking does not mean training people to criticize or attack.” Critical thinking is in fact supposed to do exactly that. It is often characterized as ‘speaking truth to power.’ Critical thinking means that you look at things critically, and when it is pertinent, you criticize them. But she is not the only person in government to have a tenuous grasp of educational and/or logical matters.
‘Dr.’ Elizabeth Quat’s three degrees all come from a house in Hawaii. They are literally not worth the paper they are printed on. Former Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng wrote the legal reference for illegal structures in Hong Kong. She is also an owner of several illegal structures, though at no point has she been made legally responsible. Her explanation was that she was “too busy” to rectify the issue, an excuse her own book expressly dismisses. When a photograph of incorrectly installed concrete fixtures on the HK-Zhuhai- Macau surfaced, someone from the Bridge Authority said it may be “a perceptual and visual illusion.” Or it may be a photograph of improper construction.
During the 2019 protests, video surfaced of police repeatedly kicking a man in a yellow shirt. The police spokesperson claimed it was ‘a yellow object.’ In the entirety of 2019, and since, not a single police officer faced any disciplinary measures for excessive use of force, including the officer who blinded a journalist in one eye or the officer who rode his motorcycle into a group of protesters. In 2021, 0.06% of Hong Kong’s population took part in an ‘election.’ 4,389 out of a possible 4,889 people voted to fill 1500 seats while being ‘protected’ by 6,000 police officers in what the government called a ‘perfected electoral process.’ This process has also seen virtually all non-pro-establishment candidates and/or office holders disqualified at best and imprisoned at worst. Some of them are facing prison for the crime of organizing to win an election, which, unsurprisingly, is not actually a crime. Except that now it is. So is encouraging people to cast blank ballots. Many have been held without bail since their arrests, in some cases for approximately two years.
Their opponents, like the DAB’s Gary Chan, say that “under the new political system, politicians must not engage in politicking.” If a student wrote that in a paper I would fail them. His remarks follow Carrie Lam’s expression of gratitude to the NPC for the electoral ‘reform’ in Hong Kong, as it would fix the problem of “an excess of politics in the Legislative Council.” Legislatures are by definition political congresses. When asked if the city had devolved into a police state, LegCo member (and politician) Alice Mak responded “If it’s a police state, why not? I don’t think there’s any problem with a police state… I will view the other side, that is the emphasis on security.” Politician Maria Tam, when asked whether the National Security Law would make it illegal to call for an end to one-party dictatorship in China, said that it is false; China is not a dictatorship because there are multiple political parties. She quickly added that people shouldn’t say it anyway. Even though it’s not true.
In 2020 the government announced that it would not hold by-elections to replace ‘disqualified’ district councillors, which it is legally required to do, as it was too busy “preparing for the upcoming elections.” In 2021 police forced runners in the Hong Kong Marathon to change out of clothing that carried the slogan “Hong Kong Add Oil (i.e Let’s Go!) because it’s a “political slogan.” The city’s head of Customs declared smuggled Australian lobsters “a threat to China’s national security.” In the last Chief Executive election, which the government constantly insisted was a democratic process, there was one candidate.
Pointing out these blatant, willfully flippant falsehoods isn’t ‘attacking’ people. It’s pointing out objectively false words and deeds. It’s not an “optical illusion” or a “yellow object” or an “election.” It certainly isn’t “record turnout” when you reduced the number of potential voters by 98%. Why is it only ‘politics’ when the pro-democracy side does it? Is it illegal to call for an end to Mayan rule in China, even though it isn’t real? Who knows? It’s Kafkaesque, but only in the most low-brow, clumsy way. It’s abject, performative fawning aimed squarely at the Liaison Office and/or Zhongnanhai. Locally, it’s as if they’re daring people to call them out on these obvious lies and contradictions. But there is tear gas, rubber bullets, and a prison cell waiting for anyone who dares mention the man behind the curtain; as recent events keep making ever clearer, there is now only patriotism and criminality.
Living in Hong Kong is akin to being trapped in a production of 1984 done by a public access cable channel. It’s not the obvious doublespeak I find so galling; it’s the shoddy, ham-fisted way it’s delivered. A gaggle of intellectually challenged sycophants spewing this toxic, shanzai-Orwellian drivel is hard enough to tolerate as a taxpayer, but it has a direct impact on my job, and not just because the current Chief Executive isn’t even a degree holder. How am I supposed to uphold Logic and Truth in my classroom when the people in charge of the city can blithely say anything they want, no matter how illogical, contradictory or plainly false?
Textbooks have recently begin declaring that Hong Kong was never a British colony, simply “a Chinese territory under colonial administration.” Logically, there’s a strong argument to be made that the latter half of that assertion is in fact true today. But saying it is probably illegal. In December of 2021 the chief of police declared that his officers never entered the Chinese University campus in 2019. A photograph of police on the Chinese University campus won a Reuters photojournalism award. This fall, the former chief, now the minister for security, attended an opening ceremony at Chinese University. Perhaps next year he’ll deny he ever went. The government claims that freedom of the press is intact in Hong Kong. Thee link to the claim of never entering campus is a quote Tweet from Stand NewsHK, a media entity that no longer exists, much like Apple Daily or many other outlets the government doesn’t approve of.
This odd admixture of xenophobia and dumbness that has become policy in local governance was the primary motivator for my leaving a place I had full intended to spend the rest of my life in. Like many people, I supported the measures taken in 2020 to stop the spread of Covid in one of the world’s most densely populated places. I got vaccinated, and I behaved as I was expected to. We were told that together we fight the virus. Except we weren’t together. There were obviously two sets of rules, because some Hong Kongers are more together than others. I had always told myself that I would stay until Covid was over, but at one point a voice in my head very reasonably asked “for what?” The city I moved to no longer exists. The masks we have worn for three years, as well as the surveillance app needed to accomplish entry into most buildings, are plainly much more about control than science. This is especially true when exemptions seem to be handed out based much more on one’s financial status than vaccination status. It should also be pointed out that at present it is illegal both to not wear a mask in Hong Kong as well as to wear a mask, a vestige of the reaction to 2019. Go home, GovHK, you’re drunk.
Just recently one of Hong Kong’s politicians, when asked if residents could be jailed for holding up blank pieces of paper, said it depended on what was written on the blank piece of paper. This person is also a lawyer. Speaking of which, Hong Kong court rulings thrice informed the Justice Department that no, it may not bar Jimmy Lai from hiring a foreign lawyer. So the Chief Executive asked (likely because he was told to do so) Beijing to ‘reinterpret’ the law to clarify the misunderstanding. No one is in any doubt as to what that interpretation is going to say, but in case you’re under any illusions, the Immigration Department decided not extend the lawyer’s work visa until the interpretation is heard.
No one should tolerate this slovenly union of craven authoritarianism and malignant stupidity. I tolerated it as long as I could, but I stopped being able to. At a certain point, remaining in this situation implicitly endorses it, and I couldn’t do it any longer. So I left. That bag-eyed halfwit and his cabal of dopes will destroy whatever is left of Hong Kong. I hope they choke on it.