Long Read: “Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution Isn’t Over Yet”

Laura Hilgers, in the NYTimes, as “A democracy movement ponders its next move“:

On the final night of Hong Kong’s largest Occupy camp, a crowd of protesters swelled along an empty highway. It had been 74 days since the first canister of tear gas hit democracy supporters armed with only umbrellas, setting off what the city soon came to call the Umbrella Revolution. It had been more than two months since protesters first sat on that street in their raincoats, sleepless and worried that the military would soon arrive. The fear had now dissipated, and on this cool December evening, the atmosphere was raucous and festive. People filled the empty spaces between tents, spilling out of a metro stop and pouring over concrete barriers with the help of carefully constructed wooden steps. They lined up for free souvenirs — silk-screened T-shirts, leather necklaces, protest stickers — and gathered around microphones for open meetings. They threw glitter and snapped photographs. They sang along to pop songs crooned by a man called Bananaooyoo (now a protest icon whose signature color, like that of the protest itself, is yellow). Archivists removed pieces of artwork for safekeeping, and a few activists hung yellow banners: “We’ll be back.”…

No one planned the Umbrella Revolution, at least not the way it actually unfolded. It began as a movement called Occupy Central With Love and Peace, the brainchild of a tidily dressed law professor at the University of Hong Kong named Benny Tai, who works out of a narrow office where bookcases run from floor to ceiling — even his scholarly clutter is well dusted and clean. He speaks with the slight British accent that is common in Hong Kong and manages to sound enthusiastic about his subject without a single change in his expression. “I see myself more as an idea carrier,” Tai told me, when we met at his office. “I contribute an idea, and that’s it,” he explained. Then he added, “Now I more and more understand that ideas can be very dangerous.”…

As a student in the 1980s, Tai served on a 180-person committee that oversaw the drafting of Hong Kong’s Constitution, a document that called for Hong Kong’s autonomy but gave sweeping powers to the city’s chief executive. It also left Hong Kong with a system of government that puts power directly into the hands of the city’s business elite. Half the seats in Hong Kong’s legislature are determined by so-called functional constituencies — voting blocs grouped by industry rather than by geographic district. “A lot of the votes in functional constituencies are actually corporate votes; they’re not even given to human individuals,” Anson Chan, the 75-year-old woman who ran the city’s Civil Service before and after the handover, told me over cups of tea at the office of her pro-democracy group, Hong Kong 2020. “So if you are a big business tycoon in Hong Kong, and you have a dozen companies, all of which are eligible to vote, you essentially not just have one vote or two votes, you have a dozen votes.” While there are 3.5 million eligible voters for the 35 seats divided by geography, there are only 232,000 people and corporations voting in the functional constituencies.

A result of this system, according to Tai and many protesters, is growing economic inequality — and a hated chief executive: Leung Chun-ying, a former real estate surveyor with a penchant for insensitive comments. Leung was elected to the position in 2012 by the 1,200-member committee that decides the office, most of whom are not subject to popular elections. After a campaign in which he accused his opponent of having an illegal structure in his home, Leung turned out to have illegal structures in his own. He later pushed an education-reform package that emphasized a rosy, more patriotic picture of Beijing (it was ultimately dropped). Leung, who is better known as C.Y. Leung, is so reviled that toilet paper was sold with his face on it; at an appearance at LegCo, a legislator threw a bun at him. In an interview with foreign media during the protests, he warned that democracy would turn Hong Kong over to the poor. “Then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies,” he said, ominously…

Somewhere, Scott Walker’s aides are furiously taking notes for a presentation to the Koch brothers. And yet, in Hong Kong, while the economic situation seems familiar, the immediate personal risks are obviously far higher:

Leung’s administration has also presided over a slide in the standard of living. Hong Kong’s businesses are increasingly tied to mainland China and seen as beholden to leaders in Beijing. Over the past 10 years, the median income in the city has increased by 30 percent, even as G.D.P. has grown by 60 percent. Twenty percent of Hong Kong’s population is living under the official poverty line, but the city’s 50 richest people, according to the annual list compiled by Forbes, are worth a total of $236 billion (Hong Kong’s entire G.D.P. in 2013, by comparison, was $274 billion). Tai paid lip service to economic inequality in the name of his movement — Occupy — but his demands were more modest, limited only to the election of the city’s chief executive. “It’s just getting Hong Kong people to have that right to vote and have a true election,” he said. “It’s a first step only.” By the time I arrived at the camp on Harcourt Road, comparisons with other global protests had started to grate on the leaders; they did not aim to overthrow a government, they pointed out, or to challenge an entire economic system. The movement’s name changed to the Umbrella Revolution to reflect not just the literal image of umbrellas as shields but also how participation had expanded…

For the party, the protests have threatened to become a powerful symbol of liberalization and economic prosperity. In arguing for democracy, Tai was pitting himself not against Leung but against leaders on the mainland (“Leung Chun-ying is widely understood as an underground C.C.P. member and a puppet of Beijing,” reads an introduction on the Occupy Central website). The only way to measure Beijing’s response has been through crackdowns. In mainland China, those thought to be supporters of the protest — even those who just expressed support online — have been thrown in jail. Late in the protest, when China’s president, Xi Jinping, made a trip to Macau on a rainy day, journalists were not allowed to carry umbrellas…

For more details, personal stories, slideshows, and future possibilities, read the whole article.